The promotional material for this film covering the first 14 months of Led Zeppelin’s stellar career suggests that their success was achieved “against all the odds” and that it is the “first officially sanctioned” film about the group. Neither statement is true. The second falsehood is easily rebutted by drawing attention to their 1976 movie The Song Remains The Same, their 2003 five-hour plus career retrospective 2-DVD package, and Celebration Day, the concert movie of their final appearance, when the reformed trio of Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones performed with Jason Bonham, son of John, on drums, at London’s 02 in 2007. All three films were authorised by the group. The first falsehood is more nuanced but I would argue that the odds on achieving success were pretty short for a quartet that included two of the most experienced musicians on the 1960s London session circuit, one of whom had a keen eye for prevailing trends in rock music, and was managed by a Herculean, no-nonsense strongman who’d operated at the sharp end of the rock’n’roll trade for about seven years.
Quite why Page, Plant and Jones feel the need to tell these fibs is a bit of a mystery but mystery was always an essential commodity in Led Zeppelin’s bag of tricks. Let in too much light and you’re just another band, keep people guessing and you’re special, seems to have been mastermind Page’s mantra from day one; and, in his wisdom, which has never been in short supply, Page has prudently given the nod to a film that explains how they got where they did, but not what they did when they got there.
Becoming Led Zeppelin lets in a bit of that light in making clear that once the starting pistol sounded, Led Zeppelin set off at a furious pace, leaving little to chance. Realising at their first rehearsal in August 1968 that his group had something pretty special when they played together, and that this was their strongest card, Page established a rigorous work ethic from the outset and the others were happy to follow his lead. They made the road their home and recorded their first two LPs in the space of eight months, much of the second while on tour in America. Page and manager Peter Grant were quick to recognise that the kind of music they performed was more likely to find a receptive audience in America, which just happened to be where the biggest returns could be made, not that anyone mentions this.
But before all this happens Becoming Led Zeppelin takes us back to the childhoods of the four boys. Baby boomers all, all bar Plant were raised in families that encouraged their musical ambitions and Jones’ family, the Baldwins, were professional musicians themselves. It was a black and white world but all the families were sufficiently affluent to own cameras and the kiddie pictures offer a sentimental touch not generally associated with Led Zeppelin; even the hardest of rockers were infants once. It would have been nice to include Grant, a virtual fifth member, in this anecdotal dip into the past but he’s ignored, as he is during almost all of what follows.
Next, we move on to influences, with each member allotted a few minutes to say how they were inspired by Lonnie Donegan (Page), Sonny Boy Williamson and Little Richard (Plant), bass players in general (Jones) and James Brown and Gene Krupa (Bonham). That old footage of 13-year-old Page skiffling away on a guitar twice his size on TV in 1957 is still presciently charming, and I enjoyed the footage of their heroes, so a nod here to whoever researched the old clips.
When the four find one another they really were special. Much of the footage of early Led Zeppelin in the film has been seen before but there’s some new stuff and even familiar material has been enhanced. Here we have Page, his long black hair obscuring his features, conjuring up shards of jagged chords on the rather shabby looking, custom-painted Telecaster gifted to him by his pal Jeff Beck; a maestro on lightning fast solos, slides and the scraping of the violin. We see Jones running on the spot as he feverishly plucks the strings of the Fender Jazz Bass he used for years, its long neck swaying dangerously close to Plant on stages much smaller than those we grew accustomed to seeing Zep play on later in their career. The young Plant, at 20, is much thinner than he is today, a shaman in the making, trading vocal shrieks with Page’s bent notes, his curly hair bouncing, forever on the move. And at the back there’s Bonham, tumbling into his drums, grinning as he maintains a steady rhythm with Jones yet always looking to accentuate whatever Page is playing or Plant singing with a roll or a crash or an explosion everywhere. “I fell in love with his right foot,” says Jones at one point.
Led Zeppelin were truly fantastic, full of energy, in the early days but the suggestion that they toured America before the UK because they were ignored at home is open to question. The press in the UK didn’t ignore them – the earliest ever feature appeared in Melody Maker, written by Chris Welch after Page visited the office without prior warning, and I even wrote about them in the Bradford Telegraph & Argus before I joined MM. They chose to tour the US first simply because Page and Grant saw greater opportunities there and it was therefore advantageous to do so. Rolling Stone in the US may have been dismissive but that was really an exception. By and large, they were loved wherever they went, as the rapturous fans in their audiences – many of them female – seen in the film testify.
The present day interviews are candid and occasionally revealing with screen time shared impartially. Page, as ever, is the most enthused, contented and diplomatic. Jones, traditionally the most reticent member of the group, has plenty to say, which is refreshing, and he comes across as very likeable in a modest fashion. Plant is the most droll, the slight grin and twinkle in his eye suggesting there may have been times when he’s looked upon Led Zeppelin as a youthful folly. “My family wanted me to be a chartered accountant,” he says, tongue firmly in cheek. Of his first plane flight to the US he expresses astonishment at being served a meal on a plate with real cutlery that in different circumstances he might consider stealing. Bonham is represented by a hitherto unheard interview he did around 1970 that acts as a voice over, and he too seems to be in a state of perpetual wonder at all that happened to Led Zeppelin in such a short space of time. His wife Pat warned him on more than one occasion not to get mixed up with “that Planty”.
The emphasis, though, is on the music, and Becoming Led Zeppelin features heaps of terrific footage from America and the UK, some hitherto unseen, at last by me, though at just over two hours, it is pretty long and could have been trimmed, especially during the final half hour. If its intention is to find new fans in the 21st Century, it’ll probably succeed, especially as it stops long before Led Zeppelin reached their apogee two or three years later and dutifully ignores all the later mischief that led indirectly to their demise.
