Led Zeppelin Live Concert Review: September 6, 1970--Honolulu, Hawaii

["David" <davidp@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Led Zeppelin Concert Review                                                
                By David Pecnik
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Date??????????September 6, 1970
Venue?????????.International Center--Honolulu, Hawaii
Tape Source???????Audience

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Led Zeppelin in 1970 can only be described as an instrumental war machine. 
I don't think there is a group today on the scene that can match the sheer
musical power and energy that Led Zeppelin was able to create on a nightly
basis during these early years.  We join the band in the final few weeks of
the 6th U.S. tour.  This show is the first set of a two set performance
before some pretty loud and boisterous crowds.  They will not be
disappointed; in fact, these crowd will witness the eruption of a different
kind of Volcano--the rock and roll Volcano of Led Zeppelin.

I generally stay away from making comments about the sound quality of a
bootleg tape, but I did want to mention that Plant is in top form in this
concert and delivers many behemoth screams that torture the recording
equipment used by the bootlegger.  If you have headsets on, be prepared! 
My ears are still ringing after this one!  On to the show?.

Immigrant Song:  Obviously, the stage announcer has no idea what it means
to be excited by the presence of Led Zeppelin, as he introduces the group
in a kind of monotone voice reminiscent of post-lobotomy recipient, "Ladies
and gentlemen?Led Zeppelin."  The crowd applauds loudly, then waits on the
edge of their seats as the band takes an extended time to tune up and test
the equipment.  "Good evening."  The quiet is unbearable!  Then, with a
mighty explosion, the band pounces upon this powerful riff with a
vengeance.  Robert's Celtic scream shakes the building and pierces the
eardrums!  Listen to Bonham hammering the drums with what seems like thick,
lead pipes, while John Paul offers his typically solid bass line to
reinforce.  Page is all over the riff with the Les Paul and the whole place
is rocking with energy already.  Plant extends his voice once more prior to
Page's solo with a loud and deafening "?you're looooooosiiiiinnnngggg!." 
Then Jimmy takes over, and he struggles to fight to the forefront of this
recording, as his solo blends into the background, then bursts out when he
hits a string of tantalizing high note combinations with speed and
precision.  While Page plays, Bonham is simply out of his mind, hammering
the toms and kicking the bass drum with a kind of rock and roll madness. 
Tremendously powerful version--it will shatter your teeth!

Dazed and Confused:  John Paul Jones decides to change the set order by
suddenly jumping on the DAC bass line.  The band, momentarily confused,
quickly join in.  Bonham provides a continuing pattern of creative drum
fills, while Page stretches, bends and shakes the notes with the wah-wah
pedal.  The crowd loves every second.  Screams of delight are heard
throughout the intro.  Robert's vocal entry intensifies the already heavy
mood created by his band mates, but then the whole band erupts in the first
musical chorus, creating a force of rock and roll power that makes the
building tremble and my headsets vibrate in terror.  Next up, Plant
delivers another scream that overloads the channel prior to the second
musical chorus, delivered as forcefully as the first, with the rhythm
section solid and steady.  The final chorus before the bow matches the fury
of the first two, then there's an extended bridge which eventually heads
into Page's bow.  Here, Page starts it off extremely loud, then settles
into a quieter delivery that really sets a mysterious mood that ties into
the bow slaps.  The crowd reacts to each resounding slap to the strings. 
Then Page brings out the moaning spirits with his work on the guitar. 
Jimmy offers some real nasty wails in this interlude, while the crowd
continues to offer their approval of his mysterious work with appreciative
clapping.  Next,  Jimmy manages to transform his bowing guitar into a
Mandolin picking recital--truly beautiful, followed by Plant's "groaning"
struggle with the tortured imagery created by Page's bow.  Plant's voice is
overpowering once more.  A little more of this wonderful interplay, then
Page slides out of the bow as a call to Bonham and Jones to close the bow
interlude with a resounding climax of bass and drum.  John Paul and Bonham
set up the rhythm for the fast section, and Page fires into his part with
incredible speed and inspiration.  Everywhere his mind goes, the fingers
quickly follow--and the mind is on the creation of one intoxicating string
of notes after another, pieced together in a flurry of musical force. 
There are some moments when Page gets off the intended path, but with the
kind of steady and hypnotic rhythm developed by Jones and Bonham, it isn't
difficult for Page to find his way back and divulge into more musical
splendor with the Les Paul.  He really moves through the scale, ascending
and descending, stitching together the note patterns to bring the
listener's tension level to a peak.  But before the crowd explodes with
him, a quiet interlude arrives, featuring Jones' fine work on the bass and
the building musical pressure which leads into the next crazed section. 
Page is beyond description again!  His speed and high note execution is
awesome here, and his contrasting heavier sounds give the solo body and
character.  Listen to Pagey hang the note into "Mars, the Bringer of War",
while the rhythm section maintains a beat that pulsates deep within the
listener's brain, inflating the musical energy until the band detonates
into the exiting bridge--WOW!  What incredible force!  You need to catch
your breath as the band quiets down to allow Plant to come back in and
deliver the final vocal refrain.  Completed, the coda features Page
developing what will be an important section in the future as he
experiments with some pretty familiar note patterns and tempo changes--very
nice.  A sustained rhythm is the strong foundation for this experimenting,
and it's all very entertaining.  Bonham's intense drum treatment brings it
all to an end, and I'm as ecstatic about this performance as the crowd. 
One of the best I've heard from this tour so far!

Heartbreaker:  "You feel all right?"  Now that Plant is sufficiently
confused as to the set order, he speaks to his mates:  "What am I doing?" 
Clued in, he remarks of the next song, "It's about a mean woman--as they
usual are."  With that, Page flexes a note and moves heavily into the main
riff, followed by the immense arrival of Jones and Bonham.  Plant's voice
throughout this song is really tough on the listener's ear in this
recording, drowning out the rest of the group whenever he sings.  Page's
solo is yet another display of his ever-creative and talented work with the
guitar.  He teases the strings into a flurry of notes that touch one end of
the musical scale to the other, before settling down into his familiar
"hoe-down" delivery.  This solo is almost an exact copy of two days before,
during the famous "Blueberry Hill" concert at The Forum.  He then fires
into a fierce riff which is then beautifully contrasted with "Bouree",
before changing musical directions again into the hard and loud exiting
riff that brings in the mastery of the rhythm section.  The whole band is
flying high now!  Page's speed, again, is immeasurable in this section, yet
he does not sacrifice a creative flow in the process.  His play is fluent,
direct and overpowering.  Listen to Page stitching the notes into a massive
quilt of rock and roll pleasure upon a foundation of incredible bass and
drum.  You could incite a riot with this kind of music!  A wonderful,
chaotic jam that leads back to the vocals and one final thrust into the
collective rock and roll hearts of this crowd and listener.  Fantastic!

Since I've Been Loving You:  The crowd has definitely been incited by the
music.  Plant has to calm them down.  "Don't go mad.  Calm down--easy.  No
frenzies."  There are some equipment problems and Plant remarks, "This
group's being renamed 'The Box of Tricks'."  Once these problems are taken
care of, Page hits the intro to this legendary Blues classic.  The intro is
especially beautiful in this performance, as Page hits some striking notes
that are backed up by John Paul's Hammond C3 organ (just recently
introduced) and the added fill creations from John Bonham's drum workout. 
At the same time, you can feel the energy of the band seeping into the
intro, as the level of loudness gradually increases into Plant's vocal
entry.  My preference is for a little less rock intensity and a lot more
heavy Blues.  Nevertheless, Plant's singing here is truly inspired, amassed
with emotion, which is vividly evident in the way he works off the same
kind of emotion from Page's guitar.  A painful Plant scream leads into
Page's solo, which he plays with an agonized heart and extremely loud.  "I
said I've been crying!" comes Plant's tortured confession.  The brief
silence only heightens the tension blanketing the crowd, right into a
hectic coda.  "Now I'm gonna tell you people, just what I have to do?." 
Plant gets a little out of control, as does the rest of the group, as the
coda is played with a bit too much energy which I feel detracts from the
emotional impact of the song.  Despite my preference, this is still a
gut-wrenching performance that leaves the listener's heart, and I'm certain
each heart in the crowd, palpitating from the workout.

What is and What Should Never Be:  A member of the crowd shots for "Whole
Lotta Love" and Robert responds with, "You know, we get asked for that
every night, but the thing is, it comes eventually."  Meaning that good
things come to people that wait, and it most certainly will.  But before
such a mammoth show closer, the group moves into another hit from the
second album.  The real highlights in this performance is the work of John
Bonham and John Paul Jones, essential players in this particular song,
filled with the "light and shade" techniques created and perfected by Led
Zeppelin,  and forever copied without success by future rock group
impersonators.  Throughout the song, Page's riff plays nicely over the bass
line and his solo is intense with a lot of reverb.  The coda features Plant
singing his part a bit too hurriedly, forcing the band to move even faster
to catch up, and a nice, crushing sound to Page's final notes.

Moby Dick:  "Ladies and gentlemen, Lindsey De Paul?On drums, John
Bonham--Moby Dick!"  Guitar riff and bass assault explode out into the
Center.  I could listen to this riff all night, but now it's time to settle
back and enjoy the drum orchestrations of the master, John Bonham.  He
starts it off with an array of bass drum-snare combinations, with an
occasional slap to a tom, always perfectly placed in the stream of music. 
He displays his speed of hands and wrists with an extended workout that
involves almost the entire drum kit.  At this point, the listener needs to
sit back and enjoy the drum symphony created by the hands and feet of a
percussion genius.  There's an amazing amount of strength and endurance in
Bonham's play, and the sound that rumbles out from the stage resembles that
of a rolling earthquake destroying everything in its path.  Next up, Bonham
drops the sticks and shows off his hand work against the drums, accentuated
by some high-hat utterances.  The crowd appears to be enjoying the
performance, yet I think Bonham has a tendency to try the patience of the
crowd by extending this section just a little too long.  The hand play is
effective, but perhaps a little too monotonous for a crowd intensified by
the evening so far.  The final hand roll is the real indicator of Bonham's
talent--as hard and heavy as the sticks could produce.  Once back to the
sticks, the lightening fast hands and feet of Bonham go back to work. 
There's cannon fire and volleys of rifle reports that create an ensemble of
glorious drum music.  Finally, Bonham's triplets and tom roll treatment
raises the crowd's blood pressure once more into the return of Page and
Jones and the final drum coda sequence.  "Let's hear it for John Bonham!"
Robert cries.  No need to implore the audience, however.  Their roar of
approval is resounding.

Whole Lotta Love:  It's not whether or not the group has enough energy left
to deliver this nightly "tour de force" music medley, but does the crowd
and this listener have enough left?  A Led Zeppelin concert is wonderfully
exhausting--for the mind and the body--and this particular night has been a
real workout.  "We'd like you to try and get as loose as possible.  What do
you people think about movin' about?"  Like the crowd, I'm ready to go! 
The deep, heavy riff sound blasts through Page's amps, followed by a
massive entry by Bonham and Jones.  Plant's voice, as it has been all
night, is loud and forceful, again doing damage to the bootleggers
recording equipment.  It's difficult to isolate Bonham's drums throughout
this section, but along with Jones' uplifting bass delivery, the rhythm
section is putting on a devastating show.  Page is all over this riff,
clear and inspiring, and the tone developed through the Marshall amps is
perfectly raunchy, adding to the character of the delivery.  Then we head
with the band into the crazed-out section, which features some neat guitar
effects and Bonham's major assault on his kit.  The Theramin work here is
awesome, sounding like background music to a "Twilight Zone" episode--very
spooky.  Page even manages to control the Theramin's interaction with
Plant's vocal escapades, and then there's a almost seamless entry into the
musical bridge to the return of the vocal theme, played a little
differently tonight with satisfying results.  The final section before the
medley features a little less clean work, but there's no time to quibble
over small mistakes--here comes a music medley so packed with covers that I
probably didn't catch every reference here in this review.  You could
literally feel the crowd's anticipation (or is that mine?).  First off is
the always exciting "Boogie Chillun" which, unfortunately, is cut in the
beginning right into the jam section.  Page starts off slow, but then picks
it up beautifully.  Next up are fantastic covers of "Messin' Around",  "I'm
Moving On", and "Red House", which then leads to one of the most
spectacular and captivating version of "Some Other Guy" I have ever heard. 
Page, Bonham and Jones combine to build a rhythm/riff explosion that is
numbing in its effect upon the listener--just a helluva lot of fun!  A real
treat!  Next up in this amazing catalog of Rhythm and Blues classics is "Be
a Man", also splendidly played.  I probably missed a few--there were so
many--but when Robert segues into the WLL return with "Woman?Woman", I am
completely exhausted!  But a lot more Zeppelin bombshells remain! 
"Youuuuuu neeeeeed it!"  Followed by a Plant "LOOOOOOOVVVVVVVVVE!" scream
that popped my eyeballs out of their sockets!  WOW!  Then that almighty
riff falls on top of you like an oil tanker, and you're left sprawled on
the floor with a smile as wide as Mama Cass as you enjoy this almost
supernatural coda coming to an end in your headset.  The crowd erupts in a
massive roar of complete ecstasy.  "MORE!  MORE!"  Yes, come back!   Come
back!  A tremendous performance I will not soon forget!

Communication Breakdown:  "Get loose" Robert directs the crowd.  Page plays
around with a nice, little riff and then fires into the "Breakdown" riff,
holding nothing back now.  The power of the song overwhelms the
bootlegger's recording equipment once more and throughout most of the song.
 This is a fast and furious Led Zeppelin struttin' there stuff to a still
hungry crowd.  Bonham has himself playing in overdrive.  Page's solo is
filled with intricate note weaves which he strings together with speed and
desire--amazing talent here!  There's total, glorious chaos that heads into
a quiet slot and another medley of improvisational music and a little
snippet of Guess Who's "American Woman", both featuring the talented bass
work of John Paul Jones, and the counter-play of Page.  This then leads to
a final buildup into the "Breakdown" riff and yet another enormous musical
assault into its perfectly timed halt, which leaves the crowd and this
listener overflowing with the musical passion that must be released!  I'm
with the crowd in my enthusiastic cheers!  "ROCK ON!" shouts a fan.  "MORE!
MORE!  WE WANT MORE!"  And then that damn stage announcer throws a huge
iceberg over the enflamed crowd with two, terribly sobering words, "That's
all?."  And then, with much sadness, the concert ends?.


The late Peter Grant, manager of Led Zeppelin, once said that "When Led
Zeppelin played a concert, it wasn't just a concert.  It was an event." 
Not just an event, it was an exciting adventure into the creative and
talented minds of four music professionals, who surpassed the talent of
their day to give the rock fan the kind of uplifting music that gathered
all of our spirits into it's own life force?.