Sonic Boom: The Impact of Led Zeppelin. Volume 1 - Break & Enter. Frank Reddon
fill that void. It had also been right for The Jeff Beck Group but they had too many personnel problems they couldn’t sort out among themselves. They simply self-destructed.
One of the other things about Led Zeppelin that has always impressed me? When John Bonham passed away, the way the group disbanded. I can’t think of anybody else who would have done that but Zeppelin did. What a thing to do! They were four equal parts as I said from the beginning in 1968. One part was no longer part of Zeppelin, so the other three parts followed. No replacement. What a great tribute to do that!
I didn’t save any Led Zeppelin itineraries or anything like that. I had many such itineraries, contracts, all that type of thing. But we had no idea we were in on history being made. I was just going along, doing my job without thinking about saving those things. Who would have thought forty years later there would be such interest in these items?
We are having a celebration at the Gladsaxe Teen Club site. It’s the Egegård School in Gladsaxe, where it all began for The New Yardbirds. We have so many good memories from there! We have booked the school for a big party on Sunday, September 7, 2008 to celebrate Led Zeppelin’s 40th Anniversary date of their first-ever performance. It’s special for me because I was their tour manager for that very first tour. I found them all to be very nice guys who were always very professional. They knew what it took to “go for the gold”!
Jerry and Annie Ritz got to see the first-ever public performance of Led Zeppelin and also the last one (to date) of the band’s reunited members.
Courtesy: Jerry Ritz, used with permission. Enzepplopedia Publishing, Inc.
Frank Reddon here. In the fall of 2007, Jerry Ritz contacted me to share some very exciting news. He and his wife, Annie, had won tickets to see Led Zeppelin reunite at London’s O2 Arena! Talk about bringing things full circle! They were there at Led Zeppelin’s first-ever performance and, almost forty years later, they would be attending what might be the group’s last-ever performance. (Let’s hope that’s not the case…)
Because of the important role Jerry had played in Led Zeppelin’s career, he was the subject of many interviews in the Danish and English press in the days leading up to the O2 concert. He graciously consented to share his impressions of the concert with me for this book.
On December 11, 2007 – the day after Jerry and Annie Ritz attended Led Zeppelin’s reunion gig at London’s O2 Arena – Kurt Baagø from Danish Radio Broadcasting conducted a telephone interview with Jerry. This piece is reprinted with the permission of Kurt Baagø and Jerry Ritz; translated from Danish into English by Karen-Annette Madsen of www.teenclubs.dk and edited slightly to fit this book’s style and format by L. A. Reddon, with many thanks to all concerned.
BAAGØ:
Good Times, Bad Times - the first track Led Zeppelin ever recorded, or at least the first track on their first album – was also the song that the reunited Led Zeppelin played to open with at the O2 Arena in London yesterday evening.
We have Jerry Ritz on the line, who was there last night at the O2 Arena. Jerry, are you telling me that there were probably only five people there at the O2 Arena last night who were also there at Led Zeppelin’s very first gig ever? That was in Gladsaxe…how many years ago? In 1968! Of course, there are the three surviving members of Led Zeppelin plus you, Jerry Ritz and your wife, Annie. Only the five of you had also been there at the very first concert! Tell me. How was it?
RITZ:
Yes! It has been 39 years and 94 days since that Danish debut in 1968. It was a tremendous experience! It was very symbolic that they started out with Good Time, Bad Times because it has the following lyrics: “In the days of my youth, I was told to be a man. Now I reached the age… etc., etc.” It was really amazing to start exactly with that song and with those words. Until the time Led Zeppelin appeared on stage, there had been some opening acts with Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings and there was this quote by Ahmet Ertegün: “It’s a great life, this life of music”. That more or less became the theme for the entire evening. [Description of background for the Ertegün tribute omitted here]
BAAGØ: It was quite a long concert, was it not?
RITZ:
One might have feared that, being a charity/aid event, it could have turned into a “birthday cake show” where each band would deliver three songs and that would be it. [Description of Bill Wyman and guests omitted here]. However, there was a long forty-minute break between the opening acts and the time when Led Zeppelin came on stage at precisely 9:02 pm GMT.
They opened with Good Times, Bad Times, followed by Ramble On and Black Dog. After that, we had the first spoken words from the scene when Robert Plant cried out, “Good evening!” But he and the band had already made their presence felt with the three first songs and had welcomed the thousands in the O2 Arena in their own way.
BAAGØ: How did they play?
RITZ:
That’s exactly what was so great! Normally when “old” bands get together after many years, what you will see is that they will try to increase the tempo to cover up for the lack of muscle and lack of energy. What was so fine and so majestic was that Led Zeppelin kept exactly the same pace that we know from the records. There were no sped-up versions.
BAAGØ:
I imagine they played a lot of the songs that people were longing to hear, but were there any surprises?
RITZ:
Well, they did play a lot of those songs you might expect to hear but, in between, they played some of the more rare songs. It was not only their “greatest hits”, but all the great hits were there. But what I think was the best, was that they stayed loyal to the way in which they had performed the songs before.
In contrast to back in the 1970s when they all were in their colourful costumes, they did stay true to their age. They were more or less dressed in black. Jimmy Page started out with sunglasses on, wore a long black jacket and had his very white hair. The jacket disappeared after the first three songs, then the vest and he ended the concert in a white shirt and black trousers. The big screen in the back of the stage was, of course, very revealing of their age. You could see all the wrinkles on the old gentlemen, but the energy was exactly the same. They would not be able to deny that Jimmy Page is now 63, Robert Plant is 59, etc. – and they did not try to hide this fact.
BAAGØ:
Could you see? Did they seem to be happy to be together again? There are so many rumours of a possible tour. Did they look like they would only be together again for one time or…?
RITZ:
As the evening progressed and as the giant screen followed every expression on their faces, you could ascertain that they were smiling a lot. Jimmy Page, in particular, seemed to be enjoying himself. John Paul Jones seemed to be concentrating more in the beginning but, as the show went on, they seemed able to relax and smile a lot at each other. There seemed to be a very good rapport between the three “old” Led Zeppelin members and Jason Bonham. They would often gather around the drum set. You should remember that, as a four man band they did not take up more space in the O2 Arena than they did at the Egegård School in Gladsaxe. But they maintained very close contact among the four of them and often they would end up very close to the drum set.
BAAGØ:
Did you notice any other similarities between London in 2007 and Egegård School in Gladsaxe in 1968?
RITZ:
Yes! Actually, you may say that such a small band – only