Led Zeppelin - The Song Remains the Same

The film was assembled from the concerts Led Zeppelin played at Madison Square Garden in New York in 1973. Between the concert sections there are separate fantasy sequences for each member: one fights with a sword, one is in the country with his family, one drives a racing car, one is inside a gangster film. These passages are not narrative but purely visual. Joe Massot began shooting it, then left, and Peter Clifton completed it. Where the recordings had gaps, material was reshot in a studio; the stage was rebuilt and the band played the same pieces again. The concert recordings are from the group's best known period and the songs are played in their extended stage versions; some run close to twenty minutes. As a documentary it is thin: the logistics of the tour, the theft of the box office takings and the backstage are all passed over quickly. It came out in 1976, three years after the concerts; the band was somewhere else by then and the footage was watched as a document of the past. The group itself was not happy with the film and said so openly in later years. Who it is for: Led Zeppelin listeners and viewers who like seventies rock concert films. Who it is not for: the fantasy sections interrupt, the running time is long, and it carries nothing for a viewer uninterested in the band.