The Song Remains the Same

I'm not a massive fan of Led Zeppelin but I think that this is at least partly due to me missing them totally from my musical education. I got some albums recently to try and rectify this and was surprised by how many of the songs I already knew without knowing it was them. Following on from that I watched this film which manages to flick from being good to being ridiculous on almost a scene by scene basis. Now, I'm not totally sure of the history here but I am led to understand that the film came at a time when the band was under great strain and not at their best. For me this didn't show too much in the concert footage, which I found to be enjoyable as a live performance but also technically well captured and recorded. Those who have seen them elsewhere may disagree but I have nothing else to work with here. However the remainder of the film is mostly poor. Between (and under) the live performances are bit of other material, almost none of which works. The stuff that had potential is the behind the scenes stuff and I did want more of that, with perhaps a bit of structure and meaning to it – sadly I got none of this. Even still though, these bits are brilliant compared to the pretentious nonsense that the band came up with for the rest of the film. Absurd home movies and fantasy sequences are played out that are laughable in the extreme. I really do want to believe that the band had given up trying to prevent the film coming out so instead decided to take the p1ss, although at the same time that speaks badly of their respect for fans so I'm not sure if bad taste or bad attitude is preferable. These scenes extend the film beyond what it can bear and I was glad when it finally ended. No doubt about it that the music is good but with so much rubbish thrown in on top of it I'm just not sure if the film is worth the work involved to see the recorded performances. One for the hardcore fans much more than the casual viewer.

"The Song Remains The Same" seems to get a long of undue praise...mainly from Zeppelin fans who should really know better. True, for years -decades, really- it was the only real visual artifact of LZ's incredible twelve year reign, but you have to keep in mind that even the band practically disowned the project, and regarded it, at best, as a make-work kind of thing after Robert Plant's 1975 car smash that forced them off the road for two years. So "The Song Remains The Same" was as close to an actual Led Zeppelin concert as people were going to get, for the time being. Having said that, the film is really more of an approximation of the Led Zeppelin concert experience (and, for what it's worth, in my not-so-humble opinion, they were the best live band in the business, and, from a musical standpoint, probably the best BAND of all time...I mean, the Beatles and Stones are great, but you can hardly call them bands, in any real sense...look at the Stones; Mick and Keith still treat Ron Wood like a sideman even after thirty years!). I say "approximation" because, as with any sort of "concert" project, "TSRTS" has its share of overdubs and re-takes. If you care, see the "Garden Tapes" website to find out exactly what kind of post-production Jimmy Page carried out on the film (and soundtrack album). As for the performance, as a bit of a live Zeppelin connoisseur, I can honestly say, considering "TSRTS" comes from the end of the '73 tour, that it indeed sounds like the end of the tour. They're tired (stimulants or not), Robert Plant is not in the best of voice (hence the overdubs) and, considering Page was just beginning to dabble in heroin, he is a bit sloppy (to their credit, John Paul Jones and John Bonham, however, rarely EVER seemed to disappoint onstage.) And the songs! For a band that seemed to epitomize the term "self-indulgent", some of these renditions are very tedious to sit through. I mean, c'mon, Jimmy...do we really need half an hour of "Dazed And Confused"? Mind you, the '73 tour was not as bad as, say, the '77 tour (where both "No Quarter" and "Moby Dick" tended to push the half hour mark most every night!) but at the same time the fans couldn't say they weren't getting value for their money. Understand: a garden variety Led Zeppelin concert was the exact opposite of The Beatles being on and off the stage in less time than it takes to actually watch the "Dazed And Confused" performance on "TSRTS". Anything less than three hours was practically unheard of (until the 'back to basics' 1980 European tour...Zeppelin's last, sadly.) And the "fantasy sequences"! I think "TSRTS" gets a lot of its sardonic chuckles from detractors not because of Zeppelin's stage costumes, but because of these sequences, all of which are completely unnecessary and, for me, at least, definitely take away from the "concert experience". If they had followed Pink Floyd's example and had them playing on a back projector whilst performing the songs, that would be one thing, but in the film they are just ridiculous...even John Bonham's "Gentleman Farmer" bit. Though it is mildly amusing to watch Peter Grant and Richard Cole -Zeppelin's management- acting out their perceived personas at the start of the film...the first time you see it. All told, I'd say skip "The Song Remains The Same" and pick up Zeppelin's 2 "DVD" set, which was clearly the labour of love for Jimmy Page that this film was not. Better performances too. "The Song Remains The Same" should be considered "for die-hards only", but I'm sure even the die hards know better...

I wasn't a Led Zeppelin fan before this film, and I still am not, but the first time I saw it, it blew my mind. Forty years on and having heard all the great rock guitarists, including seeing a handful in the flesh, I am not so easily impressed, but this performance by especially the amazing Jimmy Page still has the capacity to impress an old man the way it did a teen. Actually, as it was released on Guy Fawke's Night 1976, I was not quite a teenager, but you get my drift. At school I got into Elton John before anyone else, but the first heavy metal band I sought out was Deep Purple - one of the big three, the other being Black Sabbath. At least a couple of kids in my year were into Zeppelin, but apart from "Whole Lotta Love" - the theme music for "Top Of The Pops" - and of course "Stairway To Heaven", I hadn't really heard them. I went to see the film with a touch of cynicism. Immediately afterwards I bought the double album on tape. For me the outstanding track is the epic "Dazed And Confused", Page making wonderful noises with that bow. I was even more impressed later when I got into Al Stewart and realised he'd played on the "Love Chronicles" album, but here he is in his element, arrogant and nonchalant in equal measure, like a real guitar hero should be. Awesome stuff.

For those who worshiped the ground that Led Zeppelin walks on,this is the movie to see and it features two and a half hours of the band in all of its glory. This was a band whom were the pioneers of heavy metal/classic rock and this was a band whom were the most powerful influence on the culture of the 1970's,when the band were at the peak of their prime. Based on their LIVE 1973 concert at New York's Madison Square Garden,you got to see the founding fathers of their day--Robert Plant,John Paul Jones,John Bonham as they deliver the goods to some of the best rock ballads of their day---songs like "Whole Lotta Loving" and many more were the order. It may drag on some,but it's worth seeing anyway,for those who love their Zeppelin---hard,edgy,and demandable. I have seen this film over several times,and its rocks!!!! Catch it sometime during a midnight screening with some buddies at your local theatre or on some university campus.

Twenty five years after the fact, Led Zeppelin's massive popularity confounds me more than ever. The effort on display here only clouds the issue further. Except for Stairway to Heaven and the horrendously misogynistic Whole Lotta Love, Zep sticks to a pattern: Jimmy Page flails, Robert Plant moans, John Paul Jones plays jazzy riffs, and John Bonham solos for fifteen minutes. During solos we see poorly constructed 'fantasy' sequences. The only fun stuff is the backstage footage where we get to see the king of bombast, manager Peter Grant, abusing the stadium employees. You'd need a rider's worth of mind-altering substances to enjoy any of this monotonous and tedious 'documentary'.

One of the few movies I have ever walked out on. If endless scenes at a coffee shop are your idea of great cinema, this movie is for you. I loved Led Zeppelin, and couldn't imagine why this movie didn't ever get talked about until I saw it myself. For you 70's romanticists, here's something about the 70's that is beyond bad. Are you hoping for some good ad libbed dialog, a new insight into one of the greatest rock bands of all time? Don't get your hopes up, unless you've been waiting your entire life to know how much sugar Robert Plant takes in his tea. The concert footage is bad, and even the audio, the one thing you would think they couldn't screw up in this movie, is dreadful. This movie should be avoided at all costs.

Considering the time when it was made and the filming technology available, this was a generally decent concert documentary but the intervening fantasy and home movie type footage was unnecessary for this viewer. Not being a major fan of Led Zeppelin I thought the stage performance would have been a lot better. It seems to me their raw power is captured better in studio recordings I've listened to, and that may be attributable once again to the sound equipment available at the concert venue. I also thought Robert Plant was a bit overwrought in his delivery, trying and failing to elevate himself as the quintessential rock god. As compared to say, Mick Jagger who genuinely seems to be having fun when performing, Plant's attitude seemed to be 'look at me, ain't I just the greatest'. I offer that just from what I saw in the film; I have no idea what Plant is really like so if I sound judgmental, so be it. On the other hand, Jimmy Page looked like he was working it and having a good time. 'Stairway to Heaven' was my favorite number from the show, most likely because I've heard it so many times elsewhere and find the lyrics fascinating. As for the rest, it all would have been helped by a spring clean from the May Queen.

What does it say about a movie when the work is done, and the finished product ends up on a shelf for 3 years? The Zeps themselves derided this as the 'world's most expensive home movie'. They fought with the directors over wearing the same stage clothes for two successive nights (directors need continuous-looking footage). In the middle of Bonham's solo, they found out their safe was robbed of several hundreds of thousands of dollars and manager Grant was under suspicion. In response to an emergency situation -- Plant had been injured in an auto accident on holiday in Greece -- this was released to fill the hiatus caused by inactivity. Even though this was, by Zeppelin standards, an average performance at best, it found an audience in '76; it continued to spawn generations of new fans, getting repeated plays on MTV in the 80s. The 'fantasy' portions borrow straight from "The Godfather", and perhaps Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Julet"...It's dreadfully bad stuff. The concert framing and camera effects evoke "Woodstock". The actual show is the best feature of this. There are plenty of Page bits that sent us budding guitarists back to the woodshed. Curiously, this band which had such ferocious sonic power, and needed no histrionics -- minimal stage effects and no opening act -- found itself caught within outmoded and unacceptable amateurism in cinematic techniques and composition. No wonder they disowned it at first; they knew they didn't need this. Ironically, they suffered absolutely no harm to their reputation.

I'm no dyed-in-the-wool Zep fan, but I've been listening to them a bit lately and decided to watch this concert film with its unusual added features of both fly-on-the-wall footage and highly stylised fantasy sequences, the latter focusing on the individual group members' own flights of fancy. It starts off oddly with the group's "don't mess with me" manager Peter Grant getting to play out his own imagined scenario, re-enacting a gangland shoot-out of a bunch of ghoulish individuals before we see the group themselves en-route to their Madison Square Garden concert series in New York. There they deliver a heavyweight set of barely ten songs some stretched to almost interminable limits with extended soloing which if you're a committed fan, you'll no doubt love, but if a casual acquaintance like me, find simply interminable. The individual segments are pretty weird too, usually inserted into the middle of one of the expanded songs, and see bassist Jones chase his wife through a dark forest on horseback wearing a fright mask, singer Plant act out a mediaeval play-let, guitarist Page climb up a never-ending hill to meet a white-shrouded ancient version of himself and drummer Bonham's more down-to-earth depictions of himself downing pints, tending his farm or racing a dragster. Make of these what you will, I personally struggled with them, with none of the four pulling off a "Ringo" between them. Otherwise there was an obvious mis-match between the actual concert footage itself and studio close-ups filmed later on a sound stage (Jones's changing outfits are a giveaway), with elsewhere lots of flashy camera tricks conjured up to no doubt jazz up proceedings. As I understand it, the group wasn't entirely happy with their own performances and you can certainly hear Plant for one running his voice in on the early numbers, purposely avoiding the high notes until he's well into the gig. Regarding the music itself, some of it was okay, but I just wanted the never-ending versions of "Dazed and Confused" and "Moby Dick" to just, well, end. Strange also for the movie to be released three years after the concerts themselves, especially as by that time they'd made two further albums, including my favourite the double album "Physical Graffiti". Anyway, it is what it is, a bloated, over-pretentious movie by the biggest band in the world at the time with only some good musical moments. One thing I did enjoy was seeing the original Madison Square Garden venue in its glory, that and John Paul Jones wearing his mum's hair-do throughout!

To any Led Zeppelin fan, upon hearing the titles of such songs as Stairway to Heaven, Since I've been Loving you, Dazed and Confused, Black Dog, Whole Lotta Love and Moby Dick, it should make their mouth drool and knees wobble. Being such a fan myself, having, at a glance seen these very tracks and more on the cover of The Song Remains the Same, I immediately bought the video as my first ever online purchase (Next day delivery, of course.) Indeed, the Song Remains the Same is a collection of some of LedZep's finest songs played to perfection by a selection of the greatest rock musicians to walk the earth, such as jimmy Page (guitar) and John Bonham (Drums). Both these bohemians of music have ample time and camera exposure to show us just how great they are/were, with highlights including 26 minutes of Page on Dazed and Confused including his trademark use of a violin bow on his guitar, and a 15 minute solo by Bonham on Moby Dick. What endeared me further to the film was the little excursions from live footage on stage at Madison Square Gardens in New York, to clips of the band and crew backstage and even completely random scenes of fantasy and imagery, obviously created while under the influence of some fairly way out substances. Yet, understandingly, those unfamiliar to Led Zeppelin may find this 2 hour video a long slog, and is not of course everyone's cup of tea. And while there is impressive stage footage and effects, the camera work is sometimes amaturish and unimaginative. Having said that however, The Song remains the Same is a genuine must for all Led Zeppelin and true music fans alike, as the genius of the performers is clear for all to see and is a breathtaking delight to watch and to listen to.