![Led Zep Rule the U.S. in 1973]( "Led Zep Rule the U.S. in 1973")
Led Zep Rule the U.S. in 1973
50 moments that changed the history of rock & roll
Nineteen seventy-three was "the year we conquered America," declares Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. In addition, Zeppelin's thirty-six-date U.S. run that summer was, he adds proudly, "the tour that gave birth to the modern arena-rock experience." There was no bigger band that year -- Zeppelin would sell out entire stadiums in as little as four hours -- and none better onstage.
Zeppelin's march to victory began in Atlanta on May 4th, under the stars, in front of more than 49,000 people at sold-out Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. There was no opening act. Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham tore out of the darkness with "Rock and Roll" -- spotlights lit up the band with the first thunder crack from Bonham's gigantic kit -- and played for three hours. Green lasers pierced the night sky during the spaced hymn "No Quarter" and again in "Dazed and Confused" as cannons and smoke bombs exploded with battlefield force. "The idea was that it was an assault," Page says, "a tribal thing where you never knew what was going to happen."
Even Zeppelin were stunned by the group's first-night triumph in Atlanta. "We showed 'em!" exclaimed Plant after Zeppelin left the stage -- a vengeful reference to the critics who had wreaked havoc on the band over the years. The next night, in Florida, Zeppelin played to 56,000 people at Tampa Stadium, smashing the U.S. attendance record for a single concert, set in 1965 by the Beatles at New York's Shea Stadium. A month later, on June 2nd, Zeppelin broke their own record for gross revenue at a single show at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco, pulling in an estimated $325,000.
Zeppelin repaid their fans nightly with power, volume and nerve; "No Quarter" and "Dazed and Confused" each ran close to the half-hour mark, and Page took extended, heroic blues breaks in "Since I've Been Loving You." Page says Zeppelin simply "weren't the sort of band to go out and play things note for note. We stretched songs out, and it was different every night."
The excess continued offstage. Zeppelin took over the entire sixth floor of the Hyatt House -- a.k.a. the Riot House -- on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, turning it into a sex-and-drugs fun house. At Bonham's twenty-fifth birthday party, George Harrison dumped the entire birthday cake on the drummer's head; Bonham responded by throwing the ex-Beatle into a swimming pool. Zeppelin's climactic end-of-tour stand at New York's Madison Square Garden -- three nights filmed for The Song Remains the Same -- made headlines when part of the band's take for the week, more than $200,000 in cash, was stolen from their hotel.
"I was very pleased that it said Led Zep robbed on the front page of the Daily News rather than just rock band robbed," says record executive Danny Goldberg, then Zeppelin's press agent. "Now everyone knew they were the biggest rock band in the world."
