Re: OT: Led Zep Press Conference @ O2 - 12 Sept. @ 4pm
Date: September 16, 2007 23:38
Han Wrote:
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> From The Independent
>
> Led Zeppelin: Stairway to purgatory
>
> Led Zeppelin have decided to reform. It's a
> terrible idea, says the band's historian, Nigel
> Williamson
> Published: 14 September 2007
>
> The morning after Led Zeppelin received their
> Lifetime Achievement award at the Grammys in Los
> Angeles in 2005, I sat drinking tea with Robert
> Plant in the kitchen of Real World's studios in
> Box, Wiltshire. Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones had
> attended the ceremony but Plant had decided to
> stay at home in order to rehearse with his current
> band, Strange Sensation.
>
> Needless to say, his former colleagues weren't
> pleased by his failure to turn up and Page had
> publicly vented his displeasure. "I see Jimmy had
> a bit of a go at me for not being there," Plant
> told me. "But what can you do? What I'm doing now
> is more important to me. This veneration of one
> period of one's life is pointless. It's great to
> look back and smile. But middle-aged self
> congratulation is very dangerous."
>
> Yet following recent reunions by The Police,
> Genesis, Crowded House, Spice Girls and Take That,
> it was announced this week that Plant, Page and
> Jones, together with Jason Bonham, son of the
> group's late drummer, John Bonham, will reunite
> for the first time since 1988, when they played a
> half-hour set at a 40th birthday celebration for
> Atlantic Records at Madison Square Garden in New
> York.
>
> On that occasion Plant forgot the words of
> "Kashmir", Page lost his way in the middle of the
> guitar solo on "Heartbreaker" and the pair had an
> almighty row over whether they should play
> "Stairway To Heaven" (Plant didn't want to sing it
> and Page was adamant that the world expected it).
> In the end, they did play it but Plant
> subsequently denounced the gig as "foul" and Page
> admitted it was "one big disappointment".
>
> Their only other reunion since the band's break-up
> following Bonham's death in 1980, when they played
> Live Aid in Philadelphia in 1985, was similarly
> disappointing.
>
> Indeed, their performance was so poor that when
> Live Aid eventually came out in DVD format some 20
> years later, Led Zeppelin refused to allow their
> contribution to be included in the package. Plant
> subsequently described their performance as "a
> @#$%& atrocity" and likened it to Frank Sinatra
> singing "My Way".
>
> Forgive me, then, if I don't join the general
> euphoria that has greeted the announcement that
> the band they called The Hammer of the Gods are to
> tread the boards once more at the O2 Arena in east
> London in November. But don't get me wrong. I'm as
> much of a Led Zeppelin fan as the next man. I
> first saw them play at the Royal Albert Hall in
> January 1970 when I was a 16-year-old hippie with
> hair halfway down my back in a schoolboy imitation
> of Plant's leonine mane and which I shook with
> wild and woolly abandon when they played "Whole
> Lotta Love".
>
> I bought all their albums as soon as they came
> out, was at their "comeback" concert at Knebworth
> in 1979 and I mourned Bonham's death and the
> band's consequent demise in 1980. But, to be
> completely frank, that's where Led Zeppelin should
> be left.
>
> Recently, I spent six months writing The Rough
> Guide to Led Zeppelin, a labour of love that gave
> me the excuse to listen repeatedly to all of the
> old records again and to spend happy hours
> watching footage of them in their pomp as the
> greatest rock'*'roll band in the world on the Led
> Zeppelin DVD. It brought back some wonderful
> memories and, as Plant told me, "it's good to look
> back and smile". But you can't turn back the clock
> and put those memories back up on stage as if the
> last 27 years never happened.
>
> When Page and Plant last got back together in the
> Nineties, they at least had something new to say.
> First on the MTV Unledded project, they reinvented
> favourites from the band's classic repertoire in
> startling new fashion with the addition of an
> Egyptian ensemble and the London Metropolitan
> Orchestra.
>
> Jones was miffed not to be told about the
> recording, let alone invited to join them, but
> Plant, in particular, was desperate for it to be
> seen as a new project and not a reincarnation of
> Led Zeppelin.
>
> Again without Jones, Page and Plant followed in
> 1997 with Walking into Clarksdale, an album of
> entirely new material, which they toured for a
> year. The record was widely regarded as a
> disappointment and a pale reflection of former
> glories, but at least they were trying. This time
> there is no new material and no pretence that
> getting back together is anything more than a
> blatantly sentimental exercise in cheap
> nostalgia.
>
> So, given that their only two previous reunions
> have been disasters, why are they doing it? The
> attraction for Page is obvious. With only one solo
> album to his name (1988's Outrider) and a series
> of failed attempts to find a Zeppelin substitute
> in lacklustre collaborations with Paul Rodgers,
> David Coverdale and the Black Crowes, his
> post-Zeppelin career has never taken off.
>
> In recent years, he has been more than content to
> live on his Zeppelin laurels, remastering the old
> albums, compiling DVDs and dusting down old tapes
> for live albums such as Led Zeppelin BBC Sessions
> and How the West Was Won. He's delighted every
> time Led Zeppelin are given some new award or
> honour and invariably turns up in person, beaming
> with pride and pleasure. The last time I
> interviewed him, in 2005, I asked whether he ever
> got frustrated that the world was only interested
> in his role in a band that broke up when he was
> only 36 years old. He seemed baffled by the
> question. "Not at all, because if you look at it
> from my point of view it was a great life in
> Zeppelin," he responded. I then asked if he
> planned to make a new record.
>
> "What I need to be doing is making a new musical
> statement," he admitted. "Now's the time to do
> something that makes people say, 'I didn't think
> you'd do that but I can really see why you've done
> it.' We'll see what we come up with. I'm not
> retired yet if that's what you're thinking."
>
> Two years on there's still no sign of a "new
> musical statement". There's just a Led Zeppelin
> reunion. And as for John Paul Jones, having been
> excluded from Page and Plant's joint ventures in
> the Nineties, he's probably just glad that his old
> colleagues could still remember his phone number.
>
> The real surprise is Plant. Of all of the
> surviving Zeppelin members, he is the one who has
> remained a creative force. Next month he releases
> Raising Sand, a quite wonderful new album recorded
> in Nashville with the bluegrass singer Alison
> Krauss which has already been described by Uncut
> editor Allan Jones as "may be the best thing he's
> done in nigh on 30 years". Sadly, in the brouhaha
> surrounding the reunion, the record will probably
> sink without trace.
>
> That said, of course I hope to be there on 26
> November and I won't even moan about the £125
> ticket price because, after all, it is for a
> charitable cause. But thank heavens it is a
> one-off and that the hotel managers of the world
> can rest easy that it's not a year-long global
> tour.
>
>
> Nigel Williamson's 'Rough Guide To Led Zeppelin'
> is published by Penguin/Rough Guides at £9.99
Excellent piece.