Becoming Led Zeppelin Dir: Bernard MacMahon (13th Floor Film Review)
While it doesn’t tell the whole story, this “first officially sanctioned” Led Zeppelin documentary does a very good job of telling how the band got started and what made them so sonically exciting.
Film director Bernard MacMahan is, until now, best known for his award-winning roots and blues documentary series American Epic, released in 2017.
Now, much like Zeppelin themselves, MacMahon has made a contemporary piece of art…in this case a feature-length film…built on the backs of musicians and songwriters from a century ago.
MacMahon’s story-telling style is straightforward and linear…much to my relief. And with the co-operation of all three surviving band members, he has access to lots of previously unseen home movies and concert footage.
The icing on the cake is new, contemporary interviews with Page, Plant and Jones, along with a previously-unheard audio interview with drummer John Bonham, who died in 1980.
Any Zep fan worth his (or her) salt will be aware of Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones’ history as ace session players during the 1960s, recording with everyone from The Kinks and The Who to Lulu and Shirley Bassey. Meanwhile Robert Plant and John Bonham were struggling to make names for themselves in various bands in the West Midlands. Plant…who comes across as the most charming and thoughtful…repeats several times how he was homeless and broke until just before meeting Jimmy Page.
That meeting comes at about an hour into the film and so trainspotters will find plenty of reasons to watch the first half over and over again.
Once the four bandmembers finally get into a room together, the magic seems to happen almost immediately.
And this is where the fun really begins…the live footage, starting with the an appearance in Denmark where they fulfilled outstanding Yardbirds commitments (Page’s previous band) to their triumphant show at London’s Royal Albert Hall on January 9, 1970.
The film shows how the band was initially ignored in the UK but embraced by concert goers in the States…despite a scathing review of the band’s first album in Rolling Stone calling Page “a limited producer and a writer of weak, unimaginative songs” and calling Plant, “prissy”.
As in the Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, MacMahon gives us complete performances and they are stunning, especially on the IMAX screen. Page gives solid, thoughtful insights into his production technique…it’s good to see him lucid and sober.
The was a dark side to the band, but that is, at best, alluded to here, mostly in the form of manager Peter Grant.
Those looking to hear Stairway To Heaven along with stories of drunken, debauchery in hotel rooms and personal thoughts and feelings into the deaths of Bonham and Plant’s young son, with have to look elsewhere.
There’s not a mud shark in sight…just four very talented musicians making music that will still be considered earth-shattering 50 + years after the fact.
There’s still plenty of Led Zeppelin’s story to tell…I wonder if this same team is up to telling it.
Marty Duda
Becoming Led Zeppelin is in cinemas now. Click here for tickets and showtimes.
