No more live Zeppelin: "The cupboard is bare."

Well, this certainly isn't good news. From Billboard magazine:

<<However, Zeppelin fans hoping for the future release of additional unreleased recordings may be disappointed to know that "there's nothing left over," bassist John Paul Jones told Billboard.com last year. "We used everything, pretty much. Because basically anything that wasn't any good was kind of rooted out at the source and simply never even got recorded." Jones said simply finding the master tapes for the upcoming releases was a chore in and of itself: "In those days, there was no system and things moved from here to there. When [London's] Olympic Studios closed down, people were finding master tapes in a garbage dump on the side of the road! Who knew anyone would ever need them again?">>

http://www.billboard.com/billboard/daily/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1833619

Of course this is untrue. At the very least, the have multitrack audio for the concerts excerpted on the DVD. And god knows there are plenty of high qualify soundboard recordings in circulation. I think it's pretty ridiculous that Zeppelin would close the door to future releases of live material. Ridiculous -- but not surprising.

 

I think they were only referring to the studio work not the live material. Which in a sense is true; there are many demos and partial studio outtakes but no more finished songs to be released. But Jimmy did make sure all of the live shows were recorded for posterity. Of course he is being very selective to release only the best live vesions of Zep when they were in their prime.

 

"The cupboard is bare."
Wasn't this also Page's answer when asked the same question in 1982 shortly after Coda's release?

 

“But Jimmy did make sure all of the live shows were recorded for posterity. Of course he is being very selective to release only the best live vesions of Zep when they were in their prime.”



Well, I some knowledge of the issue and unfortunately, it is a bit more complicated than that. What is being officially released represents virtually all of the concerts (although they did not release whole concerts) that were professionally multi-track recorded. They only have multi-track recordings (and film) of a handful of concerts, so the official release is limited to those. Hence, they pretty well cleaned out the vaults. It is believed that Seattle 77 was professionally recorded but that performance was so bad the band would probably rather burn the tapes than have them seen or heard by anyone.

Jimmy did have essentially all of the concerts recorded by the Showco engineers but only the raw FOH soundboard and then only to cassette tape. Great for bootlegs but nowhere near good enough for official release.

It is sad but true that we are getting most all of what was professionally recorded. Darn shame as they were great in concert!

 

Welcome to the board Reginald! It's great to have another Zep fan here. Concerning professionally recorded shows, weren't the band's September 1971 shows in Japan professionally recorded? I believe Jimmy confirmed this in an interview back in 1971/72, but he wasn't happy with the band's performance. I find his judgement hard to believe as those are some of the greatest Zep shows of all time.

 

But wouldn't it make sense to release the complete audio for some of the concerts excerpted on the DVD? I'm sure most fans would be happy to have a complete Earl's Court 1975 or Knebworth 1979 concert remixed from the professional multitrack audio.

And certainly there are SOME soundboard recordings that are worth releasing officially. They could do a "best of the boots" series. I seem to recall Cleveland '77 being an especially popular show for bootleggers.

 

If you want to hear a great sounding live show by Zep (and I mean A+ quality sound), seek out "Led Zeppelin's Flying Circus" on the Empress Valley label. It is a 3 CD recording of their 2/12/75 Madison Square Garden show. Not only is the sound perfect, but the packaging is exquisite. This could easily pass for a legitimate commercially released recording. The actual performance of the band, however, would rate B+. As a result, I can't see Page ever releasing it.

 

The Japan 71 shows are the subject of much debate. The rumor is that all of the shows were professionally recorded and that either the band or Peter Grant did not like the performances or recordings and had the tapes destroyed.

Any Zep fan knows that some of the bands best shows ever were on this tour including 9/29/71. How on earth would anyone associated with the band get it into their heads that they were bad enough performances that they needed to destroy the tapes? If it was the recordings, it’s hard to imagine all 5 nights being botched.

My personal opinion is that the shows were not professionally recorded. This was 1971 and it would have been cumbersome to recorded 5 shows in 3 different cities. Zep made no such heroic efforts to record concerts anywhere else. Three nights at one venue is one thing (NY 73), 5 nights in 3 cities is another.

 

I agree that it would make sense to release some of the whole “DVD” concerts on CD. Particularly the EC 75. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

I also think it would be a great idea to release some of the material, at least the Royal Albert Hall 70 in DVD-A or SACD. Hell they already mixed the master tapes into 5.1.

As far are Cleveland 77 goes, it is only popular because until a year or so ago it was the only soundboard recording from 77. Horrible, performance though, Jimmy was seriously smacked out.

The recent release of Flying Circus, mentioned in another post above, gives me hope though. It is a killer soundboard! If there are more like it out there it might just make up for the lack of professionally recorded stuff.

 

I'd heard a bootleg on the radio of a Texas show, either '69 or '70. The quality isn't anyrthing to write home about but the performance more than makes up for it. Zep is waaaay tight and Page plays like his a** is on fire. A show like that I would love to see released.

 

I thought we weren't supposed to talk about boots, otherwise I would have mentioned the two 3-cd sets I recently purchased of the two 1979 Knebworth shows. They are both excellent, despite having almost identical setlists, and JPJ's weird choice of keyboard sounds. I was disappointed that Ten Years Gone from the first show isn't on the DVD.
I think once I get the new 3-cd Atlantic set, combined with the few boots I have, the only song LZ performed live that I don't have is When the Levee Breaks, and as far as I can tell they only performed it three times in January 1975.