The Grey Horse, Friday 18th January 2002
Putting The Boot In!
If you like the music of Led Zeppelin, you absolutely must see this band.
Boot Led Zeppelin played the Grey Horse, Kingston on a rainy Friday night in January 2002 and blew the roof off the place. They did so not only because they play the originals note-perfect but because they're not Page, Plant, Bonham or Jones wannabes but just unassuming musicians who love the music and play it with amazing dedication.
To say they play the stuff note-for-note does Boot Led Zep a disservice. It suggests they are slaves to the original, a pantomime act. These guys aren't. They're the real thing, but they don't pretend to be. They shamble on to a low dais kitted out with Marshall stacks, drum kit, obligatory Four Symbols, a mass of guitars (including a mandolin) and kick off with - wait for it - We're Gonna Groove.
For those of you who don't know (but you would, wouldn't you, if you're reading this website) this track was an outtake from Led Zep 1 that only made it onto Coda. They follow this up with Sick Again, a live Zep staple, but not one of the original band's great songs (except when heard live), and you start to realise something.
Boot Led Zep aren't trying to ape the studio numbers. They are playing Led Zep as they used to perform on stage (hence the name: Boot as in 'bootleg'). And as the Boots progress through the set, you realise why. It's the music of Led Zep played live that matters, not the four guys who created it. The original band also started playing in pubs and clubs across England. Their first eighteen months were amongst their most viscerally exciting. The Boots are recreating that excitement. Soon Zep ended up in stadia across the States. They were all-conquering but that early intimacy was lost.
I saw the original band at Earl's Court in 1975 (i.e. in the latter half of the previous century). I saw Plant on his own, Page in The Firm, Page on his own and the two as Page & Plant at Wembley in 1998. I've got Led Zep 2 signed by all four band members, I've had a piece on them published in a national and I've got Zep bootlegs and books lining my walls. I'm a Zep head through-and-through but, I tell you, Boot Led Zep are every bit as good as the original. There's nothing counterfeit about these guys.
It takes real talent to write the Zep material. It takes even more to play it as Boot Led Zep do, knowing that there are die-hard fans in the audience scrutinising every lick. Take Raff, the guitarist. Guitarists will know Page's penchant for open tunings, yet watch Raff's chord shapes and you know he has freeze-framed The Song Remains The Same pic so that when he uses a violin bow on Dazed And Confused, he is playing exactly what Page played. He uses a theramin on Whole Lotta Love (in which they go into Boogie Mama) and even on No Quarter, as on the studio original. But the whole band is good. Luke doesn't pretend to be Plant, but then he doesn't have to. He hits the notes and holds them. Dan is fast and fluid on bass (superb on Dazed And Confused, Heartbreaker, Rock And Roll), Mat on drums is tight, economical, stoking the tension, and Steve on keyboards (terrific on No Quarter and Kashmir) are all a powerful presence.
The highlights? Kashmir (with a White Summer intro), Rock And Roll, Since I've Been Loving You, Immigrant Song, What Should And What Should Never Be (slide solo), Heartbreaker (blistering solo) Communication Breakdown (authentic to the live version), the Battle Of Evermore (hence the mandolin), which the original band rarely essayed on-stage, and The Song Remains The Same itself with Raff on obligatory twin-neck Gibson SG.
As the Boots got into their stride and we realised how good they were, the band started to vibe off the crowd and vice-versa. They played for over two hours and at the end everyone was smiling (as Plant used to say of early audiences). You can see why. No wonder Page begs Plant to come out and play this stuff. But don't wait for Page and Plant to get round to playing again, if they ever do. Hear Boot Led Zep. Let them hit you in the stomach where this music is meant to be felt, loud, in your face, in a sweaty pub. Boot Led Zeppelin have gone back to the source.
Just to be pompous for a minute, if music is to outlive its generation, it needs new bands to carry it on (Beethoven and Mozart played their own stuff, then, after they were dead, others covered it). Several tribute bands now do big business around the world, e.g. Bjorn Again and the Australian Pink Floyd. It's because people want to hear the music. Catch Boot Led Zep before they graduate to bigger venues, as I'm sure they will in due course.
By the end, such was their enjoyment of the music and ours of theirs, that they could actually have been Page, Plant et al. Raff seemed to become Page, with the floppy hair, the jump in Rock And Roll and the mannerisms. He didn't mean to be. It was the music that done gone done it. Luke started throwing some great Plant shapes. When he and Raff locked heads in smiling grimace, we knew they were into the music as Plant and Page were when they were starting out, and we loved them for it. Mat, behind the drum kit, wearing the Clockwork Orange bowler hat, seemed to mutate into Bonzo (but, thank Christ, no solo, though, actually, I'd like to hear Mat's take on Moby Dick), while Dan and Steve were studious and silent in the Jonesy tradition. So when Raff said, "Let's have a lock-in and play the whole catalogue," we all wished it could be.
Page, eat your heart out. These Boots kick ass.
Chris Stoakes
chris.stoakes@clara.co.uk
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