ST. PETERSBURG — In his long career in the music business, Henry Smith worked on the road with some of the biggest names in rock ‘n’ roll including Led Zeppelin, the Yardbirds, Aerosmith, Def Leopard, Abba, Scorpions, Ted Nugent, and others. The one tour he was so looking forward to never happened.
Smith, who lives in St. Petersburg and has been the stage manager for the Tampa Bay Blues Festival every April for the past 23 years, was working on a project with John Lennon. Promoter Bill Graham and others, knowing that Lennon was interested in touring, were pitching their ideas to the former Beatle.
But Smith convinced Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, that he could get the tour put together and cut out the middlemen…