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I read through most of this thread and the chief complaint seems to be that Page didn't do well enough in live performances. I read some where that many Zeppelin songs have layers i.e. many mixed channels of guitar parts in them, if this is true, then it would be damn near impossible for one guitarist to play them all live hence the difference between the studio and live versions. I saw Page and Plant at MSG on their "No Quarter" tour and they were EXCELLENT! No complaints here whatsoever....

Likewise.

Interesting to read all the feedback on live Zeppelin. Most people here seem to have had disappointing experiences.

I can't speak from personal experience (I was born the week LZII came out) but I have read and heard a fair amount on the subject, and most seems to agree that Zep's early gigs were really phenomenal. That was in fact how they built much of their following in the first years. In 1969 they had three separate tours of North America alone. It was important that they do well given that the music press had given them the brush-off, and that no one seemed much interested in another Yardbirds spinoff band. So they began opening for Vanilla Fudge, only to blow them off the stage (VF finally refused to go onstage after Zep had wrung the crowd for a few hours). It no doubt helped as well that Jimmy wasn't strung out on heroin yet.

In the later years - 1972 onward - they did only big arena tours. Far fewer gigs, albeit to more bodies. As a result they were less practiced (and probably a little less hungry as well). And growing off-stage distractions were cutting into their performance, which became more and more uneven as a result. Bonzo was, of course, the one exception. Always able to play with perfect timing no matter how wasted he was.

Most people who saw them at all saw them in the latter days. And that's probably why Zep gets a not entirely deserved reputation for ragged live performances.

I haven't viewed the DVD's yet, but you can bet I'm burning to do so. My fifteen year old bootlegs just aren't cutting it any more.

I saw Page and Plant at MSG on their "No Quarter" tour and they were EXCELLENT! No complaints here whatsoever....

I watched the dvd in it's entirety last night and I was blown away by Page's playing in the songs that were selected. Just incredible --particularly the first disc (Royal Albert Hall, 1970).

The problem with Page live is that he was not consistent. Some nights he was on fire, other nights he was just horrible.

I saw him perform on television a few times in the 1980s (when I was a huge Zeppelin fan as a teen) and his playing was just awful --as if he hadn't picked up a guitar since 1979.

Later, I read that Page spent most of the late 1970s-1980s battling drug addiction. I've also read that he has since cleaned up his act.

I've always thought Page sounded best when he plugged his Les Paul straight into his Marshall and didn't mess around with effect pedals ('cept his wah) like he did at the early Zeppelin shows.

Page was like a composer, to ask that he perfectly reproduce live what he created in the studio is asking a bit much for a band with one guitar player. You're right most Zep songs had at least two guitar tracks some had as many as five and Page would bounce around between the parts which always amazed me like in "Celebration Day", there are five guitar tracks in that song. Page had the magic, no doubt. In many songs there is variation everytime a riff repeats itself which is quite intriguing from a player's point of view. He also had "The Tone", guitar players are still trying to emulate the "Whole Lotta Love" tone.