Get Back To Where You Once Belonged (Wendy wecd-118/119/120)
Disc 1: The Drone – Immigrant Song, Heartbreaker, Black Dog, Over The Hills And Far Away, Since I’ve Been Loving You, Stairway To Heaven
Disc 2: Bron-Y-Aur Stomp, Dazed And Confused, What Is And What Should Never Be, Dancing Days, Moby Dick
Disc 3: Whole Lotta Love, Rock And Roll. Bonus tracks, Long Beach Arena, Long Beach, CA – June 27th, 1972: Black Dog, Over The Hills And Far Away, Dazed And Confused
It is surprising that, with the surfacing of a new, decent sounding Led Zeppelin audience recording from one of their legendary tours, it took so long for it to be pressed. Empress Valley released this tape first on Crashing Revelry, and five years later, in the span of a couple days, both Scorpio and Wendy issue the tape again. Wendy claim to have not remasterd the tapes (an idea they stole from TCOLZ), but it is obvious they simply copied the Empress Valley release. It is a good to very good recording but distorted in the upper frequencies. Some cuts also appear on the tape due to tape flips but nothing significant is lost.
After the opening drone “Immigrant Song” and “Heartbreaker” is used as the opening salvo for the final time, two years to the day when it was introduced at the Bath Festival.
Plant dedicates “Black Dog” to an audience member named Terry Hanson before giving the standard story about the black lab at Hedley Grange. Before playing “Over The Hills And Far Away” Plant tells the story about their last visit to Tucson: “I collapsed. Everybody went home and left me in Phoenix. I can’t get used to the hot weather. It must have something to do with the mountains”. They play a truncated acoustic set with “That’s The Way”, “Going To California” and “Tangerine” omitted leaving only the up-beat “Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp”. The band would continue playing the one song acoustic set through to the European tour in 1973 until it would be dropped altogether for several years.
“Dazed & Confused” is twenty-eight wired minutes as typical from this tour with the Houses Of The Holy track “The Crunge” making an appearance during the lengthy improvisation. “What Is And What Should Never Be”, which was introduced into the set list in the summer of 1969, is played live for the final time. The “Whole Lotta Love” medley includes the rarely played Elvis hit “Stuck On You” with John Paul Jones playing accompaniment on the piano.
There are several instances where Jones played keyboard during Page’s theremin exercises but this is perhaps the only time he played piano during a medley number. Previously the only documentation of this concert has been fragments of dark and grainy 8mm film so a complete audience recording is welcome. This is a great tape of a laid back and fun show.
This also has three bonus tracks from the fourth audience recording to surface for the June 27th, 1972 show at Long Beach Arena. Bits of “Black Dog” and “Over The Hills And Far Away” were used from this show for the official release How The West Was Won, but most of those tracks were from the Los Angeles show. The sound quality of the Long Beach tracks are very good and clear, superior to the Tucson tape. A release with the whole Long Beach show in this quality would be most welcome. Wendy package this in a fatboy jewel case with obi strip. And of course they had to use a Beatles inspired lyric for the title which doesn’t make any sense. It is true the song “Get Back” mentions Tucson, but that is Jojo’s home, while Led Zeppelin are not from Tucson but from England. It show how inept the label is at picking names.
3 Comments
Yeah, I heard that too. But from what I’ve read, the kicker to it being legit is that Bonham is heard playing his tympanis, which he didn’t get until Japan in 1972. And Plant’s voice sounds like crap, which fits with the era. Mysteries of the unknown I guess.
That is the mysterious “Europe 1973” tape which has been attributed to Aberdeen, Preston, and Rotterdam. It is my understanding that the presence of “What Is And What Should Never Be” as an encore on that tape is a hoax perpetuated many years ago and has since been debunked.
Nice review. Although, “What is and What Should Never Be” was also played in Aberdeen in 1973. So, the performance in Tucson was the next-to-last performance of the song. At least, as far as we know.