Commonly dismissed as a disappointment upon its initial release, the soundtrack to
Led Zeppelin's concert movie
The Song Remains the Same is one of those '70s records that has aged better than its reputation -- it's the kind of thing that's more valuable as the band recedes into history than it was at the time, as it documents its time so thoroughly. Of course, that time would be the mid-'70s, when
Led Zep were golden gods, selling out stadiums across America and indulging their wildest desires both on and off stage. Theirs was the kind of excess that creates either myth or madness, and this 1976 live album -- comprised of highlights from their three shows at Madison Square Garden during July 1973 -- has its fair share of both, as
Zeppelin sounds both magnificent and murky as they blow up songs from their first five albums to a ridiculously grand scale. This is not the vigorous, vicious band documented on the subsequently released live
BBC Sessions or the majestic might of the 2003 live album
How the West Was Won and its accompanying eponymous DVD, where the band still sounded tight even when they stretched out for 20 minutes. Here, on a show documented just about 18 months after those on
How the West..., the group were starting to let their status as stars go to their head ever so slightly. They no longer sound hungry; they sound settled, satisfied at their status as rock overlords and, since a huge part of
Zeppelin's appeal is their sheer scale, hearing them at their most oversized on
The Song Remains the Same is not without its charm. This, more than any of their studio albums, captures both the grandiosity and entitlement that earned the band scorn among certain quarters of rock critics and punk rockers in the mid-'70s, which makes it a valuable historical document in an odd way, as the studio records are such magnificent constructions and the archival live albums so powerful. Plus, there is a certain sinister charm to the sheer spectacle chronicled on
The Song Remains the Same, particularly in the greatly expanded 2007 reissue, which adds six previously unreleased tracks, helping pump up this already oversized album into something truly larger than life. At this stage,
Zeppelin seemed concerned only with pleasing themselves, but they only did so because they could -- others tried to mimic them, but nobody could get the sheer size of their sound, which was different yet equally as monstrous on-stage as it was on record. It wasn't as consistent on-stage as it was on record, though -- a half-hour "Dazed and Confused" may be the stuff of legend, but it's still a chore to get through -- but the very fact that
Led Zeppelin could take things so far is part of their mystique, and nowhere is that penchant for excess better heard than on
The Song Remains the Same.
[In 2018,
The Song Remains the Same was issued as a Super Deluxe edition, containing CD, vinyl, and Blu-Ray editions of the album.] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
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