Live: Led Zeppelin @ Grande Ballroom, January 1969

Led Zeppelin, Grande Ballroom, Detroit, January 1969
By Jaan Uhelszki

Not six months after Jimmy Page walked out of the Student Union of the Luton College of Technology, on a drizzling Sunday night in July of 1968 after a rather deplorable final Yardbirds show, the seminal guitarist must have had a feeling of déjà vu. Page was leaning his bone-thin elbow against a stack of amps on the scarred wooden stage at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom, waiting to launch into “Train Kept a Rollin,” a Yardbirds standard which served as a sometime set-opener for his new band, once dubbed The New Yardbirds, but now known as Led Zeppelin.

Ten months before, Page had stood in this exact spot, under the tawdry silver mirror ball of the Moorish style ballroom, as a card-carrying member of the Yardbirds. It was on the strength of that former association that Zeppelin was able to get this prestigious three-day booking at the ballroom that had hosted the glitterati of both American and British bands.

There was a pragmatism to calling his new outfit the New Yardbirds – after all, the new band had to fulfill the old band’s touring obligations. But there was also something subversive about taking over the reins of a band that he had only joined two years before, and keeping their name. Page had been forced to put together an entirely new cast of characters to impersonate the Yardbirds for a 10-day Scandinavian tour.  First, he tapped bassist John Paul Jones, who furnished string arrangements on the Yardbirds' final album, Little Games. Next, Page was told to check out a raspy voice Adonis described as a “Greek Fairy God,” who was currently making waves fronting an outfit with the unwieldy name of Hobbstweedle. Once he had snared Robert Plant, all he needed was the drummer, and Plant had someone whom he thought was perfect for the job: John Bonham, the drummer for Plant’s former group, The Band of Joy, whose heavy-handed skin-beating seemed perfect for the epic music that Page heard in his head. By September everything was signed, sealed and almost delivered, and the four new compatriots began a flurry of rehearsals in London prior to embarking on their first dates as the New Yardbirds in Gladsaxe, Denmark
on September 7, 1968. After that handful of dates, things began to escalate furiously. There’s nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come — and Led Zeppelin’s time was nigh. They had barely unpacked from their brief tour when the newly-named quartet congregated at Page’s home in Pangbourne, Berkshire to rehearse material for what would become Zeppelin’s debut, going into the studio only nine days later.                                                         

Back in Detroit, Page languidly smoked a cigarette, the ash dangerously dangling inches from his black leather jacket, as he waited for John Bonham to tighten his still rather modest drum kit. The 1275-person capacity ballroom was only half-filled on the first night of the three-night stand because no one had yet heard of the band with the rather Germanic-sounding sobriquet of Led Zeppelin. In fact, local

Motor City denizens were more familiar with the opening bands (Linn County, Target and the Wind) alternating during Zep’s two-night stand. Of course, by the second night the crowds had swelled beyond the Grecian pillars that encircled the jewel box of the ballroom. Word quickly spread about how audacious and sonically tremendous this new band was, an unexpected hybrid of bluesy, soulful hard rock and unexpected musical delicacies, exhibiting technical wizardry. The sound was massive, psychedelic and vaguely frightening, taking up more psychic space than the new band had a right to.

All four were garbed in impossibly tight jeans and leather jackets, looking very little like the foppish dandies that they would later become. Bonham, with his neat trimmed mustache and grown-out Roger McGuinn bob looked more like a member of Moby Grape than the heavy-metal titan he would later become — the bad-boy Bonzo myth having not even gathered steam during these formative days. John Paul Jones was the picture of decorum, his shirt tucked in, and not a hair out of place, as he straddled a bass that seemed a little too large for him. Plant would perform onstage at the Fillmore East barefoot two weeks later, in the dead of winter; but on this night in mid-January, his corona of blonde frizzy hair seemed to have a life of his own, as he tossed his head back to reach those impossibly high notes of “You Shook Me.”

Only 15 years old, and not yet a journalist, I worked behind the bar at the Ballroom, dispensing soft drinks to the revelers. Though the more important part of my job was to make sure that no one dropped any nefarious psychedelics into the plastic soda cups that were assembled on the bar for easy consumption. A rabid Yardbirds fan during the Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page eras, I was willing to forego my sentry post at the bar, in order to watch Led Zeppelin’s set. Watch is only an operative term. Since I was a treasured employee, I had privileges that mere mortals didn’t share. I could actually get on stage and stand mere feet from my very idols. And make no mistake, Jimmy Page’s presence was larger than life to me.

At the time, all I was concerned with was making sure that I didn’t ruin my brocade satin trousers by slinking between the dusty unused amps and speaker boxes, while not angering my boss by taking a break for the entire set, and getting as close to Page as I possibly could. By some perversion of physics, I managed to squeeze in behind the guitarist’s Marshall stacks, moving centimeter-by-centimeter, until I was almost on the same latitude as John Bonham’s drum kit. So moved and transfixed by “Babe I'm Gonna Leave You” and “How Many More Times,” I rather forgot where I was, and found myself fully leaning my elbows on Page’s amps in order to take it all in. Even stranger, no one came to dislodge me from my perch. Later, pictures of the event show Page pulling notes off his guitar with a concentration that was otherworldly.

Led Zeppelin played a mere nine songs that night — hardly enough for me — or anyone else for that matter, because four months later the band would return to the Grande Ballroom for one final time.