Becoming Led Zeppelin (5 Stars)

I wrote about "Becoming Led Zeppelin" when I saw it in the cinema last year. I don't have much more to say about the film itself. But there was one thing I didn't put into my original review: while I was sitting in the cinema watching it, I realised that this was the best documentary I'd ever seen.

That's not because of the subject matter. Obviously, I'm interested in Led Zeppelin, but it's the way the story is told that makes this documentary so good.

Most documentaries are watched by people who are already interested in the subject, so the people watching them will already be familiar with the details being presented. "Becoming Led Zeppelin" is different. It's genuinely informative. I'm a Led Zeppelin fan, yet it still told me things I didn't know.

I knew that Jimmy Page had played with the Yardbirds, for example, but I didn't know that Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham had gone on tour together in 1968 as the Yardbirds. They could have recorded their first album together as the sixth Yardbirds album, but they wanted to make a new start.

I also found the story of their early popularity fascinating. They were playing to sold-out concerts in America, then flying back to England where hardly anybody knew them. It took at least a year for their popularity to pick up in England.

The documentary ends with Led Zeppelin playing at London's Royal Albert Hall on 9th January 1970. This was when they'd truly made it big. This was when they became Led Zeppelin.

Is this really the best documentary ever made?

That's what I thought last year, and it's what I still think today.

One last point. On Wikipedia it's written "Led Zeppelin evolved from a previous band, the Yardbirds, and were originally named the New Yardbirds".

This is incorrect. They were never officially named the New Yardbirds. They were the Yardbirds, as proved by the contract shown above. It can also be verified by the posters for the various stages of their tour. "New Yardbirds" is an unofficial nickname that wasn't given to them until after they officially called themselves Led Zeppelin.

Don't believe everything you read in Wikipedia.

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