'Holy-Grail-type material': How never-before-seen Led Zeppelin concert footage ended up in Ohio
John Waters has seen it all.
Little league games. The building of Mount Rushmore. Even nudist camps.
He never knows what lies behind the home videos people ask him to digitize at American Video Productions Company, his media duplication and preservation store in a Cincinnati suburb.
Correction: John Waters thought he had seen it all. That all changed when "Holy-Grail-type material" landed in his lap: Seven minutes from Led Zeppelin's legendary 1970 show at the Inglewood Forum in Los Angeles.
That's the same show that gave the world Live on Blueberry Hill, a lauded Led Zeppelin album that was never supposed to be but was after a fan recorded the concert's audio and the bootleg recording became available around the world.
But video footage from the concert had never come to light. That is until Waters got his hands on two reels of film, complete with the band members rocking out, complete with lots of headbanging and Jimmy Page showing off his fabled guitar playing, all in the cinematic concert light.
For the general public, it's an important lesson to keep looking for treasures you have tucked away somewhere. For rock fans everywhere, it's exciting. For video producers and bootleggers like Waters, this was like reaching the mountaintop.
"I would be lying," Waters says, "if I said that I hadn't dreamt of something like this."
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The legendary concert
Fifty-two years ago, teenager Eddie Vincent tucked his parent's windup 8mm Kodak Brownie underneath his oversized jacket and crept into the Inglewood Forum to see the English rock band.
Back then many bands had a clear rule ? no filming. If you were caught filming at a Led Zeppelin concert, well, good luck. Rumor had it Led Zeppelin's manager and ex-wrestler Peter Grant would personally beat you up.
Led Zeppelin didn't want bootleggers for the same reason most bands don't. It's about 'mystique,' something bootlegging messed with. If you wanted to see them or hear them, you needed to buy a long-playing record or buy a concert ticket.
Then there's the concern that a bootlegger might record them on a bad night.
But on Sept. 4, 1970, Led Zeppelin didn't have to worry about that. That night, drummer John Bonham, singer Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page and bassist John Paul Jones were in sync.
Vincent used his camera, which recorded in bursts, to capture snippets ofthe band performing "Since I've Been Loving You," "What Is and What Should Never Be," "Whole Lotta Love," "Thank You" and other tunes.
Despite the bootleg audio being available around the world shortly after the concert, Vincent is one of few if not the only concertgoer with film from the night.
And yet, for 52 years, Vincent left his film mostly untouched, in a drawer collecting dust.
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Discovering video gold
Waters bought American Video Productions Company from the previous owner in 2011. He works another full-time job but purchased the store as a side hustle because of his affinity for video.
Running the store is Waters' hobby, but over the years, by watching hundreds of other peoples' videos, it's become something more.
"I've lived my life," Waters says, "but I've lived a complete other life through other people's media. The good. The bad. The ugly."
Waters grew up in a single-parent household with two siblings. They didn't have extra money to go toward expensive filming materials, which meant he didn't really have home movies growing up.
His experience, he says, has brought him to appreciate film in a way other people might not.
"Everything is documented now because we have the cell phone, but back then you didn't. Only a few people had cameras. So to have them, I tell folks, 'you don't know how lucky you are,'" Waters says. He's had instances where his customers tell him to throw away their film, to which Waters refuses. "You're telling me to throw your life away, I can't do that."
Waters' appreciation ? and eye ?for film was critical for discovering the Zeppelin tape.
Vincent contacted Waters to digitize his film of The Who performing at Anaheim Stadium in 1970. Waters was shocked by the high quality of Vincent's film and asked him if he had footage of anything else.
Vincent said yes, he had his Led Zeppelin film, but he figured nobody would care about that.
Waters said otherwise.
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The public unveiling
When Vincent sent him the reels of film from that sacred night at the Inglewood Forum, Waters got to work digitizing.
He didn't want to get his hopes up too high. He knew that fan-shot 8mm films were usually filmed from far away with less-than-ideal camera quality. But he had faith given the quality of Vincent's The Who concert film.
The anticipation was killing him.
"My jaw dropped when I realized what was playing before me," Waters says, describing how he felt when he digitized the film and saw the quality of the video. It was everything he could have wanted and more. He knew this was something that needed to be out in the public for Led Zeppelin fans, and music fans in general, to enjoy.
Music from Live on Blueberry Hill was added to the video, and the video was uploaded to YouTube just in time for the 52nd anniversary of the show.
And like the concert's audio half a century before, the film struck a chord with fans, even on an international scale. Days after it was uploaded online, a DVD copy of the video became available to purchase in Japan.(Experts say that American record stores, now few and far between, don't really have the desire or the room to carry illegal merchandise.)
So what exactly is the price for a one-of-a-kind, never-before-seen video of one of the best rock bands of all time at arguably their greatest concert ever?
A mere 750 Yen, or about $5.21 USD.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Unseen Led Zeppelin concert footage from 1970 LA show surfaces
