This was the first tour embarked on by the band following their enforced lay-off caused by Plant's car accident in Greece in 1975. During this sabbatical, the band had recorded their seventh studio album,
Presence. Rehearsals for the tour eventually took place at Manticore Studios,
Fulham in early 1977, where the band worked for two months on a new set list. Led Zeppelin's manager
Peter Grant conceived this series of concerts as an effort that would reassert Led Zeppelin as the dominant band of the decade. Fifty-one concerts were scheduled over a three-leg period, for 1.3 million ticket holders. It was Led Zeppelin's biggest ever tour, and tickets sold at a rate of 72,000 a day. The tour was scheduled to commence on 27 February at
Fort Worth, Texas, but Plant contracted
laryngitis and the schedule was postponed for a month. It eventually kicked off on 1 April, at the
Dallas Memorial Auditorium in
Dallas. The delay reduced the amount of time the band had available to rehearse, since all their equipment had already been airlifted to the United States. As guitarist
Jimmy Page explained: on April 10, 1977, performing "
Stairway to Heaven". Led Zeppelin's 1977 North American Tour was a massive financial success, as the band sold out large arenas and stadiums. On 30 April they performed to 76,229 people at the
Pontiac Silverdome, a new world record attendance for a solo indoor attraction, beating the 75,962 that
The Who attracted there on 6 December 1975 for Opening Night, and grossed $792,361.50 (also a record breaker). Lengthy stints were spent in New York City and Los Angeles, where the band performed six sold-out shows each at
Madison Square Garden and the
Los Angeles Forum. In New York, the band did not advertise the concerts, relying solely on street demand to sell out the shows; enough ticket applications were received to sell out a further two nights had time permitted. Dave Lewis, an expert on the band, considers that this tour, For the tour, the band chartered ''
Caesar's Chariot, a 45-seat Boeing 707 owned by the Caesars Palace Hotel in Las Vegas, to shuttle them between cities. This plane should not be confused with the more famous Starship'', which had been used by the band on its previous two concert stints in North America, but which was permanently grounded in 1977 due to engine problems. The
set list played on this tour included an acoustic section, which had originally been revived by the band at their
previous concerts at
Earls Court Arena in 1975 and was retained for the 1977 concerts due to the lingering effects of Plant's injuries. Technically, only two songs from their most recent album,
Presence (1976), were performed: "
Nobody's Fault but Mine" and "
Achilles Last Stand", although parts of the solo from "
Tea for One" would be incorporated by Page during the solo of "
Since I've Been Loving You". For many of the concerts on this tour, Jimmy Page chose to wear a striking custom-made white silk dragon suit known as the "Poppy White Dragon Suit", as is captured in several famous photographs of the band. It was also on this tour that John Paul Jones introduced a custom triple-necked acoustic instrument which contained a
mandolin,
twelve-string guitar and
six-string guitar. He used this instrument on "
Ten Years Gone" and the acoustic portion of the setlist.
Keith Moon sat in with the band on 23 June 1977, at the Los Angeles Forum. ==Problems experienced==