Associated album Led Zeppelin III End date 5 July 1971 No. of shows 4 | Start date 3 May 1971 Legs 2 | |
Led Zeppelin's 1971 European Tour was a concert tour of Europe by the English rock band. The tour commenced on 3 May and concluded on 5 July 1971. It included one concert at Liverpool, England, which was a rescheduled date from their preceding tour of the United Kingdom. It is possible that other unverified dates in Europe were also performed during this period.
Though being very short in duration, this concert tour was well known, primarily because of the extremely violent crowd disturbance which took place at the band's concert at the Vigorelli Velodrome in Milan on 5 July. This festival appearance in front of an audience of 15,000 people was abandoned when hundreds of tear-gas wielding riot police charged into the crowd. The group were forced to leave the stage and many fans were injured. Some of the group's equipment was also damaged in the chaos. The band's singer Robert Plant later recalled:
We went to Milan and the riot troops moved in and tear-gassed the event. We escaped down an access route and the troops pumped canisters at us as we ran. We managed to get in a dressing room and I barricaded the door with the medicine cabinet and got everybody to put wet towels around their heads. Then they broke the windows and popped a couple of canisters in from the street.
The concert has been described as one of the low points of Led Zeppelin's career, and the band never again returned to Italy.
Tour set list
The fairly typical set list for the tour was:
- "Immigrant Song" (Page, Plant)
- "Heartbreaker" (Bonham, Jones, Page, Plant)
- "Since I've Been Loving You" (Page, Plant, Jones)
- "Dazed and Confused" (Page)
- "Out on the Tiles" (intro) (Page, Plant, Bonham) / "Black Dog" (Page, Plant, Jones)
- "Stairway to Heaven" (Page, Plant)
- "Going to California" (Page, Plant)
- "That's the Way" (Page, Plant)
- "What Is and What Should Never Be" (Page, Plant)
- "Moby Dick" (Bonham, Jones, Page) (on 8 Aug only)
- "Four Sticks" (Page, Plant) (on 3 May only)
- "Gallows Pole" (Page, Plant) (on 3 May only)
- "Whole Lotta Love" (Bonham, Dixon, Jones, Page, Plant)
- "Communication Breakdown" (Bonham, Jones, Page)
- "Misty Mountain Hop" (Page, Plant, Jones) (on 3 May only)
- "Rock and Roll" (Page, Plant, Jones, Bonham)
There were some set list substitutions, variations, and order switches during the tour. On 3 May Led Zeppelin played "Four Sticks" (Page, Plant). This is the only known time it was performed by the original band. Also played was "Gallows Pole," one of only two complete known live performances, the other played later that year on 16 November 1971 at St Matthew's Baths Hall, Ipswich, UK.