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Neil Peart, Geddy Lee & Alex Lifeson

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Geddy Lee remembers seeing Led Zeppelin at Toronto's Rock Pile back in August, 1969

Wed, May 15, 2019@10:36AM | comments

Daniel Tate is the curator of the popular Flyer Vault Instagram page, where he has shared thousands of Toronto-area music flyers that he has collected over the years. He'll be releasing a book version of his Instagram page with co-auther Rob Bowman this coming November titled The Flyer Vault: 150 Years of Toronto Concert History, which is now available for pre-order. This past week on the Instagram page he profiled an early Led Zeppelin show from August 18, 1969 at the Rock Pile in Toronto, which Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and John Rutsey attended as described by Geddy here (thanks RushFanForever):

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#theflyervaulttakeover Part 19 👉 Geddy Lee, author, songwriter, bassist/vocalist, Rush _ "I know it sounds somewhat trite to say that an album changed your life but the first Led Zeppelin album had that kind of impact on me. The record was released early in 1969, and word of it's greatness was spreading with such intensity that by the time they were enroute to Toronto for a gig at the The Rock Pile, getting tickets had become nothing short of frenzied...I had zero money at the time and my mom was not very accommodating in such matters...my bandmates Alex Lifeson and John Rutsey had managed to scrape together enough coin but I couldn't...this required drastic measures and so I took the typewriter that my grandmother had bought me for my birthday and ventured down to Church St and pawned it in one of the shops that dotted that street. Success. I guiltily accepted the money and went straight out to buy my ticket for the show that was now being referred to as "Mighty Monday"! We lined up extra early for the 8 p.m. general admission show and we ended up in the 2nd row right in front of Jimmy Page...effin amazing! The band floated onto the stage and started rippin' into a killer version of the old Yardbirds classic, "Train Kept a Rollin"- they were super loud, and the summer heat kept rising in that old Masonic Temple and the crowd was so seriously jacked and stomping that I remember little bits of plaster falling from the ceiling of the place. They literally brought down the house! The unforgettable birth of heavy rock as far as my bandmates and I were concerned. I left the show breathless and ecstatic and it wasn't until the next day that I started trying to figure out how the hell I was going to get my typewriter out of hock before my mom found out!" 🤘🏻⚡ #zeppelin #summerof69

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