Press Review: Kiel Crowd Cheers British Rock Group

Full of sound and fury, Led Zeppelin played long and hard Saturday night and drew repeated standing ovations from a crowd of about 9,000 at Kiel Convention Hall.

The four-man British rock group played for more than two hours. Usually, a top-billed group spends a maximum of one hour on stage and leaves the rest of the time to secondary groups. Led Zeppelin is dominated by the technical proficiency of Jimmy Page on guitar and the screaming vocals of Robert Plant. Most of their performance was concerned with individual exhibition rather than music.

Although there are flashes of fire that few other groups can duplicate, such as the heavy blues that had the crowd gyrating in front of the stage at the end, a Led Zeppelin concert overall is about as interesting musically as a long playing record of train whistles.

Much of their music goes in the direction of egoistic excess that makes so much of contemporary jazz essentially boring music. At one point in the concert, they even resorted to that hoary jazz trick of leaving the drummer onstage alone for a 15-minute solo.

The things Page can do with a guitar are astounding. He wrenches sound from the strings, picks up a bow and pulls incredible shriekings from them, drops the bow and still makes the guitar sound like a violin. But his music like that that of the rest of the group, is a series of crescendos with no build-up, no sense of space. There is a long, creeping explosion, then a regrouping and another explosion. One longs for a BB King or an Eric Clapton to break through the mass of noise and play some music.

It was interesting to watch members of the audience try to dance to the Led Zeppelin.  Strong surging blues beat would come in, and there would be a delighted wiggling and scraping of feet. The dancers would keep going for a minute or so and look at each other with puzzlement. The beat had fled like a runaway child, to return at its own whim.

The sound in the convention hall, as usual, was miserable. Plant wore a pair of pretty high-heeled shows and several people threw flowers.

[H. Barnes | Post-Dispatch | 4.13.70]

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Press Review (2): Zeppelin Receives Standing Ovation

Those of you who remember the overwhelming live performance of the now defunct Yardbirds will be ecstatic to learn that their vein of excitement is not forever gone and irrecoverable. Indeed, the last lead guitarist, Jimmy Page, is currently playing with a band called Led Zeppelin. During its concert at Kiel Auditorium April 11, the group employed many of the gimmicks that made the Yardbirds so popular, such as electronic effects, vibrant changes in dynamics and vocal-guitar interplay.

Although not unusually loud, Led Zeppelin’s performance was so “together” that the audience was quite engulfed in the force of the music. Bass guitarist John Paul Jones must be commended on his tasteful bass work – never too flashy, always complimenting the rest of the music, Jones also played Hammond organ, including a passable solo. John Bonham’s drum work fitted nicely with Led Zeppelin – never overly ostentatious, but interesting enough. Bonham’s live drum solo in Moby Dick was quite a bit more technically interesting than his performance on record, though was perhaps regrettable that he did not stray from a four-four rhythm.

Jimmy Page, of course, was his usual phenomenal self. Famous in musical circles for his extremely speedy guitar runs and licks, he demonstrated that his playing is not merely fast rambling, but a very logical sequence of well-valued notes. Accompanied by East-Indian-sounding drums, page’s solo, White Summer 9which was included on the Yardbirds last American album Little Games) was quite tasteful. But his unusual metabolic lifestyle somewhat got the better of him in spots, resulting in bursts of out-of-character runs. White Summer was especially delightful because of Page’s use of electronically amplified harmonics.

Even with these fine musicians, the flavor of the concert seemed to emanate from Robert Plant, the vocalist. Plant is not only a very fine singer but also an extremely dynamic performer. Rightfully proud of Led Zeppelin’s music, he became irritated at the vocal outbursts of frenzied fans (teenyboppers?) and advised them to “shut up… and dig music”.

The concert ended with a standing ovation from the near capacity crowd and an encore performance of Whole Lotta Love. Be sure and see Led Zeppelin at least once in your life. [By J. Witthaus/Ibis/April 1970]