Earls Court 75 was incredible. Blasting onstage into "Rock 'n' Roll", the first thing that hits you is the volume. Even by the standards of the day, LZ are loud. Some suggest this is deliberate, you either are totally into it, or you cannot bear to be there. Nobody is there out of interest, we're all believers and here to genuflect our obescience. We pay the price in lifelong tinnitus.....willingly. "Celebration Day" and "Custard Pie" smash any resistance while the Zeppelin is still gaining height. Name that hit from the first five albums and it is paraded here in nuclear-hardened rock and roll glory. Dazed and Confused has become the bands light relief as they reach for their influences and play a quarter hour 50s rock and roll medley. and of course the trademeark violin bow solo, Page standing in a cone of lazer light and dry ice is the true demonic wizard as he tortures sounds from his guitar. At one point I feel absolutely surrounded and encased, entombed even, by the pressure of the volume. I don't think I have ever been so captivated in my life.

We wait for the the post-Stairway encore for 20 minutes. Then Whole Lotta Love crashes down upon us. The place goes t o t a l l y crazy.

Even now, 32 years later, if anybody doubts Zeppelin's pre-eminence I can't argue, I am filled with pity at what they cannot know.

The Albums

Led Zeppelin
This is still my favourite.  Showing their roots in the 60s blues boom, this has the most amazing ambience. It sounds like it was recorded in a cheap basement and you can hear the traffic noise outside. This lends a powerful immediacy to even the most laid back music.

Led Zeppelin II
The definitive hard rock album. Some say it invented heavy metal, and whilst Whole Lotta Love, the opening track, did so, but that's hard to square with the rest of the album which seems to be questing in every direction. Each song has more invention than some popular artists manage in their entire careers.

Led Zeppelin III
In which LZ re-discover folk-rock. Despite the hard-core opener of "The Immigrant song" this is a decidedly pastural album of nostalgic whimsies. Much derided at the time, it is a far stronger album than many gave it credit. It strengthened their live act by giving them much sought after light and shade.

Led Zeppelin IV (Four symbols)
I have long felt that "Battle of Evermore" is the best song on this album, but acknowledge this is a lost argument to the Stairway crowd. Easily their best album.

Houses of the Holy
There is much to like about this album, but it is hard to avoid concluding that, compared with what had gone before, it's weak. D'yer Maker (Jamaica - geddit) is cringeworthy. But alongside this is some of Zeppelin's best work, Song Remains the Same/Rain Song, Over the hills and Far Away and, of course, No Quarter are as good as anything they ever did.

Physical Grafitti.
Rarely for the 70s, this is a couble album with almost no filler tracks. Probably LZ's last unalloyed golden moment. Poignantly, the lyrics to "Night Flight" chronicles Plant's reaction to learning of his son's sudden death whilst he was away on tour.

Presence
I could make an argument that there are three good tracks on this album, "Achilles Last Stand", "Nobody's fault but Mine" and "Tea for One", but really only one, TfO, stands with the best of their music. A recent reviewer suggested that ALS invented modern "speed metal", but seeing as it uses that same galloping riff as Nazareth's earlier re-working of Joni Mitchell's "This Flight Tonight", I think the claim is overdone. No, it is the often-overlooked "Tea for One" that is the standout track here. Easily better than their earlier slow-blues "Since I've been loving you" the thing to notice is how Page's guitar solo slowly recedes from the listener into a haze of reverberation, suggesting a grief struck distance lost in himself, which allows Plant's return to singing to capture attention. It may be a production rather than a musical master stroke, but it's one that is the difference between first and loser.

In Through the Out Door
It was obvious by now that LZ were casting around for a new direction. The heavy rock seam they had mined so succesfully through the 70s was obviously exhausted and they were looking for something else. The misplaced rock and roll experiments of Presence continue here, but it is in "Taramsalata", a tentative stab at what we might call "Samba Metal", a mix of latin rhythms and western rock, that the band hint at where their ideas were moving.

Plant suggested as much when the band began to put together ideas for their next album. Sadly we'll never know, Bonham went on a drinking spree soon after and was found dead the next morning.

Led Zeppelin died in 1980. Trouble not my cherished memories with ghosts rattling chains