It was not unknown for bands to cancel their trips to Glasgow and this had been a source of great dread. Grimly pessimistic even at an early age, I was more or less convinced that they would not appear. Right up till the moment that Robert Plant, my complete, total and absolute adolescent hero, stepped onstage, I did not actually believe that they would play.
Now the Glasgow audience, while appreciative, usually took some time to warm up. Generally they would spend some suspicious moments sizing up the band before completely accepting them. Even then any heavy rock outfit indulging in too much balladeering and not enough power chords could be given a fairly hard time. On this night this was not the case. As Led Zeppelin appeared onstage like Mighty Heroes From Another Realm the place exploded. Everyone was up over the seats and piling down the front before Jimmy Page had completed his first riff. The bouncers, hardened Glasgow thugs normally hostile to this sort of behaviour, retreated in confusion.
Led Zeppelin played with no support act and, unlike many of the other bands in the fab early seventies, had no stage set and no fancy clothes. They wore plain T-shirts and jeans and their onstage equipment looked fairly modest although Robert Plant did have a sort of metal stick which made funny noises when he put his hands near it, very important for the psychedelic middle section of ‘Whole Lotta Love’.
They started off with ‘Black Dog’, a song with a dazzlingly good riff, and from then on it just got better. Thundering versions of crunching tunes like ‘The Immigrant Song’, ‘Communication Breakdown’ and ‘Rock and Roll’ flowed into the powerful electric blues of ‘Killing Floor’ and ‘I Can’t Quit You Babe’. (I suppose I would now have to grudgingly admit that it was a bad thing for Led Zeppelin not to have immediately acknowledged the original versions of some of these blues. At the time I would not have cared. I mean the original artists played them quietly, with acoustic guitars. Not the same thing at all.)
There were the screaming vocals of Robert Plant and the wailing and fantastical guitar playing of Jimmy Page. Behind them, as we young rock completists were well aware after dutifully sending in our poll forms for ‘Musician of the Year’ in each category to the music papers, were the excellent John Bonham on drums and the equally excellent John Paul Jones playing bass and keyboards. In between the huge chunks of noise were outbreaks of calm as they played a few acoustic numbers and some gentle songs of Misty Mountains and Elvish Warriors, all this being well suited to alleviating the tedium and frustration of my youthful existence. Aware of the status of the band, the audience listened to these in quiet rapture and did not speak, cough or fidget.
I loved every second of it. I was enormously appreciative of John Bonham’s drum solo. When Jimmy Page played his guitar with a violin bow I quite possibly wept for joy. I think it is an accurate recollection, rather than wishful thinking, that Led Zeppelin did do extremely good live versions of their material. As ‘Whole Lotta Love’ climaxed I had reached the sort of state you see in films of early Beatles concerts, that is, more or less hysterical. Seeing Led Zeppelin was probably a more satisfying fulfilment of a dream than any that was to follow.
They ended with ‘Stairway to Heaven’. Wow. What experience could have been better for me and my schoolfriends? None. Nothing would have come close. It was the best song in the world played by the best band in the world and here they were doing it right in front of us. The Archangel Gabriel coming onstage and blowing his trumpet would have had less effect. The concert ended. I was awestruck.
Outside I was completely deafened but still awestruck. That night the deafness gave way to a hideous ringing in my ears and I was still awestruck. Next day at school everyone was awestruck.
‘We are awestruck,’ we said, walking around the playground carrying our Led Zeppelin albums. ‘Completely awestruck.’
And it was true.
Time moves on. A few years later I was no longer awestruck by Led Zeppelin. They released another good album, Physical Graffiti, but were overtaken by time and the Sex Pistols. I went to many punk concerts, and it was still enjoyable but as the eighties crept on I started to lose the habit.
I was, I suppose, a little bored with the whole thing. Music did not seem a great deal of fun. I was aware however that this was a problem with me rather than the music. It is odd how people can dismiss whatever is popular at the time as ‘not as good as it was in my day’ and actually make themselves believe it. There is always something good around, it’s just that you get past the stage of appreciating it properly. Personally I was a little distressed no longer to appreciate it properly. Having passed thirty it always seemed like too much effort to actually go and see a band anywhere, what with London being so difficult to travel around in late at night. It was also too much effort to enter enthusiastically the fantasy land of any group of people whose sole talent was knocking together a reasonable tune and posing onstage. I had probably not been really excited by a live band since The Jesus and Mary Chain some years previously and by 1989 I had ceased going to gigs entirely.
By 1989 of course music listening had entirely changed. Whereas at my school Led Zeppelin were common currency, by now no such common currency existed. In any school there would be devotees of Heavy Metal, Rap, Reggae, Trance, Techno, Thrash, Hardcore, Indie Rock and no doubt various others. Dance music, utterly without credibility in the early seventies, was now popular with all sorts of people. However as this is a piece about two gigs rather than a history of music I shall pass over this, merely pointing out that from my point of view, proper music absolutely requires that there should be someone onstage hitting a loud guitar and the guitar has to be plugged into a fuzzbox. Anything else just won’t do.
So, where was I? Living in London and gone completely off gigs, it would seem. And I must admit that this was somewhat of a disappointment, and made me feel old.
When someone provided me with a spare ticket for the Pixies in 1989 I accepted it fairly doubtfully. I really only agreed to go at all because my pleasant new girlfriend wanted to. Personally I would just as soon have stayed home watching TV, especially as Britain’s late-night viewing had radically improved in recent years and I could now watch all night ‘American Gladiators’ and ‘Video Fashion’.
I had no great expectations of the music. For one thing, I had never heard the Pixies. They were American and had been in Britain before but this was their first time as stars. Their first full album, Surfer Rosa, was a big hit and they were receiving a lot of attention. So although I was ignorant of them, among others there was an air of expectation about the gig generated by those hip enough to have bought their first release, Come On Pilgrim, a mini LP, and those still avidly tuning in to John Peel on the radio.
Life for me now was different of course. I had to work for a living, which was bad. On the other hand, I no longer had to make up stories and bribe older people to buy me alcohol, which was good. I was fully entitled to march into any bar in London and demand a pint, and a whisky to follow if I deemed it necessary. I had my own home to go to and would not be censored by anyone even if I crawled through the door and made a mess on the carpet.
Different as well was my attitude to the upcoming event. I did not hang around in my bedroom listening obsessively to Pixies records, as I did in those weeks preceding Led Zeppelin’s show. Nor did I talk about the gig continually, or feverishly worry that it might be cancelled. I probably would not have minded had it been cancelled. This would have saved me the trouble of going out and left me free to watch ‘American Gladiators’ and ‘Video Fashion’. How perilous it can be to reach thirty!
The concert was at the Town and Country Club – a very strange name for a music venue I always thought. Unable to come up with any last-minute excuse for staying in, I reluctantly got myself ready and found myself packed in with what seemed like hundreds of people in a Transit van, driving slowly from Brixton to Kentish Town.
As I crawled out of the van, and rubbed the circulation back into my limbs, I saw that there were people everywhere. Hordes of fans were struggling out of the Bull and Gate, pint glasses still in hand, and queueing up for the Town and Country. The pavements were full of couples holding hands, groups of young boys