Photo © Sony Pictures Classics
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin live at the Royal Albert Hall in 1970
Led Zeppelin didn’t invent heavy rock but took the nascent genre over the top. Their 1969 debut album hit number one with a serrated metallic roar loud enough to crack the foundations of any amphitheater. They amplified the blues to unheard-of levels yet performed British balladry fit for Bilbo Baggins’ journey to Mordor.
Although Led Zeppelin was an epiphany for many young American fans, the band didn’t emerge from nowhere. Becoming Led Zeppelin chronicles the wealth of experience gained by members in their formative years, culminating in a band that set the dials for ‘70s hard rock.
Director Bernard MacMahon (whose American Epic documented American roots music) crosses the years at an easy pace through interviews with the three surviving members. Drummer John Bonham died in 1980; he seldom spoke and is heard on Becoming Led Zeppelin as an occasional voiceover from an interview taped in the ‘70s. Guitarist Jimmy Page, vocalist Robert Plant and bassist John Paul Jones are affable, articulate and reflective. Age has treated them well, and they have halcyon days to look back upon.
They grew up in 1940s and ‘50s Britain, a nation victorious in war but bomb-cratered and bankrupt in peace. Food was rationed, money was scarce and American culture—especially the music—beckoned with brightness and vitality. Bonham was inspired seeing Gene Krupa, jazz’s wild-man drummer, in a Hollywood movie. Plant was moved by the example of Little Richard. A film clip shows Johnny Burnette, the rockabilly cat whose fuzztone guitar sounded as if “from Mars” to Page. Jones is the most eclectic of the foursome. He came from a music hall family, was an Anglican church organist at age 14 and listened to rock and roll on jukeboxes, the bass sound pounding from the big speakers.
By the time of the British Invasion, Page and Jones were professional session musicians working seven days a week in recording studios. Page pulls out a calendar book from 1964 and flips through recording dates with the Kinks, the Who, Herman’s Hermits, Donovan, the Rolling Stones … “not the Beatles,” he adds with a smile. Page often crossed paths with Jones who followed his father’s maxim: “Never turn down work.” Jones played bass on several hits from film soundtracks, including Goldfinger and To Sir with Love. Plant and Bonham were scuffling along in local blues and psychedelic bands with Plant so down at heels that he lived out of a suitcase with no fixed address.
Becoming Led Zeppelin includes precious footage such as Page’s 1958 skiffle performance on BBC and concert shots of the band he co-led with Jeff Beck, the Yardbirds, dressed in white suits and taking a bow. Beck’s departure from the Yardbirds became Page’s impetus for recruiting his ideal group. Plant passed the audition with a gripping performance of Joan Baez’s arrangement of “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You.” Plant had played with Bonham and brought him into the group. They rehearsed together at Page’s house along the Thames before recording their debut album at London’s Olympic Studio. Their legendarily aggressive manager Peter Grant signed them to Atlantic with a contract not unlike Orson Welles’ deal for Citizen Kane. Led Zeppelin was given complete artistic control.
Page produced that debut and brought years of incessant studio experience into the project, endowing the recording with spaciousness as well as heaviness. Although Jimi Hendrix goes uncited, Page carried on with that guitarist’s delight in exploring amplitude and dissonance, sculpting sound with six strings. Each group member was essential. Plant could leap from intimacy to the stratosphere in seconds. Bonham delivered sledgehammer blows with a dancer’s finesse while Jones acted as a gravitational force.
Focused on the formative influences through the band’s first 18 months, Becoming Led Zeppelin follows them as they toured the U.S. like mad and returned in triumph to London’s Royal Albert Hall in 1970. They were only in their early 20s, and they conquered the world.
