Many people all around the world wish Jimmy, Robert and John Paul, and not the lady of their most famous song, bought a stairway to heaven to let the fans go up there along with them. Led Zeppelin will be soon again on the stage. This crashing event will take place on the 10th of December at O2 Arena in London, twenty-seven years after that morning of September, when John “Bonzo” Bonham, the powerful drummer of the band, was found dead bringing to a conclusion the unwitting adventure of four lads in love with music and after some reunion all along these past years. John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Bonham’s son, Jason, (photo on the side) will be on the stage again. Those who were young in the Seventies, surely will be excited, remembering not only the golden age of rock, but also a season of passions and youthful thoughtlessness. Led Zeppelin aren’t a myth only for now old generation, in fact many youths love them and listen to their music although it is so different from the present one because their appeal has remained unchanged. To prepare the ground for this stunning concert, on the 12th on November it’s been released Mothership, a triple CD plus DVD that retraces their complete carrier through their unforgettable songs. The Led Zeppelin story, started up in 1968 from the ashes of the Yardbirds, for which guitarist Jimmy Page had served as lead guitarist after Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Bassist John Paul Jones also boasted a lofty session musician’s pedigree. Singer Robert Plant and drummer John Bonham came from Birmingham, where they’d previously played in the Band of Joy. The Zep’s members  were musical sponges, often traveling the world – literally traipsing about foreign lands and figuratively exploring the cultural landscape via their record collections – in search of fresh input to trigger their muse. The group’s use of familiar blues-rock forms spiced with exotic flavors found favor among the rock audience that emerged in the Seventies. Led Zeppelin aimed itself at the album market, eschewing the AM-radio singles orientation of the previous decade. Their self-titled first album found them elongating blues forms with extended solos and psychedelic effects, most notably on the agonized Dazed and Confused, and launching pithy hard-rock rave-ups like Good Times Bad Times and Communication Breakdown. Led Zeppelin II found them further tightening up and modernizing their blues-rock approach on such tracks as Whole Lotta Love, Heartbreaker and Ramble On. Led Zeppelin III took a more acoustic, folk-oriented approach on such numbers as Leadbelly’s Gallows Pole and their own Tangerine, yet they also rocked furiously on Immigrant Song and offered a lengthy electric blues, Since I’ve Been Loving You. The group’s untitled fourth album (a.k.a. Led Zeppelin IV  or The Runes Album, or ZOSO), which appeared in 1971, remains an enduring rock milestone and their defining work. The album was a fully realized hybrid of the folk and hard-rock directions they’d been pursuing, particularly on When the Levee Breaks and The Battle of Evermore. Black Dog was a pile driving hard-rock number cut from the same cloth as Whole Lotta Love. Most significant of the album’s eight tracks was the fable-like Stairway to Heaven, an eight-minute epic that, while never released as a single, remains radio’s all-time most-requested rock song. Houses of the Holy, Zep’s fifth album, were another larger-than-life offering, from its startling artwork to the adventuresome music within. Even more taut, dynamic and groove-oriented, it included such Zeppelin staples as Dancing Days, The Song Remains the Same and D’yer Mak’er. They followed with the Physical Graffiti, a double-album assertion of group strength that included the Trampled Underfoot, Sick Again, Ten Years Gone and the lengthy, Eastern-flavored Kashmir. Led Zeppelin’s sold-out concert tours became rituals of high-energy rock and roll theater. The Song Remains the Same, a film documentary and double-album soundtrack from 1976, attests to the group’s powerful and somewhat saturnalian appeal at the height of their popularity. The darker side of Zep’s – their reputation as one of the most hedonistic and indulgent of all rock bands – is an undeniable facet of the band’s history. In the mid-to-late Seventies, a series of tragedies befell and ultimately broke up Led Zeppelin. A 1975 car crash on a Greek island nearly cost Plant his leg and sidelined him (and the band) for two years. In 1977, Plant’s six-year-old son Karac died of a viral infection. The group inevitably lost momentum, as three years passed between the release of the underrated Presence (1976) and In Through The Out Door, their final studio album (1979). On September 25th, 1980, while in the midst of rehearsals for an upcoming American tour, Led Zeppelin suffered another debilitating blow. The last one! John Bonham was found dead due to asphyxiation, following excessive alcohol consumption. Feeling that he was irreplaceable, they disbanded. Now the story comes back to the present time in which Jason, Bonham’s son, will replace his father as a drummer for the concert of the 10th of December. Only twenty thousand lucky fans have the ticket to attend this unmissable event because of the sits of the O2 Arena and someone of them has surely paid a lot of pounds to catch the only-in-a-life chance to see one of the most famous rock bands of the world. Browsing in internet, is it possible find out tickets, but how many people can spend from £ 1,700 up to £ 2,200 for a ticket? To many fans does not stay what to dream of being in the O2 Arena and try to reach not a ticket, but a stairway that since 1968 is going up to the heart of the music.

Published in November 2007 on www.clubdtv.com