In 1976, Led Zeppelin released a feature-length concert film called The Song Remains the Same. It was supposed to be a concert at Madison Square Garden in New York, where they played for three nights in 1973. The film begins with the group arriving in their private jet and being driven to the venue, where director Joe Massot had a film crew ready to capture the concerts.
The problem was, as the group and their manager Peter Grant found out only after they’d fired Massot from the project, is that he’d gotten inadequate—practically unusable—coverage that wouldn’t sync properly or cut. Some great shots but nothing that could be used to create an edited sequence.
Grant brought in Aussie director Peter Clifton, the guy they probably should have hired in the first place, to see what could made from this mess, but the initial prognosis looked pretty grim until Clifton suggested reshooting the entire running order of the Madison Square Garden show on Madison Square Garden’s stage… recreated at Shepperton Studios in England!
Everyone assumes they’re watching the group at MSG, but in reality what we are watching (for the most part) is Led Zeppelin rocking out on a soundstage in Surrey, southeast of London. Without an audience.
Complicating matters was the fact that Robert Plant had his teeth fixed, and John Paul Jones had cut his hair short in the intervening year. Read the story of how The Song Remains the Same was filmed at Dangerous Minds.
(Image credit: Heinrich Klaffs)