Remarkable colour footage of Led Zeppelin performing in Vienna, Austria on March 16, 1973 was published online by LedZepFilm on July 14.
The three minutes and 14 seconds of footage is the earliest film to emerge of Led Zeppelin’s 1973 tour. Shot by Mead Eblan, the film was previously unreleased.
LedZepNews spoke to Eblan about his film and its emergence as well as LedZepFilm AKA Eric Levy to get the inside story of how this footage was finally released after more than 50 years.
LedZepNews: Mead, what’s the backstory to you going to see Led Zeppelin in 1973? Were you already a fan of the band at that point?
Mead Eblan: I was a 16-year-old senior at The American International School in Vienna, Austria where kids from around the world attended [but] had one thing to share in common: music. Many bands of the day would make Vienna an annual stop. From the Stones, to the Mothers, to Tull to jazz musicians like Herbie Hancock. And often you could gather with them at small club venues afterwards.
Yes, I had already been a fan. With older brothers and sisters I was familiar with members of the group before they formed Led Zeppelin. Notably Jimmy Page, who along with [Eric] Clapton and [Jeff] Beck had been with The Yardbirds.
When Led Zeppelin II came out I was a 14-year-old waiting at a record store in downtown Rome for the store shipments to arrive and literally pulled the first album out of the box to rush back to school where friends and I gathered around a record player to play it over and over as loud as we could.
LedZepNews: What are your memories of the March 16, 1973 show?
Mead Eblan: Led Zeppelin was already hugely popular in Europe and the show was packed. Electronic music was already becoming mainstream there, but hard bluesy rock was then #1, which Led Zeppelin personified.
I was with friends but would often “play gypsy” and wander off alone to get closer to the stage and capture images. Guitar was my passion, so I fixated on the guitar playing, chords, style. Hence, mostly oblivious to the crowd. After returning to the USA to go to college in DC area, I got my first job. The first thing I bought with money saved was a Gibson SG.
LedZepNews: Did you see Led Zeppelin live at any other dates?
Mead Eblan: Yes, but I attended so many concerts I can’t remember where overseas or here in the USA. This was the only time I was able to film Led Zeppelin, though.
LedZepNews: How did you manage to film Led Zeppelin? Do you recall which camera and film you used? Did you have to sneak it into the venue?
Mead Eblan: I was able to simply carry my camera into the Stadthalle with its carrying case. Back then, there really wasn’t any security checking bags etc, and bringing cameras into shows wasn’t really a thing.
The film was Kodak Ektachrome, and the camera was a Sankyo CM400 Super 8. Which I still have and still works. No software to keep updated. Analog Days (sigh)
LedZepNews: Why film the band? Was it to have a personal reminder of the show?
Mead Eblan: First, why not? My girlfriend (now wife) had returned to the USA, so instead of filming her I wasn’t going to waste S8 on ducks, cats and trees. And Led Zeppelin was already iconic, so it was a no-brainer to want to film them.
By the way, thanks for saying “film”. Video was only available to TV stations back then. Noone video’d in 1973.
Secondly, absolutely. The film was shot for personal collection and enjoyment.
LedZepNews: What did you do with the film after the concert? Did you watch it back or make copies?
Mead Eblan: I watched it many times with friends. I still have my S8 projector. The original S8 is the only film copy. Then after getting married and sprouting larvae I kept all my S8 stored for decades. I brought them out in 1992 to transfer to VHS via projector capture to 8mm tape at the time. Ugh.
Then this year I decided to do another transfer via Kodak direct transfer frame-by-frame to MP4 for straight to digital. These units often use LED lights, though, which accentuate the blues (no pun intended). Luckily Eric stepped in and not only had it upscaled, but properly colorized! Then he synced up the audio from recordings of the concert. I was blown away. I hadn’t realized anyone had even recorded the concert!
LedZepNews: Had you considered releasing the footage publicly?
Mead Eblan: I did not think it would be of any value/interest to others until Eric educated me. [I had] no interest in monetizing it, and glad to see Eric share it publicly.
LedZepNews: What was it like watching the film back today and seeing it released?
Mead Eblan: Seeing it come alive through Eric’s efforts really brought a swell of emotion and return to those days. 51 years ago! A very cool thing. Like losing your virginity all over again.
LedZepNews also spoke to Eric Levy AKA LedZepFilm to hear his account of connecting with Eblan and releasing the film:
Eric Levy: I found Mead online back in January, but less conventionally than I’ve found other filmers. Most of the time, I’ve found people that filmed Led Zeppelin through open calls on the Internet for footage, audio, or photos.
Here, Mead was already in a Super 8 community, commenting that he still had his film of Led Zeppelin performing live on a photo of Page shooting Super 8 while in Hiroshima. So of course I get excited and respond asking if he was interested in sharing and what show it was.
I typically assume they shot something in 1975 or 1977, so color me shocked when Mead said he saw the band at the Stadthalle in Vienna! He originally said 1971, so initially I thought he may have seen the 1970 show, but Led Zeppelin played a different venue that year (the Konzerthaus) – narrowing it to 1973 or 1980. The process took a few months from there.
We started with Mead’s home scan of the film, done on a Canon scanner. It captured the full frame, but the scan was extremely blue, overexposed, and ran at the wrong frame rate (20 fps vs 18 fps).
Nonetheless, I knew from the start that this was a holy grail. Vienna 1973 is universally beloved among Led Zeppelin fans, often considered one of the best concerts of their career, and it’s the second known film from their Europe 1973 tour (the other being March 26th, 1973 in Lyon, but the available sound is extremely poor), often considered the band’s instrumental peak. I did a quick sync of the film and sent it back to him, and Mead was impressed with the results.
So I said “this film is great, this concert is great – what if we got the film professionally scanned and get it in the best quality?” After a bit of back and forth about why it’d be better than upscaling the footage with artificial intelligence, Mead let me fill out the order form at The Negative Space, based in Colorado, where I send all of my film leads to be transferred.
We shipped the film in early May and got it back a week from this writing. I covered all costs. The Negative Space had been extremely busy with larger film projects putting home movie projects on the backburner, but a quick nudge got us the film back within hours. The results were of course stunning, details popping off the screen that were nowhere to be found in the home scan.
The final step was the color correction, done by Nuff at The Pink Floyd Research Group. Nuff has been doing color work for a few years and started doing Led Zeppelin films that came my way ever since we started sending films to The Negative Space. Nuff was able to easily fix some washed out contrast and the overall “dull” look raw scanned film can have and brought out a vibrant array of colors that make you feel like you’re right at the show.
Once we had that and the finished sync, all Mead asked for was to credit everyone involved in the description – which I’ve done for all of my releases for years. And after seven months, I was able to drop it on YouTube for people to enjoy for free – something that may have been hoarded if found 20 years ago.
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