So what we did was: we rowed across the lake and watched the show from the back of the stage - which was pretty cool! We were probably within six feet of the amps so we had a really good view of the band" (Interview). We couldn't afford tickets, but we did have enough money to rent a rowboat at Green Lake.
"Me and my buddies were living over in Wallingford," said Flynn, "and we wanted to go to the show. Meanwhile, Seattle's premier AM radio station, KJR, had Led Zep's debut single "Good Times Bad Times" single in their Fab-50 charts that May, and KOL-AM also began pushing the same ultra-heavy tune.Īmong those fans who'd opted to watch the show from a watercraft were Mick Flynn - a guitarist with the local band, Meatball, and one of Seattle's first vintage gear experts - and his pal and housemate, Richard Green. Still, Three Dog Night - whose second AM radio hit single, "One," was resting in the national Top-10 - were the more famous band that spring. But since the January 12, 1969, release of their earth-shattering eponymous debut album, Led Zep's popularity had skyrocketed. A supergroup that had risen from the ashes of England's esteemed psychedelic blues-rockers, the Yardbirds - Led Zeppelin had actually already played the Seattle Center Arena (on December 27, 1968, albeit in an unadvertised opening role for Vanilla Fudge). Then, right before the headlining performance by Three Dog Night - a Los Angeles-based pop group with a trio of soulful vocalists - it was Led Zeppelin's turn. True to form, at the end of his band's set, Winkler reportedly jumped into the theater's pool to the great delight of the audience. The Seattle Times tolerantly noted that bandleader Jimmy Winkler was a fellow "ifted with a complete lack of talent, but an abundance of charm" and thus, "he has become a landmark at Seattle concerts" where "at nearly every concert appears on stage at the earliest and slightest lull in the program" (Gressel). Titanic." Then, while the roadies were setting up Led Zep's gear, Seattle's own hippie jug-band, Translove Airlines, played a shambling set. Next up was Cambridge-based songster, Jaime Brockett, and his talking-blues FM radio hit, "The Legend of the U.S.S. with an unremarkable opening set by the Vancouver B.C., rock band Spring. The show – which was produced by counterculture impresario, Boyd Grafmyre, in conjunction with KOL radio (whose top DJ, Burl Barer, emceed the event) - began about 2 p.m. There were even two swimsuit-clad fellows perched atop the roof of one of the diving towers." Several energetic souls treaded water in the pool between the stands and the stage. The benches in the Aqua Theatre were filled to overflowing. And a thousand or so sprawled out on the lawns around the theater, forming a wall-to-wall carpet of human bodies." The Seattle Times concurred: "The audience was everywhere. A hundred perched on the roof of a concession stand. A flotilla of canoes, rented rowboats and rubber rafts surrounded the back side of the stage, where a few also treaded water. Some roosted in the trees, many crowded onto one small dock, it submerged slightly.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that on that sunny day "several thousand of the whimsically clad and nearly unclad younger set" attended, but that "only about half the crowd" paid for their entry tickets - the "rest bent their freeloading ears to the amplified sounds from a variety of places. So, clearly, bringing the world's heaviest hard-rock band, Led Zeppelin, into the place was raising the stakes in a seismic way - and the theater would ultimately pay the highest price by sacrificing its life in the wake of that thundering event. Although the theater was generally dedicated to rather lite fair - "swimusicals," comedic plays, and a jazz festival or two - by 1965 rock 'n' roll promoters began producing the occasional show there with pop stars such as Sonny & Cher or Ian Whitcomb. That theater - an outdoor stage set on the western edge of one of the town's most popular parks - had been built in 1950 to feature shows by the Aqua Follies and so it boasted a stage with a 40-foot diving tower on each side, and a pool between the stage and the 5,000-capacity concrete grandstand. On Sunday May 11, 1969, the up-and-coming British rock 'n' roll band, Led Zeppelin, performs a legendary concert at a most unusual venue: Seattle's Green Lake Aqua Theatre. Led Zeppelin rocks Seattle's outdoor Green Lake Aqua Theatre on May 11, 1969. Opening acts: Spring, Jaime Brockett, Translove Airlines, Three Dog Night
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