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Stairway in the Way?

Edgy DC Dec 05 2007 07:20 PM

Slate believes Stairway is the main obstacle to a Zep return.

Kid Carsey Dec 05 2007 07:52 PM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Dec 05 2007 07:57 PM

When I think of Stairway and Kashmir, I think of DJ's having to use the bathroom. I loved Zep, especially the songs they don't play on the radio ever. Every album had buried in it way over-the-top extraordinary musical talent that a lot of people didn't tune into if they didn't like Plant's yelping in some songs. They could sell out MSG a dozen nights in a row easy. In my perfect world, seat Jones and Page on stools and let them do Stairway on mandolin and double-neck acoustic with no vocals.

metirish Dec 05 2007 07:53 PM

Interesting take on things, the last paragraph I think is the key, never that great live what would a tour do to their reputations especially if they got hammered for being crappy. I would think a new Zep album could only disappoint, for me at least.

Edgy DC Dec 05 2007 08:53 PM

I think Jimmy Page has hammered out some of the speedbumps in live work by the Page/Plant tours and by being a regular audience member in shows by younger bands. Supposedly, he doesn't think anybody has ever sounded good in this venue --- control-freak Prince included --- except for Elton John, and he's hired Elton's soundman. And who's to say that they don't bring some sidemen with them this time.

metirish Dec 05 2007 09:04 PM

I thought about them bringing sidemen , I'd not really want to see them on stage with a bunch of musicians, don't the 'Stones do that?, back to Stairway, it would not bother me at all if I went and they didn't play it as they have such a huge catalog of great tunes to pick from. I can see the predicament though, U2 have mentioned that there are two or three songs they have to play on every tour, fans pay all that money they want to hear certain stuff.

Gwreck Dec 05 2007 10:19 PM

The reunion (outside of those London shows) is gonna happen. Look for them to headline Bonaroo in 2008.

soupcan Dec 06 2007 07:47 AM

I read this article the other day. Unfortunately, you only get an excerpt online. Gotta buy the mag for the rest. Page, Plant and Jones are being very coy about reuniting but the figure $300 million is included in the article as the money they would make if they did tour. Jason Bonham wants to do it bad. A lot of the piece is about Bonham's feelings about joining the band as it relates to him and his father's lagacy. It's a good read. The Return of Led Zeppelin Behind the scenes at the rehearsals for the biggest show of the year -- plus talk of a tour. DAVID FRICKE Posted Nov 28, 2007 5:54 AM On June 10th of this year, at 2:30 in the afternoon, the surviving members of Led Zeppelin — guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant and bassist John Paul Jones — met in a rehearsal space to play some songs. It was the first time they had been in the same room with instruments since their rough four-song set at Led Zeppelin's 1995 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. This time, the stakes were higher: to see if they had the strength, empathy and appetite to truly perform as Led Zeppelin again, in their first full concert since the death of drummer John Bonham in 1980. The location of the rehearsal, somewhere in England, is still a zealously guarded secret. In interviews a few weeks before Led Zeppelin's December 10th show at London's 02 arena — a benefit tribute to the late Ahmet Ertegun, the co-founder of Atlantic Records — Page, Plant and Jones claim they can't remember the date, what they played or even how the idea of reuniting in honor of Ertegun, a close friend and mentor during and after the band's years on the label, came up. They all agree that playing together again, after so long, was a momentous, emotional occasion. "It was immediate," Page says brightly, sporting a small splint on his left pinkie, the result of a fracture suffered in a fall at home that forced a pause in rehearsals and the rescheduling of the concert, originally set for November 26th. "Everybody went in with a will to work and to enjoy it. It was a delight." Plant recalls "a lot of big smiles," wearing one himself. The day was "cathartic and therapeutic. No pressure, no weight." Jones claims he "didn't have any doubts. Someone picked a song. We got through it. And it rocked." But Bonham's son, Jason, can tell you the exact date and hour Led Zeppelin became a band again, because he was there, taking over for his dad. "They might not know what time it was," he says of the other three, "but I know." For him, it was "a real lump in the throat." "I didn't think there would be an instant sound," says Jason, 41, currently a member of Foreigner and now a father of two himself. "I thought, 'It's going to take some time.' " He was wrong. The band went right into the slow, dark fury of "No Quarter," from 1973's Houses of the Holy. "When the riff came in, there was this look that went around. It was brilliant." Next, the four hit the desert-caravan march of "Kashmir," from 1975's Physical Graffiti. "Then we stopped. Jimmy said, 'Can you give me a hug?' And Robert shouted, 'Yeah, sons of thunder!' " Finally, at the end of that day, Jason says, "They said, 'When we get together next . . .' " He laughs. "I thought, 'You mean I get another chance at this?' " — Excerpt From Issue 1041

Farmer Ted Dec 06 2007 07:54 PM

That article in RS also mentioned that Phil Collins sucked as a fill-in for Live Aid.

Edgy DC Dec 06 2007 08:40 PM

I missed most of that set. Not really fair to harp on that, though. I know the late Tony Thompson sat in on that set also. And Tony, while not Bonzo, was great.

metirish Dec 06 2007 08:46 PM

Anyone else see Jason Bonham on the VH1 Supergroup show?, he seemed like an OK person in a roomfull of wasters.

Farmer Ted Dec 07 2007 06:31 AM

Tony Thompson was also slammed by the band in the article for not being that good either. They gave a lot of praise to Jason for being the band's "encyclopedia". He's apparently the band's Rain Man when it comes to all things Zep-related.

Willets Point Dec 07 2007 03:43 PM

Led Zep partners with ESPN, NFL. Anyone suspect there will be a Super Bowl Halftime show with a "Stairway to Heaven Medley" in the future?

metsguyinmichigan Dec 07 2007 04:06 PM

Farmer Ted wrote: That article in RS also mentioned that Phil Collins sucked as a fill-in for Live Aid. Supposedly, that's the reason the band's performance is missing from the Live Aid DVD. And it's a glaring omission That concert was the the week my family got its first VCR, and I taped a lot of the show. And I remember fuming because Dick Bleeping Clark kept talking over Zep, and then they played highlights from earlier in the day over other Zep songs. I bought the remastered Song Remains the Same this week. Awesome. Brings back a million memories, and the newly inserted material rocks!

Edgy DC Dec 07 2007 05:56 PM

On the MTV feed, Mark Goodman and Nina Blackwood were positively reverent.

metirish Dec 10 2007 08:46 PM

I've read a few reviews of the concert and all thought it was brilliant. Great link for pictures and set herehttp://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2007/12/led_zeppelin_re_1.html

soupcan Dec 11 2007 07:22 AM

New York Times review: Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham -- son of the original drummer John Bonham -- played 16 songs, including classics like "Stairway to Heaven" and "Black Dog." December 10, 2007 Music Review Led Zeppelin Finds Its Old Power By BEN RATLIFF LONDON, Dec. 10 — Some rock bands accelerate their tempos when they play their old songs decades after the fact. Playing fast is a kind of armor: a refutation of the plain fact of aging, all that unregainable enthusiasm and lost muscle mass, and a hard block against an old band’s lessened cultural importance. But Led Zeppelin slowed its down a little. At the O2 arena here on Monday night, in its first full concert since 1980 — without John Bonham, who died that year, but with Bonham’s son Jason as a natural substitute — the band found much of its old power in tempos that were more graceful than those on the old live recordings. The speed of the songs ran closer to those on the group’s old studio records, or slower yet. “Good Times Bad Times,” “Misty Mountain Hop,” and “Whole Lotta Love” were confident, easy cruises; “Dazed and Confused” was a glorious doom-crawl. It all goes back to the blues, in which oozing gracefully is a virtue, and from which Led Zeppelin initially got half its ideas. Its singer, Robert Plant, doesn’t want you to forget that fact: he introduced “Trampled Underfoot” by explaining its connection to Robert Johnson’s “Terraplane Blues,” and mentioned Blind Willie Johnson as the inspiration for “Nobody’s Fault But Mine.” (Beyond that, the band spent 10 luxuriant minutes each in two other blues songs from its back catalog — “Since I Been Loving You” and “In My Time of Dying”). Ahmet Ertegun, the dedicatee of the concert, would have been satisfied, sure as he was of the centrality of southern black music to American culture. Ertegun, who died last year, signed Led Zeppelin to Atlantic Records; the show was a one-off benefit for the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund, which will offer music students scholarships to universities in the United States, England, and Turkey, his homeland. By the end of Zeppelin’s two-hour-plus show, it was already hard to remember that anyone else had been on the bill. But the band was preceded by Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings—a good-timey rhythm-and-blues show with revolving singers including Paolo Nutini and Albert Lee, as well as a few songs each by Paul Rodgers (of Free and Bad Company) and Foreigner — all of whom had recorded for Atlantic under Ertegun. There was a kind of loud serenity about Led Zeppelin’s set. It was well-rehearsed, for one thing: planning and rehearsals have been underway since May. The band wore mostly black clothes, instead of its old candy-colored wardrobe. Unlike Mick Jagger, Mr. Plant — the youngest of the original members, at 59 — doesn’t walk and gesture like an excited woman anymore. Some of the top of his voice has gone, but except for one attempted and failed high note in “Stairway to Heaven” (“there walks a la-dy we all know{hellip}”), he found other melodic routes to suit him. He was authoritative; he was dignified. As for Mr. Page, his guitar solos weren’t as frenetic and articulated as they used to be, but that only drove home the point that they were always secondary to the riffs, which on Monday were enormous, nasty, glorious. (He did produce a violin bow for his solo on “Dazed and Confused,” during that song’s great, spooky middle section.) John Paul Jones’s bass lines got a little lost in the hall’s acoustics — like all such places, the 22,000-seat O2 Arena is rough on low frequencies — but he was thoroughly in the pocket with Mr. Bonham; when he sat down to play keyboards on “Kashmir” and “No Quarter” and a few others, he simultaneously operated bass pedals with his feet, keeping to that same far-behind-the-beat groove. And what of Jason Bonham, the big question mark of what has been — there’s no way to prove this scientifically, but let’s just round it off — the most anticipated rock reunion in an era full of them? He is an expert in his father’s beats, an encyclopedia of all their variations on all the existing recordings. And apart from a few small places where he added a few strokes, he stuck to the sound and feel of the original. The smacks of the snare drum didn’t have exactly the same timbre, that barbarous, reverberant sound. But as the show got into its second hour and a few of the sound problems were gradually corrected, you found yourself not worrying about it anymore. It was all working. Led Zeppelin has semi-reunited a few times in the past, with not much success: short, problematic sets at Live Aid in 1985, and at Atlantic Records’ 40th Anniversary concert in 1988. But this was a reunion that the band had invested in, despite the fact that there are no plans yet for a future tour; among its 16 songs was one the band had never played live before: “For Your Life,” from the album “Presence.” The excitement in the hall felt extreme, and genuine; the crowd roars between encores were ravenous. At the end of it all, as the three original members took a bow, Mr. Bonham knelt before them and genuflected.

Valadius Dec 11 2007 08:53 AM

Here it is: Stairway to Heaven, from last night.

metirish Dec 11 2007 09:22 AM

Oh that was not good, my favorite part of that song has always been the two monster Bonham drum rolls around the six minute mark when Page is doing his solo and half a minute later when Plant gets into the last verse singing "And as we wind on down the road ,Our shadows taller than our soul", they were lost in that version, maybe the sound sucked. Did Jason Bonham play the Foreigner set as well?

soupcan Dec 11 2007 10:40 AM

Wow. Just seeing them on stage gives me chills. I didn't think it was bad. I'm sure whatever recording device that was used to capture that was the reason for the bad sound. I have to see these guys if they tour.

Frayed Knot Dec 11 2007 11:32 AM

Page actually looks better now in a lot of ways - even with the silver hair - than he did way back when. He was always so pale and gaunt and sickly looking during their heyday (and apparently was during childhood as well).

Edgy DC Dec 11 2007 05:05 PM

I think Page was right, and the sound was pretty lousy.

soupcan Dec 11 2007 07:43 PM

Page was right about what?

Edgy DC Dec 11 2007 08:10 PM

Jimmy said going in that he'd seen a lot of shows at the new arena, and the sound was almost always crappy --- including for Prince. And only at Elton John's show was the sound good. He hired Elton's sound designer as a consultant for this show. That said, the sound on that recording is probably hardly representative.

soupcan Dec 11 2007 08:37 PM

Ah.

Valadius Dec 11 2007 10:28 PM

If they do end up touring, there's no way that I don't end up going to see them. I'm glad my generation gets to experience this - I was born 7 years after the band broke up, after all.

Rockin' Doc Dec 12 2007 05:06 AM

Valadius "- I was born 7 years after the band broke up, after all." Ouch! That one hurt.

soupcan Dec 12 2007 06:01 AM

Yeah, Vlad could be my kid too. I was a young teenager in the late '70's but sadly while all my friends were into bands like Zep, Bad Co., Blue Oyster Cult and the Stones, I was wasting my time on Billy Joel and ELO (ELO not so bad in retrospect). It took me a while to appreciate bands like Zep and Hendrix and the like. Unfortunately by the time I did start listening to and appreciating Zep it was too late to see them live. If they do tour however, I will certainly be there, driving my Cadillac after watching an NFL game on ESPN of course.

metirish Dec 12 2007 10:44 AM

m an article in an Irish Daily talking about Led Zep playing Slane castle. ] Speculation has been mounting since The Cult let slip that next year they would be supporting a band with an "L" and a "Z" in their name.

HahnSolo Dec 12 2007 11:06 AM

The Cult is still around? Any word on the Foreigner set list. Sadly, they have a pretty strong representation on my iPod.

Frayed Knot Dec 12 2007 11:11 AM

I was a sometime - though hardly fanatical - Zep listener in their time, particularly of the earlier, blusier stuff in the first few albums. But as 'Progressive Rock' radio eventually starting morphing into 'Classic Rock' radio LZ became The - Single - Most - Overplayed - Band maybe in the history of recorded music. Some DJs (WNEW's Carole Miller comes to mind) were playing their 10, 15, and even 20 year old stuff as if it was some hot new sound released just that week. Eventually it came to the point where I'd turn off virtually every LZ song that popped up. Robert Plant even agreed with me to some extent, saying in an interview I read that the best thing that could happen to their music would be for no one to play it for at least a year. It's now been long enough since I abandoned those radio stations that I can actually start hearing them again - although I still doubt I could sit through S-t-H from start to finish. Obviously a live show would be a different story so long as they put the proper effort into it and all. Zepplin also probably holds some kind of record for inspiring more lousy bands than any other act, although that's probably not their fault.

metirish Dec 12 2007 11:19 AM

Carol Miller still does her " Get The Led Out" show. http://www.q1043.com/pages/jox/carolmiller.html

soupcan Dec 12 2007 09:04 PM

Here's another rave review from the Wall Street Journal. How does Plant sound both 'bluesy, (with) helium-like vocals' and also have a '...voice (that) now has a burnished timbre that suits the bottom-heavy muscularity of the group'? Also: 'Foreigner played one tune, "I Want to Know What Love Is." Wow. How disappointing if you're a Foreigner fan. ONE song? and it's THAT one? Ew. Led Zeppelin's Rocking Return By JIM FUSILLI December 12, 2007; Page D9 London A Led Zeppelin reunion is as unlikely as a Beatles reunion: Much as the Beatles would be unthinkable without John Lennon and George Harrison alive and on hand, the death of John Bonham in 1980 left Led Zeppelin with a seemingly unbreachable void. And yet here were Zeppelin's Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones on the stage at the 02 arena Monday night as the headliners in a London concert billed as a tribute to the late Ahmet Ertegun, the courtly, influential co-founder and head of Atlantic Records. On drums for the reconstituted Zeppelin was Jason Bonham, 41-year-old son of the band's original drummer. He first played in concert with the surviving members during a brief set at Atlantic's 40th anniversary celebration in 1988. A Whole Lotta Love: A reunion worth waiting for. Filling his father's shoes is asking a lot of Jason Bonham. Not only was John Bonham an inventive and powerful drummer, but his interplay with Mr. Page's guitar lines is as responsible for the band's singularity as its musical wanderlust and Mr. Plant's bluesy, helium-like vocals. That often-intense interaction gave Zeppelin's live shows the possibility of surpassing their recorded music. Jason Bonham's, and the band's, battle plan Monday was immediately apparent. They played old Led Zeppelin tunes with incredible raw power, allowing for invention within familiar structures -- and sometimes not-so-familiar ones: The band rarely resisted an opportunity to push the songs, bending arrangements with sheer force and volume. They reworked several numbers -- subtly, to accommodate and exploit Mr. Bonham's gifts -- and played one tune, "For Your Life" (from the album "Presence"), that they'd never performed in concert before. For a band that hasn't been on stage together in almost 20 years -- and almost a decade more than that for a full performance -- Led Zeppelin was as tight as a rock group could be. Its members mixed their brand of rock and metal with an authority that suggested they still might be the best rock band in the world. And then they played the blues. The 63-year-old Mr. Page, who broke his left pinkie last month, pushing the show back from its original Nov. 26 date, was relentless. Volume can carry rock numbers, but in an instrumental trio there's no place for a soloist to hide in the down-tempo blues. The group laced together a series of blues numbers that were inspired, according to Mr. Plant, by Robert Johnson and others, but they bore the Zeppelin stamp of tense pauses punctuated by Mr. Page's piercing playing. Under a shock of hair that's now more white than gray, Mr. Page's face often bore a hapless expression. But it was completely misleading. The guitarist was in control of his music -- until he decided to push himself to the edge, as he did in "Nobody's Fault but Mine" and "Since I've Been Loving You." When it didn't work to perfection, it wasn't for lack of adventure. Zeppelin wasn't the only act on the Ertegun tribute bill: The Rhythm Kings, ex-Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman's band, served as the backing group for several singers -- including 20-year-old Paolo Nutini, the last artist at Atlantic mentored by Mr. Ertegun. The talented Mr. Nutini sang "Mess Around," a hit that Mr. Ertegun wrote for Ray Charles, and "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)," a curious choice. Mr. Ertegun's memory might have been better served by a couple of tunes from Mr. Nutini's excellent debut disc, "These Streets." Paul Rodgers, formerly of Free and of Bad Company, showed that his voice hasn't lost its gritty edge, and Foreigner played one tune, "I Want to Know What Love Is." "If it wasn't for Ahmet, none of us would be here," said Foreigner's Mick Jones. But that was preamble, and the moment Zeppelin opened with "Good Times Bad Times," the first song on their 1969 eponymous debut album, all else was forgotten. Fighting a muddy sound system, the quartet blasted through "Ramble On," "Black Dog" and "In My Time of Dying"; in each song, Mr. Bonham abandoned his father's familiar riffs and played something of his own. Mr. Page responded with beefier playing that Mr. Jones echoed on bass. Early in the show, Mr. Plant's voice couldn't pierce the rumble, and for most of the set he remained in mid-range. When Mr. Plant, at last, unleashed a howl in a remarkable reading of "Kashmir," Mr. Page broke into a broad grin. In large part, though, the singer adapted well: His voice now has a burnished timbre that suits the bottom-heavy muscularity of the group. Mr. Plant spoke to the audience of a rock band's obligatory songs. On this night, one was "Dazed and Confused," a potent blues that Mr. Page marred -- as he did in the band's heyday -- by playing his Les Paul with a bow. Another such number was "Stairway to Heaven," which came late in the set. Mr. Plant wasn't up to the required vocal soaring, and his ragged version was the evening's low point. "Hey Ahmet," Mr. Plant shouted to the rafters, "we did it!" Barely. The band also chose to ignore its folky side -- no "That's the Way" or "Going to California" -- and it would have been a pleasure to hear Mr. Plant bring some of the techniques he's added to his vocal arsenal over the years to these tunes. But Led Zeppelin's two-plus-hour performance was so authoritative and so dynamic that it may have been a wise choice to leave the folk instruments in their cases and allow a highly charged audience to continue to roar. There were some quaint, backward-looking touches on the stage -- the flaming Hindenburg logo on Mr. Bonham's kick drum; the stylized letters "Zoso," which some fans consider the real name of the album "Led Zeppelin IV," on Mr. Page's amplifier -- but the band didn't act like old-timers back together for a one-off showcase. They attacked their songs like they had something to prove -- and were better than even the most ardent Zeppelin fan could have expected. While they didn't directly address whether they'll play more shows next year -- Mr. Plant already has some commitments for '08 that might affect that decision -- the music, with Mr. Bonham in firm control behind the drum kit, suggested Led Zeppelin has much more to say. Mr. Fusilli is the Journal's rock and pop-music critic.

Edgy DC Dec 12 2007 09:14 PM

JIM FUSILLI wrote: A Led Zeppelin reunion is as unlikely as a Beatles reunion: Much as the Beatles would be unthinkable without John Lennon and George Harrison alive and on hand, the death of John Bonham in 1980 left Led Zeppelin with a seemingly unbreachable void. That's ridonculous. It's so silly, it could only have been written by a guy named Fusilli. A start like that makes it hard to continue.