Latest news with #LedZep
Spectator
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Now it's getting late: on Neil Young, ageing and fatherhood
Neil Young once saved my life. Or at least, that's how I remember it. This was at an outdoor show in Finsbury Park in July 1993. I had pushed and squeezed my way almost to the front of a large crowd shortly after being passed something of dubious provenance to smoke. One moment everything was perfect: he was playing that romantic late career hit, 'Harvest Moon', the sun was setting, the moon, conveniently, rising, and I was swaying along, rapturous. But then, suddenly – bang… I fainted. This is the only time in my 45-year gig-going career that this has happened. But I was gone. I was briefly unconscious, then I came to lying on my back on the grass, looking up at dozens of legs all around and above me, almost on top of me. I realised that I needed to get up but I was still woozy, too weak to stand. I needed to gather my strength. Meanwhile Young was getting to the end: 'But now it's getting late… And the moon is climbing high.' I could no longer see the moon, just those legs. Then 'Harvest Moon' ended and applause and cheers came over my head, but I still couldn't stand. And this is when Neil Young saved my life, which felt at this moment as if it was in the balance. He did this by playing a ballad, 'The Needle and the Damage Done' (which is, perhaps appropriately, about the dangers of drug misuse). Because of this slow number I was able to spend another two minutes with my head between my knees steeling myself to get up. Had he played a rockier number – and 'Powderfinger', 'Down by the River', 'Like a Hurricane' and 'Rockin' in the Free World' were all on the set list that night – the space would have become a mosh pit and I would have been trampled. But 'The Needle' saved me. As it ended I finally managed to stand and then retreated to where it was less jammed to watch the rest of the show, shaken by how imperilled I had felt. And I realised that that song selection had been crucial in me getting out uninjured. I've seen Neil Young play a few more times in the years since – most memorably in an explosive performance at Brixton Academy in 2002, one of the best live shows I've ever been to. Alexis Petridis's review of that night in the Guardian concluded: 'Like one of his own guitar solos, you suspect [Neil Young] could go on forever.' And he pretty much has. But when I saw he was playing again this summer in Hyde Park in London, exactly 32 years to the day of that collapse in Finsbury Park, I initially had no urge to go. He'll turn 80 this autumn – and after seeing now voiceless Bob Dylan disappoint too many times, I felt Young would probably be going the same way. But then Number One Son started badgering me to take him. He's recently converted from being almost exclusively into hardcore US rap to preferring the rock bands of the early 1970s: Led Zep, the Stones and now also, it seems, Neil Young. So it felt like an open goal opportunity for some parent/child bonding. Arriving in Hyde Park, I realise I am at the younger end of the age spectrum in the audience, a rarity these days. We miss the first support act, Van Morrison, because he finishes half an hour earlier than he was listed to. It seems Young has made a late alteration to the timings to give himself longer on stage. We do see Cat Stevens and get to hug each other as he plays 'Father and Son' – a touching moment, even if the song is about parent-child estrangement. Before the main event, son goes for drinks and comes back ambitiously holding four pints. One minute you're feeding crying babies in the middle of the night, the next they're getting the beers in, I reflect. In Neil Young terminology, it seems like only yesterday that I was '24 and there's so much more' – Number One Son's age next birthday – and now I'm the old man being urged to look at the young man who is 'a lot like you were'. And indeed my son, I see, is a lot like I was. He is soon urging me to go further into the crowd. And we do this, with our four pints, only this time he does the pushing and apologising and I simply follow. I find myself thinking again of that night in 1993 when I came close to getting crushed and of other misadventures in my twenties that might have stopped me making it to my fifties. A number of my friends from those days didn't make it. Young opens his set with 'Ambulance Blues', which notes: 'It's easy to get buried in the past.' And he's right. So I try to stop brooding and to concentrate on enjoying the evening – to be in the moment, as they say these days. Once again he plays both 'Harvest Moon' – son's favourite – and 'The Needle and the Damage Done'. This time I manage to stay vertical. It's a wonderful night. The heatwave makes the air shimmer and Young can still sing that haunting high tenor, even if he is a curmudgeon who looks like a tramp. But, in fairness, so, increasingly, am I. Young also plays 'Hey Hey, My My', the companion piece to his punk era song that states: 'It's better to burn out than to fade away.' I wonder if he still thinks that? A couple of years after my 1990s white-out I attended another outdoor gig, in this same spot in Hyde Park – the Who, Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan – and wrote about it for a Sunday red-top. I recall writing the extremely snarky intro: 'Hyde Park became Jurassic Park last night as the dinosaurs of rock turned out to play.' Those dinosaurs would have been considerably younger then than I am now, I realise. One of these days Neil Young will die. I'm hoping he predeceases me – and I'm hoping I predecease my son. Who knows what will happen to any of us. But it was briefly pleasing for all three of us to be in the same field for one evening in the summer of 2025.
Metro
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
I'm a 48-year-old music snob and I loved Olivia Rodrigo
I have to admit, when I told friends I was taking my 14-year-old daughter, Florence, to see Olivia Rodrigo, I did so with an eye-roll and a bit of a 'bloody kids, eh?' smirk. At 48, I've got quite a few gigs and festivals under my belt. I was at Knebworth in '96 and could be found in the mosh pit at countless Britpop shindigs back in the day. While my record collection spans from the classic '60s swagger of the Stones to the big-riff grandeur of '70s Led Zep, taking in the stadium-filling, guitar-squealing anthems of Pink Floyd, my Spotify algorithm tells a different story. Being subjected to the 'racket' of a teenage playlist in the car is the scourge of many a parent, but I have to say, secretly — thanks to my kids —I've been introduced to a new breed of alt-pop, punk-pop… call it what you will. And I'm pleasantly surprised to report that pop music is very much alive and well — and I am a fan! It's nearing showtime, and as we gently jostle for position amid the fug of Sol de Janeiro and mounting anticipation — this is, after all, essentially Rodrigo's Glastonbury dress rehearsal (she headlines the Pyramid Stage on Sunday) — I'm suddenly self-conscious that at any moment someone might holler at me: 'Oi, Grandad, ELO's next month!' As the former Disney actor bounds on stage, the Hyde Park noise levels go up several notches, and Bad Idea Right? is greeted with a delirious tsunami of whoops and screams from teens and tweens (and dads) living their best lives. One banner I can just make out reads: Olivia, I'm obsessed with you. The hits keep coming. Bad Idea Right? is followed by the Pixies-tinged Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl, and if Vampire isn't the perfect example of a flawless, three-and-a-half-minute pop song, I don't know what is. I look across at my sequin-clad daughter, lost in the moment and singing along. I even turn a blind eye to her joining in with the (perhaps overly) sweary lyrics (shut up, Gramps). Screaming pubescent girls in purple cowboy hats watch the entire gig through their phone screens, and then the screams go up a few more decibels when Rodrigo thrills the already overexcited crowd even more by nonchalantly bringing out 'her favourite Brit,' Ed Sheeran, to duet on his classic, The A Team. As one perfectly crafted, delicious slice of pop perfection follows the next, it occurs to me that until recently — like many fellow middle-aged music-snob dads — I would have dismissed the warblings of Rodrigo, Carpenter, Roan, Styles et al. as disposable, autotuned bilge. Far from it. The output from these pop princes and princesses really stands up. These are songs with legs: compositionally sophisticated, rich in infectious melody, and emotionally devastating. ABBA, Pulp and The Cure for the Gen Z, TikTok-cool kids. Rodrigo's effortless between-song patter is charming and endearing. She tells the crowd that the capital is 'her favourite city' and yells: 'I f*cking love you, London!' Her band — made up entirely of women and non-binary musicians — isn't just making up the numbers behind the 'talent': they're excellent and rightly enjoying every minute of it. A quick low-key costume change into shorts and a T-shirt, and she's back for a supercharged, rocky encore of Brutal, the Green Day-esque All-American Bitch, Good 4 U, and — for reasons that weren't totally clear — she scales some scaffolding and belts out Get Him Back through a megaphone. Throw in the obligatory fireworks, streamers and pyrotechnics to close the show, and all the boxes have been ticked. More Trending As we turn to leave, I have to suppress my boring dad-rock instincts and resist vocalising them — like: 'The opening chords of Brutal remind me of Elvis Costello's Pump It Up,' or wondering wistfully what a Knopfler guitar solo would sound like on Happier. 'Do you want to get a T-shirt?' I ask Florence as we edge our way, exhausted but slightly euphoric, towards the exits. 'No, I think I'm all right, actually.' 'Oh, OK,' I reply. 'Er… do you mind if I get one?' Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Glastonbury 2025 Saturday live: BBC will broadcast 'controversial' rap group Kneecap MORE: The 1975's Glastonbury glory is overshadowed by Matty Healy's problematic past MORE: Robbie Williams drops major hint he's making surprise Glastonbury appearance
Yahoo
25-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Unseen footage of Led Zeppelin performing in Denmark has surfaced after 45 years
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Newly unearthed Super 8 footage of Led Zeppelin performing in Denmark in 1979 has surfaced online, giving a candid taste of what watching the band at their peak was like. Shot by Led Zep fan and filmmaker Lennart Ström on a camera he snuck into Copenhagen's Falkoner Theater on July 24, the film had sat idle in a drawer for 45 years before getting a carefully executed glow-up. The shows came on the eve of the band's iconic Knebworth sets, with the two dates in the Danish capital acting as warm-ups for the main events. Ström's 13-minute, set-traversing footage serves as a stunning time capsule of the night. Notably, the footage was captured without audio as Ström was only filming the snippets of the show to test the camera out. The Dane says he'd occasionally showcased the footage to friends during the intervening years, but it has remained largely unseen. That was until he told the Heart of Markness podcast – which had run an episode on Zeppelin's Copenhagen shows – of its existence. That led to the clip's revival at the hands of Reel Revival Film and the Pink Floyd Research Group – which played its part in reviving fan-shot footage of David Gilmour and Pink Floyd performing in 1975. Together, the parties have digitized and color-corrected the footage, and paired it with audio recordings from the show. The finished film has been uploaded to YouTube by the channel ledzepfilm and features a plethora of Led Zep classics. It kicks off with The Song Remains the Same, during which Jimmy Page makes light work of his legendary twin-neck Gibson EDS-1275, and later takes in Whole Lotta Love, Black Dog, and Kashmir. There's also a guitar solo, unleashed by Page on his 'Number 1' Les Paul, which is given a stirring visual accompaniment via a laser display that also sees Page playing with a violin bow that looks like a lightsabre. Other bands, such as The Who, were already incorporating lasers into their live shows by this time, but Zeppelin were reportedly one of the first to use a high-powered laser. However, it often wreaked havoc with venues, which the band had learned the hard way the night before. 'We brought the Super 8 camera to test a new film that would work indoors,' Ström tells Led Zeppelin News. 'It was no problem getting the camera in. It was quite small and I think I had it in my trousers. 'The gig the night before was, according to the papers, a disaster due to the electric failures that the laser had brought,' he continues. 'So there were generators standing in the alley we passed before going in. We didn't understand why they were there, but I remembered from the army that [they were] generators. So we were of course concerned about the gig.' Footage of a thankfully uninterrupted solo shows that the generators weren't needed, but had likely been drafted in as a precautionary measure. It seems the force was with them on the night. 'I have kept this film in a drawer all the years,' Ström says. 'I showed it to some friends, guitarists who went nuts. And that was the silent version.' The film's release comes just after the cinematic release of Becoming Led Zeppelin, a brand-new tell-all documentary on the band's rise. Last year, unseen footage of the band's record-breaking show at the Pontiac Dome in 1977 surfaced online.
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Becoming Led Zeppelin' Brings the Legendary Band Back to its Beginnings
L.A. based Becoming Led Zeppelin filmmakers Bernard MacMahon and Allison McGourty aren't just fans of the classic rock band's music, they're fans of the mythos. Not the salacious side that probably first comes to mind when rock fans think of Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones or the late John Bonham, but before and during their first meetings and fortuitous formation, when each member was on the precipice of individual greatness, elevating his craft and seeking creative alchemy.'I love the story,' MacMahon, who directed, tells us during a spirited Zoom chat just before the riveting new documentary's release. 'I knew that they'd never done a film and they'd never told their stories.'Indeed, the boundary-breaking British rocker's trajectory has been chronicled many times before, but these accounts have come from others and often focused on later years, when they were already rock gods, and when the tales were sexier and ultimately, more tragic. Bonham's substance abuse related death in 1980 led to the band's break-up of course, but their hedonistic hijinks, from groupies to heroin addiction to the occult, started much before that. Basically the 70s were a whirlwind of beautiful music and bad behavior. But from 1968-1970, when the band first met, made music and toured, rockstar trappings weren't on anyone's mind. The doc delves into the personal backgrounds of each player and their impressions of their first sessions, so the 'Becoming' in the film's title is literal— we only get to see their journey up until the release Led Zeppelin II. It was a timeframe that really was all about the music, even if most didn't quite get what they were doing at first. Page was coming out of playing guitar with the Yardbirds, and yearning to do something more experimental, while bassist Jones and drummer Bonham had been busy session musicians also seemingly looking for a new challenge. Plant was the perfect piece of the puzzle to stand up front, a powerful and sensual vocalist who was mastering his instrument much in the same way as the the group find the groove in early footage is nothing short of transcendent and the filmmakers are smart enough to know that fans want to see the full raw performances. Part concert film and part member memoir (including an incredible found audio interview with Bonham from Led Zep's early days), the movie serves to highlight the intricate vision of Page and the genius of his mates in bringing it to life, both in the studio and on as the movie shows, people didn't 'get it' at first. In the U.K., the band were not a hit right away. "So they set out on this mission to try and get their music out there," MacMahon says. "When no record company in Britain wanted to sign them. No one wanted to book them because, you know, they're still known as the Yardbirds, and they hadn't had a hit for years. So they go off to America to get a deal, and then they manage to start breaking through on the West Coast scene. And Jimmy's like, we've got to do albums, no singles, so they're just playing whole sides of albums on FM radio here."And just as the band was gaining traction the U.S., they got eviscerated in the press, "including Rolling Stone, which was the big counter cultural paper in 1969," Macmahon adds. "But they soldiered on at that point, not doing media, not doing TV, just reaching their audience through records and live shows." The lack of interviews made it more challenging for MacMahon and McGourty's research, but they were clearly determined. And getting the guys to agree to make the doc and do new reflective interviews may have been the hardest part. People called the duo "mad" and "insane" for even trying, as the band have been notoriously private about discussing their history for decades. "We searched and looked for every fragment of archive that existed, then we wrote a script, then we storyboarded it to see if there was a film that could be told," MGourty says. "That was a seven month process before we even got our first meeting with Jimmy." Turns out Page and Plant were fans of the duo's previous project, American Epic, and Jones loved the four-part series (covering the first-ever music recordings in the U.S. from country to blues) after watching it, so they were in. Sort of. Page did test their knowledge of the band's timeline and more obscure facts about how they formed during their first meeting, pulling ephemera he'd saved from a plastic market bag. Luckily all the research paid off."Their would never have been Becoming then Zeppelin, if it wasn't for American Epic, because we thought this was the next story that picked up where that left off, which is back to the Second World War and 50s music scene," explains MacMahon. "And that brings us into the late 60s, when everything really explodes in a whole different way. Led Zeppelin was the great story that'd not being told." Watching and hearing how it all came together is a true gift for fans and as we share with the filmmakers during our interview, it feels like a tonic for troubled times. Especially in IMAX theaters, where it debuted on Feb. 7, the film (in theaters nationwide since Valentine's day) is an immersive escape, an artistic celebration that provides a break from the menacing mess of our modern times, which is what music and movies are for. And it leaves you wanting more. "This period, with these two amazing albums with unbelievable music on them, is unique to Zeppelin," Macmahon says. "It sees four totally different guys and no other musicians sound like them. If you took any one of those guys out of that band, you would not have Led Zeppelin. None of them are replaceable. So these guys coming together, then their journey, and the fact that they barely know each other... they literally hit the ground running— and working."Of course, as Zeppelin's fame rose, life got more raucous and decidedly darker for the group, which many consider one of the greatest of all time. But it's refreshing to watch them before all that and as MacMahon notes, they produced more great music in spite of, not because of how their lives changed, in the years that followed. "We made this movie to give people this positive story, this inspirational story about music and the endeavor and its power," he concludes, noting how exciting it is to watch in a big cinema (it will be streaming soon, too). "We wanted to take you into this world."
New York Times
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Becoming Led Zeppelin' Review: The Master Blasters
Soon after Sha'Carri Richardson looks right at the camera in the new Nike ad 'So Win,' you hear the telltale sounds of one of the most famous guitar riffs in history. Nike dropped the commercial during the Super Bowl, a seemingly apt occasion for a celebration of women athletes. It's a typical Nike sales pitch, even if I'm still a bit dazed and confused that this ode to female excellence is set to 'Whole Lotta Love,' the Led Zeppelin song in which Robert Plant promises, among other things, that he's 'gonna give you every inch of my love.' That particular lyric isn't in the commercial, but you hear it and much more of Plant's moaning, groaning and baby-please beseeching in the new documentary 'Becoming Led Zeppelin.' A hagiographic look at the group's beginnings, the movie is as straightforward as it is headbangingly diverting. A smooth assemblage of new and archival material, it introduces Led Zep's own fab four — Plant (vocals), Jimmy Page (guitar), John Paul Jones (bass, keyboard) and John Bonham (drums) — and sketches in their background, revisiting how they got into music and joined forces. After two hooky hours, it wraps up in January 1970 with a rousing concert at London's Royal Albert Hall and Plant vowing 'you will be mine.' Origin stories tend to be inherently appealing, particularly for viewers already invested in the artist. 'Becoming Led Zeppelin' works especially hard to please — including, it seems, its own subjects. The movie might not be an official authorized portrait, but it plays like one, as it skitters over the group's early highs, steers clear of the band's excesses and dodges anything unpleasant, scandalous or potentially illegal. The focus here is on the guys' youthful self-invention and giddy discovery, on who they were before 'Stairway to Heaven,' before the private plane called the Starship 1 and the Madison Square Garden gigs. It's also, instructively, Zeppelin before Bonham's accidental death in 1980 at age 32. The movie is anchored by a newly uncovered audio interview with Bonham and by contemporary chats with Page, Plant and Jones. Notably, the three surviving members seem to have been interviewed separately, and are usually parked in similar elaborately carved wood chairs in a plush, somewhat gloomy space kitted out with candelabras and Oriental rugs. The location suggests that the royals have graciously granted you an audience, but the results are generally warm, relaxed and, every so often, a touch melancholic. The location visually connects the men, creating a kind of virtual reunion that helps unify the material as each musician strolls down memory lane amid a trove of visual and audio material. The director Bernard MacMahon and his co-writer, Allison McGourty, have gone deep into the archives and, with help from the editor Dan Gitlin and the sound supervisor Nick Bergh, come up with loads of images of the baby rockers at work and at play. As time skips forward, the future rock gods fall ever-deeper in love with music as they begin strumming, banging, singing and posing. Page and Jones become session musicians and back up Shirley Bassey on 'Goldfinger.' Jones starts arranging, too, including for the film 'To Sir, With Love,' and makes his father proud. Plant finds his voice amid an astonishment of hairstyles. Page joins Jeff Beck in the Yardbirds and, from the ashes of that group, founds Led Zeppelin. The band and its longtime manager, Peter Grant (a relative of MacMahon's), didn't love the press; from the new interviews, it seems that an early Rolling Stone pan of their first album ('unworthy material') still stings. Even so, the filmmakers had plenty to draw from, and among their smartest moves is to let some of the songs play out in full or close to it. Among the highlights is the group's public debut in 1968 at a Danish school; they were already moving and grooving as one. (Footage from this concert can be found online, but everything looks and sounds better here.) As the four start playing 'How Many More Times,' they visibly warm up the audience and make good on their pledge to give all they've 'got to give.' The documentary's abbreviated timeline means that much has been omitted, and it's hard not to wonder if more screen chronicles will follow. That's especially the case given that the remaining members, Page most of all, seem to have entered the retrospective phase of their legendary run with remastered box sets and a 400-page book ('Led Zeppelin by Led Zeppelin') that was published in 2018, a half-century after the band formed and 38 years after it broke up following Bonham's death. 'It's beginning to appear that there will simply never be a time when this band isn't famous,' Chuck Klosterman wrote in 2014 in an interview with Page. A decade later, Led Zeppelin clearly has a whole lotta love still to go around.
