42 years ago: Led Zeppelin at Gonzaga

Spokane concertgoers in 1968 got an unexpected treat when they went to the Vanilla Fudge concert in Kennedy Pavilion on Gonzaga's campus. They got one of the first looks at rock Gods Led Zeppelin on American soil.

Led Zeppelin wasn't always a household name though. They were still unknown in 1968, which was before their first album was released Stateside. How unknown were they? They were advertised at GU as "Len Zeffelin" on the promotional fliers when they opened for the much more popular, and slightly psychedelic band, Vanilla Fudge.

But once they started playing their set, the crowd knew they needed to remember this group.

"We wanted them to stay on stage the rest of the night," Spokane native Kerry Whitsitt said. "We were in the third row, so we were very close, and they were amazing. They were just mesmerizing basically, and I don't know as a 16-year-old, if I had ever seen performers quite like that, and performing that kind of music, they did a lot of music but it was in their own original style. They were great, and being a young woman, they were also very attractive. So, we were kind of blown out of our seat."

Spokane was the group's fifth show in the U.S. ­— 26th ever ­— and first recorded show. A sophomore student from Gonzaga brought a cassette recorder, something that was not common at the time, and recorded the entire show, according to 4,000 Holes record-store owner, Bob Gallagher. That student displayed an incredible amount of foresight ­— or luck — that night, because he or she captured a "mind-blowing" opening act that overshadowed the headliner, according to those who attended the concert.

"The crowd was very sleepy after Zeppelin," Gallagher said. "Nobody ever wanted to follow Zeppelin on anything, there was never a time that they were not good. They won everybody over right away. Everyone was really impressed, they were really cool."

Surprisingly, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant's performance wasn't the coolest thing about that night. That honor would have to go Kennedy Pavilion, which was not completely heated at the time, and since it was December in Spokane, the band and fans alike had to deal with the frigid temperatures.

"You won't believe this, but I don't think that either ourselves or our equipment is quite used to the temperature," Plant says on the recording that has been bootlegged and spread around the Internet. "It's taken about three hours of gas stoves under the equipment to get everything going."

Led Zeppelin pulled out all of their signature moves during their first and only show in Spokane — Jimmy Page used his double-necked guitar, and to the shock of the crowd pulled out a violin bow and made a sound that was "out of this world," according to Whitsitt.

"Being as close as we were, there were moments when as a 16-year-old-girl I would think, ‘Oh, I know Robert Plant is looking right at me,'" Whitsitt said. "Those moments of that intensity of his voice and appearance on stage were what made me know they were special."

Led Zeppelin's blues-oriented rock slightly clashed with the psychedelic sound of Vanilla Fudge, according to those who went to the concert.

"Vanilla Fudge was good too, but Zeppelin had their impact, they took the energy out of the room," Gallagher said. "Psychedelic was slow and grindy, and after Led Zeppelin, slow andmellow wasn't really the mood."

Zeppelin's impact was felt in Spokane after they played at the Pavilion.

"The way publicity worked [in the 60s,] was at the same time they started doing the concert tour they started playing their music on the radio, which reinforced the concert, and that really helped a lot," Jeff Nadeau said. "So I went out and bought the album and I got to hear it for myself, and that was the main way that the music grew on me."

Spokane hosted several big rock bands in that era, which has some begging the question, what happened to the city as a major stop? But Whitsitt believes that maybe nothing has changed.

"I also know that we are getting people here that are newer, which is what Led Zeppelin was, they were on their first tour, so they never came back. They got so huge that even though they came through and were unknowns, they didn't get back here," she said.

Gallagher also believes that there is nothing wrong with the rock ‘n' roll scene in Spokane:
"Rock n' roll is going to go where it wants to, it can't be wrong."