The Untold Story of Denmark 1979 - Led Zeppelin Documentary 

I attended the 23th July 1979 show and would like to shed som more light. True is that the electronic equipment, including the lasers, seemingly blowed out fuses in places all over the block. The show was delayed well over two hours resulting the one (1) bar to be emptied before the gig, and eventually many people simply left the building. At last the doors suddenly opened and the band started to blast away, but I estimate about one third of the ticketholders were in fact gone by then. You could move around quite freely in the theatre looking for a better seat! True is also that the night belonged to Bonzo, what an incredible performance that was. Because of the very late start we missed the last ferry back to Sweden; I then lived in the neighbouring city Malmö. The biggest Swedish newspaper at the time, Expressen, was not impressed mainly due to that delay and the terrible sound at the beginning of the concert (no time for soundcheck). The headline read "Worst Zeppelin disaster since Hindenburg"... The few reviews of the 24th July show were in general far more favorable, off course. But - the 23th was my one and only Zep gig and I cherish the moment to this day. // Lars Pedersen, Stockholm, Sweden

Some of Jimmy's best playing in years and evoked memories of his 1973 self.

I love Jimmy’s solo on I’m gonna crawl,one of his best. I wish they put wearing and tearing on instead of hotdog too.

Zep the 24th is still in my opinion the best concert i ever been on. It is little bit sad that no one has ever reached that level. And it is 45 years ago.

An utterly fantastic concert. Looks like we were lied to by the media……..again.

The Copahengen shows were better than the Knebworth shows. I told this to a friend of mine years ago.

I was at that last American concert in Oakland, July 24th, 1977…🥲

Was there on the 23. with my blue ticket, still got it - it was a monday in the summer holidays. Came over by train from the really westernmost part of Jutland, where something like this never happend, apart from the John and Yoko visit in Thy in 1970. We were two class mates, me and Esben, 16 and 17 years old, who met in Copenhagen and went to see the LZ movie 'The Songs Remains The Same' in the afternoon before the concert, and I was frankly quite bored, would rather have been out in the sunshine instead. Sat on row 7, number 24, everybody had to sit in the chairs, and we were surrounded by long haired older guys, who clearly were much more in love with LZ than I were. I only remember the drumming, the drumming, lot's of it, Ians voice and som green laser ligth forming a pyramid over the stage, when Jimmys(?) guitar were played like a fiddle. Later in life I learned to like and love the music of Led Zeppelin. I still do and what a great treat to see the video. Thanks JCM 🙂

Bring it on! Love both Copenhagen gigs especially the 24th which has been a fav of mine since I was a kid in the mid 80’s. Page is playing so well. Cheers

The second warm-up show was some of Page's best playing since 1973, especially with regard to being fluid. I hope a soundboard of this comes out eventually.

I was there. And it is true. The concerts in 1979, Falkoner Teatret were fantastic. The Knebworth is a bit dull compared to Copenhagen. On a funny note, Zep blew the electricity in parts of Frederiksberg, where Falkoner Teatret is situated. So the concert was delayed.

Dude you totally get it! I owned the "Copenhagen Warms Ups Second Night" as a teenager and we all knew this was Zeppelins finest performance since 73! Great video!

I was there on July 24th. I remember it was so massive, so incredibly powerful and I was thinking - it is just three guys playing and one singing - and it sounds like this. I have never seen or heard anything like it since, very impressive and enjoyable! I still have the yellow poster form the shows. So thank you for this video, it brings up great memories!

Also, JCM, I want to thank you for your videos on Led Zeppelin, their history and even including the Yardbirds era in them. These videos are amazing and you do a wonderful job and I think we all appreciate it.

The 24th is a top 10 Zep gig. Everything is working here, and they are playing what I think is their best setlist since 73'. We would not see Page this fluid again until 85' with the Firm.

Excellent video JCM. Your attention to detail yet again is impeccable. I like Zep in 1979, there's the usual poise and power but perhaps an element of not taking themselves as seriously, they're at their best when it could all fall apart. I tend to agree about the inclusion of Presence tracks...Nobody's Fault rocked in 1977 and 1979. Achilles was just perfect for the stage, a late career highlight. Going back to the Led Zep DVD of 2003, the Knebworth show is the one I came to love the most. Sick Again...Kashmir...pure power. The bass drum sounds like a cannon! Long live Led Zeppelin.

Thank you JCM

Thank You !!

Great vid JCM, in true Zeppelin style, they didn't do themselves any favours on the 23rd, it feels to me like Page wasnt ready, battling his demons, a few things going wrong on the technical side and then the nerves and frustration on top of his cocktail of booze and substances threw him right off script to make for one of Page's worst nights ever.....But he came back with a vengeance on the 24th.... thankfully!! I might add his guitar sound was more like the '75 sound I love so much...just something I noticed hearing this again after many years.....

Fantastic work as Always

Copenhagen is an amazing show - got a nice old vinyl bootleg of it (Pageboys)!

Great episode again with so much attention to details+thank you.

This was soooooo well done. One of your BEST. Very, VERY impressive.

This is just great Jose! ❤🎉

I have heard of these shows, but now I will definitely check them out. JCM, another outstanding episode. Thank you! ❤

Absolutely love the Denmark 1979 shows. There was something about them, the Led Zeppelin that came back from the tragedy of 1977 was different. More mature, more subdued, more humbled. Gone were the tales of questionable excesses. I think they were trying to leave the boorish reputation in the past.

love this

Thank you as always!

Thank you yet again, JCM!

JCM - Thank you for this!

Manythnx JCM✌️

I need to find July 24th on vinyl. Another great job JCM!!! I am in the middle of watching the making of HOTH.

Thanks for this. I must confess to having overlooked these shows over the years. You have helped me see that that is an omission I must remedy. I'll find a good recording of the second night. Thanks

the 24th - mind blowing!! yet and yet again, thanks a million Jose!

You did another great, passionate and well balanced job JCM

Awesome episode! I always learn something from your stuff (as well as always enjoying it) also as a budding guitarist, I love the 'f minor over d' descriptions etc. Thank you :)

Thank you for making this video…it’s awesome to know this

I, too, enjoy exploring the tension and release possibilities of D minor.... John Bonham is a force of nature. As much as I don't care for rhe 23rd show, Bonzo makes it worth hearing again and again. The second night was a tour de force, and the Copenhagen Warmups-the Second Night boot is one of my all time favorite Zeppelin shows.

My brother and I in 1995 drove from Pittsburgh to Cleveland, and we hopped on a plane one way from Cleveland to LAX, then rented a mustang and drove to San Lois Obispo The next day at the Freedmont theater we had the pleasure of seeing Yes in all its glory. We had the fortunate chance to attend the pre show warm-up and met Jon Anderson. I still have the pictures. If you look up Yes 1995 Freedmont during that video, I am sitting in the crowd! My flash of fame!

JC your parting words (partially cribbed from the Bee Gees) were beautiful. Looking forward to the next one.

Nice Bee Gees quote JCM! I love the Bee Gees now but in 1979 I hated them and my younger sister loved them. She'd be blasting the Bee Gees from her room and I'd be blasting Zeppelin, Sabbath, Purple. Now I realize that the Bee Gees were amazing!

ANOTHER great job on this documentary, JCM. Loved it.

Denmark has had MANY GIANTS! All great in their own right! Truly Prestige!

Sensational work, as usual. Thank you for shining light into another dark corner of the Zeppelin story. Now I must go and find that second night bootleg.

Back in 1981 I got the Copenhagen Warm-Ups/The Second Night 3xLP on the Geiko-Sukuri label and decades later I got the LSD & EVSD versions of both nights. I have always loved these AUD recordings and I think the performances are better than Knebworth in some ways... I have all those Knebworth recordings and there is SDB of them as well as video. So I enjoyed the information on them in this video. Thank you for that.

Bravo Man!

Absolutely riveting!!!! Thank you, and God bless.

Fantastic work on these videos! I’m shocked more people haven’t found this channel yet.

Wow thank you

You are a musician telling the audience how a musician plays it. I Love it!

A brilliantly composed look at the previously by me Un heard Live Music of arguably my all around biggest influence in music.Thank You For This.♥️⚡🕊️

Much like the CWs, this is one of my favourite docs that you produced. Love your unfettered enthusiasm...much like the lads on those two dates in July 79. Greatly appreciated, JCM. 👍👍👍

Danish Pageboys Get It On! indeed remember the day me and my buddy picked up this bootleg. What a great day. To young to see the Zeps but living through boots like this sure did fill the whole. Nice video great upload.

Brilliant and I loved you found the Phillips harbour reference and yes you pronounced Caithness correctly 😃

Always look forward to Saturday with Jose 😊

Your films are a breath of fresh air amongst the ill winds of 90 percent of the documentaries I've seen which seek to find fault and spread petty gossip about the artists they are reviewing. Bravo Maestro!

You delivered the goods once again my friend, another stellar episode. You absolutely nailed the pronunciation of Caithness 👍 ( coming from a Scotsman).... whilst I was too young to see Zep, sadly Knebworth was just too far away for me at the time, my first concert was in 1979. Rush on the tour of the Hemisphere's at the Glasgow Apollo, still my no. 1 gig to this day....

Awesome ‼️ These shows brought in the ShowCo rig in that small venue.... Would of been amazing to see it.. 👍🏼

Great to see the Copenhagen warm-ups get some attention. The second night is definitely in my top 10 boots.

Thank you for another jem Jose. I always liked the Whole Lotta Love Knebworth version and thought that they just prepared it for the festival or improvised it, I did not realize that they had a full concert practice behind it. The No Quarter excerpt here also sounded very impressive. For anyone that has not yet heard JCM's solo rendition of MSG No Quarter solo it is a must btw.

Overall, the first Knebworth show was excellent. I think the band was nervous during the opening numbers, but everything after is about on par with the July 24th, 1979 show.

Both The Beatles AND Zeppelin had a famous "cornfield" photo shoot. Both at the tail end of their careers

I have owned a boot of the night of the 24th since, I believe, the late 80's. I have too many Zep boots. This has always been one of my favorite shows to blast in my cars over the years. Remains so, and I'm 60. This was a lot of fun to watch.

In my personal opinion, the song Kashmir at Knebworth 79 was the greatest music I ever heard!

I made a video about the bootlegs I have from these two nights back in 2022 not sure if you seen that one. I think my first bootleg I got was the second night. These two shows are forgotten about yet they are really good. Loved the deep dive and I will have to play my bootlegs again. I felt that maybe there was not as much pressure on them at these tow gigs as they seem to flow compared to Knebworth. They are some of my favorite recordings. Great job once again really enjoyed this Jose !!!! Cheers-VK

Incredible research JCM. Amazing how you find out these facts. I've always been amazed these two gigs took place. They were so secret nobody knew they were taking place until a week or so before the events. 1979 was a massive time for music change for many bands not just Zeppelin. The Who were trying to recover after Moon's demise. I attended The Who Roar in Show at Wembley just after Knebworth, to be honest they struggled to follow AC/DC. Townshend like Page was well past his prime. At least Zeppelin still had Bonham to carry the show. But the writing was on the wall for both bands. At Reading Rock the same month the Police, Peter Gabriel and the Scorpions headlined. Motorhead, Whitesnake, Gillan, Iron Maiden were emerging giving Rock a heavier vibe. When I heard the Copenhagen warm up bootlegs years after Knebworth, I realised Jimmy could only raise to the occasion one in every three shows. Maybe due to his toxic behaviour in his leisure time who knows. I doubt he practised much. As you mentioned during the doc, he relied so much on muscle memory, hoping it would just fall in place. What you are hearing in 1979, is a band on the decline, Jones and Bonham are carrying the music, Roberts not really giving it a 100%. Hot Dog was awful why it was included has never been explained, I think it was just packing. They tried to thin down their set list in 1980 but never really got the list right. Page / Plant achieved that better a decade or so later. Love these documentaries your knowledge is second to none. Thank you so much.

The new Hipgnosis documentary, Squaring The Circle is absolutely worth a watch.....goes deep into the processes of creating artwork for Houses Of The Holy, Presence and In Through The Out Door.

I love the fact that you put JPJ's name first in the credits since he has never been given the credit he deserves for his contributions in Zeppelin, by either Jimmy or Robert.

I have both of these shows, but my versions are over 20 years old, and the computers have upgraded the sound. I pulled up the 24th show, and forgotten how good that show was. I will go back and listen to the 23 as well. Thanks for the video on these shows JCM DUANE

I own the Copenhagen warm-ups (2nd night) on an old vinyl (3 album) bootleg. Really fantastic sound quality....it was my first bootleg too (bought it around 1980 or 81). I still enjoy listening to it to this day. I think it's a great show frankly. This particular boot turned me ONTO the world of boots and LIVE shows..........I haven't looked back since and never will. However, it set me on the path of boot-addiction....which I guess there are worse things to be addicted too......right?

Wow the second show sounds absolutely killer thanks for the heads up. …Definitely ‘Now and Den(mark) for the title yeah 😉.

Zeppelin Studies, beautifully said

Thanks Jose! Even though Jimmy and Bonzo, at this point, were heavily in their addictions, they still sounded good. The whole band sounded good, especially JPJ, with is new equipment. Cheers, from Florida, USA.

watched it/listened to it/watched it and will continue to do so Jah Knows how many more times. oh btw JCM i reckon your use of & pronunciation of English is top banana. you mentioned "Caithness" & it was spot on. about 1 in a million of your spoken English words isn't quite as per a native English or Scottish fella but i have always resisted being a pedant/churl & hence remained silent. Jah Bless you sir.

OMG there is no doubt that the 2nd night they were so much tighter as a band. Like night and day compared to the 1st night.

They did All my Love in 1980. But im sure you know that.

Since when is savaging by the critics and ignoring any performance brilliance new? Since 68 the band has had the press kicking them. And it never changed. They loved when they could find something to hang Zeppelin with. That is why it is no surprise that the critics and press in general ignored the next night's performance. And held no sympathy for the tragedy the band experienced. It also gave them an excuse to trash Knebworth. Now I've seen some videos from that performance and thought they were very good. Especially Kashmir. But, unless someone watches it without influence by the critics it can be marred for them. That first night was not just a band coming back from personal tragedy but, that very tragedy ended up creating fissures in the band. Since 1968 when Jimmy Page at the last minute saved Robert Plant's floundering career (he would turn 20 in a few weeks and he promised Maureen, pregnant with their first kid and no money and unmarried, that if he did not score then he'd quit his dream of singing and go back to working on fixing the roads). Page turned up in the nick of time like a fairy godmother to grant his wish. Ever since then Robert looked up to Jimmy and admired him a lot. He was a mentor and hero to Robert. Until the death of his son and Jimmy and JPJ being AWOL from Kerac's funeral. Only Bonham turned up. That also destroyed Plant and the desire to continue in the band and the business. Stripper or no stripper there were a lot of hard feelings in the band. Plus Plant and JPJ had to do the album, In Through the Out Door, practically alone since Page was too strung out to do much and Bonham was in full fledged Alcoholism. Neither was able to do much and did not show up for over half the album. I think after that first night some airing out of greivances was done and some words were traded. And apologies. and they went out there like the team they were and functioning on all levels

Thanks for reminding me of what excellent shows (2nd night especially) they were. I had a cassette bootleg of poor quality (I still have it around here somewhere) and could tell that they were on point. The reviewers were not good; any TRUE Viking would have taken notice of these shows. Danke, otra vez, JCM!

I still have cassette somewhere!

I was at Knebworth and they were uneven. Sometimes sounding under rehearsed and nervous and at other times the best fucking band in the world. Copenhagen was much more consistent.

I was on the first of these two shows, Crazy loud in my opinion. And the electrcal power wasn´t enough so they had to hire a dieselpower generator and therefore they had to have a backdoor open because of the cables! The smokes and the laser blew away. Well well.... Both shows- soundboards are somewhere on the net. I´ve heard them. They played extremly well but that couldn´t be heard in the theater because of the volume. In fact these two are superior to all other tapes on the net!!!

Great! Falkoner Teatret is and was indeed a common place for rock koncerts mainly for a seated audience. It is actually situated in Frederiksberg, not Copenhagen (which is the neighbouring county).

"In the Evening" off this concert is the best version of the song there is. End of story. That is all.

Thanks JCM I think I read that Zep and Grateful Dead are the most bootlegged bands in history?! Amazing..since Zep officially didn’t allow recording of their shows?! I’m always hoping that we get an official release of some more of Zep’s live shows!

I saw sept 71...73.75.77 2x each all msg nyc..listenin thru yrs on net..79 was the cap on live zep 4 me....80 the 20 or so shows .as much i luv page ( my fav saw 16× ) i no listen anymore 2 hard to...kneb cop..great .

Tengo ' The Warm up.The Second night ', tres discos...y suena MUY BIEN. Muchas gracias a todos.

Too bad there's no soundboard. After hearing this, it begs the question, what happened at Knebworth?

I know tickets went on sale for Knebworth later in 1979, but I remember seeing a Melody Maker (?) announcing the Knebworth gig in Jan. of 1979 (?). The front page headline was "Zeppelin Shock Gig" or something like that. I wanted to fly over for the Knebworth gig, but a low cost airline, I think it was Laker Airline, went out of business, so I couldn't afford to go!

The second night was clearly far superior. Peter Grant has a writing credit on "I'm Gonna Crawl"? What could he possibly have contributed? You're a beast, Jose. THe number of videos you drop is staggering for the quality and length. And your twisted sense of humor...well what can I say?

Melancholy Danish pageboys get it on. I was blessed . got to remaster vinyl to cassette with 12 band eq. 16 years old.

Talentosos ésos de Led Cepillín....

Great video. Jimmy broke a string right before Misty Mountain Hop on 23rd, that’s why it’s a train wreck.

The critics in the late 70s were gung-ho on punk. Zep were considered old hat. It is like Jimmy said, the music went right over the critics' head.- They just didn't understand the music.

The Falconer Salen could be fitted with chairs elevated row by row (as seen in the photos) or it could simply be a flat floor. Then the tickets would be an one-prize only. As I remember the choice of configuration was wrong at the Slade concert in '77 where the audience smashed a lot of the chairs by jumping at the chair backs.

There were no video cameras present at the Copenhagen and so extra microphones or condenser mics onstage so its pretty safe to say there are no videos or Multitracks . There are likley soundboard tapes but that would be it for recordings .

"Take me to de Falcum" (sic) -Baldheaded John,, FZ's bodyguard as said to the chauffeur.😮

I heard a gif from Germany back in 79..it was ruff but they redeemed themselves at knebworth

24/7 was amazingly good, even Page. Why never promoted before ? Knebworth 1 (for me as an 18 year) was a huge disappointment ... Great research & video, as ever.

❤🎶🎵🎸

Such a great analysis of a (ahem) swan song. 20:14 yes I hear it too… Is this the first time Zep had done such a figure? Amazing to think about them being inspired by their own protegés. Wonder if Geddy & Alex know about this...!