| Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Concert tour by Led Zeppelin | ||||
| Location | The O2, London | |||
| Associated album | Mothership | |||
| Led Zeppelin tour chronology | ||||
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The Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert was a benefit concert held in memory of music executive Ahmet Ertegün at The O2 in London on December 10, 2007. The headline act was the English rock band, Led Zeppelin, who performed their first full-length concert since the death of drummer John Bonham in 1980, in a one-off reunion. Bonham's son Jason Bonham played drums during the band's set, and also provided backing vocals on two songs.
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On September 12, 2007, it was confirmed during a press conference by promoter Harvey Goldsmith that the surviving members of Led Zeppelin would reunite for the show, with Jason Bonham filling in on drums.[1] The concert was originally scheduled to take place on November 26, 2007. It was to help raise money for the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund, which pays for university scholarships in the UK, US and Turkey.
Tickets were made available via a lottery system through the website Ahmettribute.com, costing £125 / $250,[2] with all proceeds going to Ahmet's own charity. The website exceeded its bandwidth allowance and crashed almost immediately following the announcement, with the promoter predicting that the gig would cause the "largest demand for one show in history".[3] The promoter claimed that one million people registered for fewer than 20,000 available tickets.[4] Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page later commented:
I knew it was going to sell out quickly, but the tidal wave of euphoria that preceded the gig—the anticipation—went beyond what I could possibly have imagined. We'd had a few shambolic appearances in the past, like Live Aid, so if we were ever going to come back together, we were going to do it properly and stand up and be counted.[5]
On November 1, 2007, it was announced that Page fractured the little finger on his left hand after a fall in his garden and the reunion show was postponed to December 10, 2007.[6]
The show opened with a band consisting of Keith Emerson, Chris Squire, Alan White and Simon Kirke with the brass section from Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings. They played Emerson, Lake & Palmer's version of "Fanfare for a Common Man", including sections from Yes's "The Fish" and Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir". Initially the openers should have been Squire, White and Rick Wakeman but Wakeman was unavailable for the rescheduled date due to prior commitments and Emerson was called in as a last minute replacement.
The show also featured Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings, Paul Rodgers, Paolo Nutini, and Foreigner as supporting acts. The majority of the performance was by the Rhythm Kings, with Nutini and Rodgers both guesting on two songs each. The performance billed as "Foreigner" was in fact only Mick Jones performing "I Want to Know What Love Is" with St. Lukes C of E secondary school as the choir and the Rhythm Kings as the backing band. Other guests on the Rhythm Kings set included Maggie Bell and Alvin Lee.[7][8] Pete Townshend was scheduled to perform as a supporting act, but he pulled out when he heard Led Zeppelin was performing, saying, "They really don't need me."[9] Other acts considered for the show included a reunited Cream.
The band performed 16 songs—including two encores—featuring a range of songs from across the spectrum of their career; however no material from the band's final album, In Through the Out Door, was performed. Included in the set list were two numbers which were played live in their entirety for the first time ever by Led Zeppelin—"Ramble On" and "For Your Life".
First Encore:
Second Encore:
The concert sound was mixed by Metallica's FOH engineer Big Mick.[10] The concert was also filmed for a possible DVD release.[11] In an interview he gave in March 2008, Page commented
It was recorded, but we didn't go in with the express purpose of making a DVD to come out at Christmas, or whatever. We haven't seen the images or investigated the multitracks. It's feasible that it might come out at some distant point, but it'll be a massive job to embark on.[12]
In January 2010, when asked whether a DVD of the O2 reunion gig is expected, Page responded: "Not in the foreseeable future, I can’t give you an answer on that."[13]
However, the concert was recorded by many fans. Sophisticated bootleg versions of the show are available on the Internet, including a wide-screen DVD with a surround sound audio track mixed from 10 different audience recordings of the show.
The historic concert attracted nearly 20,000 fans from all corners of the globe. Because of the enormous demand for tickets, an online lottery system was implemented in which fans entered a random drawing. Eight thousand fans were selected and allowed to purchase the 16,000 tickets that were made available to the public. To combat fears of ticket scalping, lottery winners had to be present in London with ID to pick up their tickets and wristbands for entry. Hundreds of fans with General Admission tickets arrived at the O2 Arena days in advance with the hopes of being front and center for such a landmark occasion.
A number of celebrities attended the gig, including Chad Smith, Dave Grohl, BBC Radio 1 DJs Chris Moyles & Fearne Cotton, Brett Hull, BBC Radio 2's Chris Evans, Bob Harris, Ilan Rubin,[14] Paul McCartney, Jeff Beck, Brian May,[15] David Gilmour, Bianca Grant, Lulu, Oasis brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher, Ann Wilson,[16] Arctic Monkeys, The Edge, Bernard Sumner, Dave Mustaine (who received free tickets from Ross Halfin), Peter Gabriel, John Squire, Mick Jagger, Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark, Matt Morgan, Juliette Lewis, James Dean Bradfield, Richard Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Ashcroft,[17] Marilyn Manson, Warren Haynes, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, David Boreanaz, W. Earl Brown, Erika Sawajiri, Jerry Hall, Priscilla Presley,[18] Paris Hilton[19] and Neil Finn.[20][21]
Music critics in attendance were unanimous in their praise for Led Zeppelin's performance. New Musical Express proclaimed, "what they have done here tonight is prove that they can still perform to the level that originally earned them their legendary reputation...We can only hope this isn't the last we see of them."[22]
The New Yorker critic Sasha Frere-Jones, who attended the concert wrote, "The failed gigs of the nineteen-eighties and nineties have been supplanted by a triumph, and the band should be pleased to have done Ertegun proud with such a spirited performance."[23]
Members of the band have also expressed their satisfaction with the concert. Page commented that "it was a wonderful celebration of the music, a celebration of the fact that the essence of it, the energy, was still there,".[5] He also reflected that "It’s great that we did it. I look back on that night with a great amount of fondness, but Jason [Bonham] was the hero. For me that gig was about him."[24]
Plant has stated:
On a musical level, we've had sublime moments and there were several on December 10. Bear in mind that we're old guys now and we're not supposed to be hip-shrugging teenage idols. It was pretty ... I'm not sure 'sincere' is the right word. But it was as real as you're going to get. And Jimmy [Page] was on fire at times.[5]
In an interview he gave to The Times in January 2010, Page recalled:
We played really, really well. But we played with a totally different urgency, if you like, from how we played in the rehearsals — although the rehearsals were pretty damn good, too. I suppose in retrospect the fact there was only one gig then it’s great that everyone afterwords would say that it was an historic and inspiring gig for people to hear. It is a shame that there weren’t any more that followed on and now we got to two years later and everyone’s doing their own thing and that’s how that is at this point of time or certainly into next year. So that’s it.[13]