First night at the Seattle Center Coliseum 3/17/75...
Press Review:
Squeeze all the air out of a three-hour Led Zeppelin concert at the Coliseum and you might have an hour of music and visual effects worth your attention.
Nevertheless, a sellout crowd that broke four plate-glass doors and brought a two-feet-deep stack of counterfeit tickets gust to get into the place, sat spellbound, despite the fact that ushers and police relieved them of the equivalent of a green garbage dumpster full of booze. Led Zeppelin's appeal might be explained by the fact that they're known in the trade as a "street band," meaning that their following precedes critical attention by about two years.
Credit for such audience appeal belongs in large part to the band's singer, Robert Plant. Plant's ability to sing and play with, rather than to, a crowd is rare in this business.
Several years ago, when it was the custom to have chairs at rock concerts, people at the rear of the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver, B.C., began chanting "Please sit down!" to those blocking their view. Plant picked up on the chant, the band improvised a song, and a perennial concert hassle was thus resolved.
Supporting Plant's howling vocals were lead guitarist Jimmy Page, on Les Paul and double-necked 12-and-six-stringed guitars, John Paul Jones on bass guitar, mellotron, and piano, and John Bonham on drums.
The band introduced four songs from its new double album, titled "Physical Graffiti". These included "Sick Again," a rocker, "In My Time of Dying," a spooky tune called "Kashmir" and the album's new single "Trampled Underfoot"
A better chunk of the hour that makes LZ worth the price of admission was occupied by "Dazed and Confused," one of the band's earliest songs, and the rock classic "Stairway to Heaven."
In between these two was a medley rendition of "Woodstock" which featured Page playing his guitar with a violin bow and dynamic visual effects capped by three laser beams emanating from the stage and, terminating high above the opposite end of the Coliseum.
As the band went onto its encore, Plant remarked to the audience, "You were fantastic, so were we". (BY D. P. BOND, March 1975)
