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Tony Franklin recalls The Firm's final concert

By Steve Sauer, www.LedZeppelinNews.com

Tuesday, May 28, 2002

This interview originally appeared in an edition of the newsletter "On This Day In Led Zeppelin History."

Fretless bassist Tony Franklin speaks with Lemon Squeezings about the Firm's final concert on May 28, 1986. (See also his previous interview, a longer one touching on other work with Jimmy Page in The Firm and previously with Page in Roy Harper's band.)

SS: Tell us about the Firm's last concert.

TF: That last show was wild! The audience was electric. I think the show had to be stopped at one point as the audience was pushing forward so hard that people were in danger of getting hurt! They may have been the loudest audience on the tour. At one point I remember somebody throwing a basketball shoe towards me on the stage. It was funny because I was like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming car. I was transfixed. And before I knew it ... BOOM! it hit me square in the chest and knocked me back a few feet! Still, I didn't miss a beat! Ha ha! Fond, fond memories. And what a great send-off to a great band.

There are always mixed feelings at the end of any tour ... from sadness that the great "adventure" of the last few months is coming to a close ... and relief that's it's over ... with the prospect of going home and having a break from the craziness.

I don't think that any of us in the band thought that this would be our last ever show as The Firm. There was certainly no talk of it ... Maybe some of the guys had an idea that this was the end, but I didn't. It's probably just as well.

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Led Zeppelin Reunion


Photo courtesy of Simon Keeping

The surviving members of Led Zeppelin regrouped in 2007, with Jason Bonham on drums, to perform a year-end tribute to Ahmet Ertegun. Their widely praised concert was witnessed in person by fewer than 20,000 people. It is likely never to be repeated, and there are no announced plans to release the concert for home viewing. However, clicking the image above will bring up multi-cam footage of the entire Led Zeppelin performance as it happened on Dec. 10, 2007, at the O2 arena in London.

Many posts on LedZeppelinNews.com have centered on the possibility of a full-scale Led Zeppelin reunion, noting particularly the inaccuracies reported by the popular press.

Page


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