Led Zeppelin: unreleased footage surfaces from a 1972 concert in the Netherlands

In the ceaseless stream of archival material resurfacing online, a new document brings Led Zeppelin back into the light at the height of their ascent. It's a black-and-white film, of remarkable quality, shot in May 1972 for the Dutch television programme Popzien.

The footage follows the band on their arrival in the Netherlands, where they were awaited for a concert at Amsterdam's Oude RAI in front of 10,000 spectators. It was the first of two "warm-up" shows before heading off on the US tour. The segment documents their reception at the airport by promoter Lou van Rees, a central figure in the organisation of major rock concerts in the Netherlands in the early 1970s, already responsible for the Dutch dates of Deep Purple, Ten Years After, Black Sabbath and Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

Watch the Led Zeppelin video below.

When van Rees assures him the show is sold out, John Bonham quips back: "There won't be a sellout without my cymbals. I'm missing one!" The tone is light-hearted, but it captures the atmosphere of a machine already running like clockwork.

Another sequence shows a hotel meeting between the promoter and tour manager Richard Cole: an advance payment for the evening is handed over, and the scene closes on what looks like a briefcase full of cash, a detail that says more than words ever could about the economics of rock in those years.

The footage, which had already circulated in the past in a degraded version, also includes a fragment of “Immigrant Song”, the band's regular opening number of the period. Writing about the Amsterdam show at the time, the newspaper “Handelsblad” noted: “Watching Led Zeppelin at the peak of their power is a fascinating and thrilling spectacle, thanks above all to the hypersensual singer Robert Plant and the no less theatrical guitar of Jimmy Page, who fuse theatre, music and elite sport”.

A brief document, little more than four minutes long, but enough to convey the measure of a band that by 1972 had firmly established itself as a global phenomenon.

Meanwhile, the possibility of a reunion appears to have been definitively shelved. Robert Plant continues to focus on his solo career, including a recent appearance on the Tiny Desk Concert format. The series, dreamed up by Bob Boilen, the longtime voice of NPR's (America's National Public Radio) All Songs Considered, brings established artists to perform in a cramped space, literally behind a desk, with stripped-down arrangements and a homemade-session feel. The concept works precisely because of this: it strips the music of any onstage artifice, lays the artist bare, and reveals just how authentic they can be beneath the polished productions. Over the years, a wide range of names have passed through: Billie Eilish, Coldplay, Dua Lipa, Alicia Keys, Mac Miller. Now it's the turn of someone who has never lacked authenticity: Robert Plant.

The former frontman of Led Zeppelin took the stage with his new outfit, Saving Grace, the band with whom he has just released their self-titled album. And he didn't limit himself to promoting the new work: he closed the set with a reworking of “Gallows Pole”, the traditional song Zeppelin recorded in 1970 for “Led Zeppelin III”. A gift for longtime fans, but also proof that certain songs, stripped down to the bone, reveal all their ancestral power.

Watch the concert below:

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