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Fleetwood record Led Zeppelin's long-awaited reunion gig at The O2 Page, Plant, Jones and Bonham the Younger opened their two-hour show with the confident wit and colossal nerve of "Good Times Bad Times," the first song on Led Zeppelin's 1969 debut album. Even before Plant opened his mouth, the original fury Ñ a surprisingly lean, dub-like crossfire of cannonshot chords, frantic, gulping bass runs and polyrhythmic swagger Ñ was in order and in force. "In the days of my youth/I was told what it means to be a man," Plant sang, in the slightly lower register of someone who gives those lessons now. It was an appropriate effect, too Ñ an admission of age delivered with feral pride Ñ on a night dedicated to the memory of Zeppelin's late friend and mentor, Atlantic Records' co-founder Ahmet Ertegun. (Proceeds from ticket sales go to music scholarships, created in Ertegun's name, at schools in New York, England and his native Turkey.) Earlier, a quote from Ertegun, who died in 2006 at age 83, hung from banners at the sides of the stage: "It is a great life, this life of music." Zeppelin honoured that sentiment by playing like a band renewed, not merely reunited.
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