Zep-field Follies: Rock Turtleneck Reports from Led Zeppelin's World Premiere of "Celebration Day"

As you can see by the information divined on the poster above, Led Zeppelin has a film coming out in November called Celebration Day, which chronicles their triumphant and probably final concert at London's O2 Arena five years ago. The film is enjoying a very brief theatrical run ahead of time, beginning a premiere at the legendary Ziegfeld Theatre in New York this past Tuesday.

It so happens that my brother Super Dave is one of the most heavy-duty Zeppelin fans in the United States and of course managed to find his way into the star-studded premiere. He filed the following report.

Had a great time at the premiere. There were quite a few celebs there: Paul Stanley from Kiss (who I met), Naomi Campbell, Joan Jett, Stevie Nicks and the guy who runs Led Zeppelin.com, if that counts. I also met an interesting character named Bucks Burnett who was wearing pants made from the cover of Houses of the Holy and said he used to be the butler for Ronnie Lane of the Faces and says he's good friends with Jimmy Page. 

Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham (son of John who plays drums in Celebration Day) came in just before showtime.  They were seated several rows behind me.  I was actually in the fourth row on left.

The movie is quite spectactular on the big screen in HD with sound to match.  Running time is around two hours and is all concert except for the opening and closing credits. There are no Song-Remains-The-Same-style dream sequences or even Last Waltz offstage interviews. It's all Zep, all the time, and it is very good indeed. Here's the trailer:

The first few songs, "Good Times Bad Times," "Ramble On" and "Black Dog" were good, but the band didn't really start to cook until "In My Time of Dying."  Pretty much everything onwards is phenomenal.  

Other highlights would be "For Your Life" the Presence deep cut that had never been performed live before, "Dazed and Confused" with a trademark violin bow solo from Page, "No Quarter," "Nobody's Fault But Mine," "Trampled Underfoot" and "Since I've Been Loving You."  Great playing by the band and Jimmy really nailed the solos. 

"Kashmir," however, was probably the best thing in the the film and may be their best live verion ever.  It's earth shattering.  That closed the set. Here's an audience recording from the O2 concert.

Two encores were "Whole Lotta Love" (with Jimmy on theramin) and "Rock and Roll," which ironically used to be their opening number. Cool moment at the end as Page, Plant and Jones turn their backs to audience and watch Jason do the drum solo. 

Overall, just a great concert movie. What a way to go out. The way it was filmed was amazing mixing 8mm and 16mm footage was pretty cool.  Not many shots of crowd, but some great closeups.  The director Dick Carruthers used 16 cameras for the movie.

In a sign of how times have changed since Zep's "Riot House" days, Page made a stop this week while in New York, not to some sort of subterranean santanic den of worship or to a dealer on 125th Street, but to Shake Shake, the scrumptuous outdoor burger joint in Madison Square Park. No word if Page went "off the menu" and ordered a red snapper sandwich.

Thanks Super for the intrepid report. Let's go out with a vintage clip of the band doing the title cut of Celebration Day. These guys were good, and they still are.



Celebration Day will be out on November 19 in myriad CD/DVD/LP configurations. Pre-order it on Amazon here.