Media Credit: Dan Lutger
It’s the second coming of sweaty, sexy, ’70s rock and roll. Led Zeppelin embodied everything a rock and roll band should be, but when drummer John Bonham met an untimely death in 1980, the English superstars disbanded forever. People have spent the last 40 years trying to recreate the magic. You’ve probably seen a crappy Led Zeppelin cover band at a neighborhood bar. Led Zeppelin 2 isn’t them. The band has received rave reviews on blogs and in publications like the New Yorker and Chicago Sun-Times, which called the band “as good a Zep as Zep ever did back in the day.” We talked to Bruce Lamont, member of avant-garde metal band Yakuza and Led Zeppelin 2’s frontman “Robert Plant.”
College Times: When did you first discover Led Zeppelin?
Lamont: When I first heard the band, I was about 4 or 5 years old driving in my mom’s car. She would play local rock stations and whatnot. I was about 10 or 11 when I heard Led Zeppelin IV for the first time and once getting it, I realized I already knew the entire album.
When people hear of a classic rock tribute band, they usually think of chubby, middle-aged fans dressing up like their favorite rock stars and butchering songs. How would you describe Led Zeppelin 2 to someone who has never heard or seen you guys, keeping that in mind?
Well, we’re four musicians that don’t come from some sort of cover band background. We kind of started for fun for house parties and stuff. We realized we like to get inside the music beyond just the studio albums, so we’ve always been sort of a live band like [Zeppelin] during their heyday in ’72 and ’73, but we also go into the stuff they didn’t perform live and try to reinterpret it and try to recapture the energy more than anything else. I’ve never seen another Led Zeppelin cover band, so I don’t know how we compare to them.
What’s it like basing at least part of your musical career around someone else’s music career?
It’s different. I mean, the band doesn’t really tour anymore. There’s a whole generation of young people that not only didn’t have the chance to see Led Zeppelin at all, but probably never will. So we’re something out there that can capture the spirit. The difference in our [audience age] is remarkable. We have a 14-year-old at the front of the stage going apeshit and there’s a 70-year-old also going apeshit in the back in their own way. It’s really an awesome experience.
How do Zeppelin and Led Zeppelin 2 differ?
I know we play a lot of things that Led Zeppelin never played live. We kind of pride ourselves on that. We take a track and play it how we think the band would have played it. The main difference is that we’re not them. [Laughs] We’re just trying to embody the spirit and the intensity in the music, you know? We’re two different bands playing the same music.
When you’re on stage, you’re giving it your all musically, but you’re also partly acting. What are some of the mannerisms you use to embody Robert Plant?
I do a lot of the hand gestures and things like that. I’ve been told I’m a bit of a more masculine version of him, coming from more of a metal music background, so I guess I get a little more aggressive on stage than he would. I try to pick up on the other stuff and be conscious of it. More than anything, we try to hone in on the sound. With me, I especially try to pay attention to his voice and when he changes key. It’s a lot more than just throwing my hand up when he did.
What would you say was so special about the band that people want to recreate the music some 40 years later?
I mean, it’s probably some of the greatest music ever made in modern times. That’s all there is to it. There’s more diversity to it than what the Beatles did or Elvis Presley did, though both inspired the band in their own way. They did so many more things musically than most bands just didn’t.
Led Zeppelin 2, The Clubhouse, Monday, January 31, 7 p.m., $15 adv, $17 dos
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