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Led Zeppelin: Celebration Day – review

(Atlantic)

Somewhere in the region of 20 million people tried to get tickets for Led Zeppelin's one-off 2007 reunion gig, which is happily now immortalised on film, and this accompanying soundtrack. Where Zep's 1975 live set The Song Remains the Same documented a band heading past their imperial period and with musicianship stamped "excess all areas", Celebration Day captures a more streamlined band – men in their 60s determined to prove they can still cut it. Over 16 songs and two hours, they do just that. With Jason Bonham occupying his late father John's drum stool, Jimmy Page's guitar solos are shorter (if not exactly short); there are gentle touches in bassist John Paul Jones's delicate piano playing and Robert Plant's vocals, and even a hint of self-deprecation in the singer's quip that they first heard Since I've Been Loving You in 1932. The tracklisting consists of what Plant calls "the songs that had to be here" – from the funky Trampled Under Foot to a skyscraper of a Kashmir – and if they never play them again, posterity could do worse than remember them this way.