This is the soundtrack album of what a usually reliable source calls another boring concert movie, a good-quality recording job of a program that makes the chair seem awfully hard before it's over. I suppose albums like this are of some use to someone, but there are plenty of better examples of what Led Zeppelin can do. "Stairway to Heaven," the best piece the band ever came up with, is much better served by the exacting environment of the studio recording than by the looseness of this one. The band has enough taste and discipline problems under ideal conditions. There's also the problem of their simply having played, say, "Whole Lotta Love" too many times; the version here doesn't seem to say much of anything else. And, of course, the inevitable drum solo puts its usual pall on things. I may yet go to see the movie, but not with a whole lotta enthusiasm for listening to it.

- Noel Coppage, Stereo Review, 2/77.

Bonus Reviews!

This is the long-awaited two-disk soundtrack album from a movie based mostly on footage from the Zep's 1974 Madison Square Garden stand. The film shows the group meeting in England to fly to the New York show, arriving backstage, and performing the concert as seen from a second-row seat. There are also fantasy sequences illustrating the group's concepts of many of the most familiar songs. The movie is opening this week in key major markets. Zeppelin's white-hot live versions of its familiar hit album material amply demonstrate why the foursome has become the Stones' most serious challenger for the world rock crown since it got started in 1968. There is also a booklet of eye-catching stills from the movie bound into the jacket. Although premier rockers, this set catches the most effective ability of the group to insert softer sections that add another dimension to the vocals of Robert Plant. Best cuts: "The Song Remains The Same," "Stairway To Heaven," "Whole Lotta Love," "Dazed And Confused," "Rain Song," "Rock 'N' Roll."

List price: $11.98. Category: live double-LP masquerading as soundtrack album or vice versa. Full title: The Song Goes on Forever but the Road Remains the Same. C+

- Robert Christgau, Christgau's Record Guide, 1981.

Led Zeppelin's initial popularity was based as much on its concerts as their albums, so it's strange that the group's only official live album is such an uninspired, boring affair. Released in conjunction with the pseudo-documentary film of the same name, The Song Remains The Same reproduces the very things that made Zeppelin concerts legendary -- lengthy solos, intertwining interplay between Page and Plant, and ridiculously long songs ("Dazed and Confused" is nearly an entire half hour) -- but the group's performance is not intoxicating, it's long-winded. As scores of bootlegs prove, Led Zeppelin could produce magic with the same formula, but The Song Remains the Same is excrutiatingly dull. * *

- Stephen Thomas Erlewine, The All-Music Guide to Rock, 1995.

The soundtrack to the concert film of the same name, The Song Remains the Same is a woeful representation of Led Zeppelin's electrifying live show. So far, there's been no legitimate release to really capture the band's concert prowess. * *

- Gary Graff, Musichound Rock: The Essential Album Guide, 1996. Billed not as a "live" album but as an original film soundtrack, The Song Remains The Same takes its place within the Zeppelin canon as a multi-sales award winner, a US Number Two and a UK chart topper. It spent 15 weeks in the UK charts and 12 weeks in the US charts. Yet critically and artistically it was the band's low-point to date. Recored at the thin end of a 1973 tour, live at Madison Square Garden, and mixed at Electric Ladyland Studios in New York, the album failed to impress. Even a banker such as "Stairway To Heaven" is marred by Robert Plant's hippyisms, while the John Bonham "drumathon" "Moby Dick" provides a persuasive argument for the economy of the then-burgeoning punk rock.

A run of superb albums had placed the band as untouchable superstars and following on from the career high of Physical Grafitti , the release of an original soundtrack to an in-concert film seemed to make commercial sense. The film , which was described by Pink Floyd's manager Peter Grant as "the most expensive home movie ever made," performed respectably at the box-office, despite a series of suspect fantasy sequences. Nonetheless, Zeppelin's soundtrack fails to capture the spirit of a band considered at the time as the world's top live draw.

As of 2004, The Song Remains The Same was the #55 best-selling album of the 70s.

- Hamish Champ, The 100 Best-Selling Albums of the 70s, 2004.

Reader's Comments

No comments so far, be the first to comment .