The Song Remains the Same

My subject is more of a commentary on the band, not the movie. I'm not really a "Led Head". I didn't discover them until the late 80's. I just wish I was born 10 years earlier so I could have experienced them (and other great 70's bands) first hand.

I was 6 when this movie was released and didn't get into the concert scene until rock was in "spin-off mode" (The Firm, Plant, Dio, Ozzy, etc.). But still... This movie is a PERFECT snap shot of the 70's concert scene... Jimmy (Page) with his cosmic pants and girls with neon blue eye shadow.

The movie isn't that great if you're looking at it as a technical piece (direction, cinematography, etc.). But it excels at helping us remember what that period was like. Again, a 14 year old Britany fan will NEVER understand it. It's for those of us who were a part of that dynasty. It's "Classic Rock Video". You watch it... and remember what it was like in the "good old days".

I'm still amazed at how these guys were gods in the music industry. Talk about leaving your mark. They defined a generation and changed the lives of millions, just as The Beatles did a decade before. This kind of fame will never happen again (in corporate America). Do InSync fan's think the same way as we thought about The Beatles and Led Zeppelin? :)

Again, this movie wasn't great (technically), but if you were even remotely a part of this era, it's a must see. I gave it a 7/10 just because I get chills thinking about how these guys were living legends and it seemed like they knew how to handle it.

Led Zeppelin gives puzzlement with The Song Remains the Same by adding footage in between the concert videos of documentary footage and insights into the groups' minds. The documentary footage is more normal and not bothersome, unlike the fantasy footage which seemed to me when I first saw it like different members' hallucinations. Interesting, maybe, but why intersect with concert footage?

It is in the concert footage the film does it's best, however, by giving Zeppelin fans (and possibly even non-Zeppelin fans) a treat of a motion picture with some of their best played and famous songs- The film's title song (my favorite of the concert), No Quarter (2nd), Stairway to Heaven (still awesome the 100th time you've heard it), Moby Dick (to anybody wanting to learn how to play good rock drumming), Dazed and Confused, extended 20 minutes longer than usual by the way, among others. Rock fans in general should also take a look, or possibly just watch the scenes on DVD that make more sense. My Grade: A-

"The Song Remains The Same" is essentially a film of a concert, yet thanks to the drug and ego-addled personalities of Led Zeppelin in the mid-1970s, the footage is fleshed out to include weird 'fantasy' sequences involving each of the four band members. While this section of the movie leaves a little to be desired, the concert footage is truly breathtaking, capturing the greatest hard rock band in history at their apogee.

The film opens with an odd gangster-style sequence, where faceless mobsters are mowed down by what would appear to be rival gangsters. Whatever meaning this scene is meant to represent is not clear, however it has been suggested that the faceless mobsters are the British press, who had vilified Led Zeppelin through their entire career. Who knows, but it certainly makes for an interesting start to the film.

From there the film takes an interesting turn. Each individual band member is introduced. We see drummer John Bonham ploughing his fields in a tractor, bassist John Paul Jones reading nursery rhymes to his children, singer Robert Plant playing with his wife and children in an English country lake (the scene resembles the cover of Led Zeppelin's 1973 album 'Houses of the Holy'), while guitarist Jimmy Page is introduced next to a riverside. They each receive a letter informing them that they are to tour the next day.

Once Led Zeppelin take the stage at New York's Madison Square Garden, the action really begins. The band run through some of their absolute classics, including 'Whole Lotta Love', 'Stairway to Heaven', 'Heartbreaker' and a massive version of 'Dazed and Confused'. The quality of musicianship is amazing. Page's guitar playing belies belief and John Bonham's twenty minute drum solo is awe inspiring. As the band plays there are more fantasy scenes, the best of which includes Robert Plant as some kind of Arthurian hero. The way in which Led Zeppelin embrace and play on the Tolkien-like world of mystical fantasy is truly refreshing in these over-stylised days, where musicians are more concerned with the amount of gel in their hair than the music they produce.

Watching the band at work you get a distinct feeling that the musicians of today really aren't as proficient as they were twenty or thirty years ago. Led Zeppelin it seems were better live than on record, which would be unheard of today.

As an audience we are able to see "The Song Remains The Same" for what it is: a timepiece. Post-1975, Led Zeppelin's work became gradually lower in quality and as Punk revolutionised the music scene, they became dinosaurs at the end of the decade. But in this time, their 1971-1975 period, Led Zeppelin were the biggest band in the world, and their power is captured with brilliant clarity on this film. Whatever happened after this time is a moot point; this is how Led Zeppelin should and will be remembered. A must for any serious music fan.

What even is this? Watching it was a surreal, sometimes dull, sometimes very engrossing experience. Reflecting back on it, it feels something like a fever dream in all honesty. Comparing a movie to a fever dream would usually be a negative, but with this, it's not totally the case, as this is too bizarre and out there (and every now and then actually quite interesting) to call bad. Although when it comes to recommending it... that's an entirely different, far more difficult question.

I could spend hundreds, even thousands of words here trying to define what genre this movie falls into. I can't even call it a documentary exactly, and as 'movie' is the most general word I can think of, we'll go with that. Okay, sometimes it's a concert film. Sometimes it tries to document Led Zeppelin's trials and tribulations while on tour, with detours regarding angry band managers, stolen money, and rowdy fans. Sometimes it shows strange fantasy sequences with the band members, and honestly I got Monty Python & The Holy Grail vibes from some of these. They're occasionally interesting, sometimes dull, but usually... interesting.

It's a weak, vague word when it comes to film criticism: "interesting." But when the thing being critiqued is as strange as The Song Remains The Same, what choice do I have? Well, I could ramble on and on, and go around in circles trying to even break down what this is, and whether it's good or bad or groundbreaking or self-indulgent and stupid, or whether it's all of those, and if so, in what quantities and at what points does it reflect each.

If you're a Led Zeppelin fan you might love this. Or you might hate it. You might not even listen to much classic rock but still get a kick out of the 70s aesthetic and its dirty excesses, and absolutely bizarre detours and fantasy segments. I could see certain people indulging in certain substances and maybe getting a kick out of it in that regard- maybe that's what's led to its cult following? The members of the band certainly looked like they were under the influence of one or more things at certain points, so who knows? Maybe that's the only way viewers can get on their level.

Ultimately, my star rating is mostly arbitrary. I can't give it a bad rating, because I did gladly watch all of it and some parts I liked. But I can't give it a great one, because it's just too messy and scattershot, but then again... that's part of its appeal... I think (?)

What a strange experience though. Only in the 70s could one of the most popular, direct, and accessible rock bands in existence make something this brazenly bizarre.

Led Zeppelin was the paradigm for rock in the 1970s, ushering in a new brand of harder rock that served as a bridge between the first wave of blues influenced british bands in the 60s and the heavy metal that defined the 1980s. The magic created by the legendary foursome - Page, Plant, Jones, and Bonham - engendered hordes of imitators following their breakup in 1980, and whose music, from blues to folk to indian (and let's not forget pure rock), continues to inspire new generations of musicians.

The Song Remains the Same captures the feeling of a real Led Zeppelin concert, deep into their American tour of 1973. That year saw Led Zeppelin at it's most "professional" to date, which, despite not containing the same the youth-inspired looseness and frenziness of a concert from '69, did nevertheless present Led Zeppelin arguably at it's musical peak, with longer, more extended versions of songs like "Dazed and Confused" and "Moby Dick". The concerts were consistently good from that tour, and in my opinion, their Madison Square Garden appearance here, shown in all it's visual glory on the remastered DVD version, is no exception.

Page is captured in a unremitting show of virtuosity in numbers like "Since I've Been Loving You", "Dazed and Confused", and "Stairway to Heaven". This has to be my favorite version of "Since I've Been Loving You" amongst many others I've heard. The experience is almost emotionally moving, and there is one point where a dazzled young female audience member is shown shaking her head in amazement. The whole band seems inspired enough to put on an incredible version of "Stairway to Heaven", including Robert Plant who is not in top form during parts of this performance (relative to usual standards) - no doubt attributable to the exhaustion caused by dozens of previous concerts on almost as many days by the last leg of the tour. The movie still captures Plant's enduring image as a rock icon, with his golden mane and long bluejeans enveloping legs that sway with as much energy of a young Elvis Presley (thank you Chris Welch for that observation).

The DVD transfer itself does not do justice, though, to the singular official video document ever released of the band in concert (aside from documentary compilations). There are some bad volume fluctuations and other audio problems that are clearly noticeable, especially during "Dazed and Confused", that should have been fixed. Also, despite realistic hopes of hearing the songs remastered for a digital surround sound format, Time Warner settled for Dolby Surround Stereo. This of course is quite disappointing considering the number of other DVD titles encoded in Dolby Digital 5.1, and that one would think a movie in this genre would inherently require the greatest sound technology available. Also, as far as extras are concerned, only the original UK film trailer from 1976 are included, which dashes any hopes for newly released footage.

Still, it's a pleasurable experience to witness four of rock's greatest musicians performing some of their most exciting and celebrated pieces while they were at a personal and professional high. The movie is beautiful, presented in a 1.85:1 ratio widescreen format, and watching it on a large screen television is what DVD was made for. Hammer of the Gods!