Led Zeppelin first played the Rock Pile in February, 1969. This show was nothing special and I have no photos of it. I had seen the Jeff Beck Group the previous October and Led Zeppelin was not even close to the dynamics and energy that Beck and cohorts had put out.
However, both these bands' careers would soon take very different paths. Beck and lead singer Rod Stewart parted company, while Led Zeppelin remained together to forge one of the biggest industries in Rock history. By 1975, Led Zeppelin was making more money than The Beatles or The Stones.
With a unique sense of foresight, the bookers at the Rock Pile had Zeppelin contracted for a return engagement at the end of their first North American tour. The return gig was for August and they were booked to do two shows in one night.
By the time August rolled around, Led Zeppelin were in the charts and getting a lot of airplay. They had just released the second album and they were beginning to become huge in the USA. Arenas were being sold out, and here was this obligatory gig in a hall that held 1500 people, in another country they had to travel to, and do two shows no less!
Led Zeppelin had this notorious manager named Peter Grant. He was very large, over six feet and three hundred pounds, with greasy hair like he hadn't bathed in days, and he enjoyed intimidating promoters with his Cockney-gangster mentality.
After the first concert, there was an argument on the back stairs of the club between Peter Grant and Rick Taylor, the manager of The Rock Pile. Bottom line, Led Zeppelin wanted more money or they weren't going on for the second show. There were 2,000 rabid fans in the hall, and Peter Grant was playing hardball. It was a very aggressive confrontation, and I was standing at the top of the stairs by the dressing room door, looking down to the landing where all these shouts were coming from. There beside me was Robert Plant and although I had my camera, I didn't dare bring it out and start shooting.
Rick Taylor looked defeated, until from the back door came one of the Rock Pile stage hands. Holding a distributor cap by its wires like freshly killed vermin, the joyful roadie exclaimed 'They aint goin' nowhere Rick!'
Without Rick's knowledge or consent, the stage hand had gone out and removed the distributor cap from the band's equipment truck, thus ensuring that Led Zeppelin were not leaving the building until The Rock Pile said so.
Led Zeppelin went on with the show. They were loud and quite sloppy. They seemed to pose as much as play, and I guess this attitude set the standard for Heavy Metal bands to come.
Jeff Beck or Eric Clapton wouldn't be caught dead in pink, crushed velvet bell-bottom pants. Led Zeppelin's best musical moments were often buried by pretension.
It is also common knowledge that Led Zeppelin were blatant plagiarists. They stole riffs from other artists and then paid them off to keep quiet. Steve Marriot of The Small Faces was paid a substantial amount of money to have Led Zeppelin call one of his songs their own!
The song 'You Need Lovin', recorded by The Small Faces in 1966 was morphed into 'Whole Lotta Love' by Led Zeppelin in 1969. Any curious music fan should check this out. The rip-off is astounding, right down to the middle vocal break, 'Woman! You need... Love'.
Another example is 'The Lemon Song', with its lyrical mix of two songs, one by Robert Johnson and the other by Howlin' Wolf. Led Zeppelin claims to have written the song.
There are many other songs in their early catalogue that are not original, but they have their names on them. These songs were bought from the original songwriters, and although not illegal, this is a misrepresentation of their creativity and originality.
Their later material was totally original, and songs such as 'Kashmir' are truly great, but why the deceit in the beginning?
This lack of musical reference to their peers is one reason why Led Zeppelin fans have no source of reference from their idols. Zeppelin refused to acknowledge their influences and thus stifled the musical curiosity of their audience. Any Small Faces fan knew where Robert Plant got his vocal delivery from, but few Led Zep fans in America have ever heard of The Small Faces, except the later incarnation with Rod Stewart, of all ironies.
They also probably can't stand the thought that the same vocal dynamo who wrote the pop hit 'Itchycoo Park' also wrote 'Whole Lotta Love'.