Melvis Remembers: Led Zeppelin at The Royal Albert Hall 1969

Tony got the tickets. Sunday June 29th 1969. 8.30pm. We'd spent a sunny summer afternoon smoking in a Godalming garden waiting for him to pick us up.

Earlier that year somebody had clamped a pair of stereo headphones onto my head and said 'Listen.' I did. I'd never even seen headphones before. This was 1969. I'd never heard of Led Zeppelin. Stone me. It was the first Zep album. They couldn't get the 'phones' off me until the end of side two. It bedded itself deep into my consciousness where it still resonates as powerfully today.

So you can imagine the excitement of four fledgling Guildford hippies panting with anticipation in the seventeenth row of the stalls in the Royal Albert Hall. The Liverpool Scene, Mick Abrahams' [Jethro Tull's original guitarist] Blodwyn Pig came and went. And then Led Zeppelin.

Their Cavalier-length leonine locks, their skin-tight loon pants, their skimpy tops and the way the chicks were checking them out. But the sound was what it was all about. It was magnificent. The delerious delight of their dynamics as they ranged from pin-dropping pianissimo to brain-crunching crescendo. The set was by and large that first album. And they delivered it with panache, precision and passion. No recycled riffs for these guys. They were blazing a trail, pushing the envelope and breaking the sound barrier What set them apart was that sublime guitar playing perfectly blended with, by a country blues mile, the best ever rock voice...and I've seen Morrison, Daltrey, Jagger and Stewart. Plant used his voice like a saxophone. The call and response moments between him and Page elevated the music to the stratospheric heights of the Classical Pinnacle. It was Music of the Spheres and it ranged from a tender, sensual delicacy to the full-on Power and Glory of Spiritual Orgasm. And what a rock-solid pile-driving rhythm section: tighter than a duck's arse. This was a total band. In 1969 Hendrix was Hendrix and Clapton was God. but Led Zeppelin were the ultimate four-piece band.

At one point during the honey-sweet guitar/voice duet at the climax of 'You Shook Me' some idiot heckled Robert Plant. 'Get a f***ing move on'. Planty improvised something along the lines of 'I wish I was a catfish...then I'd slap you in the face' he didn't miss a beat, he turned the heckle right around and brought the house down.

Jimmy Page's 'Black Mountain Side' acoustic playing was a real virtuoso surprise. People just weren't used to seeing an acoustic guitar in a rock band. His use of a violin bow on that over-driven Les Paul was a stroke of pure genius that blew many minds. He had no need to smash or burn his guitar. He caressed it, stroked it, made it scream, cry and sigh and all with the ease of a consummate master. By the second encore of 'Long Tall Sally' we were dancing on our seats. The Albert Hall would never be the same again.

© 2009 Melvis