The singer unleashes a cry ferocious enough to
lead soldiers into war. The guitarist squeezes
out a solo so tight it could wring his instrument's
neck. And the drums bear down like a
10-ton truck ready to flatten anybody who can't
keep up the violent pace.
Welcome to the blood sport that was live Led Zeppelin
in its prime. On May 27, the world will get
a lengthy reminder of the band's power when its
surviving members release the mother of all concert packages.
Covering the full history of Zeppelin's flight,
the project features eight hours of previously unheard live material:
five hours on a state-of-the-art DVD (called,
funnily enough, "Led Zeppelin DVD"), three hours more on a CD
of wholly distinct recordings (under the title
How the West Was Won).
"All I can say," says singer Robert Plant, 54, "is that it's amazing what you can accomplish when you're young and foolish."
Not to mention fearless.
When it first appeared, in 1968, Led Zeppelin
obliterated the prevailing template for rock. It overhauled the previous
60 years of blues history, refigured the potential
weight of rock and ultimately created a catalogue that spawned a
range of subgenres, from speed metal to the power
ballad.
Still, what strikes a viewer first when watching
vintage Zep is the band's sheer punch. "I really love the swagger
and bravado of it all," explains bassist-keyboardist-arranger
John Paul Jones, 56.
"When we were on," 58-year-old guitarist-producer
Jimmy Page adds, "no one could touch us."
For a surprising amount of these eight hours,
the band is dead-on. The DVD focuses on three periods in Zeppelin's
history -- a 1970 concert from London's Royal
Albert Hall, a 1975 L.A. show and a 1979 performance at England's
Knebworth Festival, which turned out to be its
last show. The band broke up in 1980 following the drug
alcohol-related
death of drummer John Bonham.
Meanwhile, the CD chronicles two L.A.-area shows from 1972, before the release of Houses of the Holy.
The entire project had its genesis in the 1970
material. Just over a year ago, Page was thinking about the paucity of
visual documentation of his storied band. Zeppelin
had rarely appeared on television, since it refused to mime to its
records, which was usually necessary at that
time.
Page rummaged through the Albert Hall footage
he had lying around and discovered it was in brittle shape, and that
much of what had been filmed was missing from
his own collection. So he put the word out to bootleggers that the band
was on the hunt for the footage, and would pay
top dollar for it. He wound up buying back nearly the entire performance.
"Once we shelled out for that, obviously we had
to do something with it to get our money back," he explains.
ha ha
So he conceived a grand project that would cover
the band's decade-long history. Not only did this involve more sleuthing,
it required a technological feat to clean up
the flimsy tapes that came to light.
"My sense was that it would be an epic effort,"
Page says, "but that the band deserves it. Besides, if we didn't do it
properly now,
it might be done poorly later -- and only after
one of us was dead." Always a technology buff, Page became excited
by the
possibility of releasing the footage for state-of-the-art
DVD systems equipped with five-speaker surround sound.
Noting that more and more people had acquired
such hardware, Page convinced Plant and Jones that this should be the
selling point of the project. (The three-CD set,
which is being marketed separately, means that late adapters who haven't
caught up with DVDs also have a route into the
project. For all fans, it fills in the band's 1972 chapter.)
"If we had tried to do this project a few years
ago, we would have had to stick with just the CDs and VHS," Page says.
"And we wouldn't be able to squeeze out such
quality."
In fact, the group (aided by director Dick Carruthers)
makes striking use of DVD's enveloping sound right from the opening.
"The program starts with us going up the stairs
to the Albert Hall, with the applause all around you," Page explains.
"It's as if the viewer is in the middle of the
sound, with the band playing right in front of you and behind."
The result lets fans hear the music in a way they
couldn't have even if they were lucky enough to have scored a front-row
seat
way back when. Given the acoustic problems of
the arenas Zeppelin played in, fans had no way of knowing just how brilliantly
the group was performing. Finally, we can now
hear every note, bash and scream as they were meant to be heard. Plant
still feels
there's something missing. "My only adverse feeling
is that you can't get the full energy transmitted by actually being
there," he says.
Whatever the DVD lacks in crowd ambience -- emphasized
by the reliance on medium shots and closeups of the band -- is made
up for by the valor and adventure of the music
itself. Assessing his own "I am a golden god" phase, Plant says,
"Ah, sweet bird
of youth. It's amazing to see this footage all
roll out before me with such luster." Page jokes,
"If I'd thought more about the fact
that this would be filmed I might have worn something
different. But my focus was the music."
"We were listening very hard to what the other
one was playing," Jones explains. "That's what allowed us to improvise,
not just in
solos but to take off in those different directions
in the center sections of songs like Dazed and Confused. If someone mined
a good
groove, we'd all be in there digging away." "The
beauty of the band," says Page, "was you never knew what was going to come
out next."
That applied not only to shows, but to the band's
approach to crafting albums, particularly the first five, each of which
sounds like it was
cut by a different band. "If ever a riff came
up that was anything like what we'd done before, we'd stop it right away,"
Page explains.
Probably the sharpest left turn took place in
1970 with the hauntingly strange Led Zeppelin III.
"We did the first album in 36 hours, and the second
one we did while on tour," says Page. "The third was the first time we
had a break.
We recorded it in the countryside, where we could
finally reflect."
Critics, however, didn't get it. Given the revisionism
that has since lifted Zeppelin to the rock pantheon, it's hard to believe
the band
was once treated with the same level of respect
Britney Spears gets now.
"I used to think, 'Are they really writing about
us?'" Jones says. "It was frustrating," adds Page. "You knew (critics)
weren't paying
attention. But Led Zeppelin were quite hard to
review. If (critics) were given Houses of the Holy, (they) would
say, 'Well, where's
the Stairway to Heaven? We weren't sticking to
the format they were used to."
By refusing to follow set paths, Zep wound up
blazing a host of new ones. Communication Breakdown, from 1969, begat speed
metal.
Stairway to Heaven, from 1971, created the power
ballad. The Crunge, from 1973, blueprinted the kind of funk-rock played
by everyone
from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Rage Against
the Machine. Led Zeppelin also started experimenting with what became known
as
"world beat" music as far back as 1969's Black
Mountain Side.
Zeppelin's longtime Arabic influences came to
the fore when Page and Plant reunited in 1994. (As a threesome, the remaining
members
have played only twice -- at Live Aid in 1985
and at the 40th-anniversary concert of Atlantic, the group's record company,
in 1986.)
The latest Zep project signals a rapprochement
between Jones and the two other members (who offended the bassist by not
inviting him
along for the Page-Plant project). Now they say
it was all a misunderstanding.
"It wasn't like we were re-forming Led Zeppelin,"
Page argues. "When Robert and I got back together, the whole time I wasn't
sure
if it would work. By the time I knew, we had
the record." Jones admits that "at the time, I felt left out,"
but now accepts Page's
explanation and adds: "We've all gotten closer
by sitting in darkened rooms, watching our younger selves play."
Lately, the group has increased its profile by
allowing Cadillac to use its 1971 song Rock 'n' Roll in a pervasive ad
campaign. It's just the
sort of thing they would have once railed against.
Yet, asserts Page, "It's fair game in this day and age. And Rock 'n' Roll
is just a fun track.
I wouldn't hear of having Stairway to Heaven
on there." While the group is happy with its revived profile, it has no
plans to tour, for fear of
looking like it would be exploiting its past.
Even if it will one day play again, it won't be under the Led Zeppelin
banner. "Without John
Bonham," Plant says, "it isn't Zeppelin."
Watching Bonham on the DVD has been a bittersweet
experience for the other members. Jones takes pleasure in being able to
watch him
for the first time as an observer. But Plant
says: "It's such a waste. He would be able to do so many more things if
he were around now.
If you watch him here, it's not just what he
plays that's amazing, it's what he doesn't play. His ability to leave things
out, like a jazz drummer,
created some great rhythms. So there's regret."
The group has no regrets, however, about its legendary
sexual exploits of the time. "I was carrying the flag of hedonism," Page
declares. "And
I marched forth." To Plant, the whole era seems
like a mad swirl of sex, fame and music-making. "It was like being in a
wind tunnel," he says.
"We were just holding on to each other as we
blew through."
The whole act of looking back feels odd for these
guys, who've long prided themselves on banning nostalgia. Yet, with this
project,
they feel they have a fleeting right to bask
in their legacy.
"People always come up to me and say, 'I grew
up listening to Led Zeppelin. It's the soundtrack to my life,'" Page explains.
"Well, I have news for you, I grew up with it,
too."