I was never a Led Zeppelin fan. As a child, I grew up with their sound spilling out from my older brother’s bedroom, but they didn’t appeal to me as much as his other records by people like Bowie and the Faces. They seemed somehow more difficult. Perhaps I had a sense that they weren’t meant for me. When Ben and I went the other day to see the new documentary film Becoming Led Zeppelin, directed by Bernard MacMahon, it was in a spirit of curiosity rather than avid fandom.
That word “Becoming” in the title is key – this is a film about how a band discovers itself, and is then discovered by an audience. So we learn about each member’s background, and see footage of their inspirations – Lonnie Donegan, Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Richard. We see Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones’s stint as session musicians, playing on “Goldfinger”, with Shirley Bassey in the vocal booth giving it her all, complete with flamboyant arm gestures.
Through a series of twists and turns, the band members make their way towards each other, and end up in a rehearsal room. And there’s nothing inevitable about what happens next. I was reminded of how, at their inception, a band can startle even themselves. Jones describes hearing Plant experimenting with that high vocal register, and thinking, “What are you DOING up there Robert? You’re gonna hurt yourself!”
At the end of that first session they knew they had something, and the sound they had hit upon – John Bonham’s heavy groove, Page’s overdriven riffing, Plant’s unique voice – came blasting out of the huge Imax cinema speakers so that we were surrounded and enveloped by it. I felt myself physically convinced by them; the music had a force that simply couldn’t be denied.
They flew to the US for a tour and Plant recalls his wide-eyed excitement at the in-flight luxuries. “There was gin!” he declares, still delighted after all these years. “Tonic! Air-conditioning!” Plant is twinkly and funny throughout the film. His rock-god persona would become a cliché, but at this early stage it still seems fresh and endearing. “Robert, you’re a FOX!” shouts a young woman in 1969 who has phoned in to a talk show – and, to be fair, he was.
Part of his charm comes from not taking himself too seriously. Jimmy Page, on the other hand, still seems hung up on the idea of Led Zep being more than a pop group. He made sure “Whole Lotta Love” couldn’t be a single, he insists, by cleverly adding the middle breakdown – omitting to mention that radio simply edited that bit out, and that the track became the theme tune for Top of the Pops.
This kind of superior attitude was what separated “rock” and “pop” fans in the Seventies, and often that meant separating the boys from the girls. Girls liked pop and tunes and dancing and sexiness – boys liked rock and solos and head nodding and seriousness. Perhaps it’s why I didn’t warm to my brother’s Led Zeppelin records – I instinctively knew I wasn’t wanted.
But the early footage here of the band at the Fillmore West in San Francisco shows a joyous crowd of boys and girls, all dancing, all equally involved and turned on. I thought of the complicated relationship women have with rock music, and with the iconic bands of the Sixties and Seventies. We were onlookers; audience members, not participants. Girls would be early fans but then be subtly excluded as men took ownership of a band, becoming the experts and gatekeepers, writing the journalism and the books, deciding who to allow into the hall of fame. It often made me angry, and made me think I hated rock.
But for the duration of this film I was in a forgiving mood, won over by the visceral thrill of the band’s sound. At the end I strolled into the ladies, bypassing a long queue for the gents. Making eye contact with the only other woman in there, we smiled, noting the fact that we were in a minority, and perhaps enjoying the feeling that we’d gatecrashed, like true rebels.
[See also: Bob Dylan at the Royal Albert Hall: the best he’s been in years]
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This article appears in the 19 Feb 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Europe Alone