Customer Reviews

Led Zeppelin: The Song Remains the Same (Widescreen)

5 star:		(80)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(27)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I cannot say enough good stuff about this movie! I know lots of people say these were not their best performances, but it's still amazing to watch. "Dazed and Confused" and "No Quarter" blew me away. The sound on this movie is great, you can hear pretty much everything quite clearly. I have yet to watch bonus features, I just keep rewatching the concert!
The weird little acting sequences add some variety and interest throught out the movie, because it could get a little dry at times.
I recomend this movie to anyone and everyone! It's amazing.

Led Zeppelin will remain the giants of Rock 'n' Roll for a long time to come. Although they've been criticized for "robbing" the blues greats, the truth as any student of the blues will know is that the tradition of the blues (and folk for that matter) is to take existing songs and then modify them with new variations and improvisations until eventually a new song emerges that's virtually indistinguishable from the original. Led Zeppelin have done this with some of the early songs, especially on the first album, but then developed their own unmistakable sound that has since been imitated but never duplicated. This concert is a document of the band at the peak of their powers, claiming their place as the undisputed biggest band in the world at the time, and for many years after.

"The Song Remains the Same" showcases the band during their 1973 USA tour promoting their Houses of the Holy album, with footage from their three nights at Madison Square Garden in New York. The great (now classic) songs from the first five albums are here, including "Dazed and Confused", "Rock and Roll", "Moby Dick", "Whole Lotta Love", and of course the anthemic "Stairway to Heaven". But this is more than simply a film of the concert, as it includes several "fantasy" sequences for each individual band member, making it into a mix of live concert footage and music video, during the days before music videos were widely available on MTV (and many places elsewhere within a few years). The fantasy sequences are intertwined with the concert film, giving each band member a chance to show his individual personality through imagery only made possible with film. The original film (disc one of the two disc version) also includes some news or documentary type footage of the concerts, including investigation of the disappearance of money that the band had deposited in the hotel's safe deposit box.

This new release of the original movie has added a second disc that contains some additional concert footage (not from New York), as well as an interview with manager Peter Grant and lead singer Robert Plant, originally shown on BBC's "The Old Grey Whistle Test" prior to release of the film in 1976. In total it may not be much in terms of "bonus material" or "extras" but for any Zeppelin fanatic - and I include myself here - it's really a "must have" addition to all of the other Zeppelin albums and videos that are bursting our shelves. Besides, at the price being offered, it's almost free in the sense that I can buy the new two disc version and trade the previous one disc version with a friend for something else.

All in all, I'd highly recommend this newer version, even to anyone who has the previous version already in their collection.

Finally what many Zep fans have hoped for, a remastered rerelease of The Song Remains The Same. I know i have and that is strange because i never thought that the performances are all that great. And over the years the band has come out and said that they too don't think they played well at those New York shows ( the bootlegs of the Los Angeles shows are far superior performances). But this is the only official document of that tour so we cling to it, we come back to it, even though the band's playing is sloppy and tired. But it still is fun to watch, just to see a young Led Zeppelin in their heyday. And that tiny stage. Here they were playing arenas and stadiums and they had a stage set that was right for a 2000 seat concert hall. There are a few good performances such as the extras Misty Mountain Hop and Celebration Day and the Ocean. There just isn't enough of them.

The package is nice, it comes with a set of lobby cards, some reproductions of movie premiere tickets and newspaper clippings. Most importantly the picture quality and sound quality are vastly improved, it really does sound and look beautiful. And if you don't already know, the film isn't completely live. When the band got back to England they weren't happy with what they filmed so they set up the stage in Shepperton studios and reshot many scenes and you can see some times that Jimmy's guitar playing isn't in synch with what we hear and see. Also the film was shot over 3 nights in N.Y and the band was told to wear the same clothes for all shows to make it look like one show, but John Paul Jones wears different clothes on each night and the editing reflects that. You see JPJ wearing 3 different outfits in one song. Sad really. One last thing i would like to add is why with todays technology, they didn't give us an option to watch the film with or without the fantasy pieces, which i always found boring. So there you have it, not a great film, but still a fun snapshot of the band when they ruled the land.

This a classic cult film from the 70s. Be sure your television or viewing device is hooked up to a decent sound system and crank it up !

If this wasn't the only concert film available of Led Zeppelin it wouldn't be such a tragedy.. but it is.

This is a second rate concert at best. At the time it was released Plant himself acknowledged its shortcomings, saying it simply had to be released, regardless of the calibre of the music. His words were to the effect that it 'certainly wasn't magical'. And it isn't.

For those of us lucky enough to have heard/seen a magical performance of Led Zeppelin in their prime, this concert representation is a pathetic farce. It doesn't even scratch the surface of the brilliance of the band.

On top of the mediocre performance, the editing is simply brutal. The 'dream' sequences spliced in and out of the concert footage are rather silly and beside the point, and even the live footage is so butchered that the sound/images don't match half the time.

As for the 'dream' sequences themselves.... the fact that the makers of this film are trying to 'liven up' a Led Zeppelin concert should be your first clue that something is wrong.

It's not that this film is so bad that bothers me, it's not terrible... it's just mediocre. BUT THAT'S THE PROBLEM! Led Zeppelin was one of the best rock bands of all time.. anyone watching this who had never seen a 'magical' concert would scratch their heads and wonder what all the fuss was about.

Let's pray that somewhere, sometime, someone digs up some magic from the video vaults and shows the kind of mind-blowing concert that these guys were capable of.

Anyone who owns any "underground" Zeppelin performances (or, for that matter, BBC Sessions) knows that this is NOT Led Zeppelin at their best. In fact, the 73 tour may well have been their worst. If you're a fan, of course you have to own this, but if you're a REAL DIE-HARD FANATIC, then send some blank tapes to someone in a newsgroup and get yourself a copy of a performance from the early days or the L.A. shows of '77. Then you'll REALLY hear what Led Zeppelin was all about... and you'll realize that 'The Song Remains The Same' was an unfortunate mistake.

First of all I like the movie but this collector's reissue is severely lacking and it is sad because this was a great opportunity to provide the fans with a piece of Zep folklore. This dvd is a bad repackaging with no, I repeat no, bonus features included. A director's commentary and a band commentary would have been great. It would have been nice to hear what the surviving members thought about the movie and the concert. That would have been a good start but it didn't happen. The second disc could have been the complete footage of the concert and whatever other footage was available, I mean is that too much to ask. The producers should have gone back to the vaults of the original footage and reconstructed the concert in sequence and included other angles, backstage footage, etc.. This dvd could have been one of the best dvd releases this year but instead it is a missed opportunity.

After sesing this movie in theater, i have bought the DVD and now the Blu-Ray. Simply because it was a great experience of watching this band on film when i was young, and i have to relive this experience through the DVD. The Blu-Ray had made a improvement on the picture and the sound in DTS is acceptable for someting old. The picture is not perfect because it was not made with the technology of today, but it's acceptable when you want see more than a concert, this film got some fictional images, behind the scene footage of real facts that happened that night and also real footage of band members with their family. The soundtrack audio of the concert is always present during this movie. I don't know if i can say that is the most entertaining movie ever made, but for me it is, because i love the band and i think the way they have made this movie keeps my attention all the way through.

The title of this DVD more than explains the slight monotony of the content, which is cleverly disguised by the producer introducing all manner of unrelated scenes and events to add some variety. When that is exhausted, you introduce a bit of gratuitous abuse of people by a low life tough guy and then dramatize it all for American TV by having some unsolved mystery crime where 'the money disappears'. I bought the entire package because I wanted a live performance of Stairway, and for that it was worth the effort. I am surprised that a band of this stature had to scrape together so much filler stuff to make the whole appear congruous.

First the DVD: although not one of Zep's finest performance , it is amazing to hear them in glorious 5.1, 35 years after the Madison Square Garden show. I was browsing through the reviews of Led Zep DVD's and couldn't help but notice the one by "a customer" from 2004; he says that Jimmy Page never played on a Les Paul Custom in concert, I beg to differ; on the magnificent DVD from 2003, three songs featuring Page with his Black Beauty at the Royal Albert Hall show it off very clearly. Although it had a Bigsby vibrato arm and 3 humbucker pick-ups (two without covers)it was in fact a Les Paul Custom. That guitar was stolen not long after !