Led Zeppelin - The Song Remains the Same

Starring:John Bonham, John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Peter Grant (III), Derek Skilton, Colin Rigdon, Jason Bonham, Patricia Bonham, Richard Cole (II), Karac Plant, Maureen Plant, Roy Harper, Carmen Plant
Director: Peter Clifton, Joe Massot
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

For Led Zeppelin fanatics, this 1976 feature The Song Remains the Same is a treasure of searing live performances, particularly welcome in light of the sad scarcity of such visual material from the band's great decade. Despite the group's road weariness after a long tour, their final, three-night stand at Madison Square Garden in 1973 was full of the old power. Performances of "No Quarter," "Whole Lotta Love," "Black Dog," "Dazed and Confused," and "Stairway to Heaven" underscore Zep's charisma. Trouble is, you don't get an unbroken performance here. Viewers have to wade through a mishmash of documentary insight into the lives of Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones, as well as fantasy sequences supposedly inspired by the thoughts and fantasies of the band's individual members. It's mostly garish and silly, but there are some nice elements, especially insights into the late Bonham's life. The DVD doesn't offer much in the way of add-ons (a theatrical trailer is about it), but there is also enhanced viewing for 16 x 9 televisions. --Tom Keogh

Description

Experience the lightning of Led Zeppelin's 1973 Madison Square Garden concert-and enter the dreams and backstage lives of one of rock's all-time best-selling bands! Year: 1976 Director: Peter Clifton, Joe Massot Starring: Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Bonham, John Paul Jones

Customer Reviews:

Pure Zeppelin.......2007-05-07

I am biased because i love Zeppelin and have done for over 30 years but Song Remains the Same is just a fantastic insight into the band and an awesome display of live music. Not many bands sound better live than their studio albums but Zeppelin pull it off, from Plants awesome vocals to Pages screaming guitar this album just blows you away!

A product of its time..........2007-04-03

In some ways this film was rendered obsolete by the 2003 Led Zeppelin 2-disc dvd set, in terms of Led Zeppelin live on video. Shot at the end of the 1973 Houses of the Holy US Tour over several nights in Madison Square Garden, the Song Remains The Same had been shelved for a few years and only managed to get released when lead singer Robert Plant's car accident sidelined the band for a year. The concert footage finds the band a bit spaced out and exhausted at times in terms of the performances (although I suppose buggering daft teenage runaways and consuming vast quantities of booze, coke and smack will tend to do that to you); a nearly half-hour version of Dazed and Confused becomes particularly pondersome about 7 minutes in. Combined with the live footage were fantasy concept sequences, most of which appear to have been directed by 1st year film school students tripping on mescaline. Only John Bonhams really works well. Still, it is an unapologetic display of the debauchery, confidence and mystery that Zeppelin evoked at the time - just not really some of the band's best performances.

Led Zeppelin DVD.......2007-01-09

The Song Remanis the Same DVD - Super DVD - it Rocks!

Fascinating...In its way.......2006-11-28

What can you say about THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME--or Led Zeppelin for that matter--some 30 years after the film's release? Everybody pretty much knows where he (or she, but let's be honest, we're mostly talking 'he's' here) stands on all things Zep. For those who never saw the band live (like me), it certainly gives you a taste of what that experience was like. But then, I'm told that the DVD more recently compiled by Jimmy Page did a better job at that.

But still, this performance film/cum documentary/cum pre-MTV video fest captures an era in the group's history and our own in its own unique fashion. I was never an ueber-fan, so maybe it's not really for me to say, but I, for one, did not come away from this film feeling too disappointed.

Some maintain that SONG really would have been much better had it simply been a performance film, with no pretensions. But actually, there have been VERY few pure performance docs historically. Even the best concert films (THE LAST WALTZ,say) usually throw in a least a few documentary elements, a la WOODSTOCK. And it can give the viewer a better sense of place (here NYC) and time (1973). The documentary elements give some flavor of the rock'n'roll life as it was lived by both musicians AND fans. And it does so more by presenting random clips of backstage life than by interviews. It speaks volumes to me that in one scene, security is letting a couple of kids sneak backstage with a proverbial nod and a wink, and in another, someone--who may have been a little drunker, more high or otherwise more disorderly--is being chased down like a (black)dog.

And all those shots of the NYC skyline in 1973 register in a very strange way in these post-9/11 times. Those towers were pretty new back then.

As for the much reviled "fantasy" sequences. Well, I admit, I'd probably prefer to see more live sequences myself. But they really do serve as a precursor to the video-era (and you'll recall that the first videos weren't exactly big budget spectaculars either, so having Robert Plant in medieval garb ride around on horseback for a couple of minutes or having Jimmy Page scaling a mysterious mountain, only to meet up with a mysterious warlock (who looks, again mysteriously, like his own bad self) is scarcely any sillier than what was being broadcast 24 hours a day on "Music Television" a few years later. As a bridge between psychedelia and the MTV era, THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME is an invaluable document.

Besides would a full length performance film really have been everything some fans seem to imagine it could have been? I don't think so. At some point, I concluded that the cinematographer must have had a mad crush on Robert Plant. The shots of his, uh, torso were getting a little monotonous. And poor John Paul Jones is all but ignored in the live shots. He gets a few moments where he's fingering the fretboard, before the camera action is once again lovingly diverted back to Page and Plant. Well, they were the showmen after all. And this was quite the show.

For good or ill, depending on your point of view. At the time, as I recall, I was just purist enough to think that I could have done with less 'show' and more of the musicianship I knew the group was capable of. But looking at the film in 2006, I'm more "que era, era." It was what it was. And it's worth a look.

Hutch's Led Zep movie review.......2006-11-12

The Song Remains The Same is Led Zep at their early (1973) in concert best. For those of us that were lucky enough to see the band in concert, this is as close as we can get to revisiting that magicial time! For everyone this lets us see why Led Zep was one of the few greatest bands of all time!! The music and the performance here proves that!!

Average customer rating:

Song Remains the Same
Starring: Led Zeppelin
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Musicals & Performing Arts | Genres | DVD | Video

( S ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

DVD:

DVD

DVD

DVD

Kaleido Star Vol 2:Animini Mini Disc

Jerry Maguire / Cocktail

Sunset (REGION 1) (NTSC)

DVD: Birthday Girl

Roger Corman's Frankenstein