TBL History 1: Comebacks, Conventions, Sequels & Reunions – The TBL Years 1992-1995

In a follow up feature to the early years of the TBL magazine in TBL issue 40, Dave Lewis unfolds the story of how he re-established the TBL magazine with issue 7 in 1992 through to the chronicling of the 1995 Page & Plant world tour in issue 11

So to pick the story up from TBL issue 40:

During 1989 and 1990, I worked solidly on producing my book Led Zeppelin A Celebration. It was published in early September of 1991. I had a launch signing at WH Smith in Bedford on August 31 – sadly my Dad had passed away two days before (my Mum had died nine months previously). On a brighter note, the first review of the book had appeared in Vox magazine – it was highly complementary as were further reviews in NME and Q. In mid-September I went on a book tour of radio stations to promote it. The last station we went to was BBC Radio Nottingham. To my surprise, John Bonham’s legendary roadie Mick Hinton was at the station. He had heard a trailer for the show and as he lived locally, decided to come and meet me. I had not seen or heard from him since about 1981 when I saw him in the Swan Song office. We did the interview together and afterwards, I told him of a plan I had to stage a Led Zeppelin Convention in London and invited him to be a guest speaker.

We kept in touch over the next few months. In the autumn of 1991, I met with Andy Adams – Andy was a massive Zep collector and enthusiast and had assisted greatly on the A Celebration book.

We drew up some ambitious plans to co-stage a Led Zeppelin Convention in London the following spring. We settled on running a two day event over the weekend of May 23 and 24 – coincidentally the 17th anniversary of the Earls Court shows. In early January 1992, we had a meeting at the London Royal National Hotel where at some vast expense, we booked that venue for the Convention.