Background

Since late 1969, Led Zeppelin had been planning on filming one among their reside performances for a projected film documentary of the band. The group’s supervisor, Peter Grant, believed that they might be higher served by the massive display than by tv, as a result of he regarded the sound high quality of the latter as unsatisfactory. The primary try was the filming (by Peter Whitehead and Stanley Dorfman) of Led Zeppelin’s Royal Albert Corridor efficiency on 9 January 1970, however the band thought they appeared dated once they considered the edited footage a number of months later, and the movie was shelved (this footage was later remastered and featured on the 2003 launch Led Zeppelin DVD).

On the morning of 20 July 1973, through the band’s live performance tour of the US, Peter Grant made contact with American-born director Joe Massot. Massot was already recognized to Grant as he and his spouse had moved right into a home in Berkshire in 1970, the place they made associates with their neighbours, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Web page and his girlfriend Charlotte Martin.^[4] Grant had beforehand turned down provides by Massot to make a movie of the band, however with the large success of the band’s present tour, Grant modified his thoughts and provided him the job of director. As Grant recalled:

It began within the Sheraton Lodge, Boston. We would talked a few movie for years and Jimmy had recognized Joe Massot was  – so we known as them and over they got here. It was all in a short time organized.^[5]

Massot hurriedly assembled a crew in time for Led Zeppelin’s final leg of the tour beginning on 23 July 1973, in Baltimore. He subsequently filmed the group’s three live performance performances at Madison Sq. Backyard on the nights of 27, 28, and 29 July 1973. The movie was fully financed by the band and shot on 35mm with a 24-track quadraphonic sound recording. The reside footage within the US alone price $85,000.^{[citation needed]}

Authentic filming

The plans to movie the exhibits at Madison Sq. Backyard have been threatened when the native trades union tried to dam the British movie crew from working. After the band’s attorneys negotiated with the union, the crew was allowed to movie the live shows.^[4]

The footage of the band arriving on the airport of their non-public jet airliner, The Starship, and travelling within the motor cavalcade to the live performance was filmed in Pittsburgh, earlier than their present at Three Rivers Stadium on 24 July 1973.^[4]

For the band’s three New York performances, two band members, Robert Plant and John Bonham, wore the identical garments to facilitate seamless enhancing of the movie, however John Paul Jones and Jimmy Web page wore totally different units of apparel on a few of the nights, which created continuity issues. Web page is seen carrying a unique dragon swimsuit in “Rock and Roll” and the “Celebration Day” remaster. In an interview from 1997, Jones stated that the rationale he did not put on the identical stage garments was that he requested the crew if they might be filming on these nights and was advised no. “I would suppose ‘to not fear, I will save the shirt I wore the earlier night time for the subsequent filming’. Then what would occur is that I would get onstage and see the cameras able to roll.”

As Led Zeppelin’s reputation soared all through the Seventies, Peter Grant grew to become more and more infamous for being brutally protecting of his band and their funds; The Tune Stays the Identical captures one such trade between him and a live performance promoter. When Warner Bros. accredited the movie they did so with the proviso that expletives can be ‘bleeped’ out. Clifton took the optical print and eliminated the phrases, and the movie was given an applicable ranking. Nonetheless, on each different print, the phrases have been retained and have been totally audible.^[4]

Within the scene the place Peter Grant is pushed to the police station to be questioned concerning the theft from the protected deposit field on the Drake Lodge, he has his arm exterior the police automobile. In accordance with an interview carried out in 1989, he defined the rationale he wasn’t handcuffed was that the policeman driving the automobile was a drummer in a semi-professional band which had supported the Yardbirds on one among its US school excursions within the late-Nineteen Sixties. Grant had on the time been supervisor of the Yardbirds.^[4] The cash stolen from the protected deposit field on the Drake Lodge was by no means recovered, and whereas nobody has ever been charged, it’s alleged {that a} workers member of the lodge stop their job and fled to Jamaica quickly after the theft.^[6] Scenes of younger followers trying to purchase tickets, an unruly fan being ejected by safety, and Grant berating the promoter for receiving kickbacks have been all shot on the Baltimore Civic Heart on 23 July 1973. Grant purportedly advisable the “Dazed and Confused” sequence whereby the digital camera zooms into Web page’s eyes and cuts to the scene.^[4] Some unused backstage pictures filmed at Baltimore and at Pittsburgh later discovered their means into the promotional video for “Travelling Riverside Blues”, launched in 1990.

Subsequent filming and launch

Dissatisfied with the progress of the movie, Grant had Massot faraway from the undertaking and Australian director Peter Clifton was employed in his place in early 1974. Massot was provided a number of thousand kilos in compensation. Peter Grant later despatched somebody to Massot’s home to gather the movie. Nonetheless, Massot had hidden the movie elsewhere and so as a substitute an costly enhancing machine owned by Massot was taken as collateral. Massot served a writ, resulting in a interval of stalemate which was lastly damaged when Grant and Led Zeppelin’s lawyer Steve Weiss agreed to pay Massot the cash he was owed, after which he delivered the movie to the band.^[4] Massot was not invited to attend the premiere of the movie at New York however he attended anyway, shopping for a ticket from a scalper exterior the theatre.^[4]

Clifton, realising that there have been essential holes within the live performance footage, advised that the complete present be recreated at Shepperton Studios in August 1974, on a mock-up of the Madison Sq. Backyard stage. Shut-ups and distance footage of the band members might then be slipped into the reside sequences, which made up the majority of the live performance footage seen within the movie. When it was agreed that the band would meet at Shepperton Studios for filming, Jones had not too long ago had his hair reduce brief, so he needed to put on a wig.^[4][7]

Within the Might 2008 subject of Uncut Journal, Web page recalled the occasions surrounding the capturing of further footage at Shepperton Studios:

I am type of miming at Shepperton to what I would performed at Madison Sq. Backyard, however in fact, though I’ve acquired a tough approximation of what I used to be taking part in from night time to nighttime, it is not precise. So the movie that got here out within the ’70s is a bit warts-and-all.^[8]

A plan to shoot further footage on the band’s Autumn 1975 U.S. tour was deserted because of Plant’s automobile crash in Rhodes, Greece.^[6]

In 1976 a midnight screening of the movie was organised by Atlantic Information earlier than its launch, at which label president Ahmet Ertegun reportedly fell asleep.^[4]

The Tune Stays the Identical was lastly accomplished by early 1976, 18 months delayed and over-budget. Peter Grant later quipped “It was the most costly house film ever made”.^[2] It grossed $200,000 in its first week on the field workplace.

Important response and recognition

For its New York premiere, Cinema I used to be geared up with a quadrophonic sound system employed from Showco in Dallas. For the West Coast premieres, no such audio boosting was employed. These premieres, together with the London premiere, have been attended by the members of the band.^[4]

The movie carried out properly on the field workplace, grossing an estimated $10 million by 1977.^[9] Regardless of this, the movie was reviewed negatively by critics for its perceived amateurish manufacturing and self-indulgent content material, with the fantasy sequences particularly coming in for a few of the harshest criticism.^[2][10] The movie was notably unsuccessful within the UK, the place the band had not carried out reside for over two years because of being in tax exile. The band have been thus unable to advertise themselves at house, leaving them out of the general public highlight.^[11]

Nonetheless, amongst followers the movie has retained its reputation. Till the discharge of Led Zeppelin DVD in 2003, The Tune Stays the Identical was the one official reside visible doc that was accessible to followers of the band. It grew to become a cult favorite at late-night film homes,^[6] and its subsequent launch on video after which DVD has ensured a rising base of followers.^[2]

Some members of the band regard the performances filmed at Madison Sq. Backyard as merely common for the time, coming as they did on the finish of an extended and exhausting tour, however nonetheless consultant of the widely excessive commonplace of the band’s reside performances throughout this period. In an interview he gave with New Musical Specific in November 1976, Web page said:

The Tune Stays The Identical is just not an awesome movie, however there isn’t any level in making excuses. It is only a fairly trustworthy assertion of the place we have been at that exact time. It’s totally troublesome for me to look at it now, however I would prefer to see it in a 12 months’s time simply to see the way it stands up.

Web page made good on his promise. When reviewing materials for Led Zeppelin DVD in 2003, he determined to incorporate footage from this similar sequence of live shows.

Nonetheless, different members of the band have been much less charitable, with Jones later admitting that the movie was “a large compromise” and Plant denouncing it as “a load of bollocks.”^[9]

For all of its technical faults, many at the moment view the movie as an fascinating historic doc that captured the band at a specific cut-off date when its reputation was at round its peak, and, on a extra basic degree, as an correct illustration of the excesses of the music and show-business industries within the Seventies.^[12] In a evaluation printed in Mojo journal following the movie’s 2007 reissue, James McNair gave the movie 4 out of 5 stars and wrote:

The excellent news is that Jimmy Web page and fellow manufacturing wunderkind Kevin Shirley have been meticulous as regards high quality management. The three-night, July 1973 stint at Madison sq. backyard that fuelled the movie’s authentic soundtrack has been plundered afresh … In reality, 2003’s DVD package deal homes higher reside performances, however if you wish to catch Zeppelin in all their preposterous, ‘as a result of we are able to’ glory, The Tune Stays … is the one.^[13]

DVD scene itemizing

1. Mob Rubout
2. Mob City Credit
3. Nation Life (“Autumn Lake”)
4. “Bron-Yr-Aur”
5. “Rock and Roll”
6. “Black Canine”
7. “Since I’ve Been Loving You”
8. “No Quarter”
9. Who’s Accountable?
10. “The Tune Stays the Identical”
11. “The Rain Tune”
12. Fireplace and Sword
13. Capturing the Citadel
14. Not Fairly Backstage Cross
15. “Dazed and Confused”
16. Strung Out
17. Magic within the Night time
18. Gate Crasher
19. No Remark
20. “Stairway to Heaven”
21. “Moby Dick”
22. Nation Squire Bonham
23. “Heartbreaker”
24. Grand Theft
25. “Complete Lotta Love”
26. Finish Credit (w/ “Stairway to Heaven”)

Chart positions

DVD

Solid

• John Bonham
• Richard Cole
• Peter Grant
• Roy Harper
• John Paul Jones
• Jimmy Web page
• Robert Plant
• Colin Rigdon
• Derek Skilton

Personnel

Led Zeppelin

• John Bonham – drums, percussion
• John Paul Jones – bass guitar, keyboards
• Jimmy Web page – guitars, backing vocals, manufacturing, sound enhancing, mixing
• Robert Plant – vocals, tambourine

Further personnel

2007 reissue

On 20 November 2007, Warner Dwelling Video launched a brand new DVD version of The Tune Stays The Identical for the primary time with all fifteen songs from the unique Madison Sq. Backyard live shows.
This coincided with the reissue of the accompanying soundtrack to the movie, out there on CD. The DVD options newly remixed and totally remastered sound, 5.1 Dolby Digital and DTS encompass sound from authentic grasp tracks, and contains greater than 40 minutes of added bonus materials, together with never-before-released efficiency footage of “Over the Hills and Far Away” and “Celebration Day”, plus performances of “Misty Mountain Hop” and “The Ocean”, a uncommon 1976 BBC interview with Robert Plant and Peter Grant, classic TV footage from the Drake Lodge theft through the New York live performance stand, and a Cameron Crowe radio present. This model was launched on commonplace DVDs in addition to Blu-ray and HD DVD.

A Collector’s Version field set together with a T-shirt with the unique album cowl, placards from the New York exhibits, and a number of other shiny images was launched as properly.

As a result of authorized issues, the band determined to not change the video portion of the unique film for the rerelease.^[6] As a substitute, sound engineer Kevin Shirley created a completely new mixture of the three 1973 Madison Sq. Backyard live shows in order that the audio portion of the movie would higher match the on-screen visuals. The audio on the brand new CD launch is almost equivalent to the soundtrack of the brand new DVD launch. One distinction is that the songs included on the CDs that weren’t featured within the authentic film are included as bonus tracks on the DVD.^[18]