Recent viewing

Becoming Led Zeppelin

Viewed at the Manor Theater, Squirrel Hill

At one time I regularly read biographies, and occasionally still do. All but a few have been musician bios: Sun Ra, Miles Davis (both by John Szwed, both excellent), Billy Strayhorn, Spike Jones, Charles Mingus, John Cage (The Roaring Silence, not recommended), Thelonious Monk (two! one very good, one not), Frank Zappa, Iannis Xenakis, others I'm probably not recalling. 

I made an observation, or perhaps a realization, while reading the Xenakis book. When covering these creative people, the author begins from a perspective of being in the artist's corner. That is, even if there are criticisms or mention of negative behavior on the part of the subject, the author starts from the viewpoint of being a fan. A possible exception seems to have been John Baxter's biography about JG Ballard, The Inner Man. Baxter seemed lukewarm towards some of Ballard's novels, particularly those generally accepted as being among his best (High Rise, for example). The book is often informative but highly incomplete, mentioning Ballard's estrangement from his son only in passing in the final chapters.

Otherwise, each of the book subjects mentioned above was treated with at least some reverence by their biographers. But then, it's not as though the subject was Hitler or Stalin.

I had been thinking about several relatively recent musical biopics, if you can call them both that word: Theory of Obscurity: A Film About The Residents (2015) Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary (2016) and Zappa (2020). A comment I've made previously concerning Theory of Obscurity was that I thought it only briefly rose above being a fan piece and celebration of The Residents. Likewise, Zappa was entirely a celebration of Frank without directly touching on the many reasons he can be criticized. Those two films in particular were rich in footage I hadn't seen before, but I felt like important things had been left out. 

Before seeing Becoming Led Zeppelin, I a review on rogerebert.com including this passage:

"But before we absolutely abandon the realm of gossip/dirt/legend, we should say that “Becoming Led Zeppelin” wouldn’t truck in any of that stuff in the first place because to make a documentary about Zep, you need Zep’s music, and to get Zep’s music you need Zep’s approval. So what we’ve got here is the only kind of documentary you can make about Zep and its music: an authorized one. This picture was made with the full cooperation and—to judge from the interview clips—enthusiastic participation of the group’s surviving members."

I thought, yeah, okay, maybe I've been dense about this. Have I been expecting too much? Is it necessary to dig up the dirt under these circumstances? Can these films simply be a celebration of what makes these artists great, and not go digging for something negative?

Becoming Led Zeppelin does several things right. The first of which is that the only interview subjects are the three surviving members, with pieces of an audio taped interview with John Bonham. There isn't an endless succession of talking heads saying how great LZ was. That was an issue I took with Chasing Train; I simply don't care what Bill Clinton or Kamasi Washington have to say about Coltrane. Likewise for the more recent Ennio. I really don't care what the bassist for The Clash has to say about Morricone, especially within the framework of a 2.5 hour film. At least I Called Him Morgan, about Lee Morgan, stuck with people who knew and worked with him (and his wife) directly. Unlike the latter film, there are no staged elements; all filmed segments are either new interviews or historic footage.

Another element that happens briefly twice in the film: isolating individual instruments to hear how every player contributed. I suppose that could have gotten tired if done too many times, but I found this interesting. Show us what made each part important, each musician essential. I still say, more!

There are two substantial live performances from television: one from their first tour (pre-LP) playing "How Many More Times". What becomes clear is that they don't look like a band playing to the crowd. They're positioned pretty tight on stage, and it's a loose performance in the best possible way. I've always found Robert Plant my least favorite element of LZ, but I have been reminded by more than one friend that nobody else could have done what he did. I have to begrudgingly agree. A point made during the narrative was that he was an improvisor, he was mixing it up with bands unlike other singers. Another point, pro-Plant. 

A second clip, one I hadn't see before, features them playing "Dazed and Confused" after the first LP's release, on the road and recording the second. It's clear there's been editing for time. Again, they're even looser, more limber, and relatively close on stage playing like a unit. 

Less positive? Seeing what look like home movies of them performing, with studio recordings dubbed in to look like they're playing it live. It's nice to see visually some of the energy, but I don't like the suggestion that it's what they sounded like. Do I have a different cinematic solution? I do not! I know, it's easy to complain and not offer constructive alternatives, but I'm not a filmmaker.

Two things were mentioned in passing that, in a more complete story of the band, deserved elaboration. There was a passing mention of the availability of drugs and women during even that first tour. LZ's backstage debauchery on later tours was legendary. I'm sure it didn't reach those levels at this time, but it was a very small hint as to what things were like backstage.

More interesting to me was a quick mention Robert Plant made of basically throwing in some Willie Dixon lines when coming up with lyrics for "Whole Lotta Love". This is the sort of thing that would become a point of litigation for the band for decades to come. 

On the one hand, LZ was at its heart a mutant blues band, or at least began deeply rooted in blues playing. The blues was very much an oral tradition, with songs and lyrics passing from one person to another, often before any sort of documentation would happen. Leadbelly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" would eventually morph into the Bluegrass rendition, "In The Pines". Similar songs but not identical. Did Leadbelly base his song on some other traditional piece? I don't know. These pieces, these bits of lyrics, passed from one person to another, that was part of the nature of blues practice.

When I did a recent performance about Sonny Clark, I took some time to talk about ownership. Specifically, regarding Thelonious Monk and "Rhythm-a-ning". The essential phrase that opens that melody is known to have been a sort of stock riff that many people would have known at the time (or so I've been told). To what degree does he deserve credit? I don't have a firm answer to that question.

The fact remains, fully admitted by Plant, that he copped some Willie Dixon lyrics when creating that song. Dixon is now given co-credit, but "Whole Lotta Love" is not a Willie Dixon song and LZ didn't wholesale steal it. I suppose he deserves co-credit, but I have to ask if Dixon himself picked up those lines from someone else? 

All that said, I consider the lawsuit on the part of the heirs of the band Spirit again "Stairway to Heaven" to be total bullshit.

So, working under the assumption that my opinion means much of anything, how do I come down on LZ? I wasn't a superfan as a teen (I always thought "Whole Lotta Love" was kind of a silly song) but I had a yard sale copy of Houses of the Holy, a dub of IV, a cassette copy of In Through the Out Door. At one time I completely eschewed them, when I was going through a later time of establishing my tastes and starting to find my voice as a musician myself. I guess now it's on a case-by-case, song-by-song basis. Sometimes even within a song. For example, "Carouselambra" is far longer than it needs to be but has a slow guitar break in the middle that sounds utterly incredible to my ears. Maybe it comes back to something I've expressed on this blog before, being wary of liking or disliking something simply due to it's relative obscurity or strangeness.

Will there be a follow-up to this film? Being Led Zeppelin, Leaving Led Zeppelin? I doubt it. And maybe this is enough. It's interesting and well made enough to be worth the time, even if you're not a devoted fan. With so many films being made and so few actually seeing theatrical release, I should be happy that the story of a creative venture (such as the forming of a band) is being celebrated.