Zeppelin were not a very good live band

[Michael Shannon <michaels@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey all,

The following is a post from the Richard Thompson mailing list which
concerns Led Zep.  It's sort of anti Zep but still interesting to hear
his opinions of Zep live etc...I won't print his email address since the
poor guy would probably get about 100 emails in (flaming?) reply.

Michael


> Before I start, apologies to any Zeppelin heads if you don't like my
>opinion of the band, but I'm just reporting what I felt 27 years ago I
>saw Led Zeppelin at the 1970 Bath festival. It was my first and last 
>live  Zeppelin show, . It wasn't  an enjoyable experience. I really
>liked their BBC radio show featuring material from the first album, but
>live they just did not click.I think now that in some ways I was
>reacting more to their on-stage personalities than to their  music. I
>never did like posing, bare chested, velvet trousered singers all that
>much , so Plant got right up  my nostrils for a start, Page  seemed to
>play more for the opportunity  to play as many notes as possible in the
>shortest possible time  than  for any artisic enterprise and the rhythm
>section just weren't agile enough for my liking , so  Bonzo's solo went
>down like a lead balloon. They finished with a 20 minute rock and roll
>medley that just went nowhere in terms of contributing anything new to
>the tunes and seemed like it was only being played because they didn't
>have anything original to play. None of us were very impressed .
>    Now we were probably in the minority as the crowd were pretty
>enthusiastic. But I came away with a negative feel about Zeppelin live
>which has persisted to this day. Strangely enough,I like most of Zeps
>music ,I think the first album is a classic, I love Houses of the
>Holy.  I can listen to " The Song remains the Same " and enjoy 90% of
>the music but I can't stand watching them perform it ( although the
>track where Plant gets togged up in medieval gear and rescues a maiden
>in distress is  hilarious and should go down as one of the  classic
>examples of pretentious Rock video of all time ) It might seem
>improbable that the highlight of the day was actually the Byrds , but
>they blew everyone offstage  , Tuna , The Airplane, Its a Beautiful day,
>Steppenwolf, no one could hold a candle to them . They performed
>acoustically because of the  rain getting onto the stage ( atrocious
>weather, we spend much of the time under a sheet of black PVC ) and were
>absolutely brilliant , full of heart and soul ,improvising wonderfully
>and making music that moved me to my core, whereas Zeppelin just seemed
>very Rock Biz , image orientated and ultimately , empty. Loud but
>signifying nothing.
>        However, I really like Unplugged Zep. The World music infusion ,
>plus a lot of mellowing  by the lads  over the years has made me a
>definite fan and  I can watch  recent video of the  band  quite happily,
>so I am sure that you  all will be heartily relieved that my
>Zeppephobia  is at an end and you  legions of Zep fans out there won't
>flame me too much for my opinions (he says , hoping he has got off the
>hook , but knowing that he probably hasn't .)