Nitpicking the Nitpickers?: 1980 dream compilation
During this 40th anniversary interim between Led Zeppelin’s final concert tour of Europe and demise, I finally got around to listening to all the soundboard/matrices I could find online, and, where possible, audience recordings of minimal quality that still captured reasonably full ambience of the band. From there I deduced the following compilation that in my view would capture the best elements I heard into a killer composite representation of a show of this period:
TKAR – Cologne.
NFBM – Mannheim #2.
BD – Bremen, with Dortmund vocal verses spliced in. Captures Jones’ menacing twang and Bonzo’s final fill turned over-the-top solo (a la end of RAH ICQYB). And yet what sold me on the Dortmund version was Plant’s supremely confident, down-and-dirty bluesy delivery that lifted the verses out of the familiar recorded version. One might also splice in, from a performance later in the tour, the understated, whimsical seventh chord with which Page would underline the word ‘dreams’.
ITE – Brussels, despite the buzzing. This could be augmented even further by splicing in from later performances in the tour the ‘but the girl don’t come’ line into verse 1 (Brussels yet lacks Plant’s bluesy liberation from the recorded template), the ‘gotta have’ line before the solo (Brussels lacks Plant’s grudgingly lower note that defines most other performances on this tour), and Bonzo’s syncopated response to Plant’s ‘got to, got to’ ad lib near the end of the final verse. ITE is one of a handful of songs on this tour’s set list that I found very difficult to locate in a single, satisfactory performance otherwise—in this case, particularly in Page’s inconsistent Strat dive-bombs. (The guitar solo in Vienna is also quite good, ending and leading into the synthesizer solo particularly well--which one cannot necessarily say of most renditions on this tour.)
RS – Vienna. In the instrumental section at one point, Page essays a beautiful cascading elaboration reminiscent of Hendrix’ ‘One Rainy Wish’; perhaps it would help to splicing such bit in from a later performance which may be more developed. At least Page does not rush this version, as he does many others on this tour.
HD—Mannheim #1. Everything works just about right on this, including Plant’s country-style spoken-verse parody. (A close contender would have been Vienna, where Jones’ piano part was among the most developed, even for such a supposedly simple song.)
AML—Munich. The audience source in fact enhances the ambience of this softer number, and Page gathers himself for a coherent solo, free of the apathy of other performances.
TU—Frankfurt. The band nails this, firing on all cylinders. I concur with Zep Head on the A+ rating. (Rotterdam was quite excellent and no less funky, but Frankfurt is transcendent.)
SIBLY—Hannover, with Vienna perhaps spliced in for the second part of the solo. Hannover gets the nod for providing the best balance between the solid and the mercurial, whereas Vienna tilts more toward the former, and Brussels and Zurich more toward the latter. Hannover also offers Plant’s more committed delivery (particularly at the start) compared to other versions, and some very interesting patterns resulting from Jones and Page, which are more a matter of superimposition than interaction.
ALS—Frankfurt. Had the sound on my source been clearer, then I would have opted for Rotterdam, which features perhaps Bonzo’s most engaged performance on this tour. However, sound quality has to be the differentiator, and Jones’ eight-string bass is given more definition in Frankfurt, which is also a most consistent performance.
WS—Brussels. I might have chosen Munich, as I found that performance undeniably fluent but in the end a touch too quicksilver. For me, the Brussels performance is clear and convincing—particularly the beautiful, controlled fingerstyle/arpeggiation.
BMS—Zurich. A fine performance.
K—Would go for Cologne, which features a strong vocal entrance, then for the ‘I’ve been flying’ break segue into Frankfurt (where Jones takes lovely and risky modal bass steps), through the body of the song, then for the coda segue into Mannheim #2 which highlights Bonzo’s better fills. Bremen was fine indeed as a single performance; still, this composite would be the best of the best otherwise in my opinion.
STH—Ditto a composite, as a single consistent performance of such warhouse on this tour is also difficult to find. I would begin with Munich, which features a transcendent audience singalong, then with the ‘jazzy’ section segue into Rotterdam (which highlights’ Jones piano beautifully—although splicing in from other performances perhaps one or two alternate bass voicings would showcase even further his modulatory talent), then segue into Hannover for the solo onward.
RAR—Berlin, which noses out Bremen although both are equally savage.
H--Rotterdam. I know that Zep Head and Dave Lewis touted this as a tour highlight, but somehow I find the Rotterdam performance more intense and satisfying.
CB—Cologne. Gets in, does the work and gets out. The best version of the new headbanger riff (a fitting bookend to TKAR) and Plant’s ‘in my soul, yes it is’ ad lib near the end.
WLL—Berlin. Off the rails transcendent, with post-psychedelic hallucinations, echoplex manipulations, and portents of Ministry.
Such top choices and contenders give the lie to the dismissal of Page & Co on such tour as a burnout case. If anything, Bonzo’s overall effort on this tour seems more subdued and even muffled than in previous tours, and even Jones’ keyboards occasionally falter. At least Page is taking some chances, some of which are still fascinatingly inscrutable, and Plant is generally strong and consistent, at times loaded with attitude which carries the day, others indeed tinged with indifference but almost no bum notes. That said, indeed there is no call to canonize Nuremberg, the Zurich version of Kashmir, or (God forbid) the Berlin version of White Summer.
As complete concerts, Brussels (which I prefer to Zurich) and Frankfurt (and perhaps even Dortmund) seem to present the best overall performance arc or brush-stroke. Yet curiously, in the case of Frankfurt, the whole indeed appears much better than the sum of its parts—likely due to the superior qualities of both the soundboard and Plant’s vocal performance. (Admittedly, I have yet to locate a complete recording of Bremen, or a clear recording of the opening numbers of Rotterdam up to Rain Song.)
