It's perfectly true that Zeppelin based quite some of their most successful motives on other songwriters 'song details' and parts which they managed to turn into much more successful full compositions and their legacy is forever tarnished. It is also true that other very successful artists base their songs a lot less on such fully fledged musical motives, but much more just on chords, melodies and lyrics, while the intros, outros, solos and underlying (mini) melodies are often variations of the vocal melodies, but whatever they are and however those artist managed to be inspired by other people's music, they were still usually more original then Zeppelin.

Well I might have stated quite a bit differently in the past, but here it goes: I think there is a substantial difference between the two passages and listening to the recording probably won't change that! I think it's not similar enough, so I would still call Led Zeppelin original in terms of writing the intro, especially when you consider Bach(who can't get any royalties anymore) and Davy Graham's Cry me a river(who wrote a specific instrumental arrangement of the song, that has a vocal melody quite similar to Stairway; and Graham's relatives could still get something) also were an influence. But the question is always, how much is enough on a dying planet? And how much money and fame and glory is enough? Some get a lot in life cause they are very agile, some get almost nothing, while they obviously contributed quite a chunk to Stairway to heaven intro, copyrighted it before Zeppelin and could still get royalties and affirmation. Everybody has to make up their own opinion, but the court makes the decision about royalties and affirmation and I think Skidmore would have a stronger case, if his attorney would talk about contribution and more fair distribution of wealth, rather than perhaps just claiming it too much on Skidmore and getting his piece of the pie. Let's not all be childish, there were obviously rather similar things copyrighted before Stairway and claiming stubbornly Led Zeppelin were totally original is ridicuolus, infact they were rather strongly inspired by various compositions and especially Taurus.

Contact God! No offense, wish all best to your son!

A great band from the eighties from Slovenia called Shank rock, I absolutely love this ballad, one of my favourite songs ever, soooo beautiful:

This was discussed a lot already on the forum and I think they should have taken a break in October 1972 already and then make each tour short enough and each break long enough for Roberts voice to stay intact. I think the problem was that those were the early pioneer days of big rock and roll bands and the management wasn't that complex and developed and also you must know that the decisions about music were left to the band and how the band sounds, including Robert's voice was therefore perhaps not the decision of the management. Now why Robert alone didn't take a break and shortened the tours for medical and musical reasons we will never know. Partly it's probably just the excess and the ego and to keep the show going, partly he was maybe actually unaware of how permanent the problem will be and partly somebody once mentioned his middle class mentality about it, which is to keep going while it lasts.

Well to be honest, so am I! Especially if it's studio footage, but live performaces were ofcourse so varied and visually spectacular I would certainly like to see more of that too in pro quality, I just think there just isn't much available and I don't think they will use low quality footage for a top documentary like this. Still they might surprise us with a few good clips, perhaps studio clips and photos, some of it from pre Zep era. I just honestly don't think that if anything would be left, that it wouldn't be released already considering how high regarded the band is now and I think the problem is that in the 70's bands didn't record them that much or atleast not Led Zeppelin, it came along latter in the 80's and 90's. I think the O2 is very important in terms of having a really good show recorded in a good way although the editing is weird, constant shifting of cameras. Maybe we will get more of that, doesn't exactly fit the 68-70 era though.

I think it will be quite a detailed documentary about their maturation as musicians, about their musical influences and about the first two albums. No unseen old footage or stories about excess are nedeed in such a musical documentary, so being about all the albums would be good though.

Great news, but I really don't understand why some of you are so interested in seeing unreleased clips, that's not really a point of a musical documentary, it's about bringing new insights into the music and musicians that created it. We have seen pretty much all the footage and most importantly heard all the bootlegs, so I would much preffer them talking about their musical heroes and how they got together and about the first two albums(even of I would like to hear them talk about all of them like in the MTV Rockumentary but more in detail). I still wouldn't mind some new footage from the studio sessions but even that is not as interesting as actually hearing them talk interesting things. But some poeple here starting to fantasize about more material being in the can, I think that is a bit silly.

Yeah he truly got it down to every move, not to mention tour! But with such an original guitarists and author as Page is sure there are going to be naysayers, even when someone is that good, plus I'm quite sure he can't be that good if he isn't sober and clean hehe, while Page still could be

White Sunday(Gloomy Sunday)-Vlado Kreslin

Well music is music, even if some artist had such great processing brains they could write for a whole orchestra or very complex stuff, but it could be simple too and include a lot of folk music. But yeah, it refers to a certain musical period atleast sometimes. I like Mozart(some symphonies and sonatas and Rondo alla turca especially), Beethoven 5th and 9th symphony and some sonatas, especially Für Elise and Moonlight sonata, I also like Liszt, Haydn, Bach, Tchaikovsky, Verdi. I actually listen to this performance below a lot, I'm not particulary into technical perfection being a Zeppelin fan, so I like Horowitz perfoming it a lot too, he makes it more emotional, but Hamelin plays some of the things that seem beyond human, kind of like Plant in 1971.

Bounced in a viking ship, yeah!!!

I think the hiss at the start is cool and the sound is something special too, I just wish Robert would articulate the words more precisely, he does it on all the other songs on the album pretty much. I guess it makes the song more mysterious though.

Yeah, especially in Zeppelin's case, performance is not always measured by best technique. It's not like band didn't know each other well musically in Europe 1973, but in certain aspects they reached new and very artistic improvisational heights in 1975!

Exactly! And you could mostly only replace it with songs, that were very hard to sing for Plant in 1975.

Not that many questioned hedonism in the seventies. I wonder who they will be throwing themselves at, when they will have no one to talk to them and comfort them, because extreme weather, drouts, floods and acid oceans will wash everything away, including extreme social injustice and mistreatments of various social groups. Lets not get off topic.

Some did mind it, some didn't. As I said there isn't much of it in Zeppelin and even then it's not really aimed at all women. But no matter what, Zeppelin are not exactly Bob Dylan in terms of lyrics, but they are not bad either. It's not like there is a perfect band, but I guess there are people that would like better lyrics from them, people who would like them to have more Beatles like melodies, people who would like to make their most musical and melodic elements sound less heavy and take away the fast technical stuff that they perceive as showing off and certainly there are people who would like to make the drums less heavy. Those things were all revolutionary and some just couldn't accept them, mostly because they just didn't like those things and you can't please everybody, but it was unfair from a lot of the critics to dismiss them completely, just because they could have more or less of certain elements, overall they were really good. As far as their lifestyle, that is something I wouldn't want to live at all and I'm quite sure many of the critics were also not even remotely interested in having what they had, except for some more money maybe.

I think Plant's recovery would actually be much more important for the 1975 tour and I think it's especially important he would have a long break in autumn and winter 1972/73. I think the demand for concerts would only increase with a pause. Why they continued with such extreme vocal problems is beyond me. It brings on some interesting new vocal approaches on Physical graffiti and later albums and his solo albums, but you can always approach it differently with your voice intact.

The overpresence of wild sexuality, misogyny, painful self torture relationships, partying and mysticism in their lyrics should also perhaps be mentioned. However they also touched many other areas with their lyrics more then enough(and then Plant in his solo carrer even much more) and we all can and I can certainly relate to all above mentioned lyrical topics, I only can't relate to misogyny, but it's never like they bash women in general, they talk about specific women. And self torture relationship where you just keep loving and loving someone even with all the bad things just describe me perfectly unfortunately. It's important to stop doing that at some point, but Since I've been loving you will always be my favourite song and will be played at my funeral, hope that won't be soon. And I never listened much to them for the lyrics, but I certainly partied quite a bit, even if I was never much into partying at all and we all like good sex and mystical lyrics are just so perfect for Kashmir and Achilles, I can't imagine anything better for such songs. As for Bonham, there are perhaps more precise and technically sophisticated drummers, but he suited the band so perfectly and some things were still very complex and varied and I always thought it must be VERY hard to play some of the even more simple fills and grooves, not to mention the hard ones and smash the drums SO hard at the same time.

Sorry, this is what I should have quoted in my previous post.

Well Plant shouldn't have sang in January and most or February, I wonder how he wasn't afraid he might loose his voice completely and forever, but Page was mostly really good and made a further artform out of his soloing and I think Jones and Bonham and the overall peformance that year was more about showing the bands overall extreme diversity rather than smashing the very extreme out of every song.

Well I think that if you look at Dazed and confused, especially up to 1973, when it was still technically really good and not streched out like in 1975 when it had quite many quiet stops and the sections from 1973 just got stretched out and less technical, then I have to say that the solos and bow solo were divided into so many interesting and well improvisationaly COMPOSED separate sections, that they were not boring and uninteresting at all. They were short masterpiece compositions on their own.

Well here is a weird one! Hope you can all understand it! As much as I listen to such music, repetition of musical motives was never something that fascinated me and even if you might argue, that if Zep's music and music in general wouldn't be done like that, I wouldn't listen to it, it's not really what makes me listen to music and somehow I don't have a tendency to listen to those things, even if I certainly notice them. So I would like that they would write at least a few songs, that wouldn't be based on repetition so much, no matter how much variety and different approaches they had. My favourite song is Since I've been loving you and it's not because of the drumbeat or the chorus chords and phrases, it's because of the intro and main solo, certain screams and drum fills! Heartbreaker? The solo, especially the live solo. Stairway? The live solo, same with Dazed and it's not for the rather repetitive rhythm, it's for the most complex phrases, that are usually also the most different from solo to solo! Achilles? The drum fills, the solo, the main riff and certain guitar phrases that are overdubbed! The melody or popular Slovenian singer songwriter stuff? It's never the hits and never because of the repetitive elements, I always like something like the intro and the solo and the lyrics and then the melody for being weird or fragmented into many parts or like it for that loud part there or that quiet part there and so on, although in Zeppelin I must admit, that it attracts me more in songs like Tangerine, That's the way, Thank you, California, All my love and similar, but I certainly listen to them because the melodies are more sort off odd and not even remotely Bee gees or even The Beatles most of the time. Repetition, so I read, makes us recognise the song, makes us feel comfortable, takes us away from the 'figuring out' phase, brings the social element, makes musicians play together, makes us dance and so on, but it's certainly also pounded into people with great marketing precision many times, because if you figure out what people like the most, many just go for that and base too much on just that. So I guess I'm a bit weird, but I still love a lot of such music!

I read that post again and I realised Tyler was talking about the new material Page had. Now that is a bit different, but it's still strange Tyler would complain if you think Aerosmith doesn't have much going on instrumentally in their hits. Oh well I guess my first comment isn't that off as there might be a lack of hooks in the old Zep material when compared to Aerosmith, but Zeppelin just did it differently many times.

I think the setlist was well chosen as it included all the essential songs and I wouldn't want to see any of those left out, even the ones that were never played before were picked well and if they would be replaced I would only want them to be replaced by other never before played songs maybe. All the other songs could only be added to the setlist that was played and that would probably make the concert too long atleast for Robert and others would want to do it probably, but maybe wouldn't have the stamina. As far as the Aerosmith comment goes, it's a bit of an insult to Page. I know a lot of fans don't want to hear that, but Led Zeppelin did have a lot of pop elements to their music, otherwise they wouldn't be that successful, but they were also experimental, artsy and very creative and exoticaly original, while Aerosmith overall are very pop, but especially in the vocal melody and Tyler was probably referring to that. Now either he doesn't understand Zeppelin's magic comes from many angles or he was just being a bit of an asshole towards Plant's melodies.