I Wouldn’t Cross The Road To See Them

Having downloaded three Led Zeppelin live shows recently, I have watched with considerable interest as the world has, frankly, gone mad over ticket sales for their show at what used to be the Millennium Dome in London at the end of November. Tickets are currently selling on Ebay for in excess of £800 each. Insane. It’s worth pointing out that they have a certain rarity value. Led Zeppelin split up in 1980, after the death of their drummer, John Bonham. The band can hardly be said to have flogged the corpse of Zeppelin to death in the years since then. It took them until 1990 to release a “Greatest Hits” album (and even this, considering that they never released any singles while they were still going, was something of a questionable venture) and, though Robert Plant and Jimmy Page have re-united for than once over the last few years, it has always been emphatically as “Page & Plant”, and emphatically not as “Led Zeppelin”.

When I was 17, I loved Led Zeppelin. I was a drummer, and Zeppelin were a fundamental part of the process of learning to play the drums. John Bonham was the man. Never more than five drums, his style was important as much for what he didn’t play as what he did (and I’m disregarding the occasional ten minute long drum solos here – I’m putting them down to the effects of years of cocaine usage). Their songs were as much a part of my adolescence as they were for many people ten years or more older than me. Now, they’re back. Not merely “Page & Plant”, but as near as one can get to the full Led Zeppelin experience, with John Paul Jones playing bass and keyboard, and Bonham’s son Jason on the drums (I was waiting for a call, but they must have mislaid my number).

I didn’t bother trying to get tickets for it. Predictably, their website’s server crashed on the day that applications became available. I wasn’t one of the people frantically hitting F5. If I really put my mind to it – if it meant that much to me, I might have been able to come up with the cost of a ticket from Ebay, but I’m not going to waste my time or money doing that. I’ve got all the albums and a little stack of bootlegs, and I know that it isn’t going to be the Led Zeppelin of my DVDs – it’s going to be an older, wrinklier version of them. Plant’s voice won’t be as sprightly as it’s going to be, Jimmy Page will have grey hair and, no matter how much his son might sound like him, it won’t be John Bonham playing the drums. On the night that they play, I might just settle down on the sofa here, pour myself a stiff drink and watch them in their pomp at Earls Court from 1975. Somehow, I think that I’ll be getting the better end of the deal.