Led Zeppelin North American Tour 1972

North America 1972
Poster for Led Zeppelin's concerts at San Diego, used to help promote its 1972 North American tour
Concert tour by Led Zeppelin
Associated album	Led Zeppelin IV
Start date	27 May 1972
End date	28 June 1972
Legs	1
Shows	19 (including two European warm-up shows)
Led Zeppelin concert chronology
Australasia 1972 North America 1972 Japan 1972

Led Zeppelin's 1972 North American Tour was the eighth concert tour of North America by the English rock band. The tour was divided into two legs, with performances commencing on 27 May and concluding on 28 June 1972. It included two warm-up shows in Europe.

History

Guitarist Jimmy Page considers Led Zeppelin at this point to have been at their artistic peak.^[1] However, despite selling out their concerts, the tour had the lowest profile of all of the band's eleven North American concert tours, being vastly overshadowed by the Rolling Stones' tour of the same period, much to the annoyance of Led Zeppelin.^[2][3][4] In order to prevent this from happening again, the band's manager, Peter Grant, decided to hire PR consultants to help promote subsequent tours.

During this concert stint the band stopped at New York to mix tracks that had been recorded at Olympic Studios in London the previous month, for their forthcoming fifth album.^[2]

According to Led Zeppelin experts Dave Lewis and Simon Pallett, it was at around this period in time that Grant began to implement the unprecedented policy of asking concert promoters for 90% of all gate receipts:

The group's stature was such that he was able to pull off this major swing with little resistance from the agents and promoters. Any deal with Led Zeppelin was better than no deal at all, they decided. As a consequence Led Zeppelin's fortune began to pile up at an even faster rate [than before].^[2]

For this tour, and all of Led Zeppelin's subsequent American tours, the band hired Dallas-based company Showco to provide its lighting and sound.^[5]

Recordings

Like many other Led Zeppelin concert tours, several of the concerts performed by the band on this tour were recorded by fans as unofficial bootlegs. Some of these were subsequently released on bootleg titles such as Burn Like a Candle. Soundboard recordings from two of the concerts from this tour, at the L.A. Forum on 25 June and the Long Beach Arena on 27 June respectively, were remastered by Page and officially released on the album How the West Was Won.

No official live footage of the band was filmed during this tour. In an interview Page gave to The Times newspaper in 2010, when asked which performances from Led Zeppelin's career stand out to him now, he made reference to the tour but acknowledged the lack of visual recordings:

I think what we did on ... How the West was Won — that 1972 gig — is pretty much a testament of how good it was. It would have been nice to have had a little more visual recordings, but there you go. That’s the conundrum of Led Zeppelin!^[6]

Tour set list

This was the first tour in which Led Zeppelin used songs from their upcoming album Houses of the Holy ("Over the Hills and Far Away", "Dancing Days", and "The Ocean"). This was also the last concert tour on which Led Zeppelin included an acoustic section until it was revived in 1975 for their Earls Court performances. John Bonham sang co-lead vocals with Robert Plant during the song Bron-Y-Aur Stomp. The decision to drop the acoustic set was perhaps made because their live concerts were regularly extending into three hour long marathons (and sometimes up to four and a half hours), which were becoming taxing on all four band members.^[2][3]

The fairly typical set list for the tour was:

1. "LA Drone" (Page, Jones) (15 June to 28 June)
2. "Immigrant Song" (Page, Plant)
3. "Heartbreaker" (Bonham, Page, Plant)
4. "Celebration Day" (Page, Plant, Jones) (on 27 May and 9 June only)
5. "Black Dog" (Page, Plant, Jones)
6. "Over the Hills and Far Away" ((Page, Plant) (only on 19 June, 25 June,27 June, and 28 June)
7. "Since I've Been Loving You" (Page, Plant, Jones)
8. "Stairway to Heaven" (Page, Plant)
9. "Going to California" (Page, Plant)
10. "Black Country Woman" (Page, Plant) (only on 19 June)
11. "That's the Way" (Page, Plant)
12. "Tangerine" (Page)
13. "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" (Page, Plant, Jones)
14. "Dazed and Confused" (Page)
15. "What Is and What Should Never Be" (Page, Plant)
16. "Dancing Days" (Page, Plant) (only on 19 June, 25 June, 27 June, and 28 June)
17. "Moby Dick" (Bonham)
18. "Whole Lotta Love" (Bonham, Dixon, Jones, Page, Plant)

Encores (variations of the following list):

• "Rock and Roll" (Page, Plant, Jones, Bonham)
• "The Ocean" (Bonham, Jones, Page, Plant)
• "Louie Louie" (Berry)
• "Thank You" (Page, Plant)
• "Communication Breakdown" (Bonham, Jones, Page)
• "Bring It On Home" (Dixon, Page, Plant)
• "Money (That's What I Want)" (Bradford, Gordie) (only on 19 June)
• "Weekend" (Post)

Tour dates

Note: The 18 June show was moved to Seattle from the planned location in Vancouver at the last minute due to fans rioting.

External links

• Comprehensive archive of known concert appearances by Led Zeppelin (official website)
• Led Zeppelin concert setlists
• Led Zeppelin Database

References

• Lewis, Dave and Pallett, Simon (1997) Led Zeppelin: The Concert File, London: Omnibus Press. ISBN 0-7119-5307-4.