The thing is, I was never a Ledhead back in the day. I think the only Led Zeppelin album (8-track? Vinyl? Cassette? I don’t remember) I actually owned in the 70s was Houses Of The Holy. I remember being in awe of the majesty of “Kashmir” when I first heard it on the radio in 1975, but not enough to buy Physical Graffiti. The rest of the Led Zep catalog was burnt into my DNA from the soundtrack to my early teen years provided by WMEX and WRKO, two AM giants blasting their signals all the way from Boston up to our little rock off the Maine coast – and later on by WBLM (my introduction to free-form furry freak FM).
I knew the riff to “Black Dog” without knowing the song’s actual name for years; “Whole Lotta Love” was as raunchy as raunchy could get at the time and still get airplay; “Ramble On” built a bridge between a place where hobbits dwelt and stacks of Marshalls; and you couldn’t walk into a guitar shop without some young picker hunched over an acoustic they’d grabbed off the wall, trying out their recently-worked-out version of the intro to “Stairway To Heaven”. (That right there was probably enough to keep me from wanting to own a copy of it.)
So there it was: Led Zeppelin was a part of my growing up, but not a part of me, as such. So why was I drawn to watching Celebration Day, the recently-released documentary of their 2007 reunion performance at London’s O2 Arena?
Partly because guitarist Jimmy Page will be 69 in January (he was a month shy of his 64th birthday when Zep played the O2). Bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones will turn 67 a few days before Page, while vocalist Robert Plant is the baby of the surviving original members, having turned 64 this past August.
Those three birthdays represent about 50% of the reason for watching Celebration Day ; the other half of the equation is the fact that I’ll turn 55 this coming February.
It’s a funny spot that the folks of my generation are in. We looked up to the original bad boys (and girls) of rock ‘n’ roll; we witnessed big changes in the world around us as we grew up and the music we listened to was at the very least the soundtrack, if not an influence, on what was happening.
Once the momentum started, of course, things kept evolving and changing. And many of the musical pioneers of the 60s and early 70s resembled rock ‘n’ roll Daniel Boones to the subsequent generations – coonskin caps, muskets, and all – their antiqued albums remastered for posterity; the aural equivalent of “D. Boone Cilled A Bar On Tree In Year 1760”.
Some have aged well; some haven’t. And while Plant, Page, and Jones have continued to create their own music with various projects over the years, there hasn’t been a Led Zeppelin since they disbanded following drummer John Bonham’s death in 1980.
So for me it was a study in the reality of growing older versus the non-database/laboratory-study-defying powers of rock ‘n’ roll. The old blues guys had it made in the sense that they’d played sitting down when they were 20; it was cool to be on a stool when they were 60. Or 70. How does one draw off and let it fly when in the throes of self-produced monstrous riffs without looking “too old to be doing that sort of thing”?
Let’s face it: there wasn’t a big risk involved in going to Celebration Day. Somebody must’ve been cool with what went down on stage at the O2 in 2007, or the documentary would’ve been killed in its tracks. There definitely wasn’t the NASCAR phenomenon that nobody wants to admit to – we weren’t going to see any wrecks. But the question I had as my wife and I headed to the theater to watch Celebration Day on the big screen was: did they do more than simply pull it off? I’m certainly no Zep-can-do-no-wrong hopeless fanatic; I trusted that I’d know the difference between a well-executed performance and a captured moment of inspiration by some old masters.
(We have some sweet independent film theaters in Maine; Railroad Square up in Waterville is one of our favorites, well worth the hour or so drive from where we live. Over the years, they’ve brought us Festival Express ; Jonathan Demme’s Neil Young documentaries; and earlier this year Tigger and I watched Marley at Railroad Square weeks after wearing my reading glasses and watching a review stream on my Mac in preparation to interview director Kevin Macdonald. They’ve provided countless hours of non-music-related entertainment on their screens, as well. And the popcorn’s always popping right then. You may never be anywhere near Waterville, ME – but if you do, check out Railroad Square. And in any case, support your local folks whether it’s film, books, or music. Inventory is no replacement for soul.)
We bought our tickets and entered the theater 15 minutes or so before show time. There were a handful of folks there – at least as old as us – spread out amongst the seats. By the time the lights went down, there were a couple dozen or so. It was a little disappointing (the sort of thing that makes you question yourself, I suppose) but one thing was true – the people who were there were there for a reason, which was cool.
The movie wasted no time in getting to the meat of the matter; the opening moments were shot from the darkened O2 seconds before the band hit the stage. A newscast from 1973 was superimposed on the scene – a report on Led Zep’s attendance-record-breaking performance in Tampa, FL – with the commentators looking and sounding like geek scientists watching the band from the safety of a plate-glassed observation station. (“I’m pleased to say that one of the group’s four members has my same name – that’s John Paul Jones and he’s their bass player,” reports one of the newsmen. Jesus … )
There was enough light being emitted from raised cellphones and exits to allow you to realize that the camera was peering down onto the stage from high in the rafters as the click of drumsticks counting off the opening song could be plainly heard.
You have undoubtedly noticed that I haven’t mentioned the band’s drummer for the O2 performance yet – and I have my reasons. Not because he doesn’t deserve it; far from it. If anything, Jason Bonham was the night’s hero – the below-decks engineer who drove the beast while perched where his father had last sat 27 years before. Jason’s presence – and his own experience – was of a different kind, that’s all. His playing was marvelous: a mix of his father’s grooves and rhythms conjured up by the night’s music itself … a feat and fact made all the more surreal by the math of the matter. Jason was certainly the young lad of the group on that night in December of 2007 – but you have to remember that he was, at that moment, 9 years older than his father was when he died.
The count led into the opening slams of “Good Times Bad Times” – an appropriate liftoff for a number of reasons. There was the visual drama of the blackness exploding with light in sync with the crashing rhythm; there was the fact that the tune was the first song on the first side of the first Zeppelin album; and then there were the lyrics, first sung by Plant in 1969 – and fitting the bill quite well 38 years later:
In the days of my youth
I was told what it means to be a man
Now I’ve reached that age
I’ve tried to do all those things the best I can
No matter how I try
I find my way into the same old jam
Good times bad times
You know I’ve had my share …
The camera landed on the stage as Plant tore into the verse – voice sounding strong and solid, Jason backing him with headset mic clamped around his shaven skull as he walloped the hell out of his kit.
What I was there for came seconds later: John Paul Jones – by nature the most reserved on stage – turned from Jason to face the stage; for a moment or two, his attention was focused on his fretting hand, but then as the band thudded to the end of “… to be a man …” Jones was totally gathered up in the groove and made THE DUCK FACE.
Ah, yes – the duck face. The total abandonment of any attempt to look cool by a musician; the moment when one is simply a slave to the groove and can’t help but slightly hunch the shoulders, lean the head forward, and push all the available skin on the front of the skull into the lips – totally resembling a large duck. The deal was sealed a millisecond later when Page swung towards Jones, picking arm chunking away at his Les Paul and pulled his own DUCK FACE.
DOUBLE DUCK FACE: we were rolling. If the vibe wasn’t there; if the groove wasn’t there; if the music wasn’t happening, the duck face would be out of place … and would be sadly nothing more than an old man looking silly. But no: it only took a minute or two to establish the fact that these cats wanted to do this; needed to do this; just plain had to do this – and a 64-year-old man with hair like Beethoven and wearing a knee-length black coat could be held hostage by the music, play his ass off, and pull the duck face.
At the end of the second verse, Plant let fly with the microphone, snapping it back into his grasp on the downbeat that led into Page’s first solo of the night. The picking was classic – enough quoting of the original to please the fanatical; enough out there to be fresh at the same time. Again, the camera caught the moment that best told the tale: the quick glance Jones gave Page as he touched back down – and the grin that came with it.
I won’t turn this into a blow-by-blow account of the night. Our fellow viewers were like any concert crowd – everything from silent, rapt attention to hoots and hollers at each and every key moment. On screen, the energy never lagged – and the grins amongst the players kept on coming. Yes, there were moments that risked being clichés (Page had – had – to lay a bow to the Les Paul’s strings during “Dazed And Confused”, for instance) but the obvious fact that all hands were blowing themselves away with what was happening at their own hands overrode any feeling of a particular move being canned.
“Rock And Roll” was the finale: Jones worked his bass hard as Page blistered through his last solo of the night; Plant laid down the last “Lonely, lonely, lonely … time” as Jones and Page turn to face Jason, who launched into the drum roll of his life – and his father’s, as well; Plant, Page, and Jones visibly flinched at the young Bonham’s power – and then Page locked eyes with him and they landed the mighty beast with a beautiful crash.
You can’t fake joy; you can’t fake pride … and you really can’t fake the duck face.
Tigger and I left the theater grinning and talked about the music all the way home – and have returned to that night in conversation since.
Whether there’s ever another live Led Zeppelin performance or not doesn’t matter to me at this point. They certainly don’t owe it to us – they should only do it if they feel they owe it to themselves.
All I know is, I received reassurance by watching Celebration Day on the big screen.
Long live the duck face.
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Visit the world of Brian Robbins at Brian-robbins.com
