On their record-breaking tours in the 1970s, rock band Led Zeppelin earned a reputation for excess and debauchery. One story even has their drummer riding a motorcycle through a hotel corridor. But it wasn't the band — it was their fans — that got them into hot water here in Boston.
"It was just this awesome blend of epic emotionality and really hard rock," said author Stephen Davis, who covered Led Zeppelin on their 1975 world tour and wrote two books on the subject. "They were just a kick-ass band with an incredible guitar player, a screaming singer, and one of the greatest drummers that has ever played in rock and roll … By 1975 Led Zeppelin was really the biggest rock band in the world."
A mantle they’d earned with six top-ten albums, instant anthems like "Stairway to Heaven," and six years of relentless touring, playing legendary shows that sometimes stretched on for four hours.
"Boston was a very important town for Led Zepplin," Davis said. "They broke out from England in their early days in early 1969 at the Boston Tea Party [club] where they played a series of tumultuous shows. And then in 1969, 1970, 1971 they came back around nine times and they played kind of everywhere."
So on Jan. 6, 1975, when it was announced that tickets would go on sale the next morning for Zeppelin’s upcoming show at the Boston Garden, there was, well, a little bit of interest.
"By about 5 p.m., kids began to lineup on Causeway Street outside the old Boston Garden," Davis said.
Three thousand of them.
"They were all dressed in blue denim jeans and jean jackets and things like that and they were freezing," Davis said.
As the evening wore on, and temperatures dropped into the single digits, the Garden doors were opened, and fans were told they could wait inside until the box office opened the next morning — provided they behaved. Take a guess what happened.
"Pretty soon they were passing bottles of Boons Farm apple wine and Ripple — another kind of wine they had back then — and smoking joints and generally getting rowdy," Davis said.
During a security shift change, things went from rowdy to riot.
"The kids broke into the beer concessions and started feeding themselves," Davis said. "And when the next shift came on, they turned the fire hoses on them. Then they turned the fire hoses on Boston Garden, then they started to torch the seats."
It took the Boston police riot squad until 5:30 a.m. to end the mayhem and clear the Garden, which sustained some $30,000 of damage. A few hours later, armed with his press pass, Davis dashed to the Garden to see for himself.
"The place was a smoking ruin," he said. "It was completely flooded. It was just like the place had been bombed."
Also stopping by the Garden that next morning? Then-Boston Mayor Kevin White.
"He saw the burned seats and the flooded hockey rink and the trashed concession stands and he said, 'Led Zeppelin will never play in Boston again,'" Davis said.
And they never did. White refused them a permit for their 1975 concert. They skipped Boston on their colossal 1977 American tour. And as they were rehearsing for the their 1980 American tour, drummer John Bonham died — and Led Zeppelin called it a career.
"There’s just a mythopoeic quality about Led Zeppelin back then that is almost indescribable," Davis said. "You kind of had to be there, but if you listen to "Physical Graffiti" on really good speakers, on vinyl, you can hear a little bit of what I’m talking about."
Led Zeppelin — considered by many to be the great rock band of the 1970s — banned in Boston after their fans wreaked havoc on the old Boston Garden, 40 years ago this week.
If you have a forgotten tale from Massachusetts history, or if there is something you're just plain curious about, email Edgar at curiositydesk@wgbh.org.
