Go to a musical concert with a difference. It's a concert of a symphony orchestra, known for playing classical music.


PAUL McCARTHY: It may not look like it but this is opening night for the symphony orchestra at the Festival Theatre.
But then this is a far cry from The Last Night of the Proms at the Albert Hall.
Tonight up front is the hard rocking, local cover band The Zep Boys. They've been re-creating Led Zeppelin in pubs for about 20 years but for two sold out nights they're fusing heavy metal with high culture.

JOHN ZAK (DRUMS): It's a mixture of turbo charged excitement and extreme fear. We're talking about things on the biggest scale imaginable here as far as music goes.

PAUL McCARTHY: The Zep Boys began in the mid 80s when, before the pokies, Adelaide's pub music scene was thriving. Rob Pippan came up with the cheeky idea of mimicking the music of the legendary rock band.
A cynical Warwick Cheatle saw the first incarnation of Rob's band at The Findon in 1986.

WARWICK CHEATLE (BASS PLAYER): I really thought that they were quite crazy for claiming to be able to play Led Zeppelin music. I was a big Led Zeppelin fan and thought that it was quite an incredible claim to be making for Adelaide artists, or artists from anywhere, to be able to copy it. I went along and saw them: they were exceptional.

PAUL McCARTHY: Before long Warwick and his friend, drummer John Zak, joined the line-up. 19 years later they've survived the pokies and a music industry now crowded with concept bands. But playing with the Adelaide Symphony was a concert they never considered. And the admiration is not all one way.

MARTIN BUTLER (ASO VIOLINIST): I'm very honoured to be able to provide for this band because I went to see them at the Governor Hindmarsh last year and they were phenomenal. They're a great band. And it's just great. I would never have imagined that I'd be playing violin with them.

DOMINIC HARVEY (CONDUCTOR): I love Led Zeppelin. I think they're very clever, very musical and they wrote good songs.

MARTIN BUTLER: If we just play what's written in the charts, we've got to do with it a certain style, like have to bend notes, get that kind of bluesy sound, and it's actually written, and if we just play it straight it doesn't sound the same. So we have to put the style into it.

PAUL McCARTHY: But when it came time to rock it didn't matter whether the taste was bourbon or chardonnay, the crowd lapped it up, and it was probably the only time the ASO has had the audience shouting requests.
Afterwards there were standing ovations and suggestions Led Zeppelin might be the Beethoven of the future.

VINCE CONTARINO: Just like the ASO does or, you know, operas by Giuseppe Verdi or, you know, Schubert nights or Mozart nights, 200 years time they'll be doing Led Zeppelin nights and this is the start of it.