Bringing The Compositions To The Surface

There aren't many of us out there who haven't, at some stage in our lives, wished we were our musical heroes. We've all played air guitar to Hendrix, drummed on a desk with two pencils listening to a Dave Lombardo solo, sung into a hairbrush to David Bowie. None of us have made it a career however, unlike Vince Contarino.

The larger than life frontman for Adelaide band The Zep Boys has, since 1986, made a living as an Australian Robert Plant, the Boys being the longest running Zeppelin tribute act in the country. So long running in fact, they've been around for almost three times longer than the band they've made a career covering.

"Yeah, that's right," Contarino laughs over the phone from the Gold Coast, where he's currently involved in mentoring young singers. "I always think if they ever forget something, they can give me a call and I'll help them out!"

"I always think if they ever forget something, they can give me a call and I'll help them out!"

Contarino's love of Led Zeppelin began, as with most of us, in his youth, listening to the records his older brother brought home. The love grew, and so in 1986 The Zep Boys were formed, and they've not looked back since, touring the country playing this iconic music to hordes and hordes of adoring Zep fanatics.

Over the course of three decades though, one needs to mix it up somewhat, and so a few years ago, the band began thinking outside the box. Sometime in the mid-2000s they linked together with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra to offer something different stemming from this time-honoured music.

"We thought it'd be great to do with an orchestra, because the songwriting is, it's not lollipop stuff, it's quite sophisticated songwriting, [we thought] it'd lend really well to orchestration, and so we [hooked up] with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra to start with," he explains.

It's a concept which has really taken off, and so every now and then, since around 2005, the Boys have recreated this concept, most recently in Sydney at two sold out shows at the Opera House in January, and they'll do so again in early July in Melbourne and Brisbane.

"These shows, Stairway To Heaven — Led Zeppelin Masters, are different arrangements," Contarino says. "The conductor, Nicholas Buc… he's an amazing conductor and arranger. He took on the challenge to re-write all the charts, because the charts we'd used in the past were centred on the symphony orchestra, very lush and symphonic."

"So we wanted this [show] a little bit edgier, so he's written charts that are absolutely leaning towards the song, regardless of band or orchestra," he goes on enthusiastically. "He's fantastic, these songs just come alive… when it's sweet and delicious, it's delicate and soft, all the composition rises to the surface, they're lovely big shows."

There's no doubt — a lot of Zeppelin's material was, in its own way, quite orchestral, and so it stands to reason this timeless music would transition easily into the setting The Zep Boys and Buc have created for it.

"Absolutely," Contarino concurs. "Composition is everything… once these arrangers [start] working with these songs, they think, 'I had no idea they layered these voicings together with these particular notes and chords, no wonder they sound different to other rock bands. No wonder they challenge the ear and entice you.' Because Plant, Page, Bonham, Jones, they were masters."