Led Zeppelin
BBC Sessions

It is often said about Made In Japan by Deep Purple that "a copy of this album should be present in every home." Okay, masterpiece album, but I think it can, indeed it should, be said about Live At Leeds by The Who, At Fillmore East by the Allman Brothers, Jimi Plays Monterey, and others, among which I would include these BBC Sessions by Led Zeppelin, which I personally believe have nothing, absolutely nothing, to envy from the aforementioned titles.

I still remember the day I bought them, it was a Saturday afternoon in March of 1998. At the time, I only had the Remasters collection and The Song Remains The Same, and in my naivety, I thought there wasn't much else to know about the Zeppelin. I went to the store with the idea of getting a movie on videotape but was captivated by that light cover and those titles, many of which didn't appear in either Remasters or TSRTS. I thought about it for a bit, finally bought them, and I did well.

These BBC Sessions consist of recordings made for English radio between March 1969 and April 1971 and were broadcast in various programs such as Top Gear, One Night Stand, In Concert, etc. The first disc features performances from five different sessions, all from 1969, showcasing the very early Led Zeppelin, the more bluesy ones, grappling with a repertoire from the first two albums, especially the first one, along with some excellent covers like "The Girl I Love She Got Long Black Wavy Hair", "Something Else", and a "Travelling Riverside Blues" very different from Robert Johnson's original thanks to Plant's personalized interpretation and an excellent slide work by Page; a performance that seems to anticipate by a few years the excellent "In My Time Of Dying" from Physical Graffiti. For the first four sessions, these can't be properly called live performances as there are several subsequent overdubs, but they are more live than studio performances, more spontaneous, and with a rawer sound. The last recording session of the first CD is a real live performance, that of June 27, 1969, at Playhouse Theatre (London), finally with an audience present. Four tracks from the first album, thirty-two minutes of a completely live performance with improvisations and variations on the theme, including a pyrotechnic "Communication Breakdown" (of this track in total, considering the other takes, there are three different versions), "You Shook Me", "I Can't Quit You Baby", and closing with a superb "How Many More Times". A performance of pure hard blues, overall very intense, which alone clarifies what kind of stage animals the early Led Zeppelin were. It should be noted that "Dazed and Confused" and "White Summer" were also played that evening, but they were excluded from the collection.

But if the first CD already makes the blood boil in your veins, the second is perhaps even better. Indeed, it is entirely dedicated to the 1971 concert, again in London, but at the Paris Studios (April 1st, but it wasn't a joke). By then, Page & Company already had three albums under their belt and were completing the fourth, from which they performed three tracks. That day, the audience present had the fortune to witness one of the best Led Zeppelin concerts, a performance presented almost in its entirety with this second CD, which, in its seventy-eight minutes, includes ten of the twelve songs from the original setlist. Only "What Is And What Should Never Be" and the final encore "Communication Breakdown" are missing, excluded both for space reasons and because both are already present on the first CD. But aside from some omissions, you can't help but be left speechless in front of some of the most famous classics of a band capable of moving from the hard rock of "Immigrant Song", "Heartbreaker", and "Black Dog" to the soulful blues of "Since I've Been Loving You", from the hallucinogenic improvisations, complete with a bow, of "Dazed And Confused" to the crescendo of the masterpiece "Stairway To Heaven" (in its first radio broadcast), passing through acoustic episodes like "Going To California" and "That's The Way", then heading towards the conclusion with the mythic riff of "Whole Lotta Love", extended here with rock & roll and blues quotes; closing with the splendid "Thank You", perhaps the most beautiful ballad by the Zep, with a spine-chilling solo by Page. All four are in great shape, Bonzo as always devastating and uncontrollable, John Paul Jones as a reliable and solid musician on both bass and keyboards, Jimmy Page more inspired than ever, and Robert Plant in full voice; the overall result is one of the best live performances rock can remember.

Among the live albums by Led Zeppelin, these BBC Sessions are my favorites, and I place them ahead of the excellent How The West Was Won. I prefer them primarily because I think this features the best live Plant ever, who after '72 would start experiencing highs and lows in live performances. Just listen to the hard part of Stairway to Heaven or the end of Since I've Been Lovin You to realize it. Additionally, being recordings for radio programs, they weren't allowed to go overboard with the durations, and they were forced to contain themselves a bit, which I think is a good thing because, unfortunately, live, the four had a flaw (which for some may not even be a flaw) of excessively indulging in instrumental improvisations; here they are free form, but without overdoing it. Personally, I prefer a Dazed and Confused of eighteen minutes over those of twenty-five and more that would come later. Finally, I really like the sound of these two discs, which is rawer, more sincere, more honest, and faithful to the original compared to that of HTWWW, which instead seems to me a bit too "pumped."

When it came out in 1997, this double album was greeted with great enthusiasm by all the group's admirers, who for about twenty years had to "settle" for the only official live The Song Remains The Same (a good album but certainly not portraying the Zeppelin at their best) or, alternatively, resort to some bootleg; and by the way, it should be noted that these same recordings circulated for a long time in that "unofficial" form.

In short, I would say that this live collection is truly a must-have because it shows Led Zeppelin during their most creative phase, spontaneous and direct, able to reach the listener without dwelling too much, without overly reveling in their own skills, and still far from the mannerism that would characterize some later productions.