Ed: I was just curious, because it's such an unusual place to record.
Kevin: Yeah. I think those two guys really enjoy the flavors of the more exotic and indigenous instruments around the planet. I think that's always fired them up, even in Zeppelin, way back when.
Assembling The Led Zeppelin DVD
Ed: It sounds like, from what I read about the Zeppelin DVD, that it was a massive job to reconstruct.
Kevin: It was a massive job to reconstruct. We started off with the idea that there was a treasure trove of stuff, but the more we dug into it, I became acutely aware of how complex it was to get four individual performances in a single song sounding equally amazing.
Let me put it this way: there was an amazing amount of incredible stuff, but also a lot of stuff that wasn't incredible.
Say for instance with the first DVD: when we first unearthed all those tapes, there was no visual to go with it. Jimmy knew of some visual material that was here, and some visuals there. They knew some Australian director had cut together a version of "Moby Dick" and they knew there were some handheld shots, but nothing had been synced to the music at all.
So we started off going through the material, and seeing what there was. And we ended up having to use, basically, any songs that were associated with the video, and a lot of the other material, we couldn't use. There were a couple of songs--I think one of the songs ended up being used in the menu bonuses, because we didn't have any actual video for it.
As far as the other stuff, Earl's Court we thought was going to be phenomenal, because they did a run of five shows that they recorded--or at least this is what I was lead to believe. But when we got down to it, they actually only recorded three of them. Two had been properly recorded, and the third one had been very improperly recorded.
So we dealt with, basically, these two and a half shows, because half of the third show wasn't really usable, so it was down to the two Earl's Court shows. And then you had a wonderful band, who, in 1975, were experimenting with all sorts of things, so not everyone was on every night, shall we say.
Ed: Well, speaking of which, it sounds like the Knebworth stuff needed massive work to really perfect.
Kevin: Well you know, everyone has heard the Knebworth bootlegs, and they say that they can't believe how bad the band was.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
great stuff Ed, thanks! Love the behind the scenes stuff and always nice to have you back
2 - Matt Wardlaw
absolutely fantastic man - you don't get to read a lot of interviews with Shirley, and for those that keep up with his website, he definitely always has something of interest to say!
3 - Billy
Minor correction: the Australian VHS release also included The Rain Song.
4 - ryan
who cares about that?
The man worked with IRON FREAKING MAIDEN.
why didn't you ask him any questions about that? what a waste.