Record-setting attendance at the Providence Civic Center: 12,120.

Press: Police, Teens Clash At Concert

Providence police were called to the Civic Center last night to break up a crowd of teenagers who attempted to force their way into the building while a rock concert by Led Zeppelin was gathering steam.

During a confrontation with the crowd, policemen and their patrol cars were pelted with stones and bottles hurled by a group of youngsters who had taken positions inside the nearby Holiday Inn parking garage.

Thirty persons were arrested before police managed to break up the crowd.

While police and splinter groups from the crowd engaged in scattered skirmishes outside, 12,120 representatives of the rock cult, packed themselves inside the Civic Center, paying homage to Led Zeppelin and the group’s shattering sounds.

This was the largest paying crowd on record at the center. It was previously held by Providence College, which drew 12,107 basketball enthusiasts into the arena last February.

According to Capt. Russell See, night commander at police headquarters, 40 patrolmen were dispatched to the center shortly after 9:30pm when a crowd pulled a boiler room door from its hinges in back of the Civic Center in an attempt to get inside.

Altogether about 250 persons were lingering outside when the concert started at 8pm and most of them were still around when police arrived.

Only minutes before the concert began, one youth offered a guard $20 to allow him inside. The guard refused.

Early in the concert, police expelled a young girl from the center who they had found in a locker room. She had no ticket and she would not tell how she had gotten in.  [7/22/73,  by D. Hulick / Journal]