Led Zeppelin and the film that lasted 11 years: the rock that went through three governments

Many people seemed to have nowhere to sleep. Some went dancing and others simply spent the night at the Lara cinema, in Avenida de Mayo 1221. The ritual consisted of watching The song is the sameof Led Zeppelin. That movie and that place They meant something like fullness of sound. Leaving aside musical purism, and despite the fact that the copy seemed to ask for compassion, you could feel that it was better there than at a León Gieco recital.

The quality of the film didn’t matter, its record deserves a five-star splurge. Saturday after Saturday, from 1978 to December 1989, a spectacle worthy of the word “ritual” took place. The song is the same It has become an implausible fact. How many performances were there? More than 500, more than a thousand? There’s no doubt that this 137-minute rock documentary was the real deal.

Imagination soaring with Zeppelin. Jimmy Page He slammed you into the seat and the voice and demeanor of Roberto Planta (Roberto Piantain the credits) created our pure pubescent manhood complex. The singer, in moments of total and absolute absence of video clips, seemed like a rude sailor Giuseppe Corrado.

The epic film Lara continues its journey to this day and multiplies over the years. It is said that even Plant himself, when he visited us in the 1990s, wanted to visit the famous enclave where his film spent a long decade.

Furthermore, in those early ’80s it was believed that rock was a serious thing and then you could go back again and again to see a film which, as if that wasn’t enough, was called The song is the same. “Yes, I went there again, so what?” You told your old man so he would see you as crazy and let you live in peace.

Maybe it was a way to work deeply on the idea of ​​boredom. Life is short, they told you, but already at 14, 15 you were furious at the repetitive structure of daily life.

Eleven years on the bill. Dictatorship, Alfonsín and Menem. Three governments! Here’s how long it lasted The song is the same at the Lara cinema. Successes, in general, are always enormous, collective things, cocacoleras. “Cultural” phenomena, however, seem to respond to other needs: Was the song the same for the same people as always? At least that was the feeling. In that room, with a seat in the middle, couples formed. Peace symbols were also exchanged.

Lara’s ritual

You could go to Select Lavalle late at night to see The wallFrom Pink fluid. With that said, to Lara for Zeppelin. Let’s spend the night together, by the Rolling Stones, took place late at night at the Esmeralda cinema, and A ghost in heaven, Another long-lived classic, it lasted about five years at the Cine Studio, in Santa Fe and Pueyrredón.

At that time the films were forbidden to 14 or 18 year olds. Lara was a touch safe and turned a blind eye. Identical reaction in any other room of the cinerock (or at El Continental de Flores where they gave the What Sarli). Then, well, you’re out and they might take you away for a background check.

Eleven uninterrupted years on a cinema billboard. That Titanic achieved such a result? The song is the same (The song remains the same1976) was directed by two boys, Peter Clifton and Joe Massot (??). It was Led Zeppelin’s first live album.

The double disc served as the soundtrack to the most stubborn film in the history of our national cinema. The film’s live scenes were recorded over the course of three nights at Madison Square Garden in New York. (July 27, 28 and 29), during the band’s 1973 tour.

New smells in Lara: patchouli, joint. Alcohol was drunk on the seats. It was sung. was shouted at the screen. Things were flying here and there.

“Is there an explanation for this phenomenon? It’s hard to find. There was no glamour, no new hairstyles nor that cold elegance that infected boys and girls grouped in different musical styles., but standardized according to certain cultural orientations of the time. And yet, those kids who stormed the Lara cinema to mechanically reproduce their rock fervor were also from the 80s.” This paragraph is part of a beautiful text written by my colleague Fernando D’Addario.

Volume down and rear speakers. Two precise instructions that the projectionist had received during the screening of the documentary on Zeppelin. D’Addario, journalist Page 12he reminded us of it The song is the same it debuted in 1978 (May 24, near the start of the World Cup), however the great event of tenacious permanence was built around the democratic spring.

What happened with this movie didn’t happen anywhere on the planet. Buenos Aires didn’t sleep and that’s why we spent those crazy nights on the big screenAND.

The exit back By definition it was having gone to see one of those films more than once. Charly García’s phrase, What can you do other than watch movies?, comes from those late nights. They say Charly was often seen at the Cine Studio as an audience member. A ghost in paradisewith music by Paul Williams.

The fascinating Luis Sagasti -writer, professor and art critic-, author of A musical proposal, He dedicated a book to one of the most important rock groups in history: Why we listen to Led Zeppelin (Gourmet Musical Editions). “When I was 13 I went to visit my cousin Ignacio The song is the same at night As far as I remember, it was the first rock film to arrive in Bahía Blanca.”

Other testimonials. “I saw it about forty times, it was sacred. “It was the only thing there was on Saturday if you wanted to see music”said La Renga bassist Tete. “We would meet in the neighborhood, in Mataderos, with Chizzo, with my brother and other friends, and we would go to Lara.”

He cinerockextinct species of the even more extinct “rock culture”, was able to convert the Lara works in a sticky way. For the sickest acolytes, Led Zeppelin played every weekend for 11 consecutive years in a movie theater built in 1925.

The song is the same He beat them all: The wallTO Woodstock (first at the Ritz de Belgrano and then at the Normandie), tommy (Cinematic art). A legend that began to take shape precisely from the Resistance in the difficult years and therefore it would be read as the first link of the now called DOC.

Accounts Fernando Garcia, cultural journalist, that the Lara cinema became, over time, the sick branch of a bank of which only the majolica survived. “All of us who make a pilgrimage to those late nights (five times in my case) have them burned into our memories. Thousands of hours of Led Zeppelin can be seen on YouTube, but the context in which this film was shown is the same essence like those paintings whose faces are destined to be torn from illusion, from deception, from painting, by the artisans of Artificial Intelligence. And the face of Jesus, if you believe it, they say, is only seen when you climb the ladder to paradise.” .