‘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.

The movie ends suddenly and tantalizingly shortly after the release of Led Zeppelin II, climaxing with a triumphant moment of the band’s Jan. 9, 1970, homecoming show at London’s Royal Albert Hall. So, there’s a lot left on the table. Becoming Led Zeppelin‘s high quality and strict focus on Led Zeppelin’s first two albums leaves the door open for sequels since there are seven more albums and nearly a decade of history left to cover.

(Becoming Led Zeppelin is now playing in IMAX theaters nationwide. It opens in regular theaters nationwide on Feb. 13. You can find tickets and showtimes at BecomingLedZeppelinFilm.com.)