I grew up after Led Zeppelin had already broken up, so I never had the chance to see the band perform live. I’ve seen the remaining band members together on-stage in the intervening years, though never in person. I saw them perform at Live Aid, at Atlantic Records’ anniversary bash, and maybe one or two other big events from the safe and inexpensive distance television allows, but I was never in a position to shell out the hefty sums of cash needed to see them in person.

I did, however, see Robert Plant on his Now and Zen tour, and I saw Jimmy Page on his Outrider tour. I even saw John Paul Jones when he toured with singer and songwriter Diamanda Galas—that was a really interesting show. But I’ve never seen the remaining band members on-stage together in person. And for not having a chance to see the original group perform live I’ll always feel like I missed something special.

The concert movie is a way of seeing something I’ll never be able to see. Since I came to Led Zeppelin’s music after the band had dissolved, I’d never be able to see the original band in concert. The movie, and other recordings of their performances since released, was the only way I’d ever get a sense of what they were like live in concert. But with The Song Remains the Same, and even with other concert footage like the newer Led Zeppelin DVD (2003), I still really don’t understand what they were like in concert because there’s a huge difference between watching it at home on my TV and being there in person amidst all the smoke, sweat, and screams, and the really loud music. What I lack is what some philosophers call the ritual or aura of the concert event.

Waiting in Line

As every concert-goer knows, there’s a ritual that comes with attending a concert. Susan Fast describes her own experiences of going to see Led Zeppelin in this way:

The experience of going to concerts was (and still is) similarly ritualistic and transformative for me. Hearing the announcement that musicians important in my life will tour, buying the tickets, getting to the concert, and, finally, seeing the performance can, depending on how much I admire the artists, serve as important frames in my life. (In the Houses of the Holy: Led Zeppelin and the Power of Rock Music)

Lovers of music mark their lives in terms of who they saw perform in any given year. “Oh yeah,” they’ll say in remembering a certain event, “that was around the time I saw so-and-so in Kansas City. They opened with that really good local band.” Concerts become a way of marking time on the calendar.

But even more than standing out in our memories as important past events, concerts also get us to plan our future actions. If I were seriously invested in seeing one of my favorite bands perform in concert I would have to undertake some planning. Of course there’s the process of getting tickets—you have to set aside time to call just when tickets go on sale so that you can have your pick of seats and venues. In his novel, Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me, Martin Millar recounts his experiences as a young lad in Glasgow, anticipating an upcoming Zeppelin show:

It was almost time to go and queue for Led Zeppelin tickets. Even the thought of queuing for a ticket to see the band had Greg and me shaking with excitement. “Look,” I said, holding up my hand, “I’m shaking with excitement.” (Soft Skull Press, 2008, p. 62)

Millar’s entire book takes readers through the familiar emotions and activities of going to a concert, from buying records, memorizing lyrics, following news reports of the band, to buying tickets and arranging rides and post-concert revelries. The Song Remains the Same movie builds the anticipation of the Madison Square Concert gigs with the scenario from Peter Grant’s imagination, and then with the arrival of the band in New York.

Once you purchase tickets you have to wait for the concert date to arrive. Waiting for a concert is a feeling of hope. Anyone who has anticipated seeing a favorite musician for weeks or months knows that at some point their daily lives become charged with the expectancy of things to come, of seeing the concert. With this anticipation, daily tasks become troublesome, as Millar explains from his own story:

Next day my picture was on the cover of a Glasgow newspaper, happily clutching my ticket. One of our teachers showed it to the class, with disapproval. However I didn’t get into trouble about it. I wouldn’t have cared if I did. After all, with a Led Zeppelin ticket in my pocket, what would I have cared about some trouble at school? “To hell with you all,” I would have said. (p. 67)

You get the point. The nearer you get to the concert date the more the concert becomes the focal point of your life. The experience becomes what Susan Fast calls it: a ritual.

Performing the Concert Ritual

Perhaps the most recognizable aspect of concerts is the shout-out performers give to whatever city they happen to be in. “Hello St. Louis,” the lead singer yells after the opening set of songs. In The Song Remains the Same the band powers through “Rock’n’Roll” and “Black Dog” before Robert Plant says “Hello” and “Good evening” to the crowd. The movie then has Plant describe a little bit about the tradition of blues before they play “Since I’ve Been Loving You.”

The playing of a couple songs or more before greeting the audience is not unique to Zeppelin, nor is it even unique to rock concerts in general. It follows a pattern of making people feel an intimate connection with performers who have traveled long distances to play in their presence. It is as classic as the epic poems of Homer, especially his Iliad, which depicts the last days of the Trojan War.

As the rhapsode—what the ancient Greeks called a person who performed poems—comes to the list of warriors in the massing armies in Homer’s Iliad he would naturally want to make his audience feel special. We know how it feels when musicians call out our home towns between songs. It feels special, we get goosebumps and we feel like there is a real connection between us and them, between ourselves and the musicians. The Greek rhapsodes were no different, and in performing the Iliad they endeared themselves to their audiences by placing in the list of warriors one or two local heroes of past renown. This recognition would make the audience feel a connection not only to the performer, and not only to the poem being recited, but also to the tradition of which the poem is a part. Millar recounts a similar experience in his book when Robert Plant dedicated a song to a local hotel. “It’s good to have Led Zeppelin mentioning a building in our city,” he writes. “We feel honoured” (p. 146).

In the movie The Song Remains the Same Robert Plant does not mention any specific city. We know he’s in New York City, since the concert footage was taken from three evenings of shows at Madison Square Garden. But the fact that the editors omit the bands’ specific identification of the place of the performance is significant. I think they’re trying very hard to make the movie, the recorded concert, appeal to everyone rather than just New Yorkers. In calling out no particular city at all Plant ends up welcoming all of us who watch the movie in any city at all. If there were explicit mention of New York then I would have felt a bit less special when I watched it for the first time back home in Nebraska.

Concert rituals create a certain, unique connection in time and place with the performers and the music. A ritual’s a special thing, and can’t really be generalized to appeal to everyone everywhere. The movie of the concerts, though, is trying to appeal to all people no matter when or where they watch it. It’s trying to have a mass appeal, and thus has to avoid being too much of a ritual.

Remaining the Same

The activity of going to see a concert—the feeling of being in the presence of a band like Led Zeppelin and of feeling the music emanating from the speakers and losing your hearing for a few hours—is an activity that is not so easily reproduced in its entirety.

And yet the very idea of a concert movie is an attempt to reproduce the experience of seeing the band in concert. Since records have been made and concerts have been recorded, there’s been a market for bootleg albums. Fans scour the markets for recordings from the shows they’ve been to, or try to get recordings from the shows they weren’t able to see live. Fast suggests that making sure of the playlist is an important activity for fans, since

incremental changes—the substitution of one song for another, for example—take on incredible significance, changing the shape and nature of the ritual for that particular audience (hence one feels privileged, singled out, especially blessed). (p. 54)

In other words, simply putting the concert you’ve seen into the tradition of the other concerts on the current tour is a process of becoming a part of the ritual of the band’s performances. In fact, much of Zeppelin’s (and other bands’) rituals depended on a certain amount of stability in their tour set list. Fast explains the importance of consistency for the experience of rituals:

I would suggest that the centrally important notion of re-enactment in this definition of myth was manifested in Led Zeppelin’s performances in two ways. First, fans came to expect certain elements to be part of every performance (the bow solo, the use of the double-neck, and so forth). Second—and this is critical not only to Led Zeppelin performances but also to much stadium rock—the stability the set list on a specific tour makes the entire concert a ritual act that is repeated again and again. (p. 54)

Now, the ritualistic aspect of concerts is something experienced by both fans and band members alike. So, while the band certainly had certain behaviors and activities that made their performances ritualistic for themselves, I am discussing here how fans’ experiences of the concerts are like rituals, and how these experiences are carried over to the concert DVD.

Fans of Zeppelin come to expect a certain order of songs from certain concert recordings. While the band may have tried to maintain a consistent set list during the course of a tour—thus performing in some sense the same concert for fans throughout the tour—each night’s show would have its own composition, improvisations, and unique circumstances.

Millar describes the experience of Page’s solo during “Dazed and Confused” as “a different reality” in which “Page plays some weird improvised noise and as he does so he actually walks off the stage and says to me, ‘Hello. I’m playing this bit just for you.’ Then he walks back over the heads of the crowd and keeps on playing, all without missing a note. It’s awesome” (p. 161). Anyone who has heard a Page solo in concert may have had a similar feeling, and understands how each performance is unique yet a part of a repetitive ritual, performed in every show.

Just a few moments ago I was suggesting that there’s something very unoriginal about the concert movie, since it can be watched by anyone in any location. And now I’m suggesting the concerts were intended to be as similar as possible so that anyone anywhere would get the same experience. Have I written myself into a contradiction? I don’t think so, but to get clear I need to rely on another perspective about the uniqueness of the actual performance.

Losing the “Battle of Evermore”

What we need to understand about concerts is something anyone who has been to a concert understands: they are unique experiences that no DVD or CD recording can ever really hope to duplicate. Nothing can be substituted for the actual experience of seeing a band in person. We can be reminded of seeing a band live, but it’s not the same as actually seeing them in person. Nothing can ever be substituted for standing on my chair for two hours while watching Jimmy Page. Concert experiences are incapable of exact duplication and reproduction.

Walter Benjamin suggested that these kinds of experiences had something to do with what he called the “aura” of the artwork. Benjamin was thinking more of painting, but we can think of seeing a Zeppelin concert in the same way. Benjamin wrote that all artworks have a certain history and tradition.

Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence. This includes the changes which it may have suffered in physical condition over the years as well as the various changes in its ownership. (Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, Schocken, 1968, p. 220)

In terms of a Zeppelin concert we can understand that even the most perfect shows, when the band was really on, are still understood in context of a tour, in relation to a certain album, certain events in fans’ lives, and so on. Concerts are a part of history. The important point Benjamin makes about the aura of art is that original works of art have a certain kind of “authenticity” that copies do not possess (p. 221). With the case of concerts I think this point is even more clear and easy to illustrate.

Concerts occur at specific times and places. They occur once and then they are finished. There are extended concert tours, but each show is a separate performance. Seeing one concert cannot be substituted for another night of the tour, even if there are consecutive nights in the same city, as Zeppelin often performed. So, we can say that each concert has its own aura since each concert is a unique performance. We know that these shows are all unique simply because of the “sloppiness” of Jimmy Page’s playing or the fluctuations in Plant’s voice or the improvisational segments worked into certain songs (In the Houses of the Holy, p. 149). These traits actually give more authenticity to a concert—they make the show unique and special, different from all the rest. Fast describes one way in which improvisations are important:

Experiencing the lengthy improvisational sections at Led Zeppelin shows, or now via bootleg recordings of those shows, is like experiencing someone in transition, in a liminal state: the potential for transformation comes through these improvisational moments. Hence they have a ritualistic importance that cannot be underestimated. (p. 79)

We learn more about the band through witnessing their improvisations, through their interpretations of other songs. And being in the presence of their creativity creates a unique experience for us, if we are at their shows.

When we watch The Song Remains the Same we see the band perform, but we are detached from the experience of the performance. We don’t really know what it was like to be in Madison Square Garden and listening to Zeppelin perform, not from watching the DVD at least. We can see and hear the band, and that’s important—it helps bring us closer to the band and their music more than simply listening to their albums—but we aren’t actually there as participants in the concert.

Remaining the Same, But in a Less Unique Way

Our contemporary media—DVDs, CDs, MP3s, and others—are based on the premise that everything is reproducible. One DVD is just as good as any other copy, barring scratches, and one CD or MP3 is just as good as any other recording of the same song or songs. If you couldn’t catch last week’s performance, or the Grammys or any other little show, you can probably watch it online. In other words, the way we create our performances today is based on the presumption that they are recordable. We organize our events with an eye towards reproducing them technologically, without any consideration of the importance of the original event.

Benjamin thought the development of photography and movies was a really big turning point for us and the way we live our lives. He thought that until the development of photographic techniques in the 1800s we still acted as though art and performances had an aura—we treated our experiences of things as irreplaceable. But, with the development of technology that allows mass duplication of images and sounds—photos, musical recordings, movies, and now with webcasts and other technologies in this century—we have given up our concern for the uniqueness of events. He explains it this way:

Unmistakably, reproduction as offered by picture magazines and newsreels differs from the image seen by the unarmed eye. Uniqueness and permanence are as closely linked in the latter as are transitoriness and reproducibility in the former. To pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a perception whose “sense of the universal equality of things” has increased to such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique object by means of reproduction. Thus is manifested in the field of perception what in the theoretical sphere is noticeable in the increasing importance of statistics. The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception. (p. 223)

Let me explain a few points about this long quote, because it’s not always clear what Benjamin intends to say. He writes that when we experience things personally we get a sense of the “uniqueness and permanence” of them. He means that when we see a band perform right in front of our eyes we get a sense of the timeless quality of the ritual they are enacting, and we feel as though we’re a permanent part of that ritual because we are there too.

When Benjamin writes that newsreels and magazines (or movies and photography) are related to “transitoriness and reproducibility” he means that the technologies of mass reproduction—audio recording, photography, cinema and webcasts—have an effect on how we experience the very events that are recorded. By recording a concert we have decided that there is a part of the experience that we can transmit to others without their being at the concert. When we treat the concert as an event that can be recorded and shared with millions of other people we treat it differently than when we value the ritual of concert-going. According to Benjamin technologies of mass reproduction make fans forget the ritualistic aspect of seeing our favorite band in concert. Instead, we just want the latest release in the cheapest format possible.

“Prying an object from its shell” is Benjamin’s way of saying that cameras and microphones take the Zeppelin concert out of fans’ personal experiences. Even though a fan might have gone through the ritual process of planning and traveling to the show and enjoyed the event in person, putting the performance on DVD or CD makes the event available for everyone in the same way. Very few people will have had an experience like the fan’s—just those people in attendance had this experience—but the fact that the event is available in a recorded format makes the in-person experience less unique, and therefore less valuable.

When Benjamin suggests that the mass audience attains a new “sense of the universal equality of things” he means that all of the different experiences of the performance become equally valuable. In other words, Benjamin argues that producing and watching the The Song Remains the Same on DVD can make audiences feel like they’ve seen the band in concert, like our experience of Led Zeppelin rivals the experiences of the fans who were actually there in person in 1973. I think most everyone would agree that the DVD is a poor substitute for being at the show, and Benjamin would stand in line with us.

Sneaking In through the Back Door

In The Song Remains the Same there’s a wonderful scene of two security guards letting a couple of fans sneak into the backstage area. We all wish we could have been those two lucky souls—they got to see the show live, go backstage, and then see the concert movie and later buy the recordings. They got to experience what Benjamin calls the “aura” of the concert, and then also to relive that experience through the recordings on LP, CD, and DVD.

But, consider this point: A fan who was in the far recesses of Madison Square Garden for one of Zeppelin’s shows might get a new take on their concert experience by watching the concert movie. The different camera angles, the better sound quality and the lack of annoying neighbors might all make for a new and better experience than the in-person experience. The concert movie might be worthwhile and open up new avenues for appreciating the show. Obviously, I’d have rather been to the concert than watch it on DVD, but while sitting on my sofa I can hear the music clearly, pause or rewind the show and see the band from a number of different angles that would be unavailable to anyone at the concert.

We behave as though it’s more impressive to go to the stadium than to watch a game or concert on TV. The very fact that ticket prices are ridiculously high should be proof that we value the live experience more than the recorded experience, right? There really is no comparison between watching the concert in person and seeing it on DVD. They are completely different kinds of experiences in Benjamin’s understanding.

The price of the tickets for Led Zepplin’s one-off performance at London’s O₂ Arena was £125.00, or about $250.00 back when the show took place. That’s a hefty value, but the price tag for me to see the show when they (inevitably) get around to releasing the remastered version of it on DVD will be little in comparison to that price. And I’ll be just as avid to have the DVD as someone who could afford the trip to England was avid to see them live. In fact, I’ll have pretty good seats and camera views that most of the audience could only dream of having. But I’ll have none of the anticipation, expectancy, camaraderie, or elation of being with a mass of like-minded people. In short, I’ll miss out on the ritual of it all.

The mass production, as Benjamin suggests, levels out the uniqueness of experiences of things, in this case concerts. In making the movie or the DVD or buying or renting it, we have assumed that we can get something of value out of the concert. In effect, we’ve already decided that the value of the concert is not necessarily seeing the band perform live. The value is simply in seeing and hearing the band perform, and knowing that the performance was live at one time.

Now, I know this will sound like I’m just playing games with words, but there really is a difference. I used to attend record conventions and sift through racks and racks of albums looking for the one great Zeppelin bootleg to round out my (small) collection. I once found a bootleg of a concert that took place on my birthday, and I thought that was pretty special. After a while I came to accept that the recording wasn’t all that great—pretty scratchy and not from the sound board but from somewhere in the audience—so it wasn’t something I had to have to make my life complete. For some reason I thought there was some cosmic importance in owning a mediocre recording of a concert I never saw. Well, I was thinking about something other than the ritual of the concert.

There’s a distinct difference between listening to the music and seeing the music performed. And beyond that distinction, there is another distinction characterized by seeing the music performed live and in-person as opposed to watching it on a DVD or some other recording. Fast explains her own experience with Led Zeppelin:

The way in which rock musicians use their bodies in performance is critically important to an understanding of the music. I first came to know Led Zeppelin’s music through the studio recordings, and when I eventually saw them in performance I came not only to a richer understanding of the music, generally speaking, but also to a decidedly different understanding of it and of the people making it. (p. 114)

There’s something visceral and sensual about being at a concert. Anyone who has been to a concert will know what I’m talking about. And there are even differences between seeing concerts in different venues. A local bar provides a much different experience than a stadium show, and a better view too.

Benjamin used the word “unarmed” to describe the eye that sees things personally. Seeing things for ourselves is dangerous, it involves going out into the world and being witness to events. It also involves ascribing value to original and unique things. But for Benjamin this attitude was passing away with the rise of mass production of objects. The eye that watches things on screen or from a removed distance or time is thus “armed.” It is protected against original things, it is sheltered in some way. The armed eye also has the ability to judge and assign value built into it. But it doesn’t weigh values in terms of ritual importance, in terms of how meaningful the experience will be in one’s life, but rather in terms of price, for example, what is this DVD worth? Is the quality of this bootleg good enough to merit the price?

Benjamin’s way of understanding the different kinds of human experience can be a little bit depressing. His ideas basically make us realize that the way in which we value things no longer has anything to do with the ritual service a thing provides for us. It’s not necessary to actually attend a concert, or lecture, or art exhibit or anything like that to get the gist of the experience. I’m not saying that it’s not valuable to do all these things, but Benjamin is trying to point out that we do not act like these activities have any inherent value.

We can digest the important parts of a book from a guy named Cliff, or hear the book read to us as we drive on our morning commutes, or read someone’s blog or Twittering about the show last night. Reading or living for ourselves thus becomes devalued due to our busy schedules and the availability of new technologies. We don’t have to do a lot of things for ourselves anymore—we can simply research the internet and find what other people have to say. Thus, we can substitute the experiences of other people for actually having these experiences ourselves. That seems to be the point of the concert movie in general.

Benjamin thought that the new technologies of media put us, the audiences, in a very difficult position. He put it this way:

The film makes the cult value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies this position requires no attention. The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one. (pp. 240–41)

The “cult value” he mentions in this passage is the value of an object or event when it figures into a ritual or some other activity requiring our presence. You have to have been there to see the show, not just hear about it or see it on DVD. Film, photos, and other more recent media strip away the need for this kind of interaction with things. In effect, as Benjamin claims, these technologies of mass reproduction put us in the position of critic. We’re the ones determining the value of events simply because we’re now able to witness them from afar. In a movie theater or at home on our sofas we are in the position to judge the quality of a movie and the value of scenes recorded for our viewing. We are the “examiners,” as Benjamin claims, but this new job-description requires absolutely no training and no experience. So, I go about my duties without reflecting on the fact that I probably am not the best judge of what a Led Zeppelin concert was like since I never saw them perform in person. I’ve only seen the DVD. Does that make me a good judge of their performances? Hardly.

But, I’m really only trying to talk about the movie, right? How is The Song Remains the Same as a concert movie? It’s got great music. I don’t know what Zeppelin was like in person, so it’s the best I can ever get. As Millar closes his novel:

I’m not a music journalist. I don’t have any desire to persuade anyone that Led Zeppelin were any good. You can think whatever you like. You either feel it or you don’t. The same as any music. The same as any art. You feel it or you don’t. The same as being in love. You can’t be persuaded. You either feel it or you don’t. I’m not going to try and change anyone’s mind. Led Zeppelin. Greatest rock band in the world, oh yes. (p. 212)