It’s been a long time, but Zeppelin’s back

“Out there are people from 50 countries, and there’s a sign out there that says Hammer of the Gods,” lead singer Robert Plant said, referring to one of the group’s most famous lyrics, which also has come to be its most enduring motto. “I can’t believe that people from 50 countries would come to see that — so late in life!” he said.

“This is the 51st country!” he roared then, as the band broke into Kashmir, the melodic and deep-throated anthem that is one of its signatures, to a backdrop of wheeling batik suns and a sweating, white-haired Jimmy Page on lead guitar.

Audiences from as far away as New Zealand, Japan and the US made the trek after winning a ticket lottery that allocated a maximum of two seats per person at a price of $250 each, with painstaking care to prevent entries being sold to scalpers that left some fans waiting three hours in the rain to secure their seats.

The event was a tribute to the late Ahmet Ertegun, founder of Atlantic Records, and also featured performances by Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings, led by the former Rolling Stones bassist; Foreigner; Paul Rodgers; and Paolo Nutini.

Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham’s alcohol-related death in 1980 led to the end of the band, and Monday’s performance featured Bonham’s son, Jason, now a drummer with Foreigner.

The Led Zeppelin reunion assumed massive proportions, with many here billing it the “concert of the millennium” by “the greatest rock and roll band ever”.

A band that already was being dismissed by critics as self-indulgent by the late 1970s and passe by the time new wave and punk strode onto the stage in the 1980s suddenly has acquired new currency, simultaneously earning the covers this week of Rolling Stone in the US and Q Magazine in the UK.

“I don’t think they were ever appreciated for the scale of band they were,” Paul Rees, editor of Q Magazine, said in an interview. “It’s taken people time to realise the massive influence they had on music.”

“I saw Led Zeppelin in 1971 and ‘72. That was 35 years ago. What can I say? So exciting,” said Yoshihiro Hoshina, 53.

Plant, 59, had his shirt open to the breastbone, a hint of the bare-abdomened rooster swagger of yesteryear, but managed the high screeches near the end of Stairway to Heaven — one of the most-played songs on American radio.

Instead of the old melodramatic hair-swinging and exaggerated erotic strutting, Plant, Page, 63, and bassist John Paul Jones, 61, played the first sets with easygoing confidence.

The finale of Whole Lotta Love, played as the first of two encores, was as mesmerising as ever, and then the band fell into Rock and Roll — It had been a long time, a long lonely, lonely time, and with nothing but rumours of a tour, no one knew for sure when, or if, it would happen again.