10 Things We Learned From The ‘Becoming Led Zeppelin’ Documentary

3: Builder and choirmaster are among the jobs Led Zeppelin’s members could have had

John Bonham was only ten years old when he received his first drum kit, and he would soon bash along to a diverse range of records by everyone from jazz bandleader Gene Krupa to soul icon James Brown and English rockers Johnny Kidd And The Pirates. Yet with a serious career in music still a long way off, Bonham earned his keep working on construction sites with his dad, as part of the family’s building company.

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John Paul Jones also took a circuitous path towards musical greatness. “I was from that music-hall tradition, and it was the basis for everything I did afterwards,” he explains in Becoming Led Zeppelin. Dressed in resplendent gowns, Jones’ mother was the singer in a double-act with his father, a pianist/comedian who initially encouraged his son to play the saxophone, as opposed to what he saw as a flash-in-the-pan “novelty” instrument like the bass. At 14, Jones became organist and choirmaster at a local church, earning himself £35 a year, with which he bought himself that coveted bass guitar.

“We all listened to different things,” Jones says, explaining the varied influences that made up the group with which he’d find fame. “And I always said that Led Zeppelin was the area in the middle – in between us all.”

4: Early session work helped Jimmy Page become a sonic pioneer

Jimmy Page entered a recording studio for the first time in 1963, as a 19-year-old guitarist for hire; his first recorded guitar solo appeared on a cut by Carter-Lewis And The Southerners. Soon, he would be booked for sessions by a diverse array of artists, among them The Rolling Stones, Petula Clark, The Who, David Bowie and Donovan, regularly working in the studio with another in-demand session musician, John Paul Jones. The experience taught him how to use recording equipment in ways that would prove vital when it came to crafting Led Zeppelin’s albums. “I made it my business to ask engineers how certain effects were done, like tape echo and reverb,” he says in Becoming Led Zeppelin.

During recording sessions for Led Zeppelin’s self-titled debut album, Page would push the era’s technology to the limit, pioneering sonic experimentation in his quest to create a unique listening experience. “I wanted to have so many textures and moods on it that the whole album would arrest listeners and take them to a realm they’d never been to before,” he says.

5: Led Zeppelin rose out of the ashes of The Yardbirds

When British guitar hero Jeff Beck asked Jimmy Page to join his group The Yardbirds, it was an easy decision for Page to make. “I didn’t wanna be making singles anymore,” he says, referring to the session work he’d cut his teeth with. Asking himself, “How would you really like to play, if you had the chance?” he quickly concluded: “Do it now. Now is your opportunity.”

When Beck left The Yardbirds in the middle of a US tour, Page took over as lead guitarist and creative guide, bringing in ideas that he would soon develop with Plant, Jones and Bonham when they joined forces as The New Yardbirds. “I had this new sound for The Yardbirds already worked out in my head… Like Dazed And Confused,” Page says. After playing their debut gig together in Gladsaxe, Denmark, it was a short jump to becoming Led Zeppelin.

6: Led Zeppelin’s chemistry was apparent from their very first rehearsal

Page first contacted Plant about joining his new group, and the two aspiring stars bonded over their shared musical tastes. In an audition of sorts, Page played Plant Joan Baez’s version of Babe I’m Gonna Leave you, telling him, “If you can sing that topline there, I’ve got an arrangement to go with it.” Instantly making the song his own, Plant was on board, and he brought John Bonham, his former Band Of Joy bandmate, in on drums. Meanwhile, at the urging of his wife, John Paul Jones contacted Page to enquire about the fledgling group, and quickly joined as bassist. Their first rehearsal together took place in a basement room on Gerrard Steet, London, on 12 August 1968, during which they tore through a version of Johnny Burnette Trio’s Train Kept A-Rollin’.

In a vintage interview, Bonham recalls being surrounded by “wall-to-wall amplifiers” that day, and says that receiving the invite to join the group was “like a gift from heaven”. “The room just exploded,” Jones adds, noting how Plant’s singing sent shockwaves through the musicians. “I was expecting some cool soul singer, and here was this screaming maniac.”

7: ‘Becoming Led Zeppelin’ contains footage not even the band knew existed

Having initially focused on building their audience in the US, Led Zeppelin had a UK fanbase hungry to witness the band in all their ear-splitting, mind-melting glory. An appearance at the Bath Festival Of Blues – a direct precursor to Glastonbury Festival – on Saturday, 28 June 1969, was one of the group’s first major UK festival slots, on a bill that also included Fleetwood Mac and John Mayall. In Becoming Led Zeppelin, Page and Plant are shown footage of their performance which even they didn’t know existed. “I’ve seen a photograph of the first Bath festival,” a rapt Page exclaims, after watching the vintage clip. “To see moving images of it – wow, that was absolutely amazing.”

8: They refused to be a “singles band”

As well as learning how to utilise the studio during his days as a session musician, Jimmy Page saw up close the ways in which pressure to turn out hits can cause an artist to unravel. “Having seen a situation by which singles had broken the spirit of the band, I made it a point to say we are an albums band,” he explains in Becoming Led Zeppelin. In his determination to ensure Led Zeppelin were seen as a group that released cohesive long-form artistic statements, he sought to defy any attempts that might have been made to turn one of the best Led Zeppelin songs into a standalone hit.

“I really wanted to do something with Whole Lotta Love to stop it being a single,” Page reveals. “So it was going to have a radical avant-garde sonic section in the middle.” Featuring wailing theremin and disorientating panning in the speakers, the final sonic assault was shaped during a four-handed mix conducted by Page and studio engineer Eddie Kramer. In the event, a song like Whole Lotta Love could not be stopped, and it received a single release in the US and Europe, going to No.4 stateside and topping the charts in several other countries.

9: Not all critics “got” Led Zeppelin at first

In their infamous review of Led Zeppelin’s debut album, rock bible Rolling Stone entirely missed the mark, claiming that, despite the group’s “considerable talent”, the album featured “weak, unimaginative songs” that were “unworthy” of the musicians that made it.

“Do you really care about other people’s responses if you’re playing like that?” Plant offers as a rejoinder today. Indeed, with the group packing out venues across the US in the wake of Led Zeppelin’s release, he nails it when he adds: “What people are hearing as opposed to what they’re reading is what really makes the band.” Led Zeppelin had the last laugh, too. Their debut was placed at No.29 in the 2003 edition of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time. The magazine’s 2023 update featured three Led Zeppelin albums: Houses Of The Holy (No.278), Physical Graffiti (No.144) and Led Zeppelin’s fourth – officially untitled – album (No.58).

10: ‘Led Zeppelin II’ was a true game-changer

A landmark in the development of hard rock, Led Zeppelin cleared the way for heavy metal’s arrival in the 70s. With Led Zeppelin II the band upped the ante again, thanks to the perfect confluence of ambition, talent and circumstance. “I had a whole vision for the next album. It was going to be very cinematic in its approach,” Page says of the record, which was largely laid down in various studios around the US in 1969, as the band toured the country and built their fanbase. “You’ve got the energy of the road, and you’re actually documenting it with what you’re recording,” Page notes.

For his part, Robert Plant observed the pace at which his bandmates were developing, and began to up his own game. “I had to start thinking about, What do I do as a singer?” he says. “My songwriting… started to kick in because of the colour of the playing that surrounded me… I was taking the best bits of Black music and putting it through the ringer, one way or another.” The result was a multi-platinum-selling album that topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic.

“We opened the door to America and there was a glint of light,” Page says of the journey the band had taken between the release of their debut album, in January 1969, and the release of Led Zeppelin II, that October. “Obviously we were going to kick the door in.”

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