Led Zeppelin score hit with storming reunion gig
Michael Thurston

LONDON—Rock legends Led Zeppelin demonstrated how they made their name as one of the world’s greatest bands Monday, putting on a blistering show at a one-off comeback gig which left fans screaming for more. The three surviving members of the 1970s group played a storming two-hour concert including all their classics from “Stairway to Heaven” to “Whole Lotta Love,” and “The Song Remains the Same” for 20,000 lucky fans.
“I’ve waited 30 years for this,” said John Charles, 48 from London. “It was fantastic. Jimmy Page, what can you say, what a guitarist,” he told reporters at London’s O2 Arena. “Robert Plant was awesome,” added Deborah Mataya, 46, who travelled from Chicago for the show. “It was so worth it. It was fabulous,” she said.
The long-awaited gig — 27 years after the band split in 1980 following the death of drummer John Bonham — was poignantly preceded with old newsreel of the band in their heyday, before they appeared out of the darkness. Plant’s snake hips might be a bit broader these days, but his flowing golden hair remains the same, while Page’s visceral guitar sound electrified the audience, many of whom were following on air guitar.
After a perhaps hesitant start not helped by sometimes muddy acoustics, the three ageing stars — Plant, Page and bassist John Paul Jones — and Bonham’s son Jason on drums got into their stride with stomping rocker “Black Dog.” Plant’s trademark soaring, screeching vocals soon disproved those who had worried he had lost his wailing youthful edge, while the wall-pounding beat provided by Paul Jones and Bonham had the audience rocking in the aisles.
But it was Page’s guitar which really set the evening alight, triggering a roar when he strapped on his signature double-neck Gibson SG for “Dazed and Confused,” featuring a searing violin-bow aided guitar solo. The 63-year-old, his shock of white hair sopping with sweat by the end, leaned into his guitar like of old, his face contorted as he frantically worked the fretboard.
As the band relaxed, joint frontmen Page and Plant could increasingly be seen smiling at each other. Other highlights included a majestic version of their epic “Kashmir,” a wall of sound, while “Stairway to Heaven” took the audience from acoustic arpeggios to ear-splitting climactic guitar in barely five minutes.
The London concert, a tribute to Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, was originally scheduled for November 26, but was put back by two weeks after Page injured his left little finger stumbling over in his garden. The band, formed by Page in 1968 from the ashes of The Yardbirds, are credited by some as having single-handedly created the cliche of the television-defenestrating, groupie-consumed rock band.
Their name came from a joke by The Who’s drummer Keith Moon — a rock wildman himself — who forecast they would go down like a metallic version of the infamous airship. The “a” was removed in case US fans mispronounced it. But they defied that prediction, and went on to sell more than 300 million albums over the decades, their records remaining rock staples despite Bonham’s untimely death after choking on his own vomit in 1980.
Most fans had assumed they would never take the stage together again — but then in September they unexpectedly announced the reunion for the tribute to Ertegun, who signed the band four decades ago and died last year. In theory the gig was a one-off — singer Plant has talked about doing “one last, great show” and has insisted it will not be followed by a tour. But Page and bassist Paul Jones dropped hints last week that there could be more.
As the fans headed into the London night with smiles on their faces, there was a clear hope that Led Zeppelin, buoyed by Monday’s performance, will decide to get together again. “I hope they do a mini-tour,” said Mataya, while her compatriot Richard Cooper, 37, from Memphis, Tennessee was just pleased to have been there for one night. “It’s like a once in a lifetime experience,” he said