BECOMING LED ZEPPELIN - Mark Reviews Movies

Becoming Led Zeppelin, Sony Pictures Classics

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 13, 2025

Before they were part of the most popular rock band in the world, the members of Led Zeppelin were on track for other things. All of them were musicians, of course, to one degree or another, although it's quite amusing in Becoming Led Zeppelin to hear front man Robert Plant talk about the two choices for his life. He could have pursued a career as a singer or one as an accountant. If any voice was destined and needed to sing rock and roll, it's Plant's, as anyone who has heard even a single howling line from a Led Zeppelin song could attest.

Watching director Bernard MacMahon's documentary about the pre-Zeppelin lives of the group's members and the early years of the band itself, we're constantly reminded of that old adage about luck. It's simply the intersection of preparation and opportunity, and to be sure, Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, bassist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham were prepared when they first formed the band that would soon be called Led Zeppelin.

All of them had paid their dues, with Page and Jones doing the regular rounds as studio musicians for all sorts of other artists, Bonham playing in various bands, and Plant becoming a sort of vagabond while singing with whichever group or club would have him. Page and Jones knew each other, obviously, and Bonham and Plant kept in touch after they crossed paths in one of their several unsuccessful band projects. When they all first meet to rehearse and quickly jet off to Denmark for their first gig, the four knew they had something. Watching their first performance to a live audience, we can see their hunch was absolutely correct.

MacMahon's film is nothing structurally special, but it gets at the joy of witnessing talented, hard-working people have their dreams fulfilled in ways they probably couldn't have imagined. It understands, too, that the music matters in a documentary about musicians, which seems like a given but can be overlooked or forgotten by such documentaries. That initial Denmark gig, for example, was recorded, and MacMahon lets the quartet's first song unfold in its entirety here.

He doesn't cut away from it. He doesn't let anyone speak over it with some commentary. We're here to learn about the history of the band, after all, and there's probably no more important moment in this particular story. To interrupt it in any way would be to do a disservice to the tale of how these four musicians ended up together and of what followed in the couple years following it.

The narrative here might not seem like a lot, since it does only cover the first two years or so of the band's history—ending with their first album selling over half a million copies, the release of their second album, and a homecoming performance at the Royal Albert Hall in 1970, when the United Kingdom finally caught up with the United States in recognizing that their native sons were on to something with this music. Indeed, one wonders if MacMahon has follow-up documentaries in mind, considering that there's a whole decade of history, as well as some even bigger hits and more significant musical experimentation, for the band remaining.

As it stands, though, this primer on Led Zeppelin is fairly compelling, mainly because the entire story is told by way of its members. Page, Plant, and Jones are still alive and look genuinely excited to be sitting in front of cameras to reminisce about their individual and group pasts. Bonham died in 1980 and didn't give many interviews, but MacMahon has found an audio one that, according to the film, had never been heard before.

The three surviving members are never in the same room together, but in addition to showing each one footage of past performances live on set, the director plays that Bonham interview for each of them. It's difficult to determine what about a dozen years of fame and making music as a band might have done to these relationships, especially since the film doesn't cover most of that history, but one can see the joy and just-beneath-the-surface melancholy of the three men hearing Bonham's voice again.

Wisely, MacMahon revolves the entire film around these interviews, as all four detail their respective childhoods, early careers as musicians, and perspectives on how Led Zeppelin came together. Each of the living three, surprisingly, has a matter-of-fact humility to him, considering what heights the band reached, how influential it became, how the pairing of Page and Plant is seen as one of the great rock dynamics in the genre's history, and all the rest that comes with financial, creative, and historical success. That all of the men were primarily focused on music before Led Zeppelin and were dedicated to "the Music" after the formation of the band probably explains that down-to-earth attitude now.

MacMahon doesn't skimp on that music, either, piecing together—some instances more convincingly than others—archival footage of live performances with either live or studio recordings of songs. The soundtrack is loud, as it should be, and as each member breaks down how they played (Jones, for example, talks about skipping a note here and there so that Bonham's drumbeats would become both the rhythm and part of the bassline), we can hear and see that technique right in front of us.

Some of this feels sanitized (Plant vaguely talks about some backstage aspects of touring), and the ending of Becoming Led Zeppelin is anticlimactic. There's clearly so much more story to tell, but whether or not the band gets to tell it later, this chapter of Led Zeppelin is fascinating and, here, told well.

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