The filming took place during the summer of 1973, during three nights of concerts at Madison Square Garden in New York City, with additional footage shot at Shepperton Studios.
Promotional materials stated that the film was "the band's special way of giving their millions of friends what they had been clamouring for – a personal and private tour of Led Zeppelin.
Fans drove up ticket sales, but many reviewers–and two band members–disliked the film at the time of its initial release (1976), although in subsequent years critics warmed to movie and it now receives mostly favorable ratings from the public.
[4] However the band supplied a pulse feed off their mixing desk for the editing purposes but were not sufficiently happy with their performance to release the full soundtrack for use in the film.
It was agreed with Dorfman that the concert would form part of a larger documentary project including the band's performance at the Bath Festival on 28 June, which was filmed by Whitehead.
Massot was already known to Grant as he and his wife had moved into a house in Berkshire in 1970, where they made friends with their neighbours, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page and his girlfriend Charlotte Martin.
[6] The footage of the band arriving at the airport in their private jet airliner, The Starship, and travelling in the motorcade to the concert was filmed in Pittsburgh, before their show at Three Rivers Stadium on 24 July 1973.
"[8] 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.
According to an interview conducted in 1989, he explained the reason he was not 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.
Dissatisfied with the progress of the film, Grant had Massot removed from the project and Australian director Peter Clifton was hired in his place in early 1974.
[6] Clifton, realising that there were crucial holes in the concert footage, suggested that the entire show be recreated at Shepperton Studios in August 1974, on a mock-up of the Madison Square Garden stage.
[12]A plan to shoot additional footage on the band's Autumn 1975 U.S. tour was abandoned due to Plant's car crash in Rhodes, Greece.
[9] In 1976 a midnight screening of the film was organised by Atlantic Records before its release, at which label president Ahmet Ertegun reportedly fell asleep.
In an interview he gave with New Musical Express in November 1976, Page stated: The Song Remains The Same is not a great film, but there's no point in making excuses.
"[13] For all of its technical faults, many today view the film as an interesting historical document that captured the band at a particular point in time when their popularity was near its peak, and, on a more general level, as an accurate representation of the excesses of the music and show business industries in the 1970s.
The DVD features newly remixed and fully remastered sound, 5.1 Dolby Digital and DTS surround sound from original master tracks, and includes more than 40 minutes of added bonus material, including never-before-released performance footage of "Over the Hills and Far Away" and "Celebration Day", plus performances of "Misty Mountain Hop" and "The Ocean", a rare 1976 BBC interview with Robert Plant and Peter Grant, vintage TV footage from the Drake Hotel robbery during the New York concert stand, and a Cameron Crowe radio show.
A Collector's Edition box set including a T-shirt with the original album cover, placards from the New York shows, and several glossy photographs was released as well.
[9] Instead, sound engineer Kevin Shirley created an entirely new mix of the three 1973 Madison Square Garden concerts so that the audio portion of the film would better match the on-screen visuals.