Gary SteelGARY STEEL discusses the still-contentious “classic rock” group Led Zeppelin and their first ever so-called “documentary”.
Have you seen the Zep movie yet?
I thought it might be big news. After all, Becoming Led Zeppelin is the first proper documentary on one of the biggest rock bands of all time.
Instead, reception seems incredibly muted. In contrast, that vacuous, bloated celebration of David Bowie, Moonage Daydream, generated a huge amount of media coverage.
Why is that? Perhaps it’s because Led Zeppelin are as reviled as they are revered; that as the symbol of the worst excesses of the 1970s they’re untouchables to all but classic rock aficionados. Or maybe it’s simply because things have moved on and the group’s original fans are dying off and, as we saw on the parade of R&B-influenced songs and acts at the 2025 Grammys, rock music itself is firmly off the agenda, viewed as old-hat, like an especially irritating Dad-joke.
Led Zeppelin were always contentious and have remained so. The issue of their exploitation of old blues songs with little attribution given has never quite gone away, and then there’s the group’s infamous groupie exploits, as covered in the Stephen Davis book Hammer Of The Gods. Add to that their physically threatening manager, Peter Grant, along with Jimmy Page’s notorious interest in the occult, and we have a group considered by many – rightly or wrongly – as somewhat morally reprehensible.
It’s easy to see why the Led Zep’s virile bombast and attitude pissed off hippies as much as it made them a target for punk rock venom later in the decade.
But let’s forget the dark mythology that surrounds the group and consider their music for a moment. Check out their first three albums with an open mind and you’ll hear a group at their peak and thrilled to discover something brand new, and music that sounds almost as chill-down-the-spine exciting in 2025 as it did in 1969 and 1970.
Sometimes it’s hard to understand just how revolutionary Led Zep were back then, because there have been thousands of hard rock groups in their wake trying to capture the same potent riffology, the same urgent vocal howls, the same virile impact. But it’s actually simple to figure out what just about all their imitators lacked. Zep may have virtually created hard rock but it was never their raison d’être; the headbanging aspect of their music was important but only worked because of the light and shade that accompanied those sections.
I remember some wag calling Jimmy Page the Tchaikovsky of rock and in some ways he was right. As a player, Page may not have been as notable as Peter Green or Carlos Santana or Jeff Beck (with whom he briefly played in The New Yardbirds, which mutated into Zeppelin soon after) but his real skill was as a producer, shaping the group’s sound. Zep haters don’t ever seem to comprehend just how comprehensively Page revolutionized those blues songs that inspired him in the first place, creating a brand new architecture around them; effectively orchestrating them in the same way that Bartok was inspired in his compositions by Hungarian folk song. Listen to the dark drama of even an early song like ‘Dazed & Confused’ and the line about Tchaikovsky starts to make sense. The group completely rebooted those raw blues songs, recomposing them and creating something almost entirely new in the process. Page’s deft sculpting of sonic materials was a big part of this.
But there wasn’t a weak point in the lineup. Robert Plant sang and wailed like a horny banshee and to this day the way his voice is captured on those songs is thrilling. Bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones is the mystery member who pretty much goes unnoticed but provides so much important sonic material for the group to work with. And then there’s John Bonham, the other reason why none of the bands that came in Zep’s wake could get anywhere near them. Bonham wasn’t a flashy player but, as well as a powerhouse percussionist he’s one of rock music’s greatest masters of the groove. While Page was the circus-master the other three members were also hugely important to what Led Zep were for a brief 12 years.
Which isn’t to say that they weren’t without flaws. Their machismo was at times risible, as was the pretentiousness of their part-concert, part-fantasy film The Song Remains The Same. Like other classic rock bands of the era – Pink Floyd springs to mind – they became too big for their members to keep things in proportion. Personally, I think that by the mid-‘70s and their double album Physical Graffiti, they’d lost much of their allure; that their spark had been swallowed whole by the anonymous screaming adulation of audiences in the stadium circuit and their creative spirit was compromised by excess. (And yes, I know that there’s a school of thought that PG is the best thing they ever did, but to my ears it still sounds confused and a bit lame). While Plant’s vocals were spectacular, his lyrics were often burdened in the early days by blues cliches, which sounded especially silly coming from the mouth of a white boy. Happily, he found ways around the problem. One thrilling example of his artistic growth was the brief but killer opening track of Led Zep III, ‘Immigrant Song’, which evoked its Viking theme spectacularly.
The wheels came off for Led Zeppelin, as it does for so many rock groups and celebrities. Page’s work suffered because of his (reported) drug use, and Bonham was – like his counterpart in The Who, Keith Moon – simply out of control and booze-sodden to a dangerous, eventually fateful degree. It was all over on 25 September 1980, when the 32-year-old choked on his vomit after drinking way too much vodka.
At least their reign was mercifully short, which means we can more easily appreciate the core of their work. Compare that to a group like Yes, who are still making (very average) albums all these years later with a replacement vocalist who won competitions posing as the real Yes singer Jon Anderson. And really, it’s only Robert Plant of Zep who went on to a proper career afterwards, with some fairly well-regarded albums and a few celebrated roots excursions with Alison Krauss.
Despite remaining popular, Led Zeppelin only existed for 12 years between ’68 and ’80, so maybe that’s another reason there’s been so little vibe about their first proper documentary. Or it could be that people now have less of an appetite for artist-approved and somewhat white-washed accounts.
While the blurb for Becoming Led Zeppelin boasts that it contains much to entice fans, like never-before-seen interview footage, and it was a chance to sonically spruce up existent filmed live performances, it’s no real surprise that the most controversial aspects of the group – the ones fans and otherwise really want to know the truth about – were omitted from an already epic running time. (Perhaps Page will reveal all in the extras on a forthcoming Blu-ray edition?)
As it happened, I couldn’t make it to opening night like I planned, but I sent a friend whose opinions I respect, and he texted: “WHAT A BORE! Two-and-a-half hours. Pointless. Not a doco, just comms. ZZZZ! No drugs.”
When I teased more out of my friend, he wrote: “No drugs. No groupies. No fish. Quite a lot of fantastic live footage from ’68 and ’69. Quite a lot of totally bland interviews with the band from 2024. Sanitised, authorized, nowt tawdry – just not rock ‘n’ roll apart from some fantastic rock ‘n’ roll.”
In other words, a film of new digitally spruced up live performances sans interviews might have worked better.
Having said that, of course, some of my friends on social media have been gushing over the film.
I wish I’d seen it on the big IMAX screen, even though I’m sure to have been let down by the lack of dirt. Instead, I’ll make do with a blast on my TV panel when and if it makes it to a streaming channel or Blu-ray disc.
Kiwi critic Simon Sweetman in his comments on the film made the suggestion that as great as they are it’s time to move on from celebrating groups like Led Zeppelin. In general, he has a point. A whole world of music opened up in the wake of rock colossi like Zep and there are plenty of contemporary groups and artists that deserve our attention. Nostalgia is overrated. But it’s good for new generations to get a taste of what was great 50 years ago and for me, reassessment of old favourites is as useful as discovering new favourites. In Led Zeppelin’s case, I think they’ve somewhat been celebrated (and mythologized, and criticized) for the wrong reasons. There’s stuff we can still learn from the group’s early output.
+ Becoming Led Zeppelin screened from February 8 in NZ and has probably run its course by now (although it may still be playing in a regional fleapit somewhere).
