Led Zeppelin at Knebworth festival – archive, 1979

More a myth than a rock band, Led Zeppelin have always represented rock at its most arrogant, excessive and hedonistic; a self-styled aristocracy who epitomise the gulf between performer and audience which is intrinsic to the Sixties notion of the superstar.

It is four years since Zeppelin last performed in Britain, in which time rock music has undergone a traumatic musical and moral upheaval which called into question the premise on which Zeppelin’s reputation was built and the values the group had come to symbolise. While their contemporaries such as the Stones and the Who have been spurred into re-evaluating their relevance to the times by the new order, Zeppelin have remained blithely indifferent to it.

To return in such a cavalier fashion in front of 100,000 people suggests a haughty acknowledgment of their place in the status quo which was obtained before the rise of punk. Indeed, the sight of the long-haired bedenimmed Knebworth multitude made one wonder whether they aren’t right and time really had ground to a halt in 1975 after all. Here the dubious virtues of the guitar solo lobotomy and five minutes of screeching feed-back are clearly understood.

But even the most undiscerning fan must have been disappointed at the standard of Zeppelin’s performance. At their best, the group have been responsible for music of awesome grandeur and power, not to mention volume; but here an amplification system cranked up to the threshold of pain served only to exaggerate the inadequacies of their performance rather than disguise or compensate for them.

Astonishingly, the group seem not even to have stood still but actually stepped backwards. Stiff and obviously under-rehearsed, they demonstrated a poverty of imagination and a clumsiness occasionally bordering on the incompetent. Old songs sounded pedestrian and formulaic; new songs sounded much the same – all rendered with a lack of passion and vitality that suggested not so much that the group were intimidated by the considerable sense of occasion as indifferent to it.

Not until Kashmir, almost two hours into the set, when Jimmy Page at last performed a solo of binding grace and power did the band come alive and begin to ply themselves in earnest. But by then it was not the sound of multi-decibels that was ringing in the ears so much as the cry of “Work for your money” from one distraught fan and the crash of a mighty reputation falling to the ground.