Madonna may have set a new attendance record for a concert over the weekend when more than 1.6 million attended the final stop on her Celebration Tour on Brazil's Copacabana beach, yet there was a time when Led Zeppelin was music's biggest attraction.
The band's legendary guitarist, Jimmy Page, took to Instagram over the weekend to remember the band's show in Tampa, Fla. on May 5, 1973, sharing a black-and-white aerial view photo of a packed stadium originally published in the Tampa Tribune.
"On this day in 1973, I performed the second day of the '73 US Summer tour in Tampa, Florida where we managed to achieve a record of 56,800 people in the stadium. This produced great media excitement as we had apparently broken the attendance record set by The Beatles at Shea Stadium," Page wrote.
The Beatles show that Page is referring to took place on Aug. 15, 1965. "Over 55,000 people saw the Beatles at Shea Stadium. We took $304,000, the greatest gross ever in the history of show business," promoter Sid Bernstein was quoted as saying in The Beatles: An Illustrated Record.
"By 1973, Led Zeppelin was a stadium band. We started the North American tour with an open-air gig in Atlanta, which was absolutely massive: 50,000 people - just jaw-dropping. For the second gig of that leg of the tour, in Tampa, there were even more: 56,000. This was the show that broke the attendance record for a concert, which up to that point had been held by the Beatles at Shea Stadium," Page continued.
"It was a really pivotal moment, definitely for me, realising just how big Led Zeppelin had become, and how much our fans loved us," he added.
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"After Tampa, the concerts were held at indoor venues so it was difficult to ascertain how many people would have come if the venues had accommodated them. Actually, I mostly preferred the indoor shows because I could hear the sound reflected back at me - an ambience thing, I suppose."
Led Zeppelin was at the height of its creative powers at the time, coming off the massive success of Led Zeppelin IV. The band's follow-up album, Houses of the Holy, had just topped the charts.
The band played a 16-song set during that recorded-breaking gig at Tampa Stadium, opening with "Rock and Roll" and concluding the show with a two-song encore featuring "The Ocean" and "Communication Breakdown." In between, the band performed such other classics as "Black Dog," "Dazed and Confused," "Stairway to Heaven" and "Whole Lotta Love."
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