I knew what I would say even before I got to the box office window.
I had the sentence prepared in my head, and it’s a sentence I’ve never said before. The sentence was:
“Two seniors for Led Zeppelin, please.”
The first Led Zeppelin album came out in 1969. I could barely imagine being old enough to drive.
But here we are in 2025. And a band I couldn’t appreciate at the time now has a documentary about their formation.
This being 2025, however, I didn’t get to use my sentence. We got to the box office window and there was no one there. A sign directed me to the self-service kiosk in the lobby.
I’m sure this is progress and saves Regal Cinemas Corporation the paychecks of a couple ticket sellers, but is it any wonder people feel socially isolated?
I’ll spare you further old man rantings, except to say the movie was preceded by twenty minutes of commercials and previews for violent zombie, superhero, and fantasy movies. None looked the slightest bit entertaining.
Becoming Led Zeppelin itself starts the same way their first album starts:
With the two loud power chords of “Good Times Bad Times.”
That’s how Led Zeppelin announced themselves to the world.
It worked then, and it works now.
The movie covers Zeppelin’s early career.
It details each member’s musical beginnings, how the band formed, and the first two albums. While the late John Bonham isn’t with us anymore, he speaks for himself in a never before released interview. The interview is audio only, so snippets from it are played over photos and video from the time. Sometimes it’s played while we watch the three surviving members listen to his voice.
Their expressions show how much they loved him. It’s the most touching part of the film.
While I know all of Zeppelin’s music and some of their back stories, the movie detailed a lot of tidbits from their time before the band.
Bonham’s first band was with his brother, Mick, and he played a drum set he built out of scraps. Likewise, Jimmy Page made his first guitar. Robert Plant saw a movie starring Little Richard and obsessed over becoming a singer, dropping out of school and leaving home at 16. He was essentially homeless for a while. John Paul Jones was a church organist and choirmaster at 14 years old. He said he wasn’t religious, but it was a good gig.
Bonham and Plant knew each other from the music scene in the West Midlands. Sometimes they were in the same band and sometimes not. Bonham’s wife warned him that Plant was trouble.
I knew that Jones and Page were studio musicians in London, but the list of popular songs they’re on is mind-blowing.
Jones played bass and/or keyboards on David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and many Donovan tracks. He also arranged the strings on “She’s A Rainbow” by the Rolling Stones.
Page played on “You Really Got Me” by The Kinks, “I Can’t Explain” by The Who, Petula Clark’s “Downtown,” “As Tears Go By” by the recently departed Marianne Faithfull, and lots and lots of muzak.
Jones and Page were on several records together, too.
A notable example is “Goldfinger” by Shirley Bassey, which gets an extended play in the film.
It’s nothing like what Zeppelin would become, but it speaks to their wide-ranging capabilities as musicians. It’s a joy to watch.
And it’s a joy to hear. The movie’s sound is incredible.
I heard things I’d never heard before in songs I thought I knew: the percussion in the psychedelic breakdown in “Whole Lotta Love,” an electric guitar part in “Ramble On,” layers of acoustic guitars under layers of electric on almost everything. It’s a revelation.
I’m usually wary of authorized biographies. They tend to gloss over embarrassing or uncomfortable events, and Becoming Led Zeppelin is no different. Plant says he used some of Willie Dixon’s lyrics, but doesn’t address accusations of plagiarism.
Page says that their manager Peter Grant looks like a gangster in a photo, without mentioning that he behaved like a gangster, too.
The film mentions only once that there were a lot of girls available to them without going into the tawdry details. It ends before their heavy drug use and debauchery really started.
The movie does a better job explaining what Jimmy Page set out to do when he formed the band out of the wreckage of The Yardbirds.
American FM radio’s willingness to play long songs, as opposed to the BBC playing only pop singles, led Page to want to create albums as works of art rather than just a collection of unrelated songs.
The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and others were already doing this, but not as heavy or bluesy as Page had in mind.
Audiences, especially in Britain, didn’t know what to make of that sound.
We often recognize artistic leaps forward only in retrospect and the clip of an early gig with the audience sitting with their fingers in their ears is delightful.
FM radio, on the other hand, loved that first album and would play one side of it, do a commercial or two, and then play the other side.
That airplay, and the decision to tour the United States before the United Kingdom, gained Zeppelin a huge fan base in America.
It didn’t hurt that the band paid for and owned their own recordings without using advance money from a record label. That was a very smart business decision.
Over its two hours, the movie treats us to great music, often in live performances.
There are two versions of “Communication Breakdown” that are similar enough to question why both were included, but the rest of the music choices are impeccable.
Their first live performance, filmed for Scandinavian television, shows that they were a fully formed unit from the very start.
They were of one mind, with the talent to realize their vision, and passionate about doing it.
However, it’s a little distracting when the video clips don’t line up with the audio. Sure, there may be a limited amount of film from those two years, but the editors should at least try to make it look like footage is from the same song we’re hearing.
One thing to notice is that the band members stood very close to each other, regardless of how big the stage was.
Page explains they feel each others’ energy that way, which is especially important in their extended improvised sections.
Remember this when you see the Rolling Stones standing thirty feet from each other. That may be why the Stones sound so loose.
The surviving Led Zep members are eloquent and likeable.
Jones is particularly charming. While Becoming Led Zeppelin is far from a perfect film, it’s worth seeing for their stories and the glorious sound, especially if you can see it in IMAX.
If you’re around my age, see it for nostalgia. But anyone – regardless of age – interested in creativity and collaboration may be inspired by Led Zeppelin’s process.
Individually and together, they were gifted and ingenious, making music unlike anything before it. All artists should reach as high.
Becoming Led Zeppelin, the movie, has its flaws but the music doesn’t.
Led Zeppelin, the band, is thrilling. Still.
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Great stuff Bill. Sounds like an imperfect but still worthwhile watch.
I only found out the film was coming last week when I read this article. Gives some good background detail to how they made it and got the band on board. The initial meeting with Jimmy Page sounds like it was as much an intensive vetting session by him to ensure his approval of the film makers.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/feb/04/becoming-led-zeppelin-sweet-talked-first-film
Good article. I hadn’t realized the interviews were done so long ago.
Also, next time I visit England, a side trip to Pangbourne might be in order. There’s not much to do except look at the house, but the pub next door looks good.
Thanks for this review, Bill. Like you, I’m wary of authorized biopics or docs of musicians, and I likely will not watch this, tbh. Once I dismissed the satanic panic myths that clouded my judgment as a teen, I eventually came to possess a great love of this band’s music. At the same time, the more I deep dive into music from the past, the more I realize just how much they jacked their sound from others and in numerous cases, majorly stole from others, bluesmen and otherwise. It can easily be said, “Oh, everybody takes something from somebody” but I’m not sure there has ever been a band so highly acclaimed that blatantly took so much. I was actually thinking of doing an article on it, but it evoked a bit too much negative energy and I decided not to do it.
I think any biopic or doc that would hold my interest would need to cover everything, the good, the bad, the ugly. It wouldn’t change my opinion of the band or my love of their music. I already know too much about them to know it likely won’t ever happen. It would just ground the story in the whole truth, which these days, in all corners of life is a precious commodity.
I don’t mind at all that they took from other musicians. They cribbed plenty of ideas, and yet they added so much of their own.
What bothers me is the double standard of denying writing credit to those older musicians, and later suing younger musicians for infringement of intellectual property. That manipulative legal fiction is what I loathe. But they were far from alone. It was the Dawn of the Attack of the Litigators.
A valid point. This documentary is centered around their memories of those years. While we all forget or misremember our youth, Zeppelin has always played it close to the vest. This film isn’t the whole truth, but it’s as close as we’re going to get from them.
I tried to watch Bowie’s documentary Moonage Daydream, and I found it insipid and hagiographic, so I turned it off halfway through. My brother said that his friend came away from it not even realizing that Bowie had had a major drug problem. Not that a movie can or should cover everything in an artist’s life, but it speaks to the film’s penchant for gloss.
Shortly after high school I started to get into classic bands that I had lazily dismissed: the Beatles, the Doors, Pink Floyd, the Police, and Led Zeppelin. A few years later, the Zeppelin DVD came out, and those live performances really floored me.
That’s so cool about their studio session contributions. I knew that Page was frequently on hand as a session guitarist, but I didn’t realize he was on all of those iconic works.
I might give this film a try. Likely at home though, though. I’m sure the theater sound is phenomenal, but as you suggest, the movie going experience is less and less social–all while getting more and more expensive! Does my grouchiness help get me a senior discount?
If that’s all it took, most people would get senior discounts.
There are online lists of songs Page and/or Jones played on, but they’re incomplete. Even they don’t remember everything they did.
I have loved all things (well, not quite all things, but most) Zeppelin since my high school years. Still do. I was fortunate enough to see them on their 1977 American tour. I have seen literally hundreds of shows since then, but none has ever been better.
Yes, I really do overuse parentheses. I just can’t help it.
(A man after my own) heart.
(Wo)man, (but close [enough]).
Good point.
Recently read this really terrific biography about them (knew almost nothing going in – I always respected Zeppelin more than I loved them):
“Led Zeppelin: The Biography” by Bob Spitz
Spitz wrote a really good Beatles bio book, too (a bit skewed toward Macca, but fair to John)
I long ago realized that the authorized version of any entertainment entity would be at best what I’ve seen referred to as “the varnished truth.” That means a lot of sidestepping and omission. My comfort level with the final product depends on the number and magnitude of such events. For example, there was a book on the official history of TV producers Sid and Marty Krofft, and in describing one show, they totally removed any reference of one regular character. I thought it was because the performer had died, but they did mention another actor who had passed away in the book. Then again, they left out that said actor later moved into porn films before his death.
That was a long digression just to say that I loved this writeup, Bill, and will probably watch the film, but not likely in a movie theater. It’s for the same reason you listed: 20 minutes of commercials and loud previews for film for which I have no interest. I try and avoid chain theaters nowadays for that particular reason. Yes, even if I know the sound system is better than what I have at home.
Finally, the fact that some group members played on Downtown and Goldfinger blows my mind, since as you know I rank both among my 20 favorite songs of 1965 and would never associate Led Zeppelin with either of them.