As Rolling Stone reports, the film was shot by a fan named Eddie Vincent, who snuck a Kodak Brownie 8mm camera into the arena.
“When my friends and I got to the Forum, I tucked it under my jacket,” Vincent says in the introduction to the video. “There weren’t any problems at the door back in those days. The seats were excellent, first row behind the stage. We were behind John Bonham’s gong, so you couldn’t really see him much, but the sound was great.
“During the acoustic set, John ducked behind the gong to grab a cigarette and very graciously acknowledged our slavish praise. He even posed twice for my still camera, and both times the flash failed to go off. Those pictures came out worthless, unfortunately. But a few others, along with that 8 mm film, survived.”
As the wind-up camera could only film for 30 seconds at a time, the newly-shared video features only snippets of songs from one of the final dates of Led Zeppelin’s summer 1970 North American Tour, which took place a month before the release of “Led Zeppelin III.”
The Forum show saw the group deliver a 2-hour, 16-song performance that opened with “Immigrant Song” and closed with a cover of “Blueberry Hill”, which was originally recorded in 1940 by Sammy Kaye And His Orchestra and made famous with Fats Domino’s 1956 version, as US No.2 hit.
Vincent recently unearthed his footage and sent it to fellow Zeppelin fan John Waters, who paired it with audio from the bootleg, “Live On Blueberry Hill”, before sharing it online via YouTube.
See also:
Led Zeppelin revisit 1972 on 50th anniversary series
Robert Plant and Saving Grace announce fall UK tour
Robert Plant wraps up Digging Deep series with Patty Griffin duet
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss perform Led Zeppelin classic at Glastonbury
Search Led Zeppelin at hennemusic
