Led Zeppelin – The Song Remains The Same (Special Edition)

artist website

publisher

impulse buy

Warner Home Video
Produced by Jimmy Page

Cunningly timed to coincide with the reunion concert at the O2 Arena, and Christmas of course, this ‘definitive’ edition of the original 1976 concert movie has been fully remastered and the soundtrack remixed, with the benefit of the addition of previously missing songs, all overseen by the band themselves.

For anyone not already familiar with the original film, The Song Remains The Same, originally released in 1976, is concert footage from the band’s run of shows at Madison Square Gardens in New York in 1973 mixed with backstage and “at home” footage and “fantasy sequences” starring the band and their crew (Robert Plant wearing bear-skin and wielding a sword is ridiculous). The concert footage is incomplete (i.e. it’s not a whole show) and is consistently interrupted by the other stuff.

What this new version desperately needed, and suffers badly without, is a “concert only” option. For countless numbers of years fans of many different bands have complained when DVDs are released that interrupt the concert footage (the very reason they bought the DVD in the first place) with unnecessary, uninteresting and largely poorly conceived backstage, interview, behind the scenes or any other footage (especially utterly pointless “fantasy sequences”). It was a bad idea in 1976, it’s still a bad idea now and a brand new DVD remastering should have been the perfect opportunity to right the original wrong. The opportunity has been disappointingly wasted. It is possible to select just the songs, but even this option still includes the parts of the other footage that have live music playing over the top.

So much has been made of the inclusion of previously unreleased songs and the remastering of the soundtrack from the original tapes for this release, and rightly so as the performance and quality of the material is second to none. But the question has to be asked, why was so much made of these new features? Simple. Because the music is what everyone cares about. The people behind the DVD know that, clearly, because they’re making sure everyone’s aware of the new musical features. Not a mention of the rest of it, because everyone knows nobody is interested.

And on the topic of the inclusion of these extra songs, they haven’t managed to get that right either. The songs are not, as I was expecting, slotted into their rightful place in the concert footage, but are included as individual (not even consecutive) bonus features on the second disc in between lots of interview footage, the original trailer, a news report and the audio of the 1976 Radio Profile Spotlight by famed director Cameron Crowe.

The Song Remains The Same has needed to be a pure concert DVD for 30 years. Why else would the leaked complete bootleg versions of the Madison Square Garden ’73 shows be amongst the most popular and highly desirable videos for Led Zeppelin collectors? It’s no secret that that’s what the fans want, and have always wanted, and surely can’t have passed people connected to the band by. So why not give them what they want?

This is the best version of The Song Remains The Same available. There’s no doubt about that. The footages looks and sounds fantastic. The problem is evidently that the original was flawed, and the chance to correct it hasn’t been taken, which may leave many collectors thinking “why did they bother?”

“ disappointingly wasted ”

Tracklist:
DVD1: (songs only) Bron-Yr-Aur / Rock And Roll / Black Dog / Since I’ve Been Loving You / No Quarter / The Song Remains The Same / The Rain Song / Dazed And Confused / Hell Is… / Stairway To Heaven / Moby Dick / Heartbreaker / Whole Lotta Love
DVD2: Tampa News Report / Over The Hills And Far Away / Boating Down The Thames / Celebration Day (Cutting Copy) / The Robbery / Misty Mountain Hop / Original Film Trailer / The Ocean / Radio Profile Spotlight by Cameron Crowe / Credits

Written by Andy Lye
More: Hard Rock, Live DVDs, Re-release, Led Zeppelin