Artist: Led Zeppelin
Label: Atlantic Records
Release: 2007
Rating: 3.5/5
Alongside all the “boom rock reunion” concerts currently gracing planet Earth (mega reunions like Genesis and The Police, for instance), there’s been one more. Just one show, but it kicked up as much dust as if a new sun were being born! When rock is the topic, you can hardly get any closer to the very idea of “rock” than with the words Led Zeppelin. The “survivors” reunion concert of Led Zeppelin was originally supposed to happen at the end of November 2007, but it got pushed to December 2007 because Jimmy Page injured a finger right before the November date.
Atlantic Records, of course, were hardly sitting on their hands. This was a perfect chance to make good money again. So three Led Zeppelin items landed on store shelves. The live album “The Song Remains The Same” with the complete set (almost complete, but more on that below), the reissued film of the same name on DVD with bonus tracks from three consecutive shows at Madison Square Garden (New York, 1973), tacked onto the DVD in a separate section (apart from the film), and a new best-of compilation called “Mothership”.
So what we have here is a release devoted purely to listening, no visuals. Since there’s no need to bend to any audio-visual demands this time, we finally get something that’s a far better approximation of what went down on the American tour over three nights at the end of July 1973. The original 1976 release of “The Song Remains The Same” finally gets the songs that the live album “The Song Remains The Same” (original release) didn’t include until now. The film and the album differed from the very start, with the first release in 1976. The upside of this edition, in getting closer to the authenticity of the live recording, is that you can slot the missing songs in among the existing ones and even flip the running order, since you don’t have to match the film footage.
The reissue of the live album, for instance, finally includes Black Dog and Since I’ve Been Loving You, which until now were only available on film, or as the soundtrack to a scene. Three punchy tracks in a row, starting with Rock And Roll, with an interesting link borrowed from the Bring It On Home riff between Celebration Day and Black Dog, conjure up the adrenaline rush of a Led Zeppelin show far more intensely. Next come the “new” or newly added Over The Hills And Far Away (the first song from the then-current album “Houses Of The Holy”), Misty Mountain Hop, and the aforementioned notorious Zeppelin blues rock classic Since I’ve Been Loving You. Then comes a trio of “Houses Of The Holy” songs, starting with the dark, apocalyptic-vision No Quarter, which carries the album off into a totally oversized atmosphere. Where Since I’ve Been Loving You was erotically charged, now it’s gloomy, spine-chilling, relentlessly cold and calculated. After another rock and roll eruption, the title track of the live album, comes one of the most beautifully composed songs of the Zep career, Rain Song, which (much like No Quarter) shows “Houses Of The Holy”, the band’s fifth album in a row, making a maturity leap to a higher level compared to its predecessors. An outstanding gain of the new edition is yet another “Houses Of The Holy” track, The Ocean, a fresh display of the top-notch stage execution that only Zeppelin could pull off. The fluctuation of moods and the flow between them is in intense, many-colored dynamics throughout.
Heartbreaker has now been added to the second disc, whose inserts we previously knew only from the film. This time it’s here in the full version, and it breaks up the weight of the second disc itself, which is marked by the huge, sprawling Dazed And Confused at the start and the schizoid rock n’ roll fury of Whole Lotta Love at the end, with Moby Dick in between still (!) cut by more than half. That number used to run over 25 minutes live (we get just 11 minutes of it on the recording). The indispensable Zep classic Stairway To Heaven has a similarly relieving effect on the second disc, thanks to its melodic setup with Page’s monstrous solo in the closing section and the prominence of Plant’s solemn approach throughout the song.
Despite the greater authenticity of the new edition’s recording, we’re still facing the fact that “The Song Remains The Same” is not a real live album. Its recording was primarily meant as the soundtrack for the film. That’s why it was prettified and fitted to the film footage from the get-go. First of all, we’re talking about vocals and some guitar sections recorded after the fact, and about splicing together different sequences of individual songs from three consecutive shows at Madison Square Garden (New York). Lots of Robert Plant’s banter with the crowd has been cut out, which lowers the emotional charge. And last but not least, the song Thank You, which they played only on July 29, 1973, the last of the three New York shows, still hasn’t found its place on the live album.
With the burden of serving as a film soundtrack lifted, “The Song Remains The Same” is of course a hugely fascinating document, one that anyone looking for the primal source energy rock can offer falls in love with in an instant. The demonstration of spontaneity, the eroticism of emotions and unified rock n’ roll monstrousness, in the sense of creating a unique magic that worked on stage through an irrational mutual sensing in Led Zeppelin as convincingly as in hardly any other band, remains documented for all time. And yet…
Despite the outstanding set list and the slightly flipped running order of the new edition, which once again builds on greater authenticity, we’re once more stuck with the unfortunate fact that the recording was first and foremost adapted to serve as the soundtrack for the film “The Song Remains The Same”. Luckily, it’s not the only live recording of the band out there. The live album “How The West Was Won” (2003), recorded in Los Angeles a year earlier, finally delivers in full what “The Song Remains The Same” never will. Even more fire, in the sense of a hunger to prove themselves, a demonic fascination with the power of this unique quartet’s shared focus on their goal, can be felt especially intensely on the recording “BBC Sessions” (1997), which, on that note, is also a much more recommendable investment if you want a taste of the real “blood” of one of the greatest rock bands of all time.
It’s interesting to note that the document only came out three years after the concert. Usually all the major rock bands of the early seventies put out live albums relatively quickly. And yet, here again is that damned fact of the film taking priority, where the music can wait as long as it likes. By 1975, all the films about Led Zeppelin’s climb to the top, to the title of biggest rock band in the world, had run their course. After that, the career slowly went downhill. The release of “The Song Remains The Same” in the fall of 1976 somewhat softened a period of creatively and (even) live-wise uncertain prospects for Led Zeppelin, even though the new Led Zeppelin studio album “Presence” had come out that spring. Besides the expanded music (over 40 minutes of new material), the new edition boasts extensive liner notes and extra photo material, which fill both the booklet and the “digipack” packaging.
Lineup
Robert Plant – vocals
Jimmy Page – guitar
John Paul Jones – bass guitar, keyboards
John Bonham – drums, percussion
Production
Jimmy Page
Tracklist
CD1.:
1. Rock ‘n’ Roll
2. Celebration Day
3. Black Dog
4. Over The Hills And Far Away
5. Misty Mountain Hop
6. Since I’ve Been Loving You
7. No Quarter
8. Song Remains The Same
9. Rain Song
10. Ocean
CD2.:
1. Dazed And Confused
2. Stairway To Heaven
3. Moby Dick
4. Heartbreaker
5. Whole Lotta Love
Running time: 131.55
