Sonic Boom: The Impact of Led Zeppelin. Volume 1 - Break & Enter. Frank Reddon
English bands. As for the Teen Club, it was really open to let new bands play. We had more than thirty club nights a year or per season. About one hundred bands were needed because we had three or more bands playing every night.
Some of the bands who played here at the Teen Club included John Mayall and Ten Years After. I think it was actually the Teen Club where Ten Years After played for the first time, outside England. One of the guys from Gladsaxe Teen Club saw Ten Years After at the Marquee Club in London. When he came back here, he phoned up the promoter and said, “I saw Ten Years After in England. We should hire them for the Teen Club.” That was about 1968, back when the band’s guitarist, Alvin Lee, had curly hair!
And of course, we had Deep Purple, Mk I and Spooky Tooth at the Teen Club. They weren’t world famous bands at the time but they were excellent. As well, the promoters found it easier to sell a band to another venue if they could say they had already been booked by the Gladsaxe Teen Club. It really was the place to play here.
The audiences were very much into the Brit bands and their music, there’s no question. The promoters were keen to get the British bands because they did so well in Denmark. When Led Zeppelin came here in September 1968, as The New Yardbirds, they already had a following here. The promoter knew they would do well, so it was worth the effort. You spoke to Jerry Ritz, who was the tour manager for that first New Yardbirds tour that was supposed to be the original line-up, before the band broke up in the summer of 1968, didn’t you?
REDDON:
Yes I did, Jørgen, thanks to you. He was an unbelievably great source of information about that. He said he and another kid ran The Yardbirds Fan Club.
ANGEL:
I’m glad you were able to interview him. As I said, if a band played Gladsaxe Teen Club, it also opened doors for them at other venues. That’s a key point to remember in all of this. So the groups and managers were glad to play at the Teen Club. They also enjoyed the other Danish venues because their music was thoroughly enjoyed by the Danish people. When we talk about The Yardbirds and The New Yardbirds specifically later in our interview, I’ll tell you about another advantage that playing here in Denmark provided for groups, as well.
REDDON:
Okay, that will be great to hear. So how exactly, did Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham, billed as The Yardbirds, come to play at the Gladsaxe Teen Club, for what amounted to the group’s “first ever” public performance, being called “The New Yardbirds”, on Saturday, September 7, 1968? Jerry Ritz told me that he introduced them as The New Yardbirds on most of the dates they played on that September 1968 Scandinavian Tour.
ANGEL:
All right then. The Yardbirds – Chris Dreja, Jimmy Page, Jim McCarty and Keith Relf – had some Scandinavian dates they were originally going to play. But when The Yardbirds broke up in July 1968, Jimmy Page and Peter Grant decided to carry on with a new band, keeping The Yardbirds name. No one here knew that then. Page kept The Yardbirds name and found some new musicians, so the short Scandinavian Tour they’d committed to could be played in September 1968. That’s why I thought when I heard The Yardbirds were coming to Gladsaxe, it was The Yardbirds I had seen here before…the “real” ones! Not a new band with an old name.
Page and Grant decided to use these gigs in Scandinavia as a testing ground with this new line-up of people, but with the old name of The Yardbirds. I read somewhere, maybe the outstanding biography of Peter Grant by Chris Welch, The Man Who Led Zeppelin that Grant was standing in the wings in Gladsaxe, seeing the band for the first time the night I photographed them on Saturday, September 7, 1968. Apparently, Grant hadn’t even seen them play, not even in rehearsals. They had been rehearsing for awhile before going on tour but this was the first time Peter Grant saw them playing. And he said, “I’ve got a winner here.”
REDDON: That’s a really cool account.
ANGEL:
Here’s my explanation about all this “name change” business. There were no programmes as such. The Teen Club had a monthly magazine and I was the photographer. The magazine told about upcoming events and for September ’68, announced The Yardbirds as we knew them. You know…“the old Yardbirds”. So the change was made, very close to that performance. The September edition of Gladsaxe’s Teen Club Nyt magazine had already been written and printed by August 25, 1968. It included a photo of The Yardbirds: Keith Relf, Chris Dreja, Jimmy Page and Jim McCarty. But the band’s personnel had since changed to Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham.
On the night of the performance, I believe I saw a handwritten sign outside the Teen Club, announcing these four musicians as “The New Yardbirds”. I hope that clears it up for you.
REDDON: Does it ever. Thanks.
ANGEL: Rather fascinating, all the confusion surrounding that issue then.
REDDON:
And it’s persisted for all these years. This is the first time I’ve ever heard it thoroughly and completely explained - backed up with hardcore proof and your eyewitness account. So it’s nice to see, at least on Saturday, September 7, 1968 for the first-ever performance, it was correct to call the band composed of John Bonham, John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant either The Yardbirds or The New Yardbirds. What they were NOT called, was Led Zeppelin! (At least, not publicly). Nice to finally have that all sorted out.
ANGEL:
I’m glad we were able to clear that up. Also on the subject of that hand-written sign that announced “The New Yardbirds” outside Gladsaxe Teen Club on that night, here’s a bit more detail on that.
There was a soft drink company called Jolly Cola that had sponsored various things for the Gladsaxe Teen Club. One of the things they sponsored was this stand where you could put posters or messages. That company’s advertisement can be seen on the cover of the September 1968 edition of Teen Club Nyt.
REDDON:
Yes, I see that. Thanks so much for providing that programme to be reproduced here.
ANGEL:
No problem, glad to do it. The heading of the poster was “Gladsaxe Teen Club” with the Jolly Cola promotion at the bottom about their soft drink. And then there was this space to write something in by hand. That’s where “The New Yardbirds” was written. So you had this poster, about 20 x 16”, and it was on one of those stands that could feature a poster on each side. They would put these signs up on the night of the performances at the Teen Club. Other acts that night included Olsens Damptog and Fourways.
I knew something was fishy when I saw the sign that said, “The New Yardbirds”. When you change something like a group name often, it might mean only one group member would be left or maybe half of them. I knew it wasn’t the “real thing”. It wasn’t The Yardbirds (Dreja/Page/McCarty/Relf) I knew from before. That’s why I was disappointed before they even hit the stage. Because the sign said “The New Yardbirds”, I knew this wasn't going to be right.
REDDON:
All right. Thanks to you and tour manager, Jerry Ritz, the confusion that has always surrounded exactly what these four musicians – Bonham, Jones, Page and Plant – were actually called has finally been cleared up! I’m sure that many others who have been wondering what that scoop is will thank you, too!
From now on in this interview, I’ll refer to the band as The New Yardbirds. Before we talk about their performance on Saturday, September 7, 1968, I’d like to ask you if Page and his new band rehearsed at the Teen Club that Saturday afternoon?
ANGEL:
Yes! That afternoon, the Teen Club volunteers were putting out chairs, tables, some specially made marquees...all this stuff. It took some hours. And there was a knock at the door. It was Jimmy Page wanting to rehearse with his band. So, while the volunteers were setting up the place, they were treated