Even 50+ years after their debut in the late 1960s, Led Zeppelin remains pure, unbridled rock royalty to this day, and in their time they were the unparalleled heavyweight champions of popular music. 1973 was a particularly huge year for the band, as they independently released their Houses of the Holy studio album in March of that year, bringing songs that would become live staples such as “No Quarter” and “The Ocean” into the band’s veritable catalog.
Following the arrival of Houses of the Holy on March 28th, the band landed in Atlanta six weeks later for what would turn out to be the largest concert (at the time) in the history of the state of Georgia, drawing over 39,000 fans to Braves Stadium on May 4th. The next night in Tampa, the band drew a massive 56,800 fans to Tampa Stadium. A true phenomenon was clearly underway, as the band broke The Beatles‘ record for the largest single concert in U.S. history.
Zeppelin had already released four wildly successful albums in Led Zeppelin I, II, III, and IV, but a rock and roll concert tour of this scale had never been seen before. The band would continue setting concert attendance records across the country, and they became concerned with all the publicity surrounding their wild success, so they stopped announcing when they would break a record in fear that they would attract the wrong kind of attention.
By the time the band rolled into Madison Square Garden on July 27th for a three-night, mid-summer run at the New York City arena, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham were firing on all cylinders and likely appreciative of the relatively small confines that the venue had to offer. The band was at the tail end of their tour, and management organized a professional film crew to shoot all three shows—the footage eventually was used in 1976’s epic behind-the-scenes concert film The Song
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