Question of the Day - 06 April 2025

Yes, they did.

Contrary to what many people -- including you! -- believe, Led Zeppelin played the Ice Palace on August 11, 1969.

The Ice Palace was a large hockey rink located in the Commercial Center on E. Sahara, Las Vegas’ first major shopping center. It was built, owned, and operated by Ralph Englestadt, owner of the Imperial Palace, and it primarily hosted a semi-pro hockey team. But it was also a rock-concert venue where a number of big rock acts appeared in the ’60s and early ’70s.

At the time Led Zep performed there, they had one album out, the eponymous Led Zeppelin. It was released eight months prior, in January 1969, so the concert occurred before the band got huge (with the release of Led Zeppelin II a couple months later in October 1969, with its huge hit single, "Whole Lotta Love"). Not too many people had heard of them. Tickets were easy to come by.

According to a story in the Las Vegas Sun, “The 25 Most Legendary Rock Concerts, “It went down atop the wood-covered ice of a hockey arena with fans of the band's blues-driven early music fanning across the plywood floor and up the bleachers along the sides.”

The group Pinkiny Canandy opened for them. This was an entirely obscure and mostly forgotten band, fronted by Mike Chain, who toured and recorded as a pink-spandex-clad superhero of the same name as the band and their album. (Some say David Bowie stumbled on the eponymous album and used it as his inspiration for his character Ziggy Stardust and the magnificent album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.)

Of opening for Led Zep, Chain said, “With all their stuff crowding the stage, finding an open spot wasn’t easy. Zeppelin intimidated you with their equipment. A family of six could’ve lived in John Bonham’s drum set. We set up our equipment in front of theirs. We now knew how saplings felt in a giant redwood forest.”

In our book Rock Vegas, author Pat Christenson quotes Bill Young, who grew up in North Las Vegas and served as Clark County Sheriff from 2003 to 2007.

“My first concert was Led Zeppelin at the Ice Palace. It was freezing in there, because there was a covered sheet of ice underfoot. “I remember three songs they played, ‘Train Kept a Rollin’,’ ‘Communication Breakdown,’ and ‘You Shook Me.’" Young also remembered seeing Iron Butterfly, Santana, and Jethro Tull and Ten Years After together at the Ice Palace over the next few years.

The website ClassicLasVegas posted a remembrance from someone who was also at the concert and knew a little something about the Ice Palace venue.

“A moment happened at the concert that, had I not been there, I would not have believed. [Jimmy] Page was playing, as was his wont, extremely loud. [John] Bonham could play soft, he just never did. The band was playing ‘Dazed and Confused’ from their one and only album at that point. [Robert] Plant’s microphone failed. Nothing else. Just Plant’s microphone.

“Plant didn’t miss a beat. Neither did the mighty Led Zeppelin. Plant sang, without the aid of amplification, over the cacophony of his bandmates.

“The Ice Palace was an acoustic nightmare. It was never intended to be used as a concert venue. I worked dozens of shows there as a stage hand and I could not be heard from the stage to the back of the rink, screaming with my hands cupped to my mouth.

“But on that night in 1969, there was Robert Plant, without a microphone, belting out ‘Dazed and Confused’ over the absolute onslaught of the world’s loudest rock band.

“I was standing near the back of the rink and I could hear every word, every syllable.”

Jimmy Page and company were scheduled to play Las Vegas again, this time at the Convention Center Rotunda, on April 19, 1970, but the show was canceled at the last minute due to Robert Plant collapsing back stage the night before at the Arizona Coliseum.

The band did six more tours of the U.S., but never scheduled another show in Las Vegas. Speculation has it that there was some bad blood between the promoters and Led Zep manager Peter Grant over the canceled show. But by then, the band was so huge that no venue in Vegas could have handled the demand anyway.

Page and Plant did return to Vegas for a couple of concerts at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in May 1995 and September 1998, though without John Bonham (who died of acute alcohol poisoning in September 1980 at the age of 32) and bass player/keyboardist John Paul Jones, who has appeared in Vegas with a number of other bands.