Stairway To Heaven by Richard Cole

the Fillmore, Country Joe had to follow Zeppelin onstage, which could have triggered a nervous breakdown in just about any musician placed in the same position. As Zeppelin walked offstage, leaving behind an audience limp with exhaustion, the quieter, more cerebral sounds of Country Joe were about as appropriate as an hour of Mitch Miller or Mantovani.
    During the Fillmore performances, Zeppelin didn’t disappoint anyone—including themselves. After the second of the San Francisco gigs, Jimmy turned to me on the ride back to the hotel and said, “This is a turning point for us, Richard.” He laughed with excitement. “When a supporting band starts overshadowing the headliner, you know something’s happening. Brace yourself for a pretty thrilling ride.”
    Even in that first tour, I found it impossible to sit through a Zeppelin concert and not feel an emotional high, not feel moved, not feel like I was part of a special, unique experience. I told Kenny Pickett, “If this band can stick together and not let their personalities and their egos get in the way of the music, they could be one of the longest lasting in show business.”
    To a large degree, those three Fillmore concerts became the oil that fueled the Zeppelin machine, creating a flurry of attention not only in Northern California, but in other parts of the country as well. A New York disc jockey on an underground FM radio station talked about the band as “Beatle incarnates.” Fans stormed record stores, demanding an album that didn’t yet exist. Atlantic Records was being barraged with orders even before the vinyl was off the assembly line. The momentum was building.
    On two occasions during that first U.S. tour—once at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom and again at Miami’s Image Club—John Paul left the stage during Bonham’s drum solo, with a dismayed look on his face. “What’s wrong with this damn equipment?” he yelled over at me. “I can’t even hear my own bass!”
    In fact, the music had to compete with the deafening crowd noise. And often the crowd won.
    If any doubt still existed about the power of Zeppelin, it vanished at the end of January at the Boston Tea Party. The Tea Party was a converted synagogue that had become a great showcase for rock musicians. By this point in our tour, thirty-three days and twenty-eight performances into it, the band had solidified as a unit. Groups tend to either become closer on a tour, or they begin to rupture at the seams; in Zeppelin’s case, as the four musicians got to know each other better, they began enjoying one another’s company. And as their music really began to jell, it seemed as though they couldn’t wait to get onstage.
    â€œThe other twenty-three hours of the day mean nothing,” Robert said. “It’s that one hour of music that I care about.”
    The Tea Party was sold out—in fact, the management had sold too many tickets for the 400-seat club. As Led Zeppelin began performing their sixty-minute set, both the musicians and the audience started working themselves into a frenzy. Jimmy walked to the edge of the stage, aimed the neck of his guitar at the fans as his fingers danced from fret to fret, and then extended his left leg like he was about to leap into the audience. He coaxed the crowd into an orgy of hysteria.
    After an hour of playing, no one was ready for them to quit. For another fifty-five minutes, there was more ear-drum-splintering music. Standing ovations, sometimes right in the middle of songs. Fans storming toward the stage. Absolute delirium. Encore after encore. Twelve in all.
    At that point, the band had only a three-month history together, and as one encore merged into the next, they simply ran out of songs to play. They would spring off the stage after each encore, with odd expressions that showed both exhilaration and panic. “What other songs do you know?” Jimmy