The Song Remains The Same (film) - Original Filming

Original Filming

The plans to film the shows at Madison Square Garden were threatened when the local trades union tried to block the British film crew from working. The band's attorneys negotiated with the union and the crew was eventually allowed to film the concerts.

The footage of the band arriving at the airport in their private jet airliner, The Starship, and travelling in the motor cavalcade to the concert was filmed in Pittsburgh, before their show at Three Rivers Stadium on 24 July 1973.

For their three New York performances, the band members wore exactly the same clothes to facilitate seamless editing of the film, except for John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page who wore different sets of attire on some of the nights, which created continuity problems. Page is seen wearing a different dragon suit in "Rock and Roll" and the "Celebration Day" remaster. In an interview from 1997 Jones said that the reason he didn't wear the same stage clothes was that he asked the crew if they would be filming on those nights and was told no. "I'd think 'not to worry, I'll save the shirt I wore the previous night for the next filming'. Then what would happen is that I'd get onstage and see the cameras ready to roll."

As Led Zeppelin's popularity soared throughout the 1970s, Peter Grant became increasingly notorious for being brutally protective of his band and their finances. The Song Remains the Same captures one such exchange between him and a concert promoter. In the scene, Grant uses the words 'fuck' and 'cunt' eighteen times combined. When Warner Bros. approved the film they did so on the proviso that these words be 'bleeped' out. Clifton took the optical print and bleeped the words, meaning the words were inaudible and the film was given an appropriate rating. However, on every other print the words were retained and were fully audible.

In the scene where Peter Grant is driven to the police station to be questioned about the theft from the safe deposit box at the Drake Hotel, he has his arm outside the police car. According to an interview conducted in 1989, he explained the reason he wasn't handcuffed was that the policeman driving the car used to be a drummer in a semi-professional band which had supported The Yardbirds on one of its US college tours in the late-1960s. Grant had at the time been manager of The Yardbirds. The money stolen from the safe deposit box at the Drake Hotel was never recovered and no one has ever been charged.

The scenes of police chasing a half-naked intruder and of Grant berating the promoter for receiving kickbacks were both shot at the Baltimore Civic Center on 23 July 1973. Grant purportedly recommended the "Dazed and Confused" sequence wherein the camera zooms into Page's eyes and cuts to the scene.

Some unused backstage shots filmed at Baltimore and at Pittsburgh later found their way into the promotional video for "Travelling Riverside Blues", released in 1990.