The Song Remains The Same

In 1976, my friend Ben, me and our two dates for the evening jumped into my ‘68 Malibu and drove to Westwood to see The Song Remains The Same. Without video tapes, DVDs, YouTube and all the other resources of today brimming over with concert footage, few people knew what to expect. I had seen Zeppelin at the Long Beach Arena the year before, so I had an inkling of what we were about to see, but for many people in the movie theater, this concert film was the next best thing to being there. Over 30 years later, the reissued DVD, newly remixed with remastered 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound, brings that feeling even closer to home.

The DVD and the soundtrack album have both been buffed out with extra tracks. Whereas the CD retraces the actual concert with all 14 songs intact, which includes six songs not on the original release — "Black Dog," "Over The Hills And Far Away," "Misty Mountain Hop," "Since I've Been Loving You," "The Ocean," and "Heartbreaker" — the DVD adds a second disc with the deleted performances, along with rough news and interview footage and other enticements that add little value. Nevertheless, in a year when the surviving members are reuniting, you gotta throw in all the goodies you can find to keep the fans fat and happy. For diehards, there’s a limited collector's edition with a collectible vintage T-shirt with original album artwork design, the soundtrack CD, lobby cards, reproductions of original premiere invites, tour schedule, and other surprises.

At the heart of The Song Remains The Same is one July night at the Madison Square Garden in 1973, not a particularly stellar performance, but satisfying nonetheless as Zeppelin delivered a solid set that featured “Dazed and Confused,” “Whole Lotta Love,” and “Stairway To Heaven.” The film’s fantasy sequences revolve around the ideas and lives of Messrs. Page, Plant, Jones and Bonham — ranging from castles and wizards to dragsters and tractors. It’s arguable as to whether disrupting the live footage with such illusions of grandeur gave the film legs, but it certainly illustrated the band’s penchant for the opulence their success brought while the song would always remain the same.