Upscaled footage of Led Zeppelin’s performance at the Bath Festival in June 1970 has appeared online, capturing the band giving “Immigrant Song” its live debut, months before the track was released.
The three-day festival of blues and progressive music saw Led Zeppelin headline a bill that included Pink Floyd, Colosseum, Santana, Steppenwolf and John Mayall, whose lineup at the time included Peter Green. The show would prove a turning point for the band.
Guitarist Jimmy Page had built Led Zeppelin from the ashes of the Yardbirds in the late 1960s. Although his plans to develop a partnership with Jeff Beck had fallen short of expectations — producing a song the pair argued over for decades — Page had succeeded in assembling a band that would help pave the way for heavy metal. Its biggest early successes, however, had come on the other side of the Atlantic.
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The Bath Festival performance helped change that, winning over British audiences as an estimated 200,000 people gathered for a show that stretched to around three hours. The band reportedly played five encores.
More than 80 minutes of footage from the event emerged online in August, described as “a monumental addition to the Led Zeppelin canon.” Now, YouTube account The Unfinished Self has enhanced the footage of the band performing “Immigrant Song” to 4K resolution.
The video finds Page dressed in a knee-length coat and fisherman’s bucket hat, attacking what appears to be his “Number 1” Les Paul like it owes him money. Legend has it that the Bath Festival performance was captured on a multitrack recorder, but the recording was subsequently destroyed because the band didn’t consider its performance good enough.
What’s particularly interesting is how the roughness of this version of “Immigrant Song” adds to the track’s cut and thrust. Rather than playing the tremolo-flecked chords that feature in the studio recording’s verses, Page continues hammering away at the riff. The performance’s ragged edges give the song an even more animalistic quality. Its mystery chord is also present.
The set came after the release of the band’s extreme second album, Led Zeppelin II, which was also intended as a retort to the group’s early critics, including one Rolling Stone reviewer who dismissed Page’s songwriting as “weak, unimaginative.”
The festival itself was chaotic in several respects. The gates were knocked down, allowing a huge influx of people onto the site, while Fairport Convention got stuck in traffic and had to hitch a ride with the Hells Angels to reach the Royal Bath and West Showground in Shepton Mallet, Somerset.
According to organizer Freddy Bannister, the bikers subsequently took control of security and began beating up attendees. Bannister, who had sold his family home to pay the bands in advance, eventually had to pay the Angels to leave, as he recalled in Louder Sound.
Despite the mayhem, the event’s success would help inspire a young Michael Eavis to create Glastonbury Festival, whose inaugural edition took place just months later, with T. Rex headlining.
Elsewhere, Jimmy Page’s best-kept secret has opened up about making pedals for some of the world’s greatest guitar players.
