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Europe '80: A conscious attempt to deconstruct the mythology?


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1 hour ago, KellyGirl said:

Yup! Many times!  :lol: I just meant that songs like Dazed and Confused  or, The Rain  Song  didn't
need those 'fantasy'  scenes to sell them to the listener.   I can listen to those songs  without
needing to see Robert on a horse,  or Jimmy all hermity hermit on the mountain top.  The 80s I
think would have had Zeppelin doing that kind of nonsense plus worse.  Page would have been
climbing that hill top in his Knebworth tan pants and blue button down. 

I don't think they were that smug in 1980...They were not the same band they had been back in 1973 or even 1976. Robert was not the Golden God anymore...That died with Karac.

I think they would've been the one 'older' band to continue to make great records in the '80s. Think of Queen's career without Hot Space. I can see Wearing and Tearing, Darlene, Ozone Baby etc being dug up for an early 80s album with some more experimental Jonesy numbers. ITTOD was a transition, it wasn't the future. Just as every song on Physical Graffiti didn't copy The Crunge....

At the absolute worst it might've sounded like Rush's 80s material.

But the X-YZ sessions show, Jimmy was still capable of churning out heavy riffs even in 1981. Robert was supposed to join as singer but wasn't ready emotionally yet or so I heard....

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Yeah, well I thought the fashion change was interesting(fan since 77', but too young for live shows) but even the shorter

songs etc.,  how exactly did the "economy" really make the songs more powerful ? I think it's great that there are champions out there for that 80' tour. But to me much of that tour was like a somewhat disabled Porsche which could

only hit 100 mph, not the 180 it's meant to do. Zep at half speed or coasting along, good for some, but I can't forget

the musical hurricanes and wrecking balls of the past. I agree, though, Zep was almost totally contrary to what 

came musically and culturally in the 80's. Sorry if there is a blank space or double entry, I can't fix it.

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On 3/4/2017 at 5:53 PM, RoundingRover said:

I'm wondering what you guys think the line of thought was for 1980. 

Prior to September, was 1980 the end or just begin?
 

Punk reminded Jimmy Page certainly that he and the Yardbirds invented it and were so hip that once upon a time they were doing VU covers, hence opening with Train Kept A Rollin' which served to remind them to get back to the basics, and to their own roots.  They had dropped "Dazed" years ago for the '77 tour and decided not to bring the laser light show on the stripped down 1980 tour.  No Quarter and Moby Dick were also dropped.  But White Summer remained ... And once you got Zep going, you couldn't keep them from jamming.  

The dissonant Trampled uNderfoot jam extended 10+ mins. Whole Lotta Love could go much longer, and I've been listening to the wildly experimental WLL from Bonzo's Last Stand in West Berlin. JImmy's playing No Wave licks in that, and you can here where he was trying to work them into his repertoire. The Damned seems to have been the only band he liked, so his new wave/punk antennae was pretty limited to just a couple of things, and those were not the sort of things that anybody in the mainstream paid much attention to -- so when someone says "new wave" I'm pretty sure they've got many things in mind that Led Zep was not too interested in.

The American masses in 1980 were getting re-acquainted with Rush on the radio and spent the summer going crazy over the new AC/DC and Van Halen albums, which sold about 5 million, and then some including the rest of their catalogs. This -- and trying to figure out what Devo was all about -- was what we were doing while waiting for the Zep tour, the most anticipated event since ... the last Zep tour.  (edit: and of course, there was ITTOD, which outselling everything bu the AC?DC). 

The punk-new wave was a nascent thing, or two or three separate nascent things. The only people who cared about punk were people in punk bands and a few critics like Christgau and Bangs writing in the Village Voice -- and Robert Plant, apparently -- the numbers don't lie on this, so a lot of the "new wave" sensibility is a mythology we hear too much about now. How do the gold records the Clash got for Sandinista and London Calling 10-15 years after the fact stack up against the gold record Molly Hatchet received in the 1980 for Beatin the Odds?  They don't, and the industry noticed that.  Led Zep couldn't have cared too much about it all, in any case. THEY were the dominant force in the industry and the market.

My question for anybody who knows is this:  Was Zep planning to bring the full-on Showco production and laser light show to the US?  My guess is they would have, but I think whether they were or not effects the answer to the original questions posed in this thread.  

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On ‎07‎/‎03‎/‎2017 at 9:54 PM, RoundingRover said:

ITTOD was a transition, it wasn't the future. 

Exactly. Jimmy himself said it was a 'transitional' album and that he and Bonzo had already talked about the next album being 'hard-hitting and riff-based.'

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Robert was very clearly in the drivers seat at this point and no doubt was very much behind the new leaner image.  He had gained a great deal of power in the band following the death of his son.  Remember, he was "talked into" continuing by Grant and set down some new rules about tour lengths, etc.  You only have to look at his post Zep image to see how much he was dictating format on that last tour.

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Well I think Robert was kind of dictating or implying his end in Zep concerning ITTOD and any tours forward. This whole

thing about getting leaner, yes maybe a bit, but then you are biting the hand that feeds. Prove me wrong, but I've

never heard anyone say concerning Zep's 80' European tour that the band has regained it's former glory simply by

cutting out most of the jams, and now watch out,"Zep is back"!!!! I respect fans of the 80' Euro tour, and some band

members had serious health/drug/alcohol troubles, but regardless for me Zep 80' just didn't work. Not convinced at 

all had they continued that they would have gone further with the "80" model.

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