Travesty: Led Zeppelin at Live Aid

A Led Zeppelin reunion back in 1985 turned into an embarrassing debacle!

The Robert Plant post got me thinking about Led Zeppelin, and a memory of their horrid performance at Live Aid popped into my head. Live Aid was a pretentious event designed to supposedly aid starving people in Africa, but who knows how much of the money was ever used to feed them? Tons of rock bands participated in Live Aid, and one of them was Led Zeppelin.

Led Zeppelin at Live Aid: A performance that will live in infamy

For those who might not have seen Led Zeppelin’s awful performance, here it is in all its terrible ignominy:

Where do I start with this? Apparently, the remaining members of Led Zeppelin had rehearsed the songs - but not with each other—and thus had little time to rehearse together before the performance. Imagine playing in front of an audience of a billion or more people, but you don’t get together and rehearse for weeks beforehand. Was this just stupidity or laziness on the part of Led Zeppelin?

Everything sucked in this performance except John Paul Jones. Plant’s voice is terrible, and Jimmy Page seems barely able to play his guitar properly. What did they need two drummers for? What was the point of that? Phil Collins didn’t even seem to know the songs properly. Collins tried to fob it off on the other drummer, and claimed that he didn’t know there would be two drummers:

But I do remember an awful lot of time where I can hear what Robert decries as ‘knitting’: fancy drumming. And if you can find the footage (the Zeppelin camp have done their best to scrub it from the history books), you can see me miming, playing the air, getting out of the way lest there be a trainwreck. If I’d known it was to be a two-drummer band, I would have removed myself from proceedings long before I got anywhere near Philadelphia.”

He continued: “Onstage I don’t take my eyes off Tony Thompson. I’m glued to him. I’m having to follow – he’s taking the heavy-handed lead and has opted to ignore all my advice. Putting myself in his shoes, he’s probably thinking, ‘This is the beginning of a new career. John Bonham isn’t around any more. They’re gonna want someone. This could be the start of a Led Zeppelin reunion. And I don’t need this English fuck in my way.’

I feel a sense of embarrassment for Zeppelin watching that video after all these years. But, let’s face it, they brought it on themselves via a lack of organization and preparation. There was a haphazard approach to the entire gig that gave Zeppelin’s reputation a huge black eye for many years.

Page and Plant lament their failure at Live Aid

Plant and Page later talked about how bad it was:

Unfortunately, the group failed to live up to the hopes of their diehard fans. “It was horrendous,” Robert Plant told Rolling Stone in 1988. “Emotionally, I was eating every word that I had uttered. And I was hoarse. I’d done three gigs on the trot before I got to Live Aid. We rehearsed in the afternoon, and by the time I got onstage, my voice was long gone.”

Making matters worse, Jimmy Page was handed a guitar right before walking onstage that was out of tune. The monitors were also malfunctioning, meaning the musicians could barely hear themselves. “My main memories, really, were of total panic,” Jimmy Page said years later. “John Paul Jones arrived virtually the same day as the show and we had about an hour’s rehearsal before we did it. And that sounds like a bit of a kamikaze stunt, really, when you think of how well everyone else was rehearsed.”

Until I found that article for this post, I did not know that Plant had performed three gigs right before Live Aid. Wow, you’d think that he would have saved his voice for the almost 2 billion people that were watching the Live Aid concert. No matter what was happening with his solo career, a Zeppelin reunion in front of that many people demanded his full attention and preparation.

Page’s guitar was also an interesting wrinkle in the Live Aid travesty. Did no one think to check the guitar long before it was handed to him? It seems bizarre to me that an out-of-tune guitar can be handed to a performer under those circumstances. Page’s playing also didn’t seem on par; frankly, he looked a little rusty to me. Another example of a lack of preparation, on par with Plant’s.

I don’t buy that last sentence from Page about Jones. Jones was the only one that seemed able to play properly, so I don’t know what Page was babbling about when he said that; it seemed to me like he was trying to blame Jones. Hey, check your guitar before the show starts next time, Jimmy.

Regarding the monitor issue, perhaps we should give them a pass for that one? But then again, wouldn’t such a thing be checked by the band before they went on? Again, it just seems like a haphazard approach to the entire performance, given the gigantic audience that was watching and waiting to see Zeppelin again.

The performance of Led Zeppelin at Live Aid was so bad that the remaining members later refused to allow it to be included in a Live Aid DVD:

…legendary rockers LED ZEPPELIN have refused their permission to allow their performance at fundraiser Live Aid to feature on a forthcoming DVD that hopes to raise even more money for the charity.

The original footage features ZEPPELIN performing in Philadelphia with Phil Collins standing in for the late John Bonham. This was the first reunion performance since the drummer’s death in 1980.

Claims that the band were unsatisfied with their performance were reported in yesterday's Sunday Times.

The band did an interview after their performance, which was equally bad. Watch their answers and see if it gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling inside after hearing them. I rolled my eyes as I was watching it.

Queen blows every other band off the stage at Live Aid

Compare the Led Zeppelin fiasco to Queen, who stole the show and gave a performance that remains unmatched to this day. Here’s Queen’s full performance at Live Aid; contrast it to that of Limp…er…Led Zeppelin:

As you watch Queen play, ask yourself why Bryan May’s guitar was in tune, why Freddie’s voice was amazing, and why Queen’s monitors were fully functional. If they could do it, why not Led Zeppelin? Perhaps it was as simple as Queen still being a band at that time, whereas Led Zeppelin was really just the remaining members plus two drummers.

Whatever the reasons for the difference, Queen kicked ass at Live Aid, and their performance was one for the ages. The same cannot be said for Led Zeppelin.

O2: The redemption of Led Zeppelin

And now we get to the redemption arc of our story. Well, you didn’t think I was going to leave Zeppelin - one of my all-time favorite bands - in the gutter of failure at Live Aid, did you? Oh no, my frens, because back in 2007 Zeppelin did another gig in honor of Ahmet Ertegun, the president of Atlantic Records.

This time around, the band rehearsed like mad for weeks before the performance:

But the band that played underneath those memories last night was not the one that misfired at Live Aid in 1985 or again in New York in 1988. This one was rehearsed, ready and out to kill. This band was Led Zeppelin in every way.

Zeppelin did not walk or waltz through any of tonight’s sixteen songs. You could hear the care, the weeks of practice that started back in June, in the live debut of “For Your Life” from the 1976 album Presence, a song which, according to Plant in our recent cover story, the band tried in the first rehearsals but dropped after two days. Obviously, there was no staying away from its eccentric oceanic chop.

There was no getting away from the warhorses either. “No Quarter” came with the obligatory dry ice. “There are certain things we had to do — this is one of them,” Plant said, almost in apology, introducing “Dazed and Confused.” Page was soon back in ancient ritual — pulling long wah-wah groans from his Gibson Les Paul with a violin bow under a rotating steeple of green-laser beams.

At times, Zeppelin seemed to amaze themselves. “Spectacular!” crowed Plant, turning to Bonham with pride at the end of “Rock and Roll.” As the words “Led Zeppelin” filled the back screen, before the band left the stage for good, Bonham dropped to his knees and bowed, as if to say “I’m not worthy,” In fact, he was, in spades, pushing his elders — hard — in the circle dance “Misty Mountain Hop” and the steady, exotic ascension of “Kashmir.”

It is also important to note that Zeppelin left the building wiithout making any reference to their future together, if there is one — no “See you next year!” or “Until next time . . .” The only message they left behind was, “We were the best — and still are.”

The waiting begins again.

Here is Led Zeppelin’s complete performance at the O2 show:

In short, Led Zeppelin killed it at the O2 show, and completely redeemed themselves for their failure at Live Aid. But, as always with Zeppelin, we must take the bitter with the sweet. There was to be nothing more from the band after the O2 show ended.

Still, we must be grateful for seeing them one last time in all their furious glory.

Somewhere in Heaven, John Bonham was smiling that night.

Two special Led Zeppelin videos

And now I will leave you with a couple of special videos that I had never seen before until I bumped into them on X. The first is Zeppelin way back in 1969 in Paris, playing at a fantastic level when they were young and truly hungry for success.

Listen to Plant’s voice and Page’s guitar playing! It was amazing to see Zeppelin just as it was all beginning to come together for them. 🤟🏻

And here is a great performance of Whole Lotta Love. I am not sure where this was performed or when, but it was obviously after Led Zeppelin 2 had been released.

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