Led Zeppelin in New Jersey

Led Zeppelin opted out of Woodstock for Asbury Park, New Jersey
Article by Jean Mikle @jeanmikle

 It was Saturday, Aug. 16, 1969, and at Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, New York, hundreds of thousands of people clustered on a mud-covered field for Day Two of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair. The lineup that day included some of the biggest bands in the land: Canned Heat, Mountain, Sly and the Family Stone, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Grateful Dead and The Who all played, although heavy rain and lengthy delays meant that several of the performers finished their sets in the wee hours on Sunday morning. This is a story, though, about a band that wasn’t there. Recruited to play at Woodstock, Led Zeppelin turned down the gig. Instead, they headlined a show about 150 miles south of Bethel, at Asbury Park’s Convention Hall, as part of promoter Moe Septee’s “Summer of Stars” concert series.

 Zeppelin’s manager, Peter Grant, apparently turned down Woodstock because he didn’t want his band to be part of a multi-act bill. In a 2010 interview on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” Zeppelin’s lead singer Robert Plant said, “Our management thought we would be typecast,” explaining that the festival was so visible that the fear was the guys’ performance would forever be linked to that particular event. Of course, in fairness, what a cultural touchs tone Woodstock would become. In the summer of 1969, Zeppelin was a band on the rise. Its self-titled first album, released in January of that year, reached Number 10 on the Billboard charts in the U.S., and peaked at Number 6 in the U.K. The band’s pairing of blues, folk and psychedelia eventually would make it the biggest band of the 1970s, “as influential in that decade as The Beatles were in the previous one,” according to their biography on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame site.

 Zeppelin would play more than 40 gigs on their Summer of 69 tour of U.S. At Convention Hall, they did two shows — at 7:30 and 9:45 p.m. — as was typical of bands who played Septee’s summer concert series. Tickets were $5.50 and $4.50, and $2.50 for standing room. The opener in Asbury: a young British blues-rocker named Joe Cocker.

 Glen Partusch was only 12 years old in 1969, but he already was working at Convention Hall, hawking programs during the shows. Before the concerts, Partusch’s job was to number the seats that were placed on the floor of the hall before each show.

“We had the little stickers and we had to number each of them,” said Partusch, 57, who lives in Monmouth Beach.

 He remembers that the 7:30 p.m. Zeppelin show was not sold out. “You could just walk up to the door and buy a ticket for $5.50,” he said, but the second one was “pretty much a sell-out.”

After seeing Zeppelin play, Partusch got its debut album the next day, although he didn’t buy it in a store. Instead, he won it at a boardwalk stall on Asbury’s boardwalk.

 But it was Joe Cocker, backed by the Grease Band, and not Led Zeppelin, who stole the show in Partusch’s eyes.

“They were wild,” he remembered. “Seeing him perform, with the songs and the hand gestures, you couldn’t take your eyes off him. After the first show, I couldn’t wait for the second show to see it again.”

Asbury Park Press music writer Joan Pikula also seemed to like Joe Cocker just a bit more.

 In her review of the show, which ran in the Aug. 18, 1969 edition of the Press, Pikula wrote, “Joe Cocker is something to see. Lining him up with Zeppelin was an interesting idea and while it probably wasn’t planned, what the proximity does is present a picture of pseudo­blues and blues-where­it’s­really-at. Plant’s vocals could not seem anything but “staged” when seen against Cocker’s ... it is Cocker who is a blues man from the inside out and Plant who merely sings the blues.”

 Joe Cocker did make it to Woodstock. He and the Grease Band headed to Bethel after the Asbury show. Cocker would play at 2 p.m. Aug. 17 at Woodstock, and his powerful, soulful performance would propel him to stardom.

 For Deal resident Pam DeLisa, Led Zeppelin was definitely the draw. Sixteen years old that summer, DeLisa already was a huge Zeppelin fan. At the second show on Aug. 16, she had standing­room-only tickets, but managed to work her way right up to the stage by the end of the concert. Even better, she received a kiss from a T-shirt clad, super sexy Robert Plant, with his long mane of golden hair. But it was not until 45 years later that DeLisa realized that the night had been even more special than she remembered. For decades, she had kept her ticket stub along with two items she had taken from the stage that night at show’s end: a paper cup that had once been filled with whiskey for the band, and a cigarette. About a week ago she pulled out the ticket stub and was surprised to see some writing on the back. At first, she was annoyed.

“I couldn’t believe someone had scribbled on the back of the ticket,” DeLisa said. Then she looked closer. The scribbling turned out to the signatures of Plant and Led Zeppelin’s lead guitarist, Jimmy Page. “Love to Pam,” they had written.

“I couldn’t believe it,” DeLisa said. “I must have been so excited about getting kissed by Robert Plant that I forgot that I had gotten the autographs.”

It may not have been Woodstock, but Aug. 16, 1969, was certainly a night to remember on the Jersey Shore.