On July 6th, 1969 Led Zeppelin was scheduled to close out the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island. The four day event drew over 80,000 music fans to see acts including James Brown, B.B.King, Ten Years After, Jeff Beck, Jethro Tull, Sly and The Family Stone, Blood Sweat and Tears and dozens of other big names of the time.
The Friday night program was reserved for many of the "heavy rock" acts which caused the mostly teenage/college age fans to get a bit out of hand, which ticked off the local authorities and festival security. So much so, that they convinced promoter George Wein to cancel Zeppelin's Sunday headlining slot for fear of over crowding and in the "interest of public safety". Wein then took to local radio stations to announce this claiming that a member of the band was ill. As you could guess, this didn't sit well with the band nor their Mountain of a Manager, Peter Grant. It was only after he and the attorneys got involved, that the promoter gave in and allowed them to go on in front of an estimated 12,000 Sunday night. In this write up, Page made his intentions clear:
“You don’t blow a date like this one. Not after all that. The Newport Jazz Festival was far too important to us to just cancel out and I’m very upset at the whole thing. Wein should never have announced once of us was ill.”
Below is some bootleg audio from the show. Despite Plant's vocals being buried in the mix, the band does sound pretty tight.