Financial Times article

["Jerry Czarnecki" <jerrymcza@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I hope my posting isn't getting out of hand. Some interesting things here 
too. And an unexpected highbrow place for such expert comments, as well.

Music: Treasure from a shipwreck of rock
By James Woodall
Published: May 27 2003 20:36 | Last Updated: May 27 2003 20:36


When ex-Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page lamented "it's a real shame that . 
. . there isn't enough live footage of us," he wasn't being completely 
candid. Page, who was speaking to me in 1998, knew full well just how much 
footage there was. Some of it was in the possession of himself and Robert 
Plant, some was left over from the only official full-length film made of 
the band, The Song Remains the Same (1976), and much of it, more 
problematically, was in the hands of bootleggers.

Now, however, with the release this week of more than five hours of footage 
on two DVDs, accompanying a three-CD set, How The West Was Won, of Zeppelin 
on stage in Los Angeles in June 1972, this footage is finally seeing the 
light of day. Page has been keen over the years for this material to be 
released. Step in music-video director Dick Carruthers, who has worked with 
Oasis, the Rolling Stones and The Who. Page asked Carruthers to assemble 
from official and bootleg material a definitive portrait of Led Zeppelin's 
11 years together. One aim is plainly to prevent further proliferation of 
poor-quality bootleg. Another is to show the band in the flesh to the 
under-40s - there are plenty of Zep-heads who have never have seen them live 
since they broke up in 1980.

"Before anything, we had to call an amnesty with bootleggers," says 
Carruthers. An intermediary (whom Carruthers won't name) worked on behalf of 
Page and his two colleagues to track down and obtain whatever film might be 
out there. Led Zeppelin were the most bootlegged outfit in history - their 
reticence with the media made the temptation illicitly to film their 
concerts irresistible. Small cine cameras using 8mm film were easy to 
smuggle into venues, although, crucially, the Super 8 format doesn't record 
sound. The music was often on separate audio tapes. "The job," says 
Carruthers, "was to assess the quality of audio tape, some of it obsolete, 
so old machines were hired to process it and digitalise it. Then, we had to 
work out what was on the film, and where and when, and match it to the 
music."

The surviving members of the group - Page, Plant and bassist John Paul Jones 
- - were closely involved not least of all to help identify what, on silent 
film, was being played. The result is compelling, with some sharp shocks. Is 
that a pert Germaine Greer sitting next to blond rock god Plant at a 
post-gig reception in Australia in 1972? In the same clip, Bonzo (drummer 
John Bonham) talks for the first and only time - and he comes across as 
remarkably softly spoken for a man of his fearsome reputation.

Zeppelin built their reputation on their live act and no-one in rock has 
invented on the road like them - which is why this package is, in 
Carruthers' words, like discovering shipwrecked treasure. We see and hear 
them at their living, and sometimes livid, best; this is history in the 
making. On the CDs, it's fascinating to listen to them airing great songs 
nearly a year before they could be heard on an album, such as "Over the 
Hills and Far Away", "Dancing Days", "The Ocean", all from 1973's Houses of 
the Holy. No band today, in a rock climate valuing promotion and 
merchandising above improvisation and experiment, would dare attempt that.

A visual high point comes from the penultimate stretch of film on DVD2, from 
gigs at Earls Court in 1975. Even with the doomy clouds of punk gathering, 
Zeppelin were at their zenith: airing the double-album Physical Graffiti and 
looking fabulous. A rare rendition of an old Dylan blues, "In My Time of 
Dying", one of the finest things they ever recorded, is astonishing.

The following years were disastrous for the band. Plant was seriously 
injured in a car crash in 1976, taking them off the road for a year. His son 
died of a pulmonary virus the following year, aged six. Page struggled with 
addiction and Bonzo drank - following a binge, he choked in his sleep in 
1980. Zeppelin could be no more. In a 1975 interview clip on the DVD set, 
Plant confirms that the band would never attempt solo projects while they 
were Led Zeppelin, that they couldn't play without each other. He was right. 
Led Zeppelin straddled the 1970s like a colossus, then fell silent. With the 
arrival of this project, we're able to travel back in time, and be thrilled.