Led Zeppelin
The Song Remains The Same

In 1976, Led Zeppelin were forced into inactivity due to Plant's car accident, keeping them away from the stage. Page then resumed work on the project of a film that was supposed to document Zeppelin's live activity, which had begun in 1973 but was interrupted due to footage deemed unsatisfactory, with the intention of releasing the soundtrack on record.

Thus, a double LP, "The Song Remains The Same", was released and remained the only official live testimony of the Zeppelin for over twenty years, until 1997, the year of the release of "BBC Sessions". "The Song Remains The Same" is certainly an interesting live album, but it does not reflect the true magic of Led Zeppelin concerts. Especially considering that the Zeppelins made their live performances their real strength: just think that in America, thanks to their concerts, they were already famous before the release of their debut album and that theirs were considered the ultimate live events.

In fact, the first song on the album, an energetic "Rock And Roll", is well executed: Page delivers one of his impossible solos, while Bonham beats the skins like a madman. However, Plant sings in a lower key and struggles to replicate his studio-recorded vocal performance. Then it moves to "Celebration Day", an underrated piece well interpreted in a slightly different version from the studio, but it has nothing to do with the film: originally it linked "Rock And Roll" to "Black Dog", but it was cut during editing. This brings us to the title track "The Song Remains The Same", in an exceptional live version, with Page on his legendary double-neck guitar, followed, as was customary in concerts of the time, by "The Rain Song", in a smoother version than the studio one, despite Jones's Mellotron being a bit unsteady at times. The first disc closes with "Dazed And Confused", Zeppelin's epic live marathon, which, however, is hardly epic here. Indeed, without the film's visual element, it turns out to be quite heavy: for 25 minutes, Page does everything with his Les Paul, producing all the sounds possible and imaginable, but the result is quite disappointing; the interactions between voice and guitar and the interlude with the bow are good, but elsewhere the instrumental self-indulgence becomes really irritating.

The second disc opens with a fantastic "No Quarter", certainly the best-interpreted track on the album: Jones on keyboards delivers a superb performance, as is Page's solo: simply divine. This brings us to "Stairway To Heaven", the song par excellence, which unfortunately gives us some sour notes: Plant does not sing at his full potential, and even Page's solo is quite strained: the whole comes across as rather forced and not very convincing. Then it moves to "Moby Dick", which without the visual support loses some of its impact, for Bonham's usual quarter-hour, concluding with a beautiful "Whole Lotta Love" filled with covers of old blues songs.

When the album was released on October 22, 1976 (a day after the premiere of the eponymous film), it did not achieve tremendous success: it did reach the top position at home, but "only" second place in America (something that had never happened before for a Zeppelin album) and did not remain on the charts for many weeks, additionally damaging the sales of "Presence", released six months earlier. And the film didn't fare much better: it achieved moderate box office success but soon disappeared from circulation.

Without a doubt, this double live album could have been better: indeed, inexplicably, "Black Dog", "Heartbreaker", and "Since I've Been Loving You" were discarded during editing, whose interpretations were really excellent, as well as a very good "The Ocean"; surely also the fact that the recordings were made on July 27, 28, and 29, 1973, at the end of a long and exhausting tour, did not help improve the quality of the album. As Page said at the time, "The Song Remains The Same" was the result of one of the few compromises accepted by Led Zeppelin, and both the album and the film only prove him right. Note: The rating is a 3.5