‘Becoming Led Zeppelin‘, the film released in 2025 by Irish filmmaker Bernard MacMahon, an expert in documentary films about music and musicians, seems to have been made for people like me. I am an absolute fan of Led Zeppelin, which I have been following since their first album, released 57 years ago. For me, they are, along with very few other musicians, in Olympus. MacMahon‘s documentary follows the biographies of the four members of the original band until their meeting and consolidation in Led Zeppelin, focusing on the year 1969 in which their explosive appearance in the charts occurred and in which they composed and recorded ‘Led Zeppelin II’, one of the best albums in the history of rock. It was also the year in which, at the beginning of high school, my fascination with the sound and freedom of pop and rock music and my lifelong passion for this genre began. However, I lived in communist Romania where censorship blocked our access to the music of our generation. We had, howeverm the chance of listening to Cornel Chiriac’s Metronom broadcasts from Radio Free Europe in Western Germany, which brought us the sound of freedom on shortwaves. It would be almost 20 years before I would earn the right to see Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham. Now, this documentary comes to compensate for what I (and others at the time) did not know about them. Better late than never.
Like members of many other bands that were at the core of the British pop revolution, Jimmy, Robert, John Paul and John were children of the Second World War. Born during the conflict into not very wealthy British families, they grew up among the ruins of the war and the difficult reconstruction of a militarily victorious but economically exhausted Britain, which saw its Empire falling apart. They each chose, independently, careers as musicians and almost the entire decade of the ’60s passed before they met and formed first The Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. ‘Becoming Led Zeppelin‘ follows their personal trajectories up to their meeting and then to glory, through filmed images and interviews with the three members who are still alive (and making music together!) to this day and with audio excerpts from a previously unreleased interview recorded with John Bonham before his death in 1980. Everything is wrapped in music – the music of the era that influenced their formation and especially their music.
‘Becoming Led Zeppelin‘ is an excellent documentary-interview that pays respect to these four great musicians. Maybe too much respect. Viewers learn many details behind the scenes of the group’s formation, and the details of their creative process are fascinating. Fans will be delighted. But even they will not be able to help but notice that difficult and delicate topics have been avoided. John’s death and the drugs that played a role in his tragic fate, mainly. I really liked the way the atmosphere of those years was portrayed, the creating of the sound in the recording studios, the filmed concerts through which the four musicians conquered the audiences, first the American one and then the one at home, in Britain. They also had the chance to be one of the most filmed groups in history. A more aggressive interview would have opened up some memories that are not the easiest to share. But it would probably have been the material of an even better documentary.