A stairway to heights of rock success
IT’S one of the most famous rock songs in history and it was performed in Newcastle for the first time 50 years ago by the band who created it.
On Thursday, March 18, 1971, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Bonham and John Paul Jones stepped out at Newcastle’s Mayfair Ballroom and played Stairway To Heaven
The English band had actually made their first ever UK performance at a half-empty Mayfair in October 1968 billed as the largely unknown New Yardbirds. A week or two later they changed their name to Led Zeppelin.
By the time they returned to the same venue just two and half years later, they were the biggest rock band on the planet.
As the 1970s dawned, their first three albums Led Zeppelin I, II, and III had topped the charts in the UK, around Europe, and crucially in the USA – and they were selling out concert halls wherever they went.
This was despite the band refusing to release singles in the UK, rarely giving press interviews, and turning down all television work. They never appeared on Top of the Pops, despite the show using a version of one of their songs – Whole Lotta Love – as its theme tune for many years.
Today, this PR approach would mean commercial suicide. Back then it gave Led Zeppelin a mystique which set them apart from their rivals.
The Mayfair show was part of the so-called ‘back to the clubs tour’, an idea dreamed up by guitarist Jimmy Page who hoped the band would to re-connect with their audiences at the small British university and ballroom venues they’d played on their way to the top. Other modest dates on that 1971 UK Spring tour would include the Marquee Club in London, Southampton University, and Stepmothers Club in Birmingham.
It was a noble idea from the world’s biggest band whose last two dates in their recent high-powered arena tour of the United States had been at New York’s cavernous Madison Square Garden – but demand would massively outstrip supply.
Nevertheless, it was a memorable evening at the packed-to-the-rafters Mayfair. Keith Nicholson, 66, from Hebburn, himself a bass player, was 16 at the time. He recalls: “I remember queuing through the night for tickets and the place was jumping when we got in.
“During the show, we were on the balcony looking down and I can remember drummer John Bonham whacking the cymbals with his hands during his solo in Moby Dick.
“Then Jimmy Page pulled out his now-famous double-neck guitar for a song we’d never heard before. It turned out to be Stairway To Heaven.
“It was a great gig, and just one of many I went to at the Mayfair during that era.”
Those in attendance would hear songs – including Black Dog, Rock And Roll, as well as Stairway To Heaven from the band’s upcoming fourth album – that would become nailed-on rock classics.
The untitled album released later that year, in November, would go on to become one of the most successful of all time, notching worldwide sales that currently stand at around 37 million.
It was Sunderland promoter Geoff Docherty who managed to get the world’s biggest band to the Mayfair. He also promoted the likes of Eric Clapton, The Who, T Rex and Free.
He told ChroncleLive a few years ago: “At the very start of their career, I booked Led Zeppelin to appear up here for £75 when they were unknowns.
“In the meantime, they suddenly got very big and their infamous manager Peter Grant cancelled the gig, but not before I made him promise to let me promote them if they ever came to the North East.
“And so in 1971, I was able to promote the Mayfair show and also put them on at Sunderland Mecca and Newcastle City Hall later that year. “Tickets at the Mayfair were 75p. Imagine that? We built a huge stage and they were just fantastic. The place was bedlam.”
(You can check out Geoff Docherty’s books A Promoter’s Tale and Three Minutes of Magic).
Led Zeppelin would appear just three more times in Newcastle, kicking off their European Tour at the City Hall on November 11, 1971 – with their last shows in the region coming in late 1972 at the same venue. Led Zep fans in this country would later have to travel to Earls Court in 1975 and Knebworth in 1979 to see their idols.
After 1973, the United States would be the band’s main stamping ground, using a private Boeing 737 – the Starship – to fly them from city to city on tours – and creating a rock folklore of smashed hotel rooms, drug and alcohol abuse, relations with groupies, and rumours of occult-dabbling.
The year 1980 would prove to be the swansong for Led Zeppelin when drummer John Bonham died after a drinking binge. They have sold over 200 million albums, making them one of the most successful acts of all time.
Most recently, they reunited for a one-off show at London’s O2 Arena in 2007.
Newcastle Mayfair, on the corner of Low Friar Street and Newgate Street, closed in 1999 and is sadly missed. The Gate leisure complex stands at the site today.
We built a huge stage and they were just fantastic. The place was bedlam. Geoff Docherty