Post by pledm on Nov 22, 2007 8:10:16 GMT -5
It is a rock 'n' roll fantasy that most people had abandoned. On Dec. 10 at London's O2 Arena, the three surviving members of Led Zeppelin -- Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones -- will take the stage accompanied by Jason Bonham, the son of their late drummer, John Bonham. The concert marks the first time Led Zeppelin has performed together in almost 20 years, and only the third time the lineup has appeared since Bonham's death in 1980.
Anticipation for the event has spurred an avalanche of ticket requests, followed by fresh suspense when the group was forced to reschedule from the original concert date of Nov. 26. Guitarist Page reportedly fractured his finger, prompting the delay. The concert is a benefit supporting a scholarship fund created by Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun, who passed away last year.
When the show was announced, the Web site on which tickets were being sold was so overloaded that it crashed. In the end, 20 million people around the world entered the lottery for the arena's 18,000 tickets. The response was incredible, but not shocking: Led Zeppelin is one of only two bands to sell more than 100 million records in the United States (the Beatles, of course, are the other, while Elvis Presley and Garth Brooks are the only solo artists to hit that number). The aura surrounding their majestic recordings -- eight studio albums released between 1969 and 1979 -- seems only to have grown over the years.
Speaking on the phone from London's Landmark Hotel a few days before beginning rehearsals for the reunion show, guitarist Page and bass/mandolin/keyboard player Jones made it clear that they're not taking this event lightly. "This is a really serious commitment," says Jones. "We need to get so familiar with this material again that we're not just re-creating a show, but doing something that's genuinely good."
The O2 performance will follow directly on the heels of several new Zeppelin projects. In October, the band announced that its music finally would be available for digital download, ending one of music's highest-profile holdouts. A new two-CD "best-of" compilation titled "Mothership" is being released Nov. 13, followed the next week by a remixed and remastered version of their 1976 concert film and soundtrack "The Song Remains the Same," with six previously unreleased tracks (including such skull-crushers as "Black Dog," "Misty Mountain Hop" and "Heartbreaker").
"Song," which was recorded over three nights at New York's Madison Square Garden in 1973, isn't generally considered a first-rate document of live Zeppelin; the "Rolling Stone Album Guide" dismisses it as "desultory." But the remastering is a revelation, the DVD includes such extras as news coverage of the famous robbery that took place at the band's Manhattan hotel during one of the shows, and the sheer scarcity of material from these towering rock superheroes makes any new recordings significant.
The future of the 21st century Led Zeppelin seems very much up in the air: Plant has said that he considers the O2 show a one-time thing, while Page has left the door open for more work going forward. For now, though, Page and Jones sound genuinely excited about the band's return to the stage, raving about a secret rehearsal they did in late spring to test the waters.
"We're right on the brink," says Page. "Next week we start, and I'm really looking forward to it. If it's anything like the little things that we've done, then this is going to be a terrific journey."
MSN Music: How does it feel to be playing together again?
Jimmy Page: Well, earlier this year we had this clandestine get-together. There had been a bit of a rift between us, so we had to find out if it could work, or was there too much water under the bridge? And that session felt absolutely fantastic -- it was urgent, vibrant, everything you might have hoped for and then even a bit extra, a bit more than that.
When the Ahmet thing came up, it was a call to arms. It gave us the opportunity to come together.
John Paul, I saw you this past June at the Bonnaroo festival, and you were having a blast sitting in and jamming with everyone. Have you been able to bring that spirit and enthusiasm into these rehearsals?
John Paul Jones: To be honest, though, it went the other way as well.
We had done this few days' rehearsal with Jason Bonham just before then, to see how it went. It felt really, really great playing with Jason, and with the others, really satisfying. It clicked immediately, it sounded tight -- I was surprised how many of the keys we remembered! So I was there at Bonnaroo fresh from the excitement of that.
How did the timing come together? Was it planned that the "Song Remains the Same" reissue, the "Mothership" collection and the digital catalog announcement would all happen leading up to the show?
Jones: The timing just kind of fell into place. We'd been working on the "Song Remains the Same" 5.1 mix for quite a long time, and we'd gotten lots of requests from the record company for a good compilation. We were never really happy with (the 1999-2000 collections) "Early Days" and "Latter Days," and this will replace those. It's really kind of a chronological sampler -- there are songs from every one of the studio albums, so that's kind of cool.
The online stuff we started talking about not so long ago, and the O2 show was just decided on, quite late -- and that's part of it, we were having so many meetings about everything else, this just got on the agenda and then started to receive more serious talk. The time seemed right to do it.
But why was this the right time?
Jones: I don't know why! It seemed sort of organic. These things appear at the right time. The last time it came up was quite some time ago, and then it didn't seem right. This time it came up and everyone said, "Well, why not?" That's kind of how it's always been with Led Zeppelin. There never has been any great strategy or great planning.
How is it being under so much media scrutiny for this show? When Led Zeppelin was actually making records, you never really received that much attention or mainstream exposure.
Page: I don't really want to give the media the benefit of the doubt, but each of our albums is so radically different, I just think that the reviewers didn't have a clue as to what we were doing. They were totally perplexed and bewildered. The passage of time, though, has shown what it was that the fans could connect and relate to.
In the late '60s and early '70s, there were other bands that had virtuoso players within them, but to have four virtuosos who could truly play as a band -- that was the important thing. So we had four guys on top of their game, straightaway, and then those four combined to make a fifth element, which took them even further.
The level of playing is so fine, it travels across so many musical landscapes. Anyone who wants to play an instrument inevitably comes to Led Zeppelin because it is such a remarkable textbook, it's a diamond with so many facets. And the spirit and the honesty of the playing translates across generations.
Jones: It's very nice that everybody is so interested. It's astonishing, overwhelming, to get 125 million hits or whatever for the tickets. But the music is what it's all about, and we have to just get to that.
Do you think that the media's lack of interest worked to the band's advantage in the end? Certainly no one could ever say that Led Zeppelin was overexposed.
Page: We were always underplayed in press, to the point of annihilation, really negative press. But each tour, we couldn't meet the demand for people in each city. If we sold as many tickets as we could, we could have kept touring forever. So because of being so underplayed, it really relied on people's spirit coming to it, to access Led Zeppelin through the records. And like anything that's any good, it spread by word of mouth.
Is that why there's still such reverence for the music? Why do you think the allure is still so strong for younger listeners?
Jones: I'm not entirely sure. We made the records in the '70s, but they're not really of the '70s. It was a pretty unique band, it didn't really fit into any categories. Which is part of why the press didn't really get what we were doing, which was really their problem -- it certainly wasn't a problem for the fans who were buying the records or coming to the shows. So I think the records aren't dated because they weren't of their time in the first place.
Young kids, especially young musicians, really recognize the truth and the integrity of the music. So many people tell me, "My son or daughter has taken up an instrument and they want to play like you." It's nice to be an inspiration. I was certainly inspired by my heroes, and it's nice to pass that along.
"The Song Remains the Same" isn't generally considered to be an example of Zeppelin at its live peak. What do you think of that reputation -- do you think it gets a bad rap?
Page: Listen to (the 2003 live album) "How the West Was Won" -- that was done a year earlier and we were really firing on all cylinders, but, you know, I could be critical of those performances, too. ("Song") is taken from across a couple of nights, at the end of a long tour. It was pretty happening, really happening. It wasn't the best shows we did on that tour, but I don't know which ones were.
Jones: I never thought it had a bad reputation. I always thought it was a good gig, but now it sounds bloody good as well. I think the record companies, as they will do, when they put the film on VHS and on DVD, they just did the transfer directly, straight to video, with no consultation with us.
Everything we've ever done was a statement of where the band was at the time. It was the end of a tour, the New York crowds were always very responsive. I'm sure I saw the same faces in the first rows from night to night. I think we played well -- I don't know how it came across, but I have no hesitation saying that.
Was there anything that surprised you in the performances while you were doing the remixing and remastering?
Page: The remix was related to having up-to-the-minute 5.1 surround mix on the film. But we couldn't change a frame on the film once it was copyrighted. So unlike the (2003 live retrospective) DVD, where we could overlay visuals to the sound, the exercise was that the film was out of sync and we had to actually adjust the music. We couldn't just go slow motion on the film. With the aid of ProTools, (engineer) Kevin Shirley did a fantastic job with that. And everything just sounds so much better. You have techniques today that weren't dreamt of back then.
Also, the whole of the set is included now. It goes in the way we envisioned it, how we would really pace a show. The only addition was "The Ocean" -- that was the encore, but we put it into the set.
John Paul, what stands out to you when you go back and listen?
Jones: How good it all was. I hadn't played the records much since those days -- or even in those days. As soon as one was finished, we would start work on the next record or the next tour or whatever. Now I hear them and think, "Oh, I forgot -- that was really good!"
What is it like to watch the movie's famous "fantasy sequences" now?
Jones: Well, we did look young! It was supposed to be a concert film, but when we went through it, there were these holes in the film, when they were changing reels or something. So then there was a bit of panic. I don't know whose idea it was to do the fantasy sequences -- but Jimmy and I were just talking about it, and we realized that Bonzo's wasn't actually a fantasy sequence, it was a reality sequence!
It was all fun, but in the end, not to sound like a broken record, it still comes down to the music. There were some embarrassing moments, but some good fun, too.
Page: We all went off our own merry ways, but Bonham just carried on in his usual way while we did these weird depictions of whatever. It was very much for the time and of the time. It was courageous, on one hand -- on the other hand, we managed to be Spinal Tap (laughs). But we did it first!
What is the biggest misconception about Led Zeppelin?
Jones: A lot is made of the salacious reputation of the band, which always detracted from the music. That was always disappointing -- especially newspapers, they would always start talking about sharks or whatever, and I would always think, "Oh, God, why does nobody mention how good the band was?"
Page: The biggest misunderstanding (long pause) ... I could be trite and say that people think the robbery in the movie was a fake, that we did that to add drama to the film. But now, by including the local coverage from the New York news (in the "Song" DVD's bonus footage), you can see that it was very real.
I don't know -- I don't care what they think about the band, or about me, or whatever. That will all be eradicated by listening to the music. If you really listen closely and hear what it was that we were doing, all the rest goes away.
Alan Light is the former editor-in-chief of Spin, Vibe and Tracks magazines and a former senior writer at Rolling Stone. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, GQ and Entertainment Weekly. His book "The Skills to Pay the Bills: The Story of the Beastie
Anticipation for the event has spurred an avalanche of ticket requests, followed by fresh suspense when the group was forced to reschedule from the original concert date of Nov. 26. Guitarist Page reportedly fractured his finger, prompting the delay. The concert is a benefit supporting a scholarship fund created by Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun, who passed away last year.
When the show was announced, the Web site on which tickets were being sold was so overloaded that it crashed. In the end, 20 million people around the world entered the lottery for the arena's 18,000 tickets. The response was incredible, but not shocking: Led Zeppelin is one of only two bands to sell more than 100 million records in the United States (the Beatles, of course, are the other, while Elvis Presley and Garth Brooks are the only solo artists to hit that number). The aura surrounding their majestic recordings -- eight studio albums released between 1969 and 1979 -- seems only to have grown over the years.
Speaking on the phone from London's Landmark Hotel a few days before beginning rehearsals for the reunion show, guitarist Page and bass/mandolin/keyboard player Jones made it clear that they're not taking this event lightly. "This is a really serious commitment," says Jones. "We need to get so familiar with this material again that we're not just re-creating a show, but doing something that's genuinely good."
The O2 performance will follow directly on the heels of several new Zeppelin projects. In October, the band announced that its music finally would be available for digital download, ending one of music's highest-profile holdouts. A new two-CD "best-of" compilation titled "Mothership" is being released Nov. 13, followed the next week by a remixed and remastered version of their 1976 concert film and soundtrack "The Song Remains the Same," with six previously unreleased tracks (including such skull-crushers as "Black Dog," "Misty Mountain Hop" and "Heartbreaker").
"Song," which was recorded over three nights at New York's Madison Square Garden in 1973, isn't generally considered a first-rate document of live Zeppelin; the "Rolling Stone Album Guide" dismisses it as "desultory." But the remastering is a revelation, the DVD includes such extras as news coverage of the famous robbery that took place at the band's Manhattan hotel during one of the shows, and the sheer scarcity of material from these towering rock superheroes makes any new recordings significant.
The future of the 21st century Led Zeppelin seems very much up in the air: Plant has said that he considers the O2 show a one-time thing, while Page has left the door open for more work going forward. For now, though, Page and Jones sound genuinely excited about the band's return to the stage, raving about a secret rehearsal they did in late spring to test the waters.
"We're right on the brink," says Page. "Next week we start, and I'm really looking forward to it. If it's anything like the little things that we've done, then this is going to be a terrific journey."
MSN Music: How does it feel to be playing together again?
Jimmy Page: Well, earlier this year we had this clandestine get-together. There had been a bit of a rift between us, so we had to find out if it could work, or was there too much water under the bridge? And that session felt absolutely fantastic -- it was urgent, vibrant, everything you might have hoped for and then even a bit extra, a bit more than that.
When the Ahmet thing came up, it was a call to arms. It gave us the opportunity to come together.
John Paul, I saw you this past June at the Bonnaroo festival, and you were having a blast sitting in and jamming with everyone. Have you been able to bring that spirit and enthusiasm into these rehearsals?
John Paul Jones: To be honest, though, it went the other way as well.
We had done this few days' rehearsal with Jason Bonham just before then, to see how it went. It felt really, really great playing with Jason, and with the others, really satisfying. It clicked immediately, it sounded tight -- I was surprised how many of the keys we remembered! So I was there at Bonnaroo fresh from the excitement of that.
How did the timing come together? Was it planned that the "Song Remains the Same" reissue, the "Mothership" collection and the digital catalog announcement would all happen leading up to the show?
Jones: The timing just kind of fell into place. We'd been working on the "Song Remains the Same" 5.1 mix for quite a long time, and we'd gotten lots of requests from the record company for a good compilation. We were never really happy with (the 1999-2000 collections) "Early Days" and "Latter Days," and this will replace those. It's really kind of a chronological sampler -- there are songs from every one of the studio albums, so that's kind of cool.
The online stuff we started talking about not so long ago, and the O2 show was just decided on, quite late -- and that's part of it, we were having so many meetings about everything else, this just got on the agenda and then started to receive more serious talk. The time seemed right to do it.
But why was this the right time?
Jones: I don't know why! It seemed sort of organic. These things appear at the right time. The last time it came up was quite some time ago, and then it didn't seem right. This time it came up and everyone said, "Well, why not?" That's kind of how it's always been with Led Zeppelin. There never has been any great strategy or great planning.
How is it being under so much media scrutiny for this show? When Led Zeppelin was actually making records, you never really received that much attention or mainstream exposure.
Page: I don't really want to give the media the benefit of the doubt, but each of our albums is so radically different, I just think that the reviewers didn't have a clue as to what we were doing. They were totally perplexed and bewildered. The passage of time, though, has shown what it was that the fans could connect and relate to.
In the late '60s and early '70s, there were other bands that had virtuoso players within them, but to have four virtuosos who could truly play as a band -- that was the important thing. So we had four guys on top of their game, straightaway, and then those four combined to make a fifth element, which took them even further.
The level of playing is so fine, it travels across so many musical landscapes. Anyone who wants to play an instrument inevitably comes to Led Zeppelin because it is such a remarkable textbook, it's a diamond with so many facets. And the spirit and the honesty of the playing translates across generations.
Jones: It's very nice that everybody is so interested. It's astonishing, overwhelming, to get 125 million hits or whatever for the tickets. But the music is what it's all about, and we have to just get to that.
Do you think that the media's lack of interest worked to the band's advantage in the end? Certainly no one could ever say that Led Zeppelin was overexposed.
Page: We were always underplayed in press, to the point of annihilation, really negative press. But each tour, we couldn't meet the demand for people in each city. If we sold as many tickets as we could, we could have kept touring forever. So because of being so underplayed, it really relied on people's spirit coming to it, to access Led Zeppelin through the records. And like anything that's any good, it spread by word of mouth.
Is that why there's still such reverence for the music? Why do you think the allure is still so strong for younger listeners?
Jones: I'm not entirely sure. We made the records in the '70s, but they're not really of the '70s. It was a pretty unique band, it didn't really fit into any categories. Which is part of why the press didn't really get what we were doing, which was really their problem -- it certainly wasn't a problem for the fans who were buying the records or coming to the shows. So I think the records aren't dated because they weren't of their time in the first place.
Young kids, especially young musicians, really recognize the truth and the integrity of the music. So many people tell me, "My son or daughter has taken up an instrument and they want to play like you." It's nice to be an inspiration. I was certainly inspired by my heroes, and it's nice to pass that along.
"The Song Remains the Same" isn't generally considered to be an example of Zeppelin at its live peak. What do you think of that reputation -- do you think it gets a bad rap?
Page: Listen to (the 2003 live album) "How the West Was Won" -- that was done a year earlier and we were really firing on all cylinders, but, you know, I could be critical of those performances, too. ("Song") is taken from across a couple of nights, at the end of a long tour. It was pretty happening, really happening. It wasn't the best shows we did on that tour, but I don't know which ones were.
Jones: I never thought it had a bad reputation. I always thought it was a good gig, but now it sounds bloody good as well. I think the record companies, as they will do, when they put the film on VHS and on DVD, they just did the transfer directly, straight to video, with no consultation with us.
Everything we've ever done was a statement of where the band was at the time. It was the end of a tour, the New York crowds were always very responsive. I'm sure I saw the same faces in the first rows from night to night. I think we played well -- I don't know how it came across, but I have no hesitation saying that.
Was there anything that surprised you in the performances while you were doing the remixing and remastering?
Page: The remix was related to having up-to-the-minute 5.1 surround mix on the film. But we couldn't change a frame on the film once it was copyrighted. So unlike the (2003 live retrospective) DVD, where we could overlay visuals to the sound, the exercise was that the film was out of sync and we had to actually adjust the music. We couldn't just go slow motion on the film. With the aid of ProTools, (engineer) Kevin Shirley did a fantastic job with that. And everything just sounds so much better. You have techniques today that weren't dreamt of back then.
Also, the whole of the set is included now. It goes in the way we envisioned it, how we would really pace a show. The only addition was "The Ocean" -- that was the encore, but we put it into the set.
John Paul, what stands out to you when you go back and listen?
Jones: How good it all was. I hadn't played the records much since those days -- or even in those days. As soon as one was finished, we would start work on the next record or the next tour or whatever. Now I hear them and think, "Oh, I forgot -- that was really good!"
What is it like to watch the movie's famous "fantasy sequences" now?
Jones: Well, we did look young! It was supposed to be a concert film, but when we went through it, there were these holes in the film, when they were changing reels or something. So then there was a bit of panic. I don't know whose idea it was to do the fantasy sequences -- but Jimmy and I were just talking about it, and we realized that Bonzo's wasn't actually a fantasy sequence, it was a reality sequence!
It was all fun, but in the end, not to sound like a broken record, it still comes down to the music. There were some embarrassing moments, but some good fun, too.
Page: We all went off our own merry ways, but Bonham just carried on in his usual way while we did these weird depictions of whatever. It was very much for the time and of the time. It was courageous, on one hand -- on the other hand, we managed to be Spinal Tap (laughs). But we did it first!
What is the biggest misconception about Led Zeppelin?
Jones: A lot is made of the salacious reputation of the band, which always detracted from the music. That was always disappointing -- especially newspapers, they would always start talking about sharks or whatever, and I would always think, "Oh, God, why does nobody mention how good the band was?"
Page: The biggest misunderstanding (long pause) ... I could be trite and say that people think the robbery in the movie was a fake, that we did that to add drama to the film. But now, by including the local coverage from the New York news (in the "Song" DVD's bonus footage), you can see that it was very real.
I don't know -- I don't care what they think about the band, or about me, or whatever. That will all be eradicated by listening to the music. If you really listen closely and hear what it was that we were doing, all the rest goes away.
Alan Light is the former editor-in-chief of Spin, Vibe and Tracks magazines and a former senior writer at Rolling Stone. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, GQ and Entertainment Weekly. His book "The Skills to Pay the Bills: The Story of the Beastie
