Four years after 30 minutes of Led Zeppelin's performance at the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music in 1970 appeared online – before being removed – all the known footage from the event has been uploaded to the YouTube account of film archivist ledzepfilm.
"After 56 years, I am proud to present all the 16mm footage shot by Peter Whitehead and Ernie Vincze of Led Zeppelin's performance at the Bath Festival on June 28th, 1970," says ledzepfilm. "Rumoured for decades, this is a monumental addition to the Led Zeppelin canon and an essential watch for any fan."
Whitehead and Vincze originally planned to shoot the concert and interview Led Zeppelin, but the pair arrived at the festival site late and missed the band's arrival by helicopter. During the show itself, they were shooting using film stock only suited to daytime shooting, so much of the live footage looks dark, and the band didn't have multitrack recording set up, so the sound – captured on a portable reel-to-reel machine and matched to the footage later – is incomplete and certainly not hi-fidelity.
Even so, the complete Bath footage, which captured Led Zeppelin at an early career crossroads, has become a holy grail among Led Zeppelin fans.
"It’s historically very important," Dave Lewis, editor of Led Zeppelin's Tight But Loose fanzine, told Classic Rock in 2017. "It was a turning point for the band – their biggest UK show, five encores, great reviews, the first time they played acoustically (they played That’s The Way, from Led Zep III) and it set them up for the rest of their career, really."
Highlights of the newly uploaded footage include Jimmy Page backstage with then-girlfriend Charlotte Martin, Robert Plant and John Bonham backstage, the debut live performance of Immigrant Song, and clips of Dazed And Confused, Since I've Been Loving You, Whole Lotta Love, Moby Dick and more.
Some of the footage remains silent, some synced to Whitehead's original audio recordings, and some matched with tapes made by audience members. Watch the historic footage below.
