article tells the full story and includes first hand accounts from NEMH group members Ray Laidlaw and Charlie Foskett, a late-friend's tale told by John Porteous and additional research by Marshall Hall. Well done everyone concerned - Led Zeppelin history, North East Music History and a fine story unveiled! The magazine is available from all good newsagents or by subscription from http://www.classicrockmagazine.com/
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| Led Zeppelin's first gig featured in Classic Rock magazine October 2012 |
After I posted the above article, Ian himself got in touch with me, to elaborate on how the Classic Rock story happened:
"The legendary Led Zeppelin played their first handful of UK gigs under the name The New Yardbirds, a roll-over from leader Jimmy Page's former band whose final gig obligations they were honouring. The first of these shows was at Newcastle Mayfair ballroom on 4 October 1968 with support slots from local bands Downtown Faction and The Junco Partners plus New York Public Library, originally from Leeds but based in London by this time. I'd found out about the show while researching another possible locally based Led Zeppelin story. The fact that Zep made their UK debut on Tyneside and under a different name jumped out to me as a potentially fascinating subject for an article and Classic Rock agreed.
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| Still being billed as The Yardbirds, on the night they were billed as The New Yardbirds |
If anything was going to stretch my super-researcher powers it was locating the support bands, audience members, promoter and Mayfair staff and then getting some good stories and anecdotes out of them. The gig was, after all, 44 years ago! But, pulling in favours and with the invaluable help of a notice on the main NEMH site, I got the response I needed from people who were at a gig that was, by most accounts, not very well attended.
In addition to interviewing Ray Laidlaw (Downtown Faction) and Junco Partners Bob Sargeant and Charlie Harcourt I also spoke to promoter Fraser Suffield and Brian Greenaway who was the manager of the Mayfair in 1968 that I located via a lead from Marshall Hall. Brian was seriously ill when I went up to chat with him in hospital in Berwick. He was courteous and responsive and I appreciated him seeing me under very adverse circumstances. Sadly Brian died a couple of days ago.
Some people, like NEMH member Charlie Foskett, had great recall of the event-remarkable because no-one knew, of course, that they were witnessing the first UK gig of the outfit who would become the world's biggest rock band in the 1970’s. Others remembered less but I still unearthed lots of great information that has never seen print before.
I got off to a bit of a false start by spending a fair amount of time trying to track down Terry Reid, who was credited on the advance tickets as the main support act.
Terry rang me and told me that, no, his band Fanasia didn’t play the gig because they were off supporting Cream on their Farewell US tour!
This was why, I surmised, New York Public Library were credited on the Evening Chronicle adverts, which would, of course, have gone to press a lot later than the advance tickets. They’d have been the replacement for Reid. It took a bit of scurrying around (with the deadline looming!) but I managed to get hold of a couple of guys from the band. One was convinced that the gig took place in Glasgow, but I quickly managed to disprove that to him. The other, Tez Stokes, NYPL’s guitarist, was a very good interviewee with a good memory of the event, enhanced by him already slightly knowing John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page.
I was pretty happy with the finished article and the reaction to it.
This is exactly the sort of article I like doing where I can locate people and untold information to tell a story that has previously gone unrelated. Zeppelin have been discussed, debated and written about non-stop since their split in 1980 following the death of John Bonham but very little exists about their first UK gig. Until my article. Thanks to Hazel and everybody else from NEMH who helped me do it."
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