Jimmy Page recalls badly received Led Zeppelin concert
"It wasn't a very good communion that night."
Last updated 9th Aug 2021
Jimmy Page took to social media last night (14th September) to cast his mind back on a Led Zeppelin gig in San Francisco 49 years ago that was met with a muted reception from the audience.
As anyone who follows Jimmy Page knows, the guitarist often shares ‘on this day’ posts that reflect upon landmark moments in his fabled career with Led Zeppelin, The Yardbirds and beyond.
Last night, he posted his thoughts on Led Zeppelin’s gig at The Berkeley Theatre in San Francisco on 13th September 1971.
He wrote: “On this day in 1971, I played with @ledzeppelin at the Berkeley Community Theatre and the seated, uni-like audience seemed pretty non-plussed. It wasn't a very good communion that night.”
Explaining why Led Zeppelin were met with such a bemused reaction, Jimmy wrote: “Maybe that evening they: a) were contaminated by the negative press we had continually received from the locally-based Rolling Stone; b) were sitting in the remnants of the vibrant San Francisco music scene they had witnessed over the last 5 years; c) weren't receptive to new music we played - material from the unreleased Led Zeppelin IV; d) were heavily stoned, or; e) all of the above!”
Feature: The Greatest Led Zeppelin Songs
Jimmy is indeed correct about the negative press Led Zeppelin received at the time.
In their review of the Berkeley Community Theatre concert, the San Francisco Examiner hailed Led Zeppelin as a “musical joke” and wrote in their first paragraph: “The sounds of Britain’s Led Zeppelin rock quartet strike my ear increasingly these days as a big, noisy musical joke.”
Although the review does note some positive aspects of the show, the reviewer criticises John Bonham’s “badly aimed bomb droppings”, the “incoherent babblings” of Robert Plant and the “monotonous” guitar screams of Jimmy Page. Only John Paul Jones escapes the reviewer’s caustic words.
Rolling Stone magazine famously had a fractious relationship with Led Zeppelin, and infamously lambasted the band’s debut album in 1969.
Critic John Mendelsohn called Jimmy Page “a very limited producer and a writer of weak, unimaginative songs” and said ‘Led Zeppelin I’ “suffers from (Page) having both produced it and written most of it.”
He concluded his review: “If they’re to help fill the void created by the demise of Cream, they will have to find a producer (and editor) and some material worthy of their collective attention.”