Led Zeppelin - "Celebration Day"

Film at Bolton Vue Cinema

Sunday 22 October 2012

Is it a film or is it a concert? Do I write a film review or a concert review? Who knows - hey, let's think laterally and do both!

This was a film, and I attended the Vue Cinema at the Reebok Stadium in Bolton to watch it with my friend. On the other hand, it was a concert, pure and simple, nothing added and nothing taken away, filmed when Led Zeppelin performed at a one off reunion concert at the O2 Arena in December 2007 in memory of Atlantic Records boss Ahmet Ertegun. I had applied for tickets at the time, but it was always a rather forlorn hope, what with the rest of the world also applying. That was the last I expected to hear of it, but nearly five years down the line, the concert film is being shown in selected cinemas and in a few weeks time a CD and DVD set is to be issued - and which I have naturally pre-ordered. I was a bit reluctant to go and see this film, as a similar film release - "The Song Remains The Same" - had proved a big disappointment when I had seen it a cinema on Deansgate in the mid 1980s. I had fears of similarly disappointing poor, very low volume sound quality, but the prospect of a Sunday afternoon out with my mate was too good to resist, so off I went.

There is very little doubt that I will ever get to see Led Zeppelin live in the flesh, so I have to be satisfied with this film version. If by a miracle they should reform properly and do a tour, it is not likely that I would get a ticket, so intense would be the demand. It would probably be true to say that Led Zep were the standard bearers for hard rock throughout the seventies, and that in some ways they carried on from where the Beatles left off. Unlike the Beatles they didn't release any singles and so I don't think their influence can be rated anywhere near as highly: they certainly changed (and dominated) the world of hard rock, but they didn't change the world outside of that - and after the punk rock revolution they were seen as dinosaurs, relics from another age. I can't deny their seminal importance and I do like their records, but I have a higher regard for the likes of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and the various progressive rock pioneers.

As to the film itself, all my preconceptions based on the unsatisfactory experience of The Song Remains The Same were cast aside. The sound quality was superb, crystal clear and very loud indeed, probably better than being at the concert itself. The fact that it was played at "selected cinemas" is of some importance because I doubt that the tiddly little screens at the Trafford Centre would have coped and its unlikely that the sound system would have been up to it either. The film was a straight run through of the concert itself, no silly fantasy sequences and was all the better for it. My major reservation is that I do doubt if Robert Plant's voice was as good as it sounded - surely it must have been touched up more than somewhat in the intervening five years? He also looked somewhat silly with his hairstyle as per 1970 but in his mid sixties! Jimmy Page's guitar playing was as good as ever, like he hadn't been away, and John Paul Jones was coolness personified. Jason Bonham was the ideal stand in for his dad on drums, but good as he was, it just wasn't the same as he just wasn't "brutal" enough.

The song selection was excellent, mainly concentrating on the bluesy type tracks from the early albums, but with some moody keyboard pieces from Houses of the Holy etc. Somewhat ironically, the track “Celebration Day” itself wasn’t played, but that is undoubtedly in the best Led Zep tradition. There were no acoustic tracks, which was a little disappointing as it didn't give a full overview of their repertoire, but on the other hand, boring solos were kept to a minimum and there was a mighty, bone crushing rendition of Kashmir, which will keep me dosed up on heavy duty riffing for years to come.

In conclusion: it matters not a jot whether it was a film or a concert. What does matter is that it was a superb recording of one of rock music's major players at a crucial time in their career. It's probably the last that any of us will see of them, so it's a nostalgic and historic record, as well as being a hugely noisy and well filmed one, full of some of the best rock music ever written.