eveningstar.co.uk
by JONATHAN BARNES
13/03/2010

IT was a concert that has gone down in Suffolk music legend - the night one of the biggest rock bands in the world played at a converted swimming pool.

But there are no official recordings of Led Zeppelin's gig at St Matthews Baths Hall in Ipswich in November 1971; only a handful of patched-together recordings from a small band of bootleggers.

So rock fan Vic Kemp could not believe his luck when he found a CD at a car boot sale featuring a recording of the whole concert.

“I was going through a stand of CDs at the car boot at Portman Road and the guy who was selling them said 'you might be interested in this',” he said.

“It doesn't have a proper cover and the title is just written in felt-tip pen. I think the date of the concert is wrong, as it says 1972, but the recording is not too bad at all. It's on a double CD.

“It must have been recorded by someone standing at the front with a microphone. You can hear (singer) Robert Plant talking to the audience quite clearly.”

Mr Kemp, 48, who works at Sackers Recycling at Great Blakenham, said: “I was too young to go to the gig but Led Zeppelin were massive at the time and all the big ones are on there - Immigrant Song, Whole Lotta Love, Stairway to Heaven, Rock & Roll and Black Dog.

“It only cost me two or three pounds. I've no idea how many other copies there are or if it's worth anything. It's just incredible that they played such a small venue - and it sounds an amazing gig,”

Mr Kemp also has a framed promotional poster advertising the event, which he picked up separately.

The event was hosted by Ipswich concert promoters Ron and Nanda Lesley and notorious Led Zeppelin manager Peter Grant and the poster bears the slogan: “For one night only, the internationally famous Led Zeppelin.” Tickets for the concert cost £1.

Several years ago a group of bootleggers put together the only three known “source” tapes of the concert and produced a CD, which was titled Internationally Famous. There is also another recording called Gallows Pool.

It is likely the CD Mr Kemp bought is a copy of one of these remastered recordings.

St Matthews Baths Hall, in St Matthews Street, opened in 1922 and hosted many concerts and music nights in the 1960s and 1970s.

It closed in 1984 and became offices and later a social club for Suffolk County Council. It currently stands empty, although a Tesco Express store has been built at the front of the site.

LED Zeppelin released their IV album just eight days before they played in Ipswich, a date which was part of their 1971 UK winter tour.

While they had already established themselves as one of Britain's best and most popular rocks bands by this point, it was their fourth record that turned them into superstars.

It featured four symbols on the cover to represent the four members: singer Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, bass player John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham.

Plant tells the audience at the Ipswich concert that the newly-released album was “long overdue - we had a lot of problems with it”, but IV went on to sell more than 37million copies worldwide, becoming one of the most successful records of all time.

Several tracks from the album - Rock & Roll, Black Dog, Going to California and the all-time classic Stairway to Heaven - were played at St Matthews Baths Hall, to a crowd who had probably never heard the songs before.

The show also featured the best numbers from their first three albums, including Immigrant Song, Heartbreaker and Whole Lotta Love, which later became the signature intro music to Top of The Pops. It is those songs that receive the most rapturous response from the crowd.

The hall had a distinctive “bouncing” dancefloor where the pool had been drained and filled in and Plant can be heard on the recording saying: “Don't know which one's the 12ft end - God help us” and then later “Think of the drop beneath you and the drop that might come eventually”.

He also jokes: “I'm sure you must've had a Town Hall.”

There are a couple of references to Marc Bolan and T-Rex - one of the band's big rock rivals at the time - and the singer compliments the crowd for being “very polite” after a respectful round of applause greets his introduction to Stairway to Heaven.

There are also lengthy solos in the show, notably from Page, whose showboating stretches Dazed and Confused to almost half an hour long.

Led Zeppelin went on to become one of the biggest selling bands of the 1970s with a string of hit albums, while their reputation as hard living rock stars became legendary.

The band split in 1980 after the death of drummer John Bonham after a heavy drinking binge.

The remaining members went their separate ways to pursue successful careers in music.