Becoming Led Zeppelin Reviewed: Conventional but thrilling document of Zep’s early rise

Becoming Led Zeppelin

★★★★★

In the wake of blockbuster biopics on Freddie, Jimi and two Bobs (Dylan and Marley), this straight-down-the-line two-hour ‘rockumentary’ on the rise of another iconic entity from rock’s golden age may seem, on paper, a rather old-fashioned and even scholarly method of conjuring that explosive era – and band – back to life, at 65 years’ distance.

To construe as a bad omen that none the three surviving members who were interviewed at length for Becoming Led Zeppelin were present at either of the film’s premiers would be to misread the runes in the bigger picture. At least one of them (singer Robert Plant), and possibly a second (bassist John Paul Jones), have been distancing themselves from Led Zeppelin as a whole ever since the mid-’80s. After they reunited for just that one Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert at London’s O2 Arena on December 10, 2007, inner politics have only become more frictional between these two and guitarist Jimmy Page, who might possibly resent having to curate the band’s legacy single-handedly, benefitting all.

It doubtless took some negotiating for director Bernard MacMahon (American Epic) to get all three on board; cannily, he chose to focus on the fun part, the story of their formative years, how busy London sessioneers Page and Jones fortuitously encountered stray Midlanders Plant and his drummer mate, John Bonham, and the four together created electrifying progressive blues, all but upping sticks from sniffy Britain to conquer the distant dreamland of America in a breathless two-year ascent.

It’s a familiar narrative arc: that meteoric passage from four separate childhoods of post-war rations and blues-import obsession leading to alchemical musical bonding and success via exhaustive schlepping around Stateside highways. It’s told, however, perhaps surprisingly, with considerable enthusiasm, fondness and colour, and in all fairness, it could easily (indeed, tolerably!) have been done in far more nerdy detail.

Jones, for instance, a prodigious talent from a choral background, discreetly whips through a list of almost every major British ’60s pop act whose records he played on, wryly concluding, “Just never The Beatles.” Fellow late-’60s gun-for-hire Page briefly outlines how he was similarly ubiquitous in mid-’60s London studios, and was feeling “physically sick” arranging muzak sessions when Jeff Beck invited him into the Yardbirds, then quit, leaving him to deal with the frustration of having their long-form explorations pared down into seven-inch pop ditties. When that band went belly-up on the West Coast, Page sought out a new line-up alongside Jones to indulge those excesses, with new manager Peter Grant cracking the whip for albums-only creative control.

Enter Plant, virtually itinerant, he amusingly recalls, the wild card chancing his arm in the capital “with a brown suitcase and some penicillin”. He manages to recruit Bonham against wife Pat’s better advice and – kaboom! – their chemistry on first rehearsing Johnny Burnette’s Train Kept A-Rollin’ at Page’s Pangbourne boathouse is instantaneous, volcanic.

The sheer excitement of their collective self-discovery is brilliantly conveyed via the first footage, a 12-minute How Many More Times captured barely a month later, on March 17, 1969, from Danish TV’s Gladsaxe Teen Club. Though most Zepheads will’ve seen the complete 32-minute performance many times before, they shouldn’t pass up the opportunity to experience its climactic piece immersively in a theatre at substantial volume and to lose their marbles all over again. It’s simply magnificent.

Other Led Zeppelin I tunes, including a stretched-out, violin-bowing Dazed And Confused, show the stunned disbelief they were initially greeted with – at another Euro TV show, incredibly, a bespectacled mum worriedly tries to pacify her babe-in-arms, howling in distress without ear defenders. As well as such potently restored clips, the other ace up Becoming Led Zeppelin’s sleeve is an unheard audio interview with Bonham, which airs as we watch each member hearing it for the first time. Misty-eyed, they smile as ‘Bonzo’’s Brummie burr gushes about their formation as “like a gift from heaven”, and their unshakable four-way friendship, soldered as they took on the world together. In turn, Jones reveals how he “was in love with John’s left foot [i.e. the one that pummelled the bass-drum pedal] – I learnt to give it space.”

As they undertake successive US tours, recording Led Zeppelin II on the hoof, Plant aptly marvels at how they showed “no fatigue, just power and energy”, but we learn also of the testing human side, as all bar Page were concurrently starting families at home. Their prize, their first gold disc, landed on the same day as the heroic Apollo 11 astronauts touched back down from the first moon landing. “What next, after that?” shrugs Plant. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”

True, the movie could quite comfortably finish there at around 100 minutes, but that would be to lose unseen footage from Bath Festival, and then a signifier of UK acceptance at January ’70’s triumphant homecoming at the Albert Hall. Now, they’ve ‘become’ Led Zeppelin, and only some persistently sniffy reviewers can dispute their majesty.

Yes, it’s a mainstream rock saga founded on familiar tropes, but it would take a cold heart not to be moved by this version of it, told proudly by protagonists in their twilight years. Those uninterested in Chicago blues derivations and backstories can still revel in 40-odd minutes of incomparably kinetic footage. Those who seek the mid-’70s squalor of LA drugs, groupies and mud sharks, the agony of Plant’s car-crash, the death of his child and ultimate loss of his bestie Bonham – all the stuff that ruined the dream – will surely never get them from Page, Plant and Jones’ mouths now.

Don’t expect Being Led Zeppelin or indeed Leaving Led Zeppelin any time soon, then. Instead, just bask in this wonderful slice of history written by the winners, an ascent as rip-roaringly exciting and properly loud as any in the classic-rock pantheon.

Becoming Led Zeppelin is in UK cinemas from February 7.

Hammer of the gods! Presenting the definitive guide to Led Zeppelin’s albums, songs, films and books, MOJO The Collectors’ Series: Led Zeppelin Essentials is out now! More info and to order your copy HERE!