Associated album Led Zeppelin III End date 1 April 1971 | Start date 5 March 1971 Legs 2 | |
No. of shows 13 (14 originally scheduled) | ||
Led Zeppelin's Spring 1971 United Kingdom & Ireland Tour (also known as the Back to the Clubs Tour) was a concert tour of the United Kingdom & Ireland by the English rock band. The tour commenced on 5 March and concluded on 1 April 1971.
Contents
Overview
For this tour, the band decided to mainly perform at the smaller clubs that they had originally played earlier in their career, rather than large arenas and auditoriums. This decision was made to reward those fans who had been loyal to them from the start of their career. The small, more intimate size of the venues, and the correspondingly smaller ticket sales and gate receipts, was offered as proof that Led Zeppelin wasn't preoccupied with making money and instead endeavoured to create a close connection with their audiences when performing on-stage. However, as the tour progressed, it became evident that this intention was compromised due to thousands of fans being shut out of shows because of the scarce availability of concert tickets.
The Belfast concert on 5 March featured the first public performance of their now-legendary song "Stairway to Heaven", which was played at nearly every subsequent Led Zeppelin show. One scheduled concert from the tour, at Liverpool University, was cancelled and rescheduled to take place during the band's subsequent tour of Europe.
During this period the band members began to experiment with their stage attire, introducing strange caftans and garments and growing longer hair and beards, which gave them a very fashionable appearance.
Tour set list
A 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)
- "Out on the Tiles" (intro) (Page, Plant, Bonham) / "Black Dog" (Page, Plant, Jones)
- "Dazed and Confused" (Page)
- "Stairway to Heaven" (Page, Plant)
- "Going to California" (Page, Plant)
- "That's the Way" (Page, Plant) (on 1 April only)
- "What Is and What Should Never Be" (Page, Plant)
- "Moby Dick" (Page, Jones, Bonham)
- "Whole Lotta Love" (Bonham, Dixon, Jones, Page, Plant)
Encores (variations of the following list):
There were some set list substitutions, variations, and order switches during the tour.