How the filmmakers managed to make the first official movie about Led Zeppelin
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Directors McMahon and McGourty created the documentary The Making of Led Zeppelin with the participation of all the living members of the band. For the first time in decades, the legendary band agreed to tell their story.
For decades, the band rejected any attempts to tell their story. However, they finally succeeded. NME explains how two relatively unknown filmmakers, McMahon and McGourty, managed to engage the legendary band's grumpy musician grandfathers in a project they had never heard of.
Transmits UNN with reference to New Musical Express and Infobae.
Details
Making an official documentary about Led Zeppelin seemed like a daunting task. The legendary band almost always refused to give interviews or create any audiovisual materials. However, Bernard McMahon and Allison McGourty accepted the challenge and, against all odds, managed to convince the three surviving members of the band to take part in the film The Making of Led Zeppelin.
For reference
Initially, director and co-writer Bernard McMahon wanted only one full video for the opening: eerie footage of the doomed Hindenburg airship spectacularly bursting into flames as it landed at NAS Lakehurst in 1937.
"We tracked down every single shot, including ones we'd never seen before," McMahon says in an interview.
The original acetate disk was damaged, and there was a huge "notch" on it, but thanks to some technical tricks, they were able to clean it.
The iconic photograph of the disaster would later grace the cover of Zeppelin's debut album, although McMahon decided that the restored sequence of events was too horrific.
As for the members themselves Led Zeppelin.
It is known that they have always avoided the media. Despite their success, the band avoided giving interviews and rarely appeared on television. So the challenge for the filmmakers was to get the band to talk and open up to the story.
The first meeting
We managed to meet with Jimmy Page in November 2017 in a London hotel. Page brought with him personal diaries from the 1960s, which he used to verify dates and anecdotes while McMahon showed him the storyboard of the film.
They talked for seven hours before the famously demanding musician announced that he was "in" - with a condition.
Bernard McMahon says:
Jimmy turned to me and said: 'Do you want to make this [film] about me? ‘No, it's about the band.’
‘Paige smiled and said:
It's going to be a little bit harder, because we don't spend Christmas together.
To make the musicians relive their past, the filmmakers filled the interview room with memorabilia: newspaper clippings, concert tickets, photographs, and old recordings.
In one of the most striking scenes, Jimmy Page looks at never-before-seen footage from the Bath Festival that he has never seen before.
That's why for me it's like a feature film... they take you through the story, overcoming every obstacle, experiencing it anew."
Despite its limitations, The Making of Led Zeppelin offers an intimate and candid portrait of the early years of one of the most influential bands in history.
"The energy of the story and the power of the music is phenomenal," explained Jimmy Page.
Robert Plant, who was reluctant to agree at first, eventually admitted that American Epic inspired him to be part of "an extraordinary journey into the heart of the maelstrom.
"The most famous and influential drummer in rock music"
One of the most striking aspects of The Making of Led Zeppelin is the presence of John Bonham, despite his death more than four decades ago.
McMahon found a previously unreleased interview with the drummer in Australia, which originally existed only as a low-quality bootleg.
After intensive archival research, the team managed to recover the original recording, allowing Bonham to become a kind of narrator of his own story.
Summary
In a week when Black Sabbath unveiled a massive farewell show and The Rolling Stones continue to adjust their tour plans, Led Zeppelin's inactivity seems even more like a missed opportunity.
There is no right answer to this question. That's the most interesting thing about Zeppelin. There's no way to tell what's going to happen or what's going to happen next. There is nothing predictable about them - and that's what makes them interesting
