Directed by Jimmy Page, it took a year of intensive research to assemble this five-and-a-half-hour digital re-tooling of the Zeppelin legend. Previously, the only officially-sanctioned live footage was the 1976 film The Song Remains The Same. Here, a trawl of the band's own unreleased archives combines with reclaimed bootleg material to tell the Zep story in chronological fashion, via 30 performances from four memorable concerts—the Albert Hall (1970), Madison Square Garden (1973), Earls Court (1975) and Knebworth (1979).
"If God could do the tricks that we can do, he'd be a happy man," declares megalomaniacal film director Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole, on epic form), who's just hired a wanted fugitive (Steve Railsback) to be a stunt man in his anti-war movie. Richard Rush's decidedly offbeat comedy thriller from 1980 lies somewhere between genuinely unsettling and extremely likeable.
One of the oddest gigs I've seen in a long time. The weathered Leven sings mournful songs of loss and regret in a rich, soulful voice. He's a big poetry man, quoting Pablo Neruda on his new album Shining Brother Shining Sister. Yet, more often than he's being a melancholic, working-class minstrel, he's being a man of the people in an entirely different manner. For at least half his time onstage, he tells bawdy shaggy dog stories.
