50 years ago today: A UK debut for world’s biggest rock band
ROCK history was made in Newcastle on this day 50 years ago.
It was Friday, October 4, 1968, when a young, relatively unknown four-piece band took to the stage of the city’s Mayfair Ballroom.
It was their first UK show and they were billed as the New Yardbirds.
It wasn’t until a few weeks later that 20-year-old rookies Robert Plant on vocals and John Bonham on drums, alongside John Paul Jones on bass, and Jimmy Page, guitar virtuoso and the band’s leader, would appear as Led Zeppelin for the first time at Surrey University.
Their ascent was rapid. By 1970, they’d replaced The Beatles as the world’s biggest group, topping the album charts in the UK and United States, and selling out massive venues like New York’s Madison Square Garden.
They would dominate the rock world for the rest of the decade, attaining almost God-like status in America - and all this despite refusing to release singles, declining television appearances (including Top Of The Pops), and keeping press interviews to a minimum.
Today this approach would almost certainly equate to commercial suicide. Back then, allied to whispered tales of occult dabbling, dalliances with groupies, and industrial-scale drug consumption onboard private jets, it gave Led Zeppelin undoubted mystique.
Back at the Mayfair in 1968, one of the support bands, Downtown Faction, featured a young local drummer called Ray Laidlaw who would enjoy big success with Lindisfarne a few years later.
Ray recalls today: “I remember them as being good, but nothing really special, and I certainly wouldn’t have foreseen the huge success they would later enjoy.
“Drummer John Bonham was obviously good, but with the live sound systems of the day, he didn’t come across as clearly as he would do later.”
Nevertheless, Led Zeppelin’s shattering debut album would be released in January 1969, and they were on their way. Songs like Whole Lotta Love, Stairway To Heaven, and Kashmir would reverberate around the arenas and stadiums of America.
Zeppelin returned once to the Mayfair, in 1971, and last played in Newcastle - at the City Hall - in late 1972.
The band split in 1980 following the alcohol-induced death of John Bonham, who was only 32.
There have been sporadic one-off concert get-togethers - Live Aid in 1985 and London’s 02 Arena in 2007, for example - but the surviving member have rejected several multi-million pound offers to reunite.
The Mayfair is long since demolished and The Gate leisure complex now stands in its place.
A blue plaque high up on an exterior wall reads: “The Mayfair Ballroom stood on this site 1961-1999. The band that became Led Zeppelin made their UK debut here on 4th October 1968.”