| Concert Tour Name: | United Kingdom 1970 |
| Album: | Led Zeppelin II |
| Start Date: | 7 January 1970 |
| End Date: | 17 February 1970 |
| Number Of Shows: | 8 |
| This Tour: | United Kingdom 1970 |
| Next Tour: | Europe 1970 |
Led Zeppelin's 1970 United Kingdom Tour was a concert tour of the United Kingdom by the English rock band. The tour commenced on 7 January and concluded on 17 February 1970.
This tour is arguably best known for the band's performance at the Royal Albert Hall on 9 January.[1] According to Led Zeppelin guitarist, Jimmy Page, the Royal Albert hall was "at the time the largest and most prestigious gig in London."[2] In 1970, Led Zeppelin commissioned the British director and Producer of BBC's In Concert at the time, Stanley Dorfman, to film Led Zeppelin Live At The Royal Albert Hall,[3] during which Dorfman and the two cameramen he hired, Peter Whitehead and an assistant used handheld Bolex cameras to capture the concert in 16mm film.[4] Virtually all the footage from the Royal Albert Hall concert was featured as Disk One of Led Zeppelin DVD in 2003. The audio portions were digitally remixed for stereo and 5.1 surround mixes. Audio recordings of two songs from the concert, "We're Gonna Groove" and "I Can't Quit You Baby", had earlier been released on the 1982 album Coda. In 2022, Led Zeppelin released portions of 1970 Royal Albert Hall footage as three official music videos, Dazed and Confused (Live at The Royal Albert Hall 1970), How Many More Times (Live at The Royal Albert Hall 1970), and What Is and What Should Never Be (Live at The Royal Albert Hall 1970).[5]
One concert from this tour, at Edinburgh on 7 February, was postponed for 10 days owing to vocalist Robert Plant suffering a minor car accident, in which he sustained some facial injuries.[6] [7]
For all but one of these concerts, the band did not use any supporting act, although Barclay James Harvest did support them at the Edinburgh Usher Hall gig on 17 February. This would be a trend to continue on subsequent Led Zeppelin concert tours.[6]
The fairly typical set list for the tour was:
Encores (variations of the following list):
There were some set list substitutions, variations, and order switches during the tour.
| Date | City | Country | Venue | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 January 1970 | Birmingham Town Hall | |||
| 8 January 1970 | Colston Hall | |||
| 9 January 1970 | Royal Albert Hall | |||
| 13 January 1970 | Portsmouth Guildhall | |||
| 15 January 1970 | Newcastle City Hall | |||
| 16 January 1970 | Sheffield City Hall | |||
| 24 January 1970 | University of Leeds Refectory | |||
| 17 February 1970 | Usher Hall |