He ends his least favourite song, 'Stairway to Heaven', with a jokey 'we did it, Ahmet!'. Instead, the feline Plant oozes dignity, prowling about the stage, letting his wrists flick the mike lead imperiously. On the cusp of 60, he simply cannot be the shrieking, haloed torso'n'phallus of Zeppelin's heyday. He's so good, Jimmy Page so controlled and masterful, you almost believe all that old gubbins about the erstwhile occultist signing a contract with the devil. It's easy to forget how avant-garde 'Whole Lotta Love' is, until you witness Plant moaning along to Page's abstracted effects in the mid-section breakdown. Ensconced in a pyramid of green lasers (the night's only questionable excess), Page bows his guitar on a tremendous working of 'Dazed and Confused'. Playing the silver fox to Plant's golden god, he soon sheds his frock coat and starts to sweat, coaxing great sulphurous shocks out of a succession of guitars for two hours, until he is literally drooling. Indeed, he is the night's revelation, more than living up to the expectations of a generation of first-timers. Never mind the numbers - the millions of hits that crashed the website the 18,000 lucky few here - what of the prime digit? Happily, Page's gammy finger is no impediment. But it's fitting that that other god-king, Tutankhamun, is listening in from his exhibition next door. The venue is not ideal: Led Zeppelin's music is not the sort of thing that should be accompanied by upmarket enormodrome ciabatta cheeseburgers. As Robert Plant plays call-and-response with his 'ah-ahs', you dare to hope that not only will you be able to tell everyone from your school days who's just found you on Facebook that you saw Led Zeppelin, you will also be able to brag that they were as loud as anything. Three songs in, though, the band unleash 'Black Dog', and the sound man finally tames the howling din. There are a few anxious minutes as 'Good Times, Bad Times' swills muddily around the venue, and a leisurely version of 'Ramble On' feeds back. In the run-up to the gig, guitarist Jimmy Page wondered publicly whether the wobbly acoustics in the O2 would be up to it. His partner in rhythm, John Paul Jones, is a dour presence on the bass, cheering up markedly when he takes to the keyboards for expansive tracks like 'No Quarter'. But he's up to the task, hitting the drums very hard indeed, even if he is never required to reprise his dad's epic solos. Thickset and goateed, he looks like he should be drumming for a bunch of rap-rock no-marks. Jason Bonham - son of John 'Bonzo' Bonham, the Zep drummer who broke up the band by choking to death after a spell of heavy drinking - mans the kit. The next two hours fly by, as worry after worry melts away.įirst, there's the sub. Yes, reunions are staid, venal affairs that seek to make a noxious heritage industry out of rock. Have any acts of true greatness ever happened in front of an audience where the gilded and the botoxed virtually outnumber the ordinary fans? You suspect not. The glut of glitterati in the house isn't a thrill, though it's a worry. Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine - whose own reunion is imminent - skulks past a gang of Americans, one of whom is wearing a My Bloody Valentine T-shirt. Aston Villa's Martin O'Neill, who has been on the long-list for England manager, is sitting inches from my knees. Just over to the left, Bob Geldof chats to Bill Wyman, tonight's house band leader. The band whose albums my wildest cousin gave me when I was 11, unwittingly sealing my fate. It is all so dreadful, so Jools Holland, so smug old duffer-y, you start questioning the wisdom in being excited at all about seeing Led Zeppelin - the bluesmen who invented heavy rock, who set the template for a thousand Spinal Tap cliches, who made a base genre utterly transcendant. Mark Ronson's stepfather (Mick Jones) and his lot (Foreigner) pump out 'I Wanna Know What Love Is' with a choir of schoolchildren, an act of questionable taste on at least two counts. Keith Emerson curdles the air with keyboards. In the distance, a procession of third-string Atlantic luminaries ply their wares. They say the wait for an ambulance is torture, but the warm-up to the most feverishly anticipated gig of the decade is no picnic, either.
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