When dinosaurs rocked the earth
First Night: Led Zeppelin Wembley Arena London
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Nice feeling of deja vu then, when he sang "Bring It On Home" and "Heartbreaker" two in a row in the opening set. Jimmy Page lacked the floppy hat and beard, but the guitar still maintained his trade mark industrial resonance.
The show rambled on with an excursion through Led Zeppelin II, but you suspected the duo were just warming up for something else. Correct. The next song was "Walking Into Clarksdale", a non-Zep original, but none the less borne along by the same unique voice/guitar combination.
Jimmy Page continues to extract fantastic, but essentially new, noises from the instrument, his mastery of sustain and feedback second only to Jimi Hendrix.
And what of the Plant voice, patented in 1969 and imitated ever since? "When The World Was Young" provided a good test. Robert yodelled comfortably along, surfing easily on Page's guitar-generated waves. Yes, definitely the same voice.
"Stools Were Produced For Going to California" apparently started the "request" section of the gig. There were moments during this song when the guitar and vocal parts actually became indistinguishable. The same went for "Gallows Pole", which Plant insisted was an old English folk song. The difference is the Burundi drum beat that drives this number at double speed.
Distant memories, also, of Jon Bonham. "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" signalled the beginning of an exercise in voice control by Plant, each "Baby" landing perfectly after the previous one, as Page's lopping guitar quickly converted from rhythm to lead, and back again. "Psychedelic" uttered Plant as the intro began for "How Many More Times?"
And so everyone waited for Jimmy's special bit in the middle. A cheer went up when he seized his bow from the top of an amp and began steadily sawing his guitar strings. It's his oldest trick, but he does it perfectly, creating sounds usually only possible in the bath.
Plant then allowed himself a degree of vocal experimentation and wailing before the song ended with a heartening crash. "Straight into Most High", their favourite new song, featuring Middle Eastern drumming, and other noises from the desert, including the mysterious oriental oboe, actually produced here on a keyboard.
Page and Plant really look as if they're heavily into this new stuff, performing with much more seriousness than when they lapse into the "easy" songs, for example, "Whole Lotta Love". Whether Page played this with his eyes shut could not be seen at a distance of 60 yards, but it sounded like it.
Plant's then "Way Down Inside" part was OK, but required a lot of echo assistance on the microphone. The crowd bayed for an encore when "Whole Lotta Love" ended, and they were rewarded with "Black Dog". Everyone went home happy.
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