'Becoming Led Zeppelin' Brings the Legendary Band Back to its Beginnings

Yahoo

19-02-2025

L.A. based Becoming Led Zeppelin filmmakers Bernard MacMahon and Allison McGourty aren't just fans of the classic rock band's music, they're fans of the mythos. Not the salacious side that probably first comes to mind when rock fans think of Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones or the late John Bonham, but before and during their first meetings and fortuitous formation, when each member was on the precipice of individual greatness, elevating his craft and seeking creative alchemy.'I love the story,' MacMahon, who directed, tells us during a spirited Zoom chat just before the riveting new documentary's release. 'I knew that they'd never done a film and they'd never told their stories.'Indeed, the boundary-breaking British rocker's trajectory has been chronicled many times before, but these accounts have come from others and often focused on later years, when they were already rock gods, and when the tales were sexier and ultimately, more tragic. Bonham's substance abuse related death in 1980 led to the band's break-up of course, but their hedonistic hijinks, from groupies to heroin addiction to the occult, started much before that. Basically the 70s were a whirlwind of beautiful music and bad behavior. But from 1968-1970, when the band first met, made music and toured, rockstar trappings weren't on anyone's mind. The doc delves into the personal backgrounds of each player and their impressions of their first sessions, so the 'Becoming' in the film's title is literal— we only get to see their journey up until the release Led Zeppelin II.
It was a timeframe that really was all about the music, even if most didn't quite get what they were doing at first. Page was coming out of playing guitar with the Yardbirds, and yearning to do something more experimental, while bassist Jones and drummer Bonham had been busy session musicians also seemingly looking for a new challenge. Plant was the perfect piece of the puzzle to stand up front, a powerful and sensual vocalist who was mastering his instrument much in the same way as the others.Watching the group find the groove in early footage is nothing short of transcendent and the filmmakers are smart enough to know that fans want to see the full raw performances. Part concert film and part member memoir (including an incredible found audio interview with Bonham from Led Zep's early days), the movie serves to highlight the intricate vision of Page and the genius of his mates in bringing it to life, both in the studio and on stage.Still, as the movie shows, people didn't 'get it' at first. In the U.K., the band were not a hit right away. "So they set out on this mission to try and get their music out there," MacMahon says. "When no record company in Britain wanted to sign them. No one wanted to book them because, you know, they're still known as the Yardbirds, and they hadn't had a hit for years. So they go off to America to get a deal, and then they manage to start breaking through on the West Coast scene. And Jimmy's like, we've got to do albums, no singles, so they're just playing whole sides of albums on FM radio here."And just as the band was gaining traction the U.S., they got eviscerated in the press, "including Rolling Stone, which was the big counter cultural paper in 1969," Macmahon adds. "But they soldiered on at that point, not doing media, not doing TV, just reaching their audience through records and live shows."
The lack of interviews made it more challenging for MacMahon and McGourty's research, but they were clearly determined. And getting the guys to agree to make the doc and do new reflective interviews may have been the hardest part. People called the duo "mad" and "insane" for even trying, as the band have been notoriously private about discussing their history for decades. "We searched and looked for every fragment of archive that existed, then we wrote a script, then we storyboarded it to see if there was a film that could be told," MGourty says. "That was a seven month process before we even got our first meeting with Jimmy." Turns out Page and Plant were fans of the duo's previous project, American Epic, and Jones loved the four-part series (covering the first-ever music recordings in the U.S. from country to blues) after watching it, so they were in. Sort of. Page did test their knowledge of the band's timeline and more obscure facts about how they formed during their first meeting, pulling ephemera he'd saved from a plastic market bag. Luckily all the research paid off."Their would never have been Becoming then Zeppelin, if it wasn't for American Epic, because we thought this was the next story that picked up where that left off, which is back to the Second World War and 50s music scene," explains MacMahon. "And that brings us into the late 60s, when everything really explodes in a whole different way. Led Zeppelin was the great story that'd not being told." Watching and hearing how it all came together is a true gift for fans and as we share with the filmmakers during our interview, it feels like a tonic for troubled times. Especially in IMAX theaters, where it debuted on Feb. 7, the film (in theaters nationwide since Valentine's day) is an immersive escape, an artistic celebration that provides a break from the menacing mess of our modern times, which is what music and movies are for. And it leaves you wanting more.
"This period, with these two amazing albums with unbelievable music on them, is unique to Zeppelin," Macmahon says. "It sees four totally different guys and no other musicians sound like them. If you took any one of those guys out of that band, you would not have Led Zeppelin. None of them are replaceable. So these guys coming together, then their journey, and the fact that they barely know each other... they literally hit the ground running— and working."Of course, as Zeppelin's fame rose, life got more raucous and decidedly darker for the group, which many consider one of the greatest of all time. But it's refreshing to watch them before all that and as MacMahon notes, they produced more great music in spite of, not because of how their lives changed, in the years that followed. "We made this movie to give people this positive story, this inspirational story about music and the endeavor and its power," he concludes, noting how exciting it is to watch in a big cinema (it will be streaming soon, too). "We wanted to take you into this world."