Led Zeppelin

"Becoming Led Zeppelin", the first documentary authorized by the British band, is out in cinemas from 27 February to 5 March as an exclusive event. Directed by Bernard MacMahon and co-written and produced by Allison McGourty, it's actually a hybrid between a documentary and a concert film, focusing on a very specific stretch of Led Zeppelin's life: the period running from the band's origins up to 9 January 1970, the date of their concert at London's Royal Albert Hall. A remarkably short span, then, during which the four members of the Airship grow day by day in chemistry, skill and fame, sign an excellent record deal with Atlantic (thanks in part to a far-sighted manager), and release two albums that have gone down in legend: "Led Zeppelin" and "Led Zeppelin II". In 1968 they're on average 20 years old, already building an impressively solid repertoire... and the best part is that "Stairway To Heaven" is still yet to come.

It is, in short, the age of innocence, real or perceived, that every band has lived through, or wishes it had lived through, at the dawn of its career: they haven't yet been swept up by sex, drugs and alcohol (the latter fatal for drummer John Bonham); there's only rock'n'roll, together with deep friendship, lifting the four English lads to great heights, letting them push through financial hardship and the public and press's initial lack of appreciation - all in the name of music.

You can't properly talk about Led Zeppelin without showing them live: making the docu-film wasn't easy, precisely because not much footage exists from the band's early period. The director has stated he used "only original film and negatives, with over 70,000 frames restored by hand." Viewers can thus immerse themselves in the March 1969 concert at the Gladsaxe Teen Club in Denmark, a stop on a Scandinavian tour where Led Zeppelin performed as The New Yardbirds, before they had even definitively become what history would remember them as. Standout original clips are drawn from the tours - three in all - that the British band undertook in the United States during that period, stunning American audiences with the fury of their sound, as happened for instance at San Francisco's Fillmore West. Nor are the homeland concerts in Bath and at London's Royal Albert Hall left out: the latter marks a true homecoming for the band members, who, after grueling but necessary stints in the United States, could finally show the English public and their own families, with joy and pride, just how far they had come by the start of 1970.

The concert footage is interwoven with other kinds of material. First of all, there's a recent interview with Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones, alongside a previously unheard account given in the past by John Bonham, who died in September 1980. There's also archival footage documenting events from the era contemporary to the band, from images of England in the years after World War II, to the 1968 protests with their flower children, to the moon landing; finally, drawing inspiration from the expressive technique of "Singing In The Rain", the director resorted to rapid-fire photomontages of posters, tickets and travels, to visually recreate the sense of historical frenzy, crafting a documentary that resembles a musical as closely as possible.

The band's growth is highlighted through a cumulative approach. This is evident in the shifting reactions of concert audiences: at first there are children covering their ears and mothers rolling their eyes, then young people letting loose in wild dancing, and finally delirious fans breaking down venue doors and chanting for Led Zeppelin.

"Becoming Led Zeppelin" effectively manages to travel back in time, also capturing certain features of the British record industry, already present in the 1950s, that undoubtedly contributed to the band's birth.

First of all, the countless musical influences: from rock to blues to soul; and each member of Led Zeppelin, in the telling of the story, says that even before joining the group he already had a very clear idea in mind of the kind of sound he wanted to achieve: so that, when they finally rehearsed together for the first time in the summer of '68, the result was a sound like a collective explosion.

Secondly, even younger musicians had the chance to gain experience: consider that John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page, before joining Led Zeppelin, worked as session men for the Rolling Stones and many other leading names of the era. Jimmy Page even recalls being called in, in '64, at just twenty years old, to Abbey Road Studios, to play with the orchestra backing Shirley Bassey on "Goldfinger!", complete with a spine-tingling scene documented in the film.

Finally, even London's most coveted recording studios weren't impenetrable fortresses: Led Zeppelin recorded their first two albums at Olympic Studios. Granted, at night and with an "in-house" producer, namely the barely-twenty-something guitarist Jimmy Page. A man marked for greatness, after all. Even now, at the venerable age of eighty, Page's eyes light up when, in the interviews woven through the film, he talks about effects, tape played backwards, bows and reverb. Particularly striking is the sequence that, in a dizzying montage, runs through the entire tracklist of "Led Zeppelin II" tied to the places where it was recorded.

The recovery of so much archival live footage from the era, besides showing the devastating sonic power of their live performances - always physical and visceral from the very start - also lets us grasp the extraordinary artistic maturity that defined Led Zeppelin even in the earliest days of their career: the four of them play close together on stage, reading each other with remarkable chemistry, with no one trying to outshine the others. What also emerges with unprecedented clarity is the band's "facilitator" role, played by John Paul Jones, whose bass holds up the group like a backbone, giving his bandmates room to breathe. Of them all, Robert Plant comes across as perhaps the most disenchanted. At one point during the interview he asks himself: "We'd won a gold record, what more could we want?". There's a melancholy in his gaze that hints at everything - good and bad - that was still to come after 1970. But that's another story...

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google