More than 200 pages of previously unseen police files obtained by LedZepNews provide new details on a notorious riot that took place in Tampa, Florida on June 3, 1977 following the premature end of a Led Zeppelin concert due to heavy rain.

Through a records request, LedZepNews obtained a collection of 25 police reports that were made following the concert and the subsequent riot by officers from the City of Tampa Police Department.

The records provide a fascinating series of snapshots of the riot, showing how police spent a relatively relaxed afternoon arresting fans for drug offences before a riot broke out at 9.15pm following the announcement that the evening’s show had been cancelled after Led Zeppelin performed just three songs.

Once the riot began, police reports show escalating tension inside the stadium with multiple reports of violence against police and glass bottles thrown by concert attendees.

LedZepNews has used the collection of unseen police reports, press coverage from the time as well as audience recordings of the abandoned concert and existing coverage of the event to piece together this definitive timeline of the day. 

We have not named any of the concert attendees and have chosen not to publish any of the original police reports as many of the concert attendees identified in the files were teenagers or in their early twenties at the time they were arrested nearly 50 years ago.

11.30am: Stadium doors open

Fans who had been waiting outside the stadium were allowed into the venue at 11.30am, with eager attendees grabbing spots near the front of the stage.

The weather was sunny, but forecasts warned of a risk of rainstorms, something that Led Zeppelin’s management was well aware of.

“It had been dreadfully wet for days in the area with rain like you’ve never seen,” the band’s manager Peter Grant recalled in an interview published in Dave Lewis’ 2003 book “Led Zeppelin: The Tight But Loose Files Celebration 2”.

2.05pm: The arrests begin

Police reports from the afternoon before the concert note that the weather was clear. The day’s first arrest came at 2.05pm when an attendee was seen “smoking a suspected marijuana cigarette”. Police arrested him, finding “a small pipe containing residue in his front left pocket.”

Further drug arrests were made later in the afternoon. One unfortunate fan held a bag of marijuana “in plain view” of a police officer who arrested him, leaving the attendee with a $350 fine.

By 5.15pm, the weather remained fine but one fan was ready to go home. A 15-year-old girl in the crowd had “a distinct odour of alcohol on her breath and seemed bewildered and confused as a result,” a police report notes. 

The girl had arrived at the concert with her boyfriend. After they had both been drinking, they argued and lost each other in the crowd. “[She] was very upset, crying etc and wanted to go home”, the police report explained, so officers called the girl’s mother who arranged for her to be collected.

Officers also challenged a bootleg T-shirt seller who was seeking to make some money from the more than 60,000 people who were streaming into the stadium. When challenged, the entrepreneur “failed to show a business license and was placed under arrest. A search was conducted which revealed one baggie of marijuana in the suspect’s left front pocket of his pants.”

Police working at the stadium seemed to find it easy to spot evidence of drug dealing, their reports show. One 17-year-old girl attending the show was arrested after a police officer spotted her raising her trouser leg to reveal a bag of marijuana taped to her ankle.

After 6pm, one officer spotted someone offering a woman a plastic bag of pills. He followed the man into the toilets, where the shocked fan dropped his bag of Quaalude pills to the floor when approached by the officer.

At the same time that fan was dropping his Quaaludes, another fan’s enjoyment of the afternoon was cut short. The officer claimed to have observed the attendee experiencing a “euphoric high” so searched him, finding three joints in his pockets.

7pm: Fans prepare for the Led Zeppelin show

The day’s first report of criminal damage came when the driver of the 4587 city bus complained to a police officer that someone had hit one of the bus’ windows with their hand at 7pm, shattering the glass as the bus drove alongside the crowd.

With Led Zeppelin scheduled to take to the stage at 8.30pm, the band flew into Tampa on the rented Boeing 720 plane Caesar’s Chariot which they used throughout the 1977 US tour.

Aboard the plane, trouble was brewing when tour manager Richard Cole saw one of the tickets for the evening’s show. “It wasn’t until we were on the plane flying from Miami to the gig that Richard shows me the ticket,” Grant told Lewis.

Printed on the bottom left corner of the ticket was the text “rain or shine”, a promise that Led Zeppelin would still perform even in bad weather.

“I storm off to blast Terry Bassett from Concerts West. Steve Weiss, our lawyer, should have caught it in the contract,” Grant recalled to Lewis. “I should have sent Richard out to check the place but he’d been sorting out some trip for Robert and Jonesy to visit Disneyland with the kids.”

7.30pm: The clouds appear

Almost all police reports during the afternoon and early evening noted that the weather was clear. But at 7.30pm, police reports unanimously note that clouds had appeared in the sky.

At 8pm, with Led Zeppelin shortly due on stage, a hapless husband and wife pair of drug dealers realised that officers had seen them trying to sell PCP.

The husband ran into the stadium’s parking lot but “was caught approx. 30 feet east from where he was first observed,” a police report notes. “Subject was observed throwing the suspected drug under vehicle by which she was standing.” The man’s wife later surrendered to officers 15 bags of PCP pills that she had been carrying.

The members of Led Zeppelin had arrived at the stadium. John Bonham’s son Jason Bonham and Grant’s son Warren found a chalkboard, drawing on it and writing before the band members posed for photographs for Terry O’Neill.

Grant remained concerned about the weather and the risk of rain, especially when he realised the band would perform under tarpaulin, not a metal roof.

“When we get to the site there was something like 10,000 tons of water resting over the drums,” Grant told Lewis. “So now I have to make a decision about them going on. You can’t imagine the pressure.”

8.15pm: Led Zeppelin came on stage 15 minutes early

Aware of the rain clouds overheard, Led Zeppelin took to the stage 15 minutes early.

Aubrey Powell, a designer at the firm Hipgnosis which was responsible for several of Led Zeppelin’s album covers, had joined the band’s entourage for the show. “By the time the band was ready to go on, you could see it getting darker and darker. Lightning flashed all over the place,” he told Bob Spitz for his 2021 book “Led Zeppelin: The Biography”.

“When they’re about to go on the rain has stopped,” Grant recalled. “There’s 70,000 fans gathered and we’ve got to get it on somehow. So I decided to let them start. Nearby overhead there’s this big dark cloud looming. I thought at this rate it will be us who’ll be leaving under a big black cloud.”

The band launched into “The Song Remains The Same” before immediately playing “The Rover/Sick Again”.

As the band began the show, light rain began to fall on the 60,000 people packed into the stadium.

“I could feel the drizzle coming on me and it was soaking the double neck guitar,” Jimmy Page recalled in an interview recorded days later on June 9, 1977 with WNEW-FM presenter Scott Muni in New York.

Robert Plant, perhaps mindful of the need to continue the show before the rain worsened, remarked on stage: “Good evening … it’s more than a pleasure to be back in the Tampa region again. It’s been about four years, right? I suppose the best thing we can do is less talking and the more music the better, right?”

Backstage, Led Zeppelin’s stage crew were anxiously peering upwards. They were concerned by the black clouds and by the growing amount of rain pooling in the tarpaulin above Led Zeppelin.

One employee of Showco, the band’s stage team, even took a photograph showing the rain collecting directly above the band members and their instruments.

8.30pm: The rainstorm begins

Led Zeppelin performed “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” as the rain worsened, progressing into a full-blown storm.

“By the time we were doing ‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine’ it was really pouring down,” Page would later tell Muni. “But the trouble was the wind was blowing our way and there was this gigantic tarpaulin above us which was just bowing inwards with the pressure of rain which had built up.”

Audience recordings of the concert captured fans’ reaction as the rain worsened. “Rain is coming down … a hard rain’s gonna fall, motherfuckers,” one man can be heard saying.

Another attendee remarked “this is the worst, this sucks” as the sound of rain was picked up by a tape recorder.

Gary Carnes, the tour’s lighting director who worked for the Showco touring company, recalled in Barney Hoskyns’ 2012 book “Trampled Underfoot”: “The sky exploded. Within minutes everything was under water.”

8.35pm: Led Zeppelin leave the stage

Watching from the side of the stage as the rain storm began in earnest, Grant decided to bring the band off the stage. “I quickly actioned to Robert to wind it up and off we run,” Grant recalled.

After finishing “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”, Plant informed the audience that Led Zeppelin will leave the stage temporarily.

“We want you to bear with us because there seems to be some water falling on the electrical equipment so we’re going to give it a 15 minute break,” he explained. “Are you cool? A 15 minute break, we’re going to try it as it’s going to blow everything up otherwise.”

Plant later told Grant that “as he’s coming off stage my son Warren shouts to Robert to pick up a frisbee he’s thrown on. As you can imagine Robert told him in no uncertain terms to leave it there.”

Bob Ross, a journalist from the St Petersburg Times, wrote in a June 7, 1977 article that “the intense rainstorm drenches the field and fans. Many run for cover in the stadium’s spacious lobbies and covered walkways. Many more remain wet in their seats, waiting for the show to resume.”

As 15 minutes passed and there was no sign of Led Zeppelin’s return, drenched fans begin chanting “We want Zeppelin”.

There was a tense atmosphere backstage, with O’Neill the photographer shooting photos of the members of Led Zeppelin conferring while dressed in robes to help them dry out.

Eventually, Grant decided to cancel the performance. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said, according to Cole writing in his 1992 book “Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored”.

9pm: Led Zeppelin leave the stadium

The members of Led Zeppelin and their families were whisked away to a fleet of 13 waiting limousines at 9pm, fearful of the reaction of the crowd to the sight of the band fleeing the stadium.

“We were all in the dressing room, and all of a sudden the guy burst in and picked me up under his arm, and picked Peter Grant’s son up under his arm – Warren – and yelled, ‘GO! GO! GO!’ I didn’t even know what was going on,” Jason Bonham recalled in a 1988 interview with Scott K Fish.

“I remember just looking around and it was like seeing a riot running towards you,” Bonham continued. “We all jumped in the cars, and 15 or 20 seconds after we got in the cars, it was like they all piled onto the cars. Police bikes being knocked over. They wrecked something like eight limos.”

“I remember being thrown onto Jimmy Page’s lap. He was like, ‘Oh, hello Jason. How are you?’ I was going, ‘What’s happening, mom?’ I was really terrified. And my mom was going, ‘No, it’s alright. It’s alright.’ But, y’know, she was worried to death as well. My dad was trying to calm everyone down,” Bonham said.

The departure of the band’s fleet of cars was noticed by some of the journalists in the stadium. “The Led Zeppelin entourage of 13 limousines leaves the stadium in a hurry,” Ross wrote in his June 7, 1977 article. “The group’s spokesman says they were told to leave and come back the next night for a rain date. Stadium officials say the band was warned that to leave was to invite problems with the crowd.”

9.10pm: The riot begins

Angry fans, realising that the concert was unlikely to resume, attempted to break down barriers as they tried to storm the stage. Police officers and security guards tried to push them back.

One security guard was “working at the gate, but was called to the stage because the crowd became rowdy,” a police report says. Once on the stage, he “was struck on the right side of the head by a bottle thrown by someone in the crowd”.

While a riot began to break out in the stadium, Led Zeppelin’s limousines sped through Tampa thanks to a police escort as they raced to return to the airport and Caesar’s Chariot.

Grant was driven in a car along with Powell. They reached the airport safely but their departure was delayed as they waited for John Paul Jones’ wife Maureen.

“We had to wait at the airport for John’s wife Mo who had travelled out in a separate limo which had spun off the road,” Grant later recalled to Lewis.

By the time the band boarded the plane, a group of fans from the stadium had followed Led Zeppelin to the airport.

“The crowd had followed us from the stadium and were trying to break through the fences,” Powell told Spitz for his 2021 book. “We could see them through the portholes in the plane. They felt Led Zeppelin was deserting them, and they were pissed.”

Eventually, Caesar’s Chariot took off and Led Zeppelin departed Tampa. Even though he knew the band’s departure and the show’s cancellation would cause anger, Grant seemed unconcerned.

“Peter sat there with this big grin on his face. The gig had been rained off, but Zeppelin had been paid,” Powell recalled in an interview for Mark Blake’s 2018 biography of Grant “Bring It On Home”.

“I got the fucking cash, Po,” Grant said on the plane, tapping the flight case, according to Powell in Blake’s book.

9.15pm: The crowd is told that the concert is cancelled

At 9.15pm, an announcement was made through the stadium loudspeakers that Led Zeppelin would not be returning to the stage. It instructed people in the stadium to keep their ticket stubs so they can be “issued an IOU” for a replacement show.

Many fans, wet from the rain, had already lost their tickets. “It’s not fair,” a female fan can be heard shouting in an audience recording in response to the announcement of the cancelled show. 

“Club swinging cops in riot gear clear the crowd away from the stage,” Ross wrote. “After the stage is secured, the police continue to wade through the crowd, using sticks to prod or smack the slowest departees. Bottles and epithets cascade upon the field from the grandstands. The flying glass injures several policemen and civilians. Fear and panic pervade the ugly scene.”

At 9.15pm, one officer encountered an angry concert attendee with martial arts training. “Defendant was advised to move out the gate at which time he turned, got into a karate stance, threw two kicks and one punch striking undersigned in the groin area, stomach area, left forearm and left foot at which time undersigned subdued defendant with physical force placing same under arrest,” a police report notes.

The members of Led Zeppelin may have managed to leave the stadium in their fleet of limousines, but the band’s stage crew remained on and around the stage as a riot began to break out.

“When it was announced there would be no show tonight, war broke out,” Carnes told Hoskyns in his book. “The cops called out to us through megaphones, ‘Everyone lay down behind the speaker cabinets and cover your heads. Do not get up.’”

“This huge riot squad came in through the back of [the] stadium,” he added. “There were bodies lying everywhere bleeding. It was pretty scary.”

Benji Le Fevre, another crew member, remained inside the stadium along with Carnes. “All of a sudden, the riot cops came charging in around the crash barriers in front of the stage—they were just swinging batons, clubbing kids, laying into everybody. It was brutal, frightening,” he told Spitz for his 2021 book.

9.20pm: Bottles fly towards the police officers

As the police tried to force the crowd out of the stadium, glass bottles rained down on them. Some officers managed to arrest those seen throwing bottles into groups of police.

“The undersigned observed the defendant throw a unknown brand, pint sized liquor bottle,” another police report reads, “striking officer [name redacted by LedZepNews] on the lower back. The undersigned … observed the assault and chased the defendant who fled into the crowd. Numerous bottles were thrown at the undersigned as I chased the defendant through the crowd. On catching the defendant it was necessary to strike him with a night stick several times as he fought back and a crowd attempted to take the complainant away.”

By this time, most people had left the stadium’s main field area. “The on-field officers had just about succeeded in clearing the field, although still being involved in several scuffles in the north playing field area,” a police report explains.

An attendee who was arrested for throwing a glass bottle at police later told officers that he “became mad at the policeman, picked up a half-pint or pint bottle, and threw it at the policemen. He stated that he just wanted to break it and did not want to hurt anyone. He also stated that the bottle hit in the stands and did not hit the field.”

The officer who filed the report wryly explained in his notes: “This is not what actually happened”.

That attendee later hired an attorney in an attempt to get the charge of throwing a deadly missile within an occupied building dropped as he was due to join the army on July 19, 1977. The attorney called Tampa police, passing on an offer to “repay” anyone injured in the incident to avoid charges being filed. A police officer noted in the report that he felt the attorney was trying to bribe him.

At 9.25pm, one angry concert attendee was seen “pull[ing] a one pint whiskey bottle from his right rear pocket and raise[d] it over his head in an attempt to strike Officer [name redacted by LedZepNews] in the head.”

The officer who saw this, realising his colleague was about to be hit in the head, charged the angry fan. “I struck him in the head with my night stick to disable him,” he noted in the police report.

9.30pm: Police start to clear the crowd

By 9.30pm, the police reports start to note that the crowd in the stadium had largely been cleared.

The situation in the stadium “began to stabilize” at this point, allowing one officer to arrest someone he claimed to have earlier seen throwing a bottle at a group of police. “I did not let the defendant out of my sight from the time he threw the bottle until he was arrested,” the officer claimed.

Angry crowd members, unhappy at being cleared from the field, staged a last ditch attempt to push past police. One unhappy fan saw officers arresting someone at 9.45pm so “came up to the arresting officers and pushed his way between the police officers,” a police report noted.

“Defendant was subdued and taken into custody and charged with interfere with a police officer,” the report noted. “After it was ascertained that he had a quantity of marijuana on his person (left shirt pocket),” a second report about the same person read.

10pm: The rain stops

By 10pm, the violence had largely ended and the rain had stopped, with police reports now mentioning cloudy conditions, not rain.

One concert attendee complained to police that he had been hit by something thrown into the crowd, passing on a description of someone he claimed to have seen throw something. Police attempted to track down the perpetrator but abandoned the search. “Due to the amount of people (in excess of 70,000 people) this case is inactive as it is impossible to ascertain the identity of the suspect,” a police report explains.

11.15pm: The final bottle is thrown

The last police report for the riot concerns an incident that occurred in the stadium’s south parking lot at 11.15pm. A police officer “observed the defendant throw a 16-32 oz size clear bottle into a group of approx 30 policemen,” he recalled in a police report. He “apprehended suspect after a short foot chase. It is unknown as to whether the bottle actually struck anyone.”

The aftermath

The press reaction to the cancelled concert and the riot was scathing. “Led Zeppelin show halted – 3,000 riot,” read the front page of The Cleveland Press on June 4, 1977. “Rain grounds Led Zeppelin And Stirs Tampa Rumpus,” read a headline in the New York Daily News.

Led Zeppelin’s management was concerned about an impending meeting of the Tampa City Council on June 6, 1977, the Monday following the Friday night concert.

Grant, keen to absolve Led Zeppelin of guilt over the riot and cancelled show, decided to place adverts in local newspapers with the help of a relative of Elvis Presley’s manager.

“I knew Colonel Tom Parker’s son-in-law ran an ad agency so we got him out of bed early on Sunday to get the ad in for first thing the next morning,” Grant later recalled to Lewis. “So no matter what the council said we were in the clear for all to see.”

“Led Zeppelin … Concerts West apologizes,” the full page adverts read, “and is so sorry for the humiliation and inconvenience to you and your faithful fans at Tampa Stadium, June 3, 1977.”

“You did everything that you could and wanted to do so much more. You are the best and deserve the best, not the worst treatment,” the advert continued.

Grant’s audacious full-page advert didn’t mollify Tampa’s mayor William Poe, who told local journalists on June 6, 1977: “Led Zeppelin will not perform in Tampa again. We have to protect the health and welfare of the police officers as well as the citizens of Tampa.”

Poe ruled out Led Zeppelin returning to the city to perform a reschedule date. “There will be no future or rescheduled concerts by that group,” he told local press.

That afternoon, the Tampa Sports Authority which managed the stadium held a press briefing to discuss the situation. “In this business I feel very strongly that the act controls the kids,” stadium manager Robert Pierce told the gathering.

During the meeting, officials studied photocopies of the crucial wording on the tickets which promised merely “the presence of Led Zeppelin” in “rain or shine”, not specifically a concert by the band in any weather.

“I think they covered the waterfront with that ticket,” said the Sports Authority chairman Nelson Italiano, later snapping “I’d like to stop you” at Pierce who had begun answering a question about how quickly Led Zeppelin could have returned to the stage after the rain storm had ended.

Led Zeppelin never returned to Tampa. The band’s chaotic 1977 US tour encountered further controversy following backstage violence at the Day On The Green music festival in California on July 23, 1977.

Follow Led Zeppelin News on Twitter and Facebook to stay up to date on news as it happens. You can also sign up to our email for a digest of the latest news sent to your inbox. LedZepNews uses paid Amazon referral links to earn commissions to cover its costs.