Next up was Cambridge-based songster Jaime Brockett and his talking-blues FM radio hit, "The Legend of the U.S.S. with an unremarkable opening set by the Vancouver, B.C., rock band Spring. The show – which was produced by counterculture impresario Boyd Grafmyre in conjunction with KOL radio (whose top DJ, Burl Barer, emceed the event) - began about 2 p.m. There were even two swimsuit-clad fellows perched atop the roof of one of the diving towers."
Several energetic souls treaded water in the pool between the stands and the stage. The benches in the Aqua Theatre were filled to overflowing. And a thousand or so sprawled out on the lawns around the theater, forming a wall-to-wall carpet of human bodies." The Seattle Times concurred: "The audience was everywhere. A hundred perched on the roof of a concession stand. A flotilla of canoes, rented rowboats, and rubber rafts surrounded the back side of the stage, where a few also treaded water. Some roosted in the trees, many crowded onto one small dock, it submerged slightly. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that on that sunny day "several thousand of the whimsically clad and nearly unclad younger set" attended, but that "only about half the crowd" paid for their entry tickets - the "rest bent their freeloading ears to the amplified sounds from a variety of places. So, clearly, bringing the world's heaviest hard-rock band, Led Zeppelin, into the place was raising the stakes in a seismic way - and the theater would ultimately pay the highest price by sacrificing its life in the wake of that thundering event. Although the theater was generally dedicated to rather light fare - "swimusicals," comedic plays, and a jazz festival or two - by 1965 rock 'n' roll promoters began producing the occasional show there with pop stars such as Sonny & Cher or Ian Whitcomb. That theater - an outdoor stage set on the western edge of one of the town's most popular parks - had been built in 1950 to feature shows by the Aqua Follies and so it boasted a stage with a 40-foot diving tower on each side, and a pool between the stage and the 5,000-capacity concrete grandstand. On Sunday May 11, 1969, the up-and-coming British rock 'n' roll band Led Zeppelin performs a legendary concert at a most unusual venue: Seattle's Green Lake Aqua Theatre.
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