Deep into the set, the first notes of “Gallows Pole” started to build — and then Robert Plant teased the crowd with a quick, playful “hey hey mama,” just enough to spark recognition before the band swerved somewhere else entirely. Instead of the wall of electric sound that line usually promises, “Black Dog” arrived reworked into a hypnotic, rootsy acoustic jam. The Lycabettus Theatre erupted anyway — maybe louder for the surprise of it.
Led Zeppelin’s music shaped rock as we know it, and Plant’s voice is a massive part of why. But watching him now isn’t nostalgia — he’s never treated that legacy as a victory lap to coast on. He keeps rebuilding these songs through a rootsy, folk-and-blues lens, finding something genuinely new inside material everyone already knows by heart. Seeing him today means watching someone who helped shape modern rock still actively reshaping it himself.
Straight from the Scorpions show, it was a late-night flight to Athens — a four-and-a-half-hour hop that put me on the ground around dawn. For a change, I skipped the train into the city and took the bus instead, just to actually see Athens arrive outside the window rather than underground.
I stayed near Syntagma and Monastiraki, right in the middle of everything. The Parthenon, up on the Acropolis, was the one non-negotiable stop — walking through it is walking through the roots of modern governance itself, not just old stone. Between that and the show, there was time for a wander through the shopping and food streets: Greek frozen yogurt, and a gyro that’s now a strong contender for favorite thing I ate in the country.
The venue was the Lycabettus amphitheatre, sitting right on top of Mount Lycabettus. There’s an easy way up — cabs run most of the way — and I deliberately skipped it: a public bus to the base of the hill, then a rough, unpaved thirty-minute climb the rest of the way. Reaching the summit paid off immediately — a full golden sunset laid out over Athens, right before the show.
Backed by co-vocalist Suzi Dian and the acoustic collective Saving Grace, Plant didn’t play this catalog as a stadium victory lap — the whole set leaned into American folk, Appalachian tradition, and British roots music instead. He and Dian traded vocals throughout rather than one dominating, turning songs that used to be full-throttle rock deliveries into something closer to a conversation. The instrumentation matched that mood: acoustic guitars, a cello standing in for electric bass, an accordion drifting through — more campfire than arena.
“Ramble On” and “Four Sticks” both got rebuilt this way, stripped of their original weight and left with just the pulse of the songs underneath — proof that what made them work was never really the volume. “Orphan Girl,” a Gillian Welch cover, was the quietest moment of the night and one of the most affecting — Plant leaning fully into restraint rather than reaching for the big notes.
This whole week has been a bit of a marathon — concert to concert, city to city, exploring wherever I landed between shows, then standing, jumping, and singing through each one before heading back late and doing it again the next morning. It takes a certain amount of physical stubbornness and some actual planning to pull off back to back like this.
Looking back on the whole trail now, there’s a real sense of achievement in it. I got to watch Led Zeppelin live — not the full band, and not with all the songs that make up that legacy. No “Stairway,” no “Going to California,” none of Page’s solos. But Plant was Zeppelin, and watching him in the flesh, still doing what he’s always done best, was an honor in its own right.
That’s the trail — five shows, three countries, one very long week, closing exactly where it needed to: watching a piece of Led Zeppelin, live, in the flesh.
Practical Notes
Ticket: around 75 euros.
Setlist — Lycabettus Theatre, July 9
Intro (tape): “Escalay (Water Wheel)” (Hamza El Din)
- Win My Train Fare Home (If I Ever Get Lucky)
- Down to the Sea
- Higher Rock (Martha Scanlan cover)
- Ramble On (Led Zeppelin cover)
- There Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down (Brother Claude Ely cover)
- Four Sticks (Led Zeppelin cover)
- Orphan Girl (Gillian Welch cover)
- Let the Four Winds Blow (Robert Plant and the Strange Sensation cover)
- Calling to You
- As I Roved Out (traditional)
- For the Turnstiles (Neil Young cover)
- Friends (Led Zeppelin cover)
Encore:
- Gallows Pole / Black Dog (Led Zeppelin cover)
- Everybody’s Song (Low cover)
- Rock and Roll (Led Zeppelin cover) — with “Happy Birthday” intro, for little Mimi Plant