If you're a Led Zeppelin fan, April 2024 has been a bonanza. Early in the month, nearly an hour of 8mm footage shot in Montreal, Canada, in 1975, found its way online. Less than a week later, footage of Zeppelin's truncated 1977 show in Chicago emerged. And now there's more.
The latest footage was shot by Led Zeppelin fan Don Andree at the 20,000-capacity Richfield Coliseum in Richfield, Ohio, on January 24, 1975, just two weeks before the Montreal show. Andree donated a copy of his footage to the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame archive in 2018, who shared a copy with Led Zeppelin news site LedZepNews for research purposes.
Because the Hall Of Fame owned a copy of the film but not the copyright, LedZepNews – in conjunction with YouTube channel LedZepFilm – were able to publish the footage after tracking down the copyright holder, Andree.
"Using public databases in the US, we found Andree’s contact information," say LedZepNews, "and he kindly agreed to allow us to release his film publicly for the first time."
The nine-minute video features clips of Led Zeppelin performing Rock And Roll, The Song Remains The Same, The Rain Song, No Quarter, How Many More Times and Stairway To Heaven, with the footage synced to existing audience recordings by LedZepFilm.
"Initially, a disappointment was vocalist Robert Plant who demonstrated his vocal pipes are almost shot from years of abused singing in the alto range," said a contemporary review in the Akron Beacon Journal. "After an hour of rasping and shouting his way through several songs, though, Plant showed the audience he can still sing like a banshee."
Meanwhile, Pulse magazine reported, "Although the show was run extremely well, with a minimum of onstage hassle, the musicians were clearly loose. Jimmy Page quenched his thirst frequently from a bottle of Jack Daniels, with Plant and John Bonham joining him."
