Australian Rock Collective tours classic album Led Zeppelin IV
Starting this weekend, an enterprising band of Australian musicians will undertake a national tour to perform Led Zeppelin’s classic 1971 album in full.
Eight songs, 42 minutes, no title: with its much-loved fourth album, British quartet Led Zeppelin pointed its collective finger toward the shape of hard rock to come.
Released in 1971 and commonly known as Led Zeppelin IV, it’s stacked with classic cuts familiar to budding guitar heroes, drummers, bassists and singers everywhere, from Black Dog and Stairway to Heaven to When the Levee Breaks.
Starting this weekend, an enterprising band of Australian musicians will undertake a national tour to perform the album in full, followed by a second set of selections from Led Zeppelin’s formidable catalogue.
The Australian Rock Collective (ARC) comprises drummer Mark “Kram” Maher (of Spiderbait), guitarist Darren Middleton (Powderfinger), bassist Mark Wilson (Jet) and guitarist Davey Lane (You Am I).
While taking on Zeppelin IV may sound like a tall order, ARC has plenty of runs on the board. In the past five years, it has toured highly accomplished reprisals of classic albums by The Beatles (Abbey Road and Let It Be), Pink Floyd (The Dark Side of the Moon) and Neil Young (Harvest).
Since 2019, those tours have collectively sold 50,000 tickets, according to tour promoter Live Nation, while the upcoming run has so far shifted 15,000.
When The Weekend Australian spoke with Middleton, ARC was midway through rehearsals, with each member having spent weeks in solo preparation mode, studying every note in every song.
“It becomes a slightly different listening experience: it’s like watching a game of football, but then suddenly you’re on the team,” he said.
Anyone who begins learning to play rock ’n’ roll inevitably gives Zeppelin’s music a go, and so it was for Middleton in his youth. “Led Zeppelin was a huge influence on Powderfinger. In the very early days, we were [playing] half covers, half originals, and there were always Zeppelin songs in our set,” he said.
“They’ve just played a big part of our own bands’ lives and therefore it makes sense to us to pay homage to that music.”
Any of the 50,000 or so attendees at its shows across the years will vouch that ARC is painstakingly faithful to the music, but none of the musicians are dressing up in character: the artists remain the same, even as they bend themselves and their talents back toward the sounds of 1971.
ARC’s 13-date Led Zeppelin IV tour begins in Newcastle on Sunday and ends in Perth on June 30.
These classic album concerts are “enjoyable because they’re really authentic”, said Middleton, 52. “We genuinely just f..king love what we do. We pick records that we love, and that inspired our own bands.
“All of ARC believe the way to present live music is like the ocean: it’s a little bit different all the time, every night, and it should be; you should be immersed in the moment.”
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