Becoming Led Zeppelin: Came Saw Conquered

To their detrac­tors, Led Zep­pelin were far too com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful to be tak­en seri­ous­ly as artists, and all too quick­ly suc­cumbed to what then become a clichéd descent into a hedo­nis­tic hell of their own mak­ing, with the inevitably trag­ic result.

What this exhil­a­rat­ing doc­u­men­tary fea­ture shows is that they’re far bet­ter under­stood as the spir­i­tu­al fore­bears of Radio­head. A band of, in this case, four incred­i­bly dri­ven musi­cal mavens hell bent on pur­su­ing a very par­tic­u­lar musi­cal direc­tion, who, inex­plic­a­bly, wake up one morn­ing to dis­cov­er they’ve con­quered the world, notwith­stand­ing the sin­gu­lar­i­ty of that musi­cal vision.

One of the rea­sons the doc­u­men­tary works so well is that, hav­ing shunned all and any pub­lic­i­ty for their entire careers, espe­cial­ly doc­u­men­taries like these, now that they’ve all agreed to final­ly par­tic­i­pate in one, they are each uncom­mon­ly can­did and open.

And they are ‘all’ here, as the three sur­viv­ing mem­bers are accom­pa­nied by the voice of drum­mer John Bon­ham, thanks to a recent­ly unearthed inter­view that Bon­ham gave before his death in 1980.

The rea­son these hith­er­to reclus­es have sud­den­ly opened up so casu­al­ly is the mutu­al respect that they and the film mak­ers enjoy. And the rea­son for that is Amer­i­can Epic, which was the project that film mak­ers Bernard MacMa­hon and Alli­son McGour­ty made before this one.

Amer­i­can Epic, which I reviewed ear­li­er here, is a 3 part doc­u­men­tary that charts the birth of record­ed music in Amer­i­ca in the 1920s, and the musi­cal gen­res that that gave birth to; the blues, coun­try, blue­grass, RnB, rock ‘n’ roll, rap, hip hop and all man­ner of pop.

The argu­ment this film makes, entire­ly con­vinc­ing­ly, is the Led Zep­pelin are the miss­ing link that con­nects every­thing that came before 1969, and every­thing that fol­lowed, after 1970. 

As much as any­thing else, this is cul­tur­al his­to­ry rather than mere music his­to­ry, in much the same way that Peter Gar­al­nick’s tow­er­ing Sweet Soul Music is as much about race and the Amer­i­ca of the 1950s and ‘60s, as it is about Sam Cooke and James Brown

So what we get for most of the first hour is a his­to­ry of 1960s Lon­don, and the dif­fer­ent paths that the four men take before final­ly form­ing the band. 

There’s Jim­my Page, becom­ing one of the most in-demand ses­sion gui­tarists, and then pro­duc­ers in town, work­ing with every­one from The Kinks and The Who to The Rolling Stones and Van Mor­ri­son

While Bassist, and then arranger, John Paul Jones was sim­i­lar­ly record­ing with all of the above, which is how they meet. While also arrang­ing for the likes of Françoise Hardy, Shirley Bassey, Dusty Spring­field and the Walk­er Brothers.

Even­tu­al­ly, in 1968, Page teams up with Jones to form a band, and, some­how, they enlist the tal­ents of the force of nature that is Robert Plant, and his close friend and col­lab­o­ra­tor, drum­mer John Bonham. 

In those days, the genial Plant was repelled from con­ven­tion­al soci­ety and main­stream cul­ture in much the same way that elec­trons are in per­pet­u­al flight from the pro­tons they orbit. Remark­ably, the sec­ond he and the oth­er three start play­ing togeth­er, every­thing fits into place, and sparks explode spec­tac­u­lar­ly into the ether.

When the film final­ly gives us a taste of the actu­al music, its sound is sig­nif­i­cant­ly rich­er from hav­ing been posit­ed in the midst of the cul­tur­al and musi­cal land­scape that it sprang from. 

Dif­fer­ent in size and scope to Amer­i­can Epic, Becom­ing Led Zep­pelin is every bit as impres­sive, and makes for absolute­ly manda­to­ry view­ing. And should, if pos­si­ble, be seen in a cinema. 

And I defy you to resist imme­di­ate­ly going in search of, at the very least, those first two albums the sec­ond you exit the cinema.

Watch the trail­er for Becom­ing Led Zep­pelin here:

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American Epic” watch, listen and marvel

Amer­i­can Epic

Amer­i­can Epic is an extra­or­di­nary win­dow on to the roots from which Amer­i­can music sprang. And it pro­vides there­fore the key to under­stand­ing all sub­se­quent gen­res that pop­u­lar music went on to spawn through­out the course of the 20thcen­tu­ry. Essen­tial­ly, it’s in two parts.

The first, Amer­i­can Epic, is the three part doc­u­men­tary series pro­duced by BBC4’s Are­na, and the 5 cd box set that that pro­duced. The sec­ond is The Amer­i­can Epic Ses­sions, which is a doc­u­men­tary fea­ture (effec­tive­ly episode 4 of the series), and the two cd box set that that generated.

Jack White and The Amer­i­can Epic Ses­sions.

The whole project revolves around the tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tions that were going on in sound at the begin­ning of the 20thcen­tu­ry, and the cul­tur­al waves that those rip­ples produced. 

For the first cou­ple of decades, the music indus­try had been an exclu­sive­ly mid­dle class enter­prise. Phono­graph record­ings were man­u­fac­tured so that opera arias, clas­si­cal music and Broad­way show tunes could be played in well to do homes.

But the inven­tion of radio in the 1920s seemed to have dealt a fatal blow to that nascent indus­try. Any­body with elec­tric­i­ty could lis­ten to any amount of music, all day long. 

So, in des­per­a­tion, the record­ing indus­try sent scouts out into rur­al Amer­i­ca to record the sorts of music that peo­ple with­out elec­tric­i­ty – and there­fore a radio – would be inter­est­ed in lis­ten­ing to on their hand-cranked phonographs. 

Charley Pat­ton.

They then went back to head­quar­ters with these stacks of dis­cov­er­ies to fuel the most pow­er­ful medi­um of the day, radio, with the same thing that all media are always in search of; content.

What this did, cru­cial­ly, was to con­nect the urban radio lis­ten­ers and the indus­try that served them, with an entire coun­try of rur­al com­mu­ni­ties that had, up until then, exist­ed in effec­tive isolation. 

In many ways, it was the field record­ings that came out of the 1920s that mould­ed and cre­at­ed a Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. And it was these record­ings that laid the foun­da­tion for what would become the blues, coun­try, blue­grass, soul, RnB, gospel, rock n roll, hip hop and each and every con­ceiv­able kind of pop.

The sec­ond part, The Amer­i­can Epic Ses­sions, focus­es on the tech­nol­o­gy that made all of this pos­si­ble. In 1925, West­ern Elec­tric made a portable record­ing appa­ra­tus that could be pow­ered by bat­tery. Scouts were quick­ly sent out to scour the coun­try to record any­one who had a song to sing and want­ed to have it memo­ri­alised on wax. 

Lead Bel­ly.

Overnight, a host of nation­wide stars were born. The Carter fam­i­ly, the Mem­phis Jug Band (because they used jugs in place of the instru­ments they couldn’t afford), Charley Pat­ton, Mis­sis­sip­pi John Hurt, Blind Willie McTell, Lead Bel­ly, Jim­mie Rodgers and Robert John­son to name but a pal­try few.

Depress­ing­ly, the US gov­ern­ment melt­ed down the vast major­i­ty of these 78s in the course of their sec­ond WW effort. The shel­lac that records were made from before the advent of vinyl was need­ed for the pro­duc­tion of cam­ou­flage paint. 

So by the time the folk revival kicked in in the 60s with its cel­e­bra­tion of all things Amer­i­cana, incred­i­bly few 78s were left in exis­tence. And none of West­ern Electric’s record­ing pieces had been pre­served for posterity.

The Carter sisters.

Until now. Because over the last cou­ple of decades, sound engi­neer Nick Bergh has man­aged to get his hands on the indi­vid­ual bits and pieces that the appa­ra­tus was made of, to painstak­ing­ly recon­struct a sin­gle, func­tion­ing record­ing piece. 

And he and pro­gramme mak­er Bernard McMa­hon decid­ed that the best way to re-mas­ter all the orig­i­nal record­ings that go to make up Amer­i­can Epic, was to invite cur­rent per­form­ers to record a song on wax, using the orig­i­nal, recre­at­ed West­ern Elec­tric record­ing appa­ra­tus. That way, they would all gain an unri­valled under­stand­ing of exact­ly how it had functioned. 

So Alaba­ma Shakes, Elton John, Taj Mahal, Nas, Willie Nel­son, Mer­le Hag­gard, Raphael Saadiq, Rhi­an­non Gid­dens, Los Lobos and Ash­ley Mon­roe got togeth­er with pro­duc­ers Jack White and T Bone Bur­nett to record an album, which they doc­u­ment­ed on film. 

Mon­roe by the way penned the near­est thing to the per­fect line, with her auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Like A Rose, which she wrote with none oth­er than Guy Clark.Ran off with what­shis­name when I turned eigh­teen…”.

Rhi­an­non Giddens.

Doc­u­men­tary wise, the 3 episode Amer­i­can Epic is the one to watch. The Ses­sions is basi­cal­ly an added bonus. Con­verse­ly, musi­cal­ly speak­ing, unless you’re an afi­ciona­do, you should go for the 2 disc Amer­i­can Epic Ses­sions, rather than the 5 disc Amer­i­can Epic box set. As the for­mer is that bit more expan­sive, made up as it is of orig­i­nal as well as tra­di­tion­al songs. Obvi­ous­ly though, if you can, watch and get both.

Tak­en togeth­er, the whole enter­prise is noth­ing short of monumental.

Watch Los Lobos here

And Alaba­ma Shakes here

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