Personalities | Led Zeppelin | The Middle Years (1972) | Key Events

January

Lucifer Rising

It’s fitting that, when one of cinema’s most-noted avant-garde directors decided to make a movie reflecting his own interest in Satanism, he should ask the world’s most-famous occultist to provide the soundtrack. Thus film maker Kenneth Anger asked Jimmy Page to provide the soundtrack to his new film, Lucifer Rising. Seemingly a match made in heaven (or hell), it would ultimately take Page more than three years to provide barely 20 minutes of music, which Anger felt was unusable. While it would not appear on the film, Page self-released it as a blue vinyl album in 1987, on his own Boleskine House Records.

February

Australia And New Zealand Tour

A band in Led Zeppelin’s position could afford to take a break but, instead, they continued touring as though they had just landed in Hollywood in 1968. Their first tour of 1972 was meant to start in Singapore, but the Singaporean authorities refused the band entry into the country because of their long hair. After briefly returning to London, they were able to tour Australia and New Zealand.

March

Page And Plant Visit India

Taking a break following their tour of Australia and New Zealand, Page and Plant returned to India for the first time after a brief visit the previous year. Page had long been looking to blend Western and Eastern music styles and held an experimental recording session in Bombay with some local musicians. This Eastern influence would ultimately find its way on to Houses Of The Holy, most notably in ‘The Song Remains The Same’, Page’s tribute to world music.

June

Canadian And US Tour

If Led Zeppelin hadn’t already moved the goal posts for stadium tours, their Summer US tour of 1972 would see manager Peter Grant changing the rules forever. In the early 1970s the music business still adhered to 1950s and 1960s tradition: a band would split the profit from ticket sales 50-50 with the promoter. Grant, however, decided that this wasn’t good enough for his band. Led Zeppelin were the artists, the tickets were being sold on the back of their talent, and so they should get 90 per cent of the gate. Grant’s revolutionary business style would see Led Zeppelin earn more money for themselves than any other touring band up to that point.

Lori Maddox

A surprising, but prominent, character in the Led Zeppelin story, Lori Maddox was just 14 when Jimmy Page met her in June 1972. Maddox was a teen model at the time, when Led Zeppelin’s then-press officer, B.P. Fallon, had shown Page a picture of her. Page was smitten, all but giving up his current relationship with Pamela Des Barres, essentially the leader of the GTOs, to date Maddox in the US, while also living with Charlotte Martin at home. Their affair would last for years, being sometimes secretive, other times almost too open for comfort. Maddox would maintain that their romance was so strong they fell in love,...

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