Becoming Led Zeppelin: We chat to the filmmakers ahead of epic documentary's release

Created by the powerhouse team of director Bernard MacMahon and screenwriter/producer Allison McGourty, Becoming Led Zeppelin traces the journey of Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, John Bonham and Robert Plant through the music scene of the 1960s, their meeting in the summer of 1968 and meteoric ascendancy throughout 1969, culminating in 1970 when they became the No. 1 band in the world.

Anticipation for the film’s release tomorrow is high - particularly in our region, for which Plant remains a staunch and beloved ambassador. 

We were lucky enough to be able to chat to the filmmakers about the incredible journey of one of the world’s most treasured rock acts, and the equally amazing journey of putting their story on screen.

Famously, despite having spent five decades at the top of the pantheon of true music royalty, Led Zeppelin have never agreed to an authorised documentary until now. So what changed, and why did Bernard and Allison become the lucky biographers given the band’s blessing to tell their tale?

“I wanted to do something that was from the next era after our previous project, American Epic, which was like the 20s and 30s,” said Bernard. “This story picks up in the 50s as these kids are growing up and through the 60s and the late 60s as they take off.

“I’d read a paperback book about Led Zeppelin as a 12-year-old boy without knowing a note of their music at that stage, and I loved the story. This book went up to the early 70s and it was just about these two guys from the Midlands trying to make their way in the music business and trying to break into the snobby London scene with little success, and then these two other guys that are working as session musicians inside that scene.

“I loved that story and, like with American Epic, it had never been told before. I had a sense that if we looked into this story there would be emotional resonances and things in their backgrounds and childhoods that would be fascinating. I thought ‘you don’t get music this amazing unless people have had interesting lives that inspired it’. When the music is this great, there’s going to be a wonderful story behind it.”

Serendipitously, Led Zeppelin were fans of Bernard and Allison’s previous work, and as such, a door was opened.

“It was several months of preparation, research, writing the script, storyboarding, and putting archive footage together before we pitched anything,” said Allison.

“Before we ever go and see anyone, whoever they are, with a film we want to make, we want to have worked out exactly how we’re going to make that film,” added Bernard. “Fortunately, when we went to see Zeppelin with all this work done, it transpired that both Robert Plant and Jimmy Page were huge fans of our previous films. And when we sent the DVD of American Epic to John Paul Jones, he had made a pilgrimage to the place in Virginia where our very first story was set. It was that thing where fortune smiles on hard work. We’d done all this preparation work and it transpired when we got to meet them that they actually knew our work. And so that was how it came about.

“One of the things that I thought was really amazing about them is that when they agreed to the film they agreed that we could have editorial control. We made the film independently, and that’s unheard of for a group of this magnitude. They just let us make the film that we wanted to make. I have enormous respect for them to agree to do that. They made the decision and they trusted us.”

Making the film led Bernard and Allison to experience nothing less than a love affair with the West Midlands, and the stomping ground that Robert Plant has always called home.

“Robert opened up his address book and he introduced us to all of his old friends, and we spent an enormous amount of time in the Midlands,” said Allison.

“We went from Gornal to Kidderminster to Bewdley - all around,” added Bernard. “The wonderful thing in the West Midlands is people don’t stand on ceremony and they’ll say what they think. Some of these people have become very close friends of ours now and the West Midlands has become one of our favourite places in Britain - just full of wonderful, friendly people, and Robert knew that they would give us this unvarnished portrait of him.”

The big question is, of course, did the lads like the finished product?

“Robert brought his whole family - kids and grandkids - to a screening in London,” said Allison. “It was very moving and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. He turned to his family and said ‘that was my life’. That meant a lot, and his family learned a lot that they hadn’t known before. It was very meaningful to the Bonhams as well.”

“John’s grandson, Jagger, was watching the film and he came up to me afterwards and he just thanked us,” added Bernard. “He said ‘it’s just wonderful to hear my grandfather talking for the first time’. With the film you really do get a sense of what an extraordinary musician John Bonham was. One of the most moving things was to be able to give to his grandson this opportunity to hear his grandfather talk. He died before he was born.”

In telling the story of one of the most lauded acts in rock history, Bernard and Allison feel nothing less than privileged, and hope that audiences across the world will feel the same in witnessing it.

“We tell the story with four equal voices,” said Allison. “Bonham has got a voice equal to the other three from beyond the grave through the video footage that the Bonham family have provided us.”

“The key thing about Zeppelin is that it’s about four completely indispensable people,” added Bernard. “With one of those people not in the mix, it would not have happened the way it did. There are a lot of great groups where you could potentially remove one person and it would still have worked, but that would never have been the case with Zeppelin, and that’s the story we tell.”

-Becoming Led Zeppelin is due for release tomorrow (Friday, February 7).