‘Becoming Led Zeppelin': Movie Review
Led Zeppelin‘s music is rightfully the star of the band’s new documentary.
Becoming Led Zeppelin compellingly tells the story of the group’s early years, using previously unreleased concert and studio footage and new interviews to demonstrate how quickly and naturally the pieces fell into place to form one of rock’s most remarkable bands.
The musical segments sound amazing, even when the visual footage is primitive, or in one case, warped badly enough to warrant a disclaimer. The audience at one early show is stunned by the group’s unexpected power, staring in an unbelieving daze or covering their ears and looking flat-out frightened.
Jimmy Page,
Robert Plant and
John Paul Jones tell their stories separately throughout the movie; a frequent and endearing highlight of
Becoming Led Zeppelin is seeing their real-time reactions to hearing rare interviews with their late drummer
John Bonham. Plant is particularly emotional when hearing Bonham discuss their friendship at the movie’s end.
Page and Jones talk about the lessons they learned during their years in the high-pressure world as session musicians, working with everybody from the
Kinks to Lulu to the
Rolling Stones and Shirley Bassey (both future Zeppelin members collaborated on her
theme song for the
James Bond movie
Goldfinger). Meanwhile, Plant and Bonham share amusing stories about their early years in club bands.
One of the main successes of
Becoming Led Zeppelin is demonstrating just how well Page planned for the leap from session musician to bandleader. He had and followed a clear plan for every aspect of his new group’s career – from recording their 1969
self-titled debut album with his own money, then using that leverage to obtain a much better record contract, to intentionally adding the outlandish middle instrumental section to
Led Zeppelin II‘s “Whole Lotta Love” to keep it off the singles chart so Led Zeppelin would be judged on their albums.
The movie shows the full breadth of Page’s vision for the sound of his new band, as he takes what he learned from working in different genres to form a wide-ranging yet cohesive style, drawing on blues, rock, folk and more. Musical segments focusing on his guitar work in varying styles illustrate what a leap forward this was for hard rock music.
As expected from a band-sanctioned documentary, there’s barely a speck of dirt or gossip in
Becoming Led Zeppelin. The closest the film gets is Plant, who was married, vaguely recalling a lot of drugs and girls during the group’s first U.S. tour.
It also helps that in the years the movie covers, Led Zeppelin was in their honeymoon phase and quickly becoming one of the biggest bands in the world; the conflicts, challenges and tragedies they’d face were still years away.
. Some of my favorite Zep songs, Ten Years Gone, What is and Never Should Be, Over The Hills and Far Away, Ramble On, The Rain Song, Going To California , Gallows Pole among others. I’m currently learning Black Dog, always liked the guitar riff in that song:
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