40 Year Itch: Led Zeppelin Kicks off 1973 US Tour

Led Zeppelin posing in front of The Starship

We did 53,000 at Atlanta and then 55,000 at the following concert in Tampa, Florida — it was quite clear that if people were going to come along to see us in those kind of numbers we weren’t going to have problems doing concerts that would fulfill the demand
-Jimmy Page

The Led Zeppelin North American Tour got off to a rousing start on May 4, 1973 when the band drew 49,236 fans to Atlanta's Braves Stadium. They paid $6 each for tickets. The following night the group broke the Beatles' attendance record for a single night in the US with 56,000 at Tampa Stadium. Two days in, they had grossed  more than half a million dollars prompting one reporter to call Led Zeppelin the top rock 'n' roll band in the world. On May 12, the band's fifth album, Houses of the Holy, shot up to Number 1 on Billboard's album charts. Their three night stand at Madison Square Garden was filmed for the concert movie The Song Remains The Same.





The fairly typical set list for the tour was:
"Rock and Roll" (Page, Plant, Jones, Bonham)
"Celebration Day" (Jones, Page, Plant)
"Black Dog" (Page, Plant, Jones)
"Over the Hills and Far Away" (Page, Plant)
"Misty Mountain Hop" (Page, Plant, Jones)
"Since I've Been Loving You" (Page, Plant, Jones)
"No Quarter" (Page, Plant, Jones)
"The Song Remains the Same" (Page, Plant)
 "The Rain Song" (Page, Plant)
"Dazed and Confused" (Page)
"Stairway to Heaven" (Page, Plant)
"Moby Dick" (Page, Jones, Bonham)
"Heartbreaker" (Bonham, Page, Plant)
"Whole Lotta Love" (Bonham, Dixon, Jones, Page, Plant)
Encores (variations of the following list):
"The Ocean" (Bonham, Jones, Page, Plant)
"Communication Breakdown" (Bonham, Jones, Page)
"Thank You" (Page, Plant)
"Dancing Days" (Page, Plant) (one time only, on the second night in Detroit)