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Early in 2009 the manager of Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page laid to rest all reunion tour rumours with the monolithic claim ‘Led Zeppelin are over’. Now for fans either too young, or just too late, to see the originals in action, cover bands like Whole Lotta Led are the last chance to catch a shadow of the classic rock titans’ live legacy. But do Whole Lotta Led fill the gap?
As would be expected of a band cut in the shape of such rock royalty, Whole Lotta Led know their Zeppelin trivia: tonight’s set saw them pull a variety of authentic shapes with a show tailored for the deserving fan, bringing to the fore ‘best of’ classics such as ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and ‘Rock and Roll’, but also taking time to treat the devoted to over-looked treasures such as storming opener ‘The Wanton Song’ and the epiphany-meets-blitzkrieg that is ‘In My Time of Dying’, whilst often breaking into faithful deviations from the songs sourced from the original band’s well documented live career, including impressive extended guitar and drum solos.
Whole Lotta Led must be one of the hardest working bands in the UK: last night they graced the stage in Southampton, whilst tomorrow they’ll be surfacing in Swansea. Whether this has had an effect on the vocals of front-man Lee Addison, who appeared to be giving the high-notes as wider berth as any Robert Plant sound-a-like can respectably do, the unforgiving sound saw many of the lines end in a squawking imitation. However, when dashed against the snarl of a Les Paul guitar and backed by a rhythm section tighter than the lid of a submarine, the likeness began to emerge, and on those final post-climactic notes that close ‘Stairway to Heaven’ Addison did not disappoint, also holding particularly strong on the brooding ‘Kashmir’ and the cheeky ‘Rock and Roll’.
Lead guitarist Nick Ferris’s guitar tones remain reverently true to the myriad of sounds found on Zeppelin’s back catalogue, whilst the modern live sound adds meat to the bone of the out-dated recordings. However, Whole Lotta Led seem to take these songs less as a well-worn pair of boots with which to walk the path of a touring rock n’ roll band, instead appearing slightly too self-conscious about scratching what they’ve borrowed. As a result the precision with which they enact their set is at times more mathematic than it is uncanny, losing some of the subtleties in the process. Despite this, as they crossed the halfway line they began to settle into their second skins more comfortably, drawing in some crowd-participation in the well-received ‘Black Dog’, pulling out all the stops for a charged rendition of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ before driving the audience to over-boil for pre-encore set closer ‘Whole Lotta Love’ during which no limb was stationary.
During inter-song banter vocalist Addison explained that Whole Lotta Led’s purpose is to ‘celebrate’ the music of their iconic idols. One look across the faces filling The Duchess tonight showed that people of entirely different ages, genders and styles had packed in to share that very purpose. For all the similarities or differences between the four men on the stage tonight and the four that made rock history, Whole Lotta Led serve as a reminder of just how talented, but ultimately, just how inimitable their forerunners were.
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