MOST modern number one hits could fit into one of their guitar solos.
LED ZEPPELIN returned to the stage last night with their first full set in 19 years — and younger members of the crowd had heard nothing like it.
Manufactured pop is ruling the charts and young music fans are an impatient sort.
Maybe that’s why the bars at the O2 Arena in Greenwich filled during some of the band’s winding rock epics. But their classics proved music doesn’t rock like it used to.
Tracks like Whole Lotta Love and Stairway to Heaven had every one of the fans — who included LIAM GALLAGHER and SIR PAUL McCARTNEY — on their feet and shaking their fists.
Original members JIMMY PAGE, ROBERT PLANT and JOHN PAUL JONES were joined by dead drummer JOHN BONHAM’s son, JASON, 41.
The trio — with a combined age of 183 — burst on stage and opened with Good Times Bad Times, the first track of their debut album. Robert Plant — wearing jeans not quite as tight as they were in his heyday — still had the energy to strut his 59-year-old body across the stage. Page, 63, and Jones, 61, kept less energetic pace with him. As the band settled into a series of songs old and new, grown men in the mostly middle-aged and male audience began playing air guitar. Some of the old Zeppelin remained — during a monumentally long instrumental, Plant had time to go off stage as Page continued to play. One thing not so new was when in the middle of Dazed And Confused, Page got out his violin bow and started to play his guitar with it, in his trademark style. After more than an hour the bulk of the fans got what they seemed to want most — a rendition of Stairway To Heaven. When the lights went out a massive demand for an encore brought them back to play Whole Lotta Love. The adulation of 20,000 almost-equally tired fans ringing in their ears, they trooped away into the darkness. Fans of all ages had travelled from around the world to see the group and they weren’t disappointed – giving huge ovations and raving after the show. American Lisa Anderson, 57, said: “Everyone around me agreed it was an absolute triumph. “I saw them a few times when I was younger, but for me this was the best show they’ve ever done. "It was worth every penny." Support act PAOLO NUTINI, 20, told The Sun: “I wasn’t alive the first time around but I’ve seen the footage on DVD. “Now watching them live, I’ve been taught a true musical lesson. “They were just so intense and so tight, even after all these years.
“I was just blown away.”
I think I have stated before that this is one of the great studio bands ever. I have seen them twice and each time, they have not been good. Is it me, or have the things I have seen and heard from this show not been real great? There is nothing like Zep. I am without a doubt one of their biggest fans, but I have long thought the stage was not where they excelled. In the studio, yes. Live? No.
