June 28, 1970
Shepton Mallet, UK
Bath Festival - West Showground
Setlist:
Immigrant Song, Heartbreaker, Dazed and Confused, Bring It On Home, Since I've Been Loving You, Organ solo / Thank You, That's Way (tentatively titled: The Boy Next Door), What Is and What Should Never Be, Moby Dick, How Many More Times (medley incl. Long Distance Call, Honey Bee, Meed Your Love Tonight, That's Alright Mama), Whole Lotta Love, Communication Breakdown, Long Tall Sally ~ Say Mama ~ Johnny B. Goode ~ That's Alright Mama.
Notes:
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Peter Grant: "Some people were trying to videotape the Bath festival and they'd already been told beforehand they couldn't, so I had no qualms about throwing a bucket of water on to the tape machine which blew the whole lot up. Whoosh! It made a horrible smell and then it melted." (C. Welch interview)
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Review: By 8pm, it was estimated that a quarter of a million people – roughly the population of the city of Leeds – were champing at the bit awaiting Led Zeppelin. Half-an-hour to set up – then the members of THE definitive ‘heavy’ band strode on stage – Robert Plant, looking more like Norse warrior than ever, Jimmy Page looking like Mad Dan Eccles in an ankle length overcoat and yokel’s hat over his ears, John Bonham in purple vest crouched behind his green drums and John Paul Jones in “straight” trendy gear clutched his bass guitar.
They kicked off with a new riff from their next album called “Immigrant Song”. They actually took some time to warm up the crowd, but this may have been intentional as they built up to a fantastic climax with an act lasting over three hours.
Jimmy produced his violin bow to attack the guitar strings, and John Paul was featured on Hammond organ on Since I’ve Been Loving You.
It was after John Bonham’s phenomenal drum solo – violent, aggressive and furiously fast – had brought the crowd permanently to their feet, that the real fun began!
They had contrasted their rock style with the beautiful “The First Time” (aka That’s the Way) featuring John Paul on mandolin and Jim on six-string acoustic with Robert singing in the most attractive restrained style. Now it was time for the other extreme.
A wild rock medley - How Many More Times. The crowd wouldn’t let them go. Tambourines thrown to the fans. As dusk fell and the lights flickered on the band roared into Communication Breakdown.
ANOTHER ENCORE – at 10:50pm Zeppelin had won. They had made all the hang-ups worthwhile and given the crowd a night to remember – whatever else happened. In their final minutes, they paid tribute to the masters of Rock and Roll with the songs of Little Richard, Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry. (MelodyMaker, July 1970)


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Bootleggers
That's ironic, isn't it! Peter Grant scoffing about how he threw a bucket of water on a video tape machine, and, next to this comment above, the statement that "there is no video from this show yet, check back here soon". Wishful thinking, fellows. I was at this show, right down the front in the Press, VIP area. Security/roadies were constantly leaping into the crowd and ripping audio tapes out of tape machines (I don't recall the bucket of water incident). In about 2003 I read a Jimmy Page comment that was something like "I was listening to a bootleg tape of us the other day and we were playing all these fantastic little riffs between songs. We were so hot then!" (He wasn't talking about Shepton Mallet.) Ah, the wisdom of hindsight. It would be nice now to have that Shepton Mallet video and all those destroyed audio tapes, wouldn't it?.