Click here to view the North American '75 Tour Programme (flipbook)

The two concerts in Vancouver are almost cancelled, due to a strike by radio station CKLG-FM.  3-18-75: "CUPE local 1004 (Canadian Union of Public Employees) at the PNE and two other unions involved would have boycotted the concert if CUPE local 686, representing the CKLG strikers, had so wished. But CUPE spokesman Ole Johnson said the concert is “definitely on. We felt it was in the best public interest to allow the concert to be held," he said, “We aren’t intertested in hurting the over 20,000 people who have already bought tickets."

Press Review:  Don Stanley notwithstanding, the back-to-back Led Zeppelin concerts last week were two of the heaviest rock evenings in recent memory. Plant, Jones & Bonham - admittedly - have changed little over the group's six-odd years of existence, but Jimmy Page - Mr. Rock Guitar – still manages to bring a touch of entertainment magic to the otherwise jaded world of rock •n• roll.

And Mr. Page was in fine form for both Zipper shows - heavy on Wednesday, intellectually smooth on Thursday, with an unending supply of riffs, all guaranteed to inflict physical punishment upon the assembled masses. The high points, speaking in terms of both show’s totality, can be broken down into a few songs, the sound system and the visual pyrotechnics.

Where to start. The songs worth remembering are No Quarter, Talkin' About Love (Trampled Under Foot), Kashmir, Stairway to Heaven and Whole Lotta Love. Of those, Kashmir is easily the best song the Zep have composed since the frenetic early days, and Talkin’ About Love(Trampled Under Foot)  is the quintessential Led Zeppelin: a basic, heavily rhythmic line allowing Plant's voice the option of soaring on its own over the holocaust below.

Stairway to Heaven has lost most of its "pretty" qualities, with Page delivering a blistering sole, and the best thing about No Quarter is the trading, jam-style, of licks between Page and Jones, who isn't that great a piano player, although he fills well on moog, mellotron and organ.

The sound system was easily the loudest ever to shake the Coliseum's roof. Surprisingly, the acoustics were passably clean, especially from medium range (75 to 150 feet), and it's obvious most of the group's travel expenses come from shipping the mountain of equipment needed to deliver the watts.

The visuals. Something very rarely considered in a major North American tour, and that's mainly because of the enormous cost of air shipping the necessary equipment around. No longer do more spotlights hold the interest - the well-equipped rock group of the 1970s must travel with fixed spots, dry ice machines, choreographed following spots and anything else they can muster to generate the all-important mass audience interest.

Led Zeppelin, not to be outdone, and with a reputation to re-bolster, has come up with a unique first on this tour: laser beams which shoot out from the stage, across the audience, to blink out against the concrete wall of the Coliseum. Laser beams – three of them - which changed colour and more importantly , tight, about an inch in diameter, for the 300 feet of darkness they shattered while Page, bathed in dry ice and top lit by purple spotlights, played his guitar with a violin bow, creating otherworld electronic sounds, laser beams, also, tend to glow when excited by gaseous substances - like dry ice fumes - and the result was a liquification of light spreading out from the stage as the gas billowed from stage out over the audience's head.

The shows, just over three hours on Wednesday and three and a half hours on Thursday, were fantastic. And relentless. And heavy. And just what Rock is all about. [R. Mcgrath / Richmond Review / 3-26-75]