‘Becoming Led Zeppelin’ is a thrilling but sanitized look at the rock gods
Also, Questlove explores Sly Stone, and a sparse look at a famous Eric Clapton special.
Becoming Led Zeppelin is one of those projects that I’d been aware of for several years and had been wondering when it might see the light of day. The first-ever major authorized documentary about Zeppelin, the film had a work-in-progress screening at the Venice Film Festival back in 2021 but languished for years without being completed, or even much news about when it might surface.
But now, the film is here, receiving what was billed as a one-night-only IMAX showing, but after that did super well at the box office, the release has been expanded.
The film features some fantastic footage, and the music sounds great, especially in a high-end movie theater with a great sound system. But if you know practically anything about Led Zeppelin’s history, well, let’s just say it paints a bit of a sanitized portrait of what this band was and for what it was known.
Directed by Bernard McMahon, the film features new interviews with surviving band members Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones, all of whom are on either side of 80. Drummer John Bonham died in 1980, but the film uses a never-before-heard interview with him.
Marshaling lots of archival footage, including concerts, tours, and the recording studio, the film follows the band from its formation as an offshoot of the Yardbirds in 1968 through their rise, their first two big tours, and the recording of their first two albums. If you think of Zeppelin as a band of the ‘70s, be advised: The narrative wraps up in January of 1970.
Therefore, the film feels a lot like Part 1 of a 3- or 4-part docuseries, although considering how successful it’s been, perhaps we’ll get sequels about the rest of the band’s history.
But not being able to hear “Stairway to Heaven” or “Kashmir” isn’t really the issue. I was bothered more by the film glossing over anything that even hints at conflict or controversy.
The infamous shark thing happened — if it actually did — after this period, and you kind of knew that wasn’t going to come up. But there’s not a word about any of those salacious groupie stories or any other wild stuff that happened on the road. Manager Peter Grant is known as an absolute madman, but the film is short on those stories, too. And if the members of the band ever had any interpersonal conflicts with one another, you won’t hear about that here.
If that’s what you’re looking for, there are numerous Zeppelin biographies, most notably Hammer of the Gods. And if you want a great Zeppelin-adjacent documentary that also took years to come to fruition, seek out Mr. Jimmy, the 2023 film about a Japanese guitarist who portrayed Jimmy Page on stage with Method actor-like furor, before heading to L.A. to run roughshod over the local Led Zeppelin tribute band scene.
As it stands, Becoming Led Zeppelin is fairly entertaining. It’s just very much the sanitized, official version.
SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)
There’s a strong case to be made that 2021’s Summer of Soul (...or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), directed by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, is the best documentary of the decade so far. A Sundance debut in 2021 that landed on Hulu a few months later, the film was assembled from never-before-seen footage of 1969’s Harlem Cultural Festival, a sort of Black counterpart to Woodstock that had the disadvantage of not becoming a staple of the boomer imagination in the ensuing 40 years.
Summer of Soul won an Oscar, a Grammy, and a Critics Choice Award, and while Questlove didn’t make a feature documentary for the ensuing four years — the man has a lot of other jobs — he’s returned this year, first with the first-rate Ladies & Gentlemen: 50 Years of SNL Music, which he co-directed, and now with SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius), which debuted at Sundance and lands on Hulu today.
Like the other two films, SLY LIVES! does a great job marshaling both music, archival footage, and interviews and family members and music luminaries, in telling the long life story of Sly Stone, the rock and funk star of the 1960s. Sly formed a large group that was multiracial and multigender that made some classic music, but Sly eventually fell into drug addiction and legal trouble and spent many years as a recluse.
The title is true- Stone is indeed still alive, although he doesn’t give a new interview for the film; the subtitle operates as more of a thesis.
SLY LIVES! isn’t quite the achievement that Summer of Soul was, but it’s still a thought-provoking and joyful exploration of an under-explored artist. Questlove, though, is very, very good at this.
Eric Clapton Unplugged… Over 30 Years Later
Paramount+ this week unveiled a look back at Eric Clapton Unplugged from 1992. It was probably the most famous episode of the old MTV Unplugged show, which was later released in album form and won a truckload of Grammy Awards. Like most things reviving the old days of MTV, the special is on Paramount+ rather than MTV itself.
The Paramount+ release isn’t a documentary about the album or special; it feels more like the kind of thing that would have been released on DVD in the early 2000s. It’s an expanded and remastered version of the original special, adding about 30 minutes of additional running time, including a few songs and vintage footage of Clapton talking about some of them.
The whole thing feels a bit half-assed, and not only because of the inexactitude of the “over 30 years later” thing; the special was recorded in January of 1992, which is 33 years ago. There’s no new footage of Clapton talking about the special, although considering the turn Clapton’s views have taken of late, that may be a good thing.
Still- the Clapton Unplugged album was one of the better things of its kind, although not the best- that would be Tesla’s Five Man Acoustical Jam, from 1990. When’s the anniversary retrospective of that?