On May 11, 1974, Elvis Presley walked onto the stage at the Forum in Los Angeles knowing some very famous musicians were sitting in the audience.
Led Zeppelin were there.
Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Bonham had come to see Elvis while they were in Los Angeles launching their new Swan Song record label. Despite being one of the biggest rock bands in the world themselves, the three were longtime Elvis admirers.
Then something went wrong during the concert.
As Elvis and his musicians began “Funny How Time Slips Away,” the opening was shaky and the band did not come in together properly.
Elvis stopped them.
Instead of getting angry, he turned the mistake into a joke.
Knowing Led Zeppelin were watching, Elvis told his musicians they needed to start together because “we’ve got Led Zeppelin out there,” adding that they should at least try to look like they knew what they were doing.
The crowd loved it.
And more than 50 years later, the actual low-quality audience recording of Elvis mentioning Zeppelin still survives.
Elvis Presley Talks About Led Zeppelin Onstage in 1974
The recording comes from Elvis’s May 11 evening show at the Los Angeles Forum and captures the famous moment when he acknowledges Led Zeppelin from the stage.
The story became even better after the concert.
Plant and Page later met Elvis, and Plant remembered the encounter as relaxed and extremely funny. Page mentioned that Led Zeppelin rarely bothered with soundchecks, but Plant joked that whenever they did, he preferred singing old Elvis songs.
Elvis immediately wanted to know which ones.
Plant mentioned “Love Me.”
When the meeting was ending, Plant later remembered Elvis suddenly appearing around a doorway and beginning to sing the song toward him. Plant answered by doing his own Elvis imitation, leaving the two singers briefly singing back and forth to each other.
There is another detail worth knowing about the surviving footage online.
No known film or photographs exist of that backstage meeting, and the Forum concert itself was not professionally filmed. Videos recreating the encounter use photographs and footage from other dates. The brief audience audio of Elvis mentioning Led Zeppelin, however, is genuine.
That almost makes the surviving recording more special.
By 1974, Led Zeppelin were filling arenas around the world.
But on that night in Los Angeles, they were not the stars Elvis had to impress.
They were fans in the audience, and Elvis Presley knew exactly who was watching.