How ‘Becoming Led Zeppelin’ Went From a Pipe Dream to Theaters Everywhere

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome Bernard McMahon and Alison mcgrdy, director, writer, co producer
of the most fantastic film on Zeppelin Becoming led Zeppelin.
And congratulations to you guys. You're breaking box office records already.
Thank you, Carol, And tell us about the box office
record of the Imax.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
It's the biggest selling music documentary of all times, that
big selling music film in Imax in history.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Amazing, amazing. Now I know why I saw the Stones
in Imax and that was how long ago was? That
was like fifteen twenty years ago? Right, But I haven't
seen this in Imax. I saw twice. But just amazing.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
This is this is this is This is made as
you would as led zeppyln is made to be seen
on the biggest screen possible, with the biggest the biggest
sound system you can find.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Well that's that's great. And you are preaching to the
choir here on this show. Get the let out because
everybody that's listening already loves led Zeppelin.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
Yeah, this is I guess this is the Valhalla of
radio shows for our movie. Hope, so proud to be here.
And if you recall how I actually called you at
the very beginning of making this film for background research
because some of a friend someone told me that you
would be one of the You've been the first New
York concert, Yeah, in early sixty nine, And I was

(01:28):
really interested in people talking for people that had seen
those early shows, which is what our film's about. It's
becoming led Zeppelin that first year, and I wanted and
Carol gave me a very vivid description of like her journey.
I think you got there quite late, didn't, Yes, I gig.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, I got there. It was just because I was
driving up from Philly because I was at university there. Yeah,
and I missed most of it. But the point that
I think I was making to you was as amazing
as the music was, it was also terrifying to me personally.
I mean it was so gargantua. And you know what
I'm talking about that if I want to really meet

(02:08):
these guys and then then they started getting this reputation
and I'll meet them later when they're older, and I
did you know what I'm saying. I just, you know,
a little scary at that time. But you have both
a history with music and American films, and you've won
awards and you I think have elevated Zeppelin now to

(02:33):
a cultural status in a way you've it's not just
a a movie about a music film, because you could
have just done that, but it was that part of
your goal to kind of put them in a cultural,
even Americana context, because they broke here.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
Yes, it was. We had made a series of films
prior to this, called American Epic, which were about the
first blues gospel, country Cajun Hawaiian records made in the
twenties and thirties, and that's essentially the foundation of all
American popular music, and the group's influenced by it, like

(03:14):
led Zeppelin. And so we did those four films with
Robert Redford, and when we finished those films, we thought,
we want to do one more music film. And I
thought we wanted to do something that picked up where
American Epic had left off, like at the end of
the Second World War, and take you through the fifties

(03:35):
and the sixties. And I turned to Alis and I said,
I think it's led Zeppelin because when I was twelve,
i'd my mum was an antique dealer and she used
she brought back a boxer junk in the bottom of
this box was this little paperback book called led Zeppelin,
and it was written by a fellow called Howard Miler
and published in around seventy four or something like that,

(03:58):
and it was the first a book about led Zeppelin.
I think a lot of that information has been lost
now and it's not part of the lexicon. But to me,
it was like the story of these four kids that
was trying to make their way in the music business
in Britain and then meeting in this basement and against

(04:20):
all these adversar or odds, they kind of take over
the world. And I found that book hugely inspiring as
a little boy. I read it twice and a lot
of the things that inspire me and how I do
my work was from reading that book. So I said
to as them, I know that this is a great
story because I loved the story before I'd fell in

(04:42):
love with their music. Oh really, I hadn't heard their
music when I read that book. I got into their
music after I'd read the book twice. Then I went
and tried to find their record. So I knew the
story was great. And I went to see her and said,
what do you think about this?

Speaker 2 (05:00):
So we spent seven months researching looking for any archive
that might exist, and there was not a lot. We
wrote a script and then we cruited a storyboard so
we would then be ready if we got an oportunity
to meet the group and everyone.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
We were very secretive about it, but we mentioned we
had a couple of people and they said, you're insane.
There's no way led Zeppel will ever agree to a film.
Why are you doing all that work? And yeah, you're crazy,
and we were like, we don't care. A good story
and again, I want to watch this on a screen.

(05:34):
I was making it for my twelve year old self
and Allison's twelve year old self. That was what we
were writing for. So we reached out to the group.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
Yeah, and we got The first person we got to
meet was Jimmy Page. So we flew into London.

Speaker 3 (05:47):
And met agreed to me which is incredible, you know.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
And that meeting was seven hours. Seven hours.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
Very first meeting transported that he was a huge fan
of American epic.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
Well, I bet that Robert Plant would be too, because
he spent all this time and.

Speaker 3 (06:03):
He was because Robert with Robert tramps around the South,
particularly with he used to do a lot with Justin
Adams that he played yes, and on any day off
he had, he'd be going to Clark's Dell or Classville sorry,
or yeah, yeah, anywhere in Mississippi, tracking down where these
musicians came from. So what I knew Justin And so

(06:27):
Justin had actually been apparently telling Robert, oh my god,
my friends have found pictures of Henry Thomas. Oh my goodness,
my friends have found the first ever picture from the
thirties of Sonhouse. And so this stuff with it was
being relayed to him. When we met him, he was
a huge American Epic fan, so that was that was
kind of great. And then John Paul Jones we contacted

(06:51):
his managers and we just said, we're going to send
this DVD of American Epic and all we ask is
just he watches the first fifteen minutes of it and
if he doesn't like it, he'll never hear from us again.
And so we sent the DVD in.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
Unfortunately, two days later we heard back from them and
they said, well, he'll meet you, and thanks goodness, thankfully
for us. He had the very first episode is about
the Carter families, and he had actually made a pilgrimage
to Missus Springs where the Carter family from, and the
Carter fad and met the very people that we had met,

(07:32):
deal Jet and fell Way Sally.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yeah, so you were meeting with these three guys that
we realized we had an absolute common passion in the
music that we were interested in, and all of us
individually had tramped around these places looking for these things.
So you're meeting these guys and you like immediately have
got this thing in common with them.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
I had something else too, just off the top of
my head that if it were anybodybody else, I don't
think that I'm guessing that Robert Plant would not have
been interested because I think the fact that you're putting
it in a more musicology type of a story, you're
elevating once again, you're elevating the whole story into something

(08:18):
that is related to Americana. It's somewhat educational. He's you know,
because he came from that background that he would really
appreciate that.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
Yeah, I mean it was. I think you're I think
I think you're right. I mean, I mean when I
watch if I watch something about music, I want it
to be about music, and I want to hear the
music and I want to feel the music, and I
want the film to make me appreciate and understand and

(08:51):
get more out of that music than before I watched
the movie, you know. And so I think with this
it was really this sense of I mean, now I
look at it from the point of view of what
you're saying, like, we've just come out and we've made
a film about Charlie Patton, the Carter Family, Mississippi, John
hurt Lydian Mendoza, And if I was them and I'm

(09:14):
the next on the line, that I'd be like, I'll
be there. Yeah, that's what I mean. I mean, that's Esteemed,
That's that's Olympian Company, you know, right, and also Fathers
of Everything.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
If did you go to the reunion at in two
thousand and seven of the O two or I.

Speaker 3 (09:31):
Did, Allison didn't?

Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yeah, I wasn't in the country at the time.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
Oh well we it was a twenty four hour blitz
from here. They sent me over so I could do
a report. We're here now. And I think that Robert
Plant's presentation of that show was so totally different, purposefully
because he he was trying to point out all the
influences on each song. If you remember he said, I

(09:56):
got this from gospel, I got this from the Blues,
and then he made some crack about oh no, I
won't be doing any of that dancing, which I think.
I think he has a little conundrum with that presentation
that he gave so long ago, and so this is
a more respectable way of putting it, and I think

(10:17):
that's part of the reason that he might have really
loved doing this. Well.

Speaker 3 (10:21):
Yeah, it's also you know, you know, as I said,
he'd watched American Epic. Yeah, American Epic is like films
are team efforts. It's the same group of people putting
this together, and there's like an insane amount of working
epic the stuff that's been dug up and found that
that thing, most of that stuff wasn't even known to exist.

(10:43):
I mean, that was a film where people were going, also,
you're crazy, you can't make this film. There is no
film footage from that period, but we found it and
so it's sort of following on that tradition. So I
think it was like, looking at it, it's like this
is legacy. Yeah, yeah, you know, it's just like it
needs to be there, and we definitely have that approach.

(11:04):
We make films that we think we do untold stories,
but and we feel a pressure that we do untold stories.
You've got to do the absolute best you can because
you've got that one opportunity to do this thing that's
never been done before. So you've got to get you've
got to make sure you've done that the most thorough
way you possibly can. But the interesting thing about Zeppelin

(11:26):
was we present it to Robert, presented it to John
Paul Jones, and they were all chiming in with all
these amazing additional memories and don't forget, this is like
a seventy page storyboard and there's not a word written
on it. And because we'd committed everything to memory, every day,
every name, because I think you sit in front of someone,

(11:49):
you've got to know that subject. Well that's if someone
came to me and said, all we're film about you,
I'd expect them to know a bit about my life.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
Right, So we got all this here and we're going
through this whole thing.

Speaker 2 (11:59):
And at the first meeting with Jimmy, he threw in
a few test questions and one point Burnan was talking
about the very first meeting.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
That, yeah, I said, this is where you first go
and see Robert Plant singing.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yeah, and he said, what was the name of the
group Robert was in?

Speaker 3 (12:15):
And I'm like, Mob's Tweedle.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
And he went back, yes, well done, very good, carry on.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
And that's well I would expect that. Now. My next
question with that is, since Jimmy is really the architect
of the band, how much did he contribute as far
as sonically or anything else to your film. I can't
imagine him going okay, just go do it.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
Well, actually he did, That's exactly what he did. Yeah,
because we said, we said we needed as artists ourselves,
we needed our total artistic control for our own credibility
and so for the film's credibility. And so he agreed,
to his credit, and to and the rest of the
members as well, they all agreed they know edoral control
and they just let us get on with it.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
Yeah, really the uses of the film. And this is
to their credit. I mean, it's is like, what's really
impressive with them is that they've not done a film
in their whole career, but when they decide this is
the thing to do, they don't actually try and control it.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
They amazing because especially Jimmy is so on point with
every last thing with his recording, and my goodness.

Speaker 3 (13:32):
But he he's he this is a very smart guy
when he met us. He when I say, he's watched
the American Epic, He's watched American Epic. He knows what
those twenties and thirties records normally sound like. So you
can hear what we've done. So he's like, these guys
work hardcore at a sound. So you're throwing this together.

(13:56):
So to us, I mean, we did that. This is
very hardcore the sound in the Zeppelin film. Okay, Yeah,
And so they gave us that freedom to make the movie.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
The only thing they did do is they brought in
extra art of things like the person personal diaries, family photographs,
things that nobody has ever seen before to help.

Speaker 3 (14:18):
And they turned up with each of them, the interviews,
with bags of archive, all of it I'd never seen before.
Like John Robert turned up with this hilarious sort of
gift which was like it was the led Zeppelin box
set with the corn field the corn circles. Yeah, a

(14:39):
vinyl box set and in sharpie he'd written pre hyphen
led Zeppelin. And when I opened the lid up, it
was a lacker of a recording him and John Bonham
had written and made together before led Zeppelin called Memory
Lane in Robert Plant and the Band of Joy, and

(15:02):
he handed that to us to take to La and
that's what you hear in the film. You hear that
that is their song that they wrote and no one's
heard it.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
So the sound then, I mean, of all the music there,
how did you re mix it for the movie remaster?

Speaker 3 (15:21):
What did you do that? That's the key thing. I
don't think you should mess with Zeppelin music at all.
That is they're the masters in that field. So what
we wanted to give you is the pure sound as
it was originally intended in nineteen sixty nine for it
to be heard. So when you make an album at

(15:42):
that period, there are three steps to that process. Step
one is you make a quarter inch master, which is
a mixed down from the studio. Step two is you
may what's called a production master that will often happen
at elect Atlantic Records, and that is the quarter inch
from which they cut the lackers, which is step three.

(16:03):
And those lackers are so radically altering the production master
and defining what is actually turning the public on that
that is actually your true master. That Lacker is what
sent people crazy or not in that era. So what
you're hearing is we have researched and found what we

(16:25):
think is the absolute ultimate Lacker cut of one and
two and so one was a particular one done by
George Piros who was a naval guy classical music love.
I hated rock music, but he knew how to cut
led Zeppelin one. That's the absolute mother effort. Then the
second one is I went through three of them, an

(16:47):
absolutely pristine copy of Bob Ludwig's cut of two and
it's literally the cleanest pressing I've ever heard. I think
it was from the press well plant. We had pristine
ones from each of the four plants, and then no
digital work whatsoever on those things. They're transfired on our

(17:10):
state of the art lathe in La. The arm is
adjusted for every track. This whole thing is readjusted. I
mean it's hardcore. So what you're hearing is the ultimate
sound of that music as it was intended, but on
the best playback system in the world, so it's total purity.
And all the music before them is from the original Lackers,

(17:32):
the original discs, So you hear the sound of Johnny
Bennett and fifty six. You hear the sound of Shirley
Bassi in sixty five. So when Zeppelin one comes out,
you hear the sonic difference in real time what that
music is, and that's what the films. And then when
you get to Zeppelin two, you get this even wider

(17:53):
stereo spread and this amazing production that Page is doing
light where he is really using it. You hear that
that's your finale at the end of the film. Is
that well top that? Yeah, So it's totally pure. The
only thing we've done any work on is occasion there's
a live performance that was you know, not ever intended

(18:15):
for commercial release in a major way. We've had might
it might have lacked some bottom end, but essentially we
are giving this to you like the we're literally taking
the pineapple off the tree in sixty nine and like
bringing you back in time and putting it on your plate,

(18:35):
like the minute after we've cut it from a tree.
It's that fresh. That's the sound you're getting.

Speaker 1 (18:40):
Well, the reason because this is on video that I
keep grinning and looking at my husband here, Paul Logus.
He is well right now. He's a mastering engineer, but
as a mixer and a producer. He did work with Jimmy,
but this is his wheelhouse, so to speak, right, And
you know you were community you can come here for

(19:01):
a second. You were saying, how fantastic. It's what you say,
your cut slacker, and you were saying how amazing this
thing sounded, and that was mind blowing.

Speaker 4 (19:13):
This I'm just like one hundred times more than hearing
all this detail with the Sonics, and I was surprised.
And they all gave you, guys cartlage with the Sonics
and let your pre division go.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
But I mean, oh, thank you so much. Well, as
I said, you know, I think I think that that
permission was given because you know, because of American Epic
was about purity. You know. You know, we're presenting this
that twenty stuff pure. You know, we're not trying to

(19:48):
what they call it, make it acceptable to the kids.
You know, and what people want is they want pure stuff,
the raw stuff originally intended. You know, like so for example,
you know, with with those Chuck Berry records and these
rocket like Jimmy Loves you know, the Elvis Sun records.
You know, yeah, well those records. Sam Sam Phillips was

(20:09):
applying reverb to those records as he's cutting them. So
you can never ever get the sound of those original
forty fives in any reissue because a lot of that
stuff was done literally as he's making the lacker that's
going to press the record. And so this is my
view with the Zeppelin. It's like all this stuff in

(20:31):
the studio was done knowing that that final step was
going to happen, and someone like Ludwig was going to
be there going push this, push that push. That's the
finished record. And Jimmy will tell you himself, he goes,
that's the ultimate led Zeppelin too, you know.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
And the thing about this film is that you will
get the artist will get whether you go to Imax
or a regular AMC or Regal, whatever you course the cinemas,
you will get to hear how led Zevna supports to
sign on the biggest science system possible.

Speaker 3 (21:01):
Plus, led Zeppelin's music is so amazing it allowed us
to figure out an actual flaw in every single DCP
that is delivered to every cinema on planet Earth. John
Bonham's drum parts are so sophisticated that when the master
came in from Sony Pictures, this is the they call DCPs,

(21:24):
and that is how every movie is delivered to every
cinema on planet Earth. When the DCP came in, I
was screening the film for Bob Weir and Peter Coyote
in the Bay Area and I thought, and taj Mahal
was also, you know, let's play it for some of
the heads of the counterculture that maybe didn't really watch
their plane see what they think. But they were digging it,

(21:44):
you know, and we have said they're like the John
Coltrane trio, you know, with the singer. I mean, that's
a high praise as you can get, isn't it from
a musician? And they're watching this. But I'm sitting going
compared to what i'd work. So I'm going, the music's dragging,
you know, And I call up Sony and go, something
wrong with the master of the music's dragging. Gavin other

(22:06):
screening another master, same deal. Music's dragging. So I went
to our sound guy, Nick Berg, who's worked through from
American Appy said, you've got to go through the schematics
of these industry DCPs. There's something not right in it.
And he unpacks the whole thing and found out that
in order to save a few hours of packaging time.
They'd taken a shortcut on the instructions given to every filmmaker.

(22:29):
And the subwoofer, that's the base speaker, is getting the
sound on every film you see in the cinema a
fraction of a second late.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
And we're all stunned. We sit here, Oh.

Speaker 3 (22:41):
My god, and that is John Bonham and Paul John
Paul Jones showed that up with their playing. I played
it to the heads of Imax, you know, and these
other theater groups and put it on and I said,
here's the correct version, and here's what the industry insists
you to liver. And it literally sounded like the band

(23:02):
had had four point pints of beer.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
Well they and actually we were working on this till
the very last minute.

Speaker 3 (23:08):
Yeah, this happened. That's why Imax and Sony because this
is from years ago. Whenever that was decided. This is
not the current people running things now. Years ago this
packaging thing came up of how we made do you
know what's brilliant about Imax and Sony pitched slashes even
though all the masters have been made about to go
the next day, they recalled it all so it could
be correct.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
Let us do it again.

Speaker 3 (23:30):
Yeah, So what you're hearing, I think is the first
fully in sync film in probably in thirty years in cinema. Y.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yeah, I mean it was right down to the wire.
This was only about and half.

Speaker 3 (23:43):
You would ensure you would you would still enjoy the
film a lot. I would hope with it being out
of sync like every other movie. But when led Zeppelin
in sync is a thing to behold, you definitely want
a group of led Zeppelin's attitude. You want the the
speakers to be in sync. That rhythm section, that rhythm

(24:03):
should be as it's meant to be. It's one of
the best rhythm sections in existence ever. And so the
idea to me that there's anything wrong in how you're
playing that back is just an anathema to me. It's
anything that is messing with their music is like you
should not be doing it, you know, totally. Yeah, I'm

(24:25):
just kind of it's made for love, you know, the
film's made for love. You know the music is. You know,
however difficult it is to make this film, and it
was really hard to get this. I wanted to be
played like Rocky horror, you know, where you could go
over and over again you could go three or four
times a year and just completely get into it. And

(24:48):
it's like this two hour world where and we search
pretty much the entire planet by the Mariana Trench for
every clip. I'm praying that it's anything else that can
turn up from this era that's not in this movie.
But but you're in. You're creating this this world. But
with all the difficult to get the story to flow

(25:08):
in the smooth way, the one thing that was always
utterly joy was the music. When the songs would come up,
they always sounded fantastic, And I remember thinking, near the
end of production, I said, what other group could we
have made a film of where we would not literally
want to break those records over our knees, you know,

(25:30):
after that amount of listening to them? Zeppelin, It's always interesting.

Speaker 1 (25:34):
That's how come forty years, I mean, I've been you
can't get tired of it. I mean, who else could
I play every single night? Everything?

Speaker 3 (25:44):
You should? Showed me this huge list of all these
shows you've done, and a lot of people would go,
if it was another subject, go you're crazy. I actually
go no, I totally see why you do this for
a year and years, because it never gets boring. It's
always interesting and.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
You always get another little tidbit.

Speaker 3 (25:59):
You know, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
For example, you know when when they go see Robert,
the first thing when they're asking, you know, they ask,
and they say, where's Robert Planting goes, I'm him. They
thought he was the bouncer, and then he gets he
gets a telegram about the telegram. You know, you always
get this little other little I.

Speaker 3 (26:21):
Met the film director James Samuel, who's I think of
West Indian descent and and wonderful in London recently and
he and he came backstage at the green room and
he was like, I just watched your movie and wonderful stuff.
And he directed The Harder They Fall, and he was
like a huge Terry Reid fan, and he was going
in and he was coming and talking about super lungs.

(26:41):
And then he came up with me and and he said,
I can't believe it that dude sitting right opposite opposite
Peter Grant, that Mickey Mosey. He stole him, you know
what I mean.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
I mean, he turned him down. I mean, I mean,
you know, Jimmy said, well, at least from he wanted
to Marriott small Faces and small Faces, and he said, no,
I'm in small Faces. I don't want to do that.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
Well that what that was was that was when when
when he was recording bex Balero, it was John it
was many bent twists on the base, and then he
didn't come and then it was John Paul Jones came
in Moon on the drums and and apparently after the
session they were chatting out, yeah, well what making making

(27:27):
a group? And I think Moon was saying something on
the lines of the he was having a real spat
with with Pete Townsend and informacygree So that was who
they wanted to get Steve Marriott and they called Don
Donarden found about it and he said in our interview
Jimmy with he said, he called up Jimmy and said, hey,
you want to use you want to use Steve Marriott

(27:49):
for this band and he and he said, does absolutely fine,
as long as you don't mind playing guitar with broken fingers.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
And then well, you know, I'm going getting off the topic,
right they did. Steve Merritt did Small Faces. Did you
Need Love? Which it's well, it is a whole lot
of love. I mean, you know, it's the precursor.

Speaker 3 (28:12):
Yeah, you see, Robert gives a lot in the film.
You talk about Robert gives a lot of props you know,
to this, to this music in this film in a
really it's really heartfelt, like so he took He talks
about Sonny Boy Williams and you see his big performance
of Sonny Wi Williamson, who he saw at the at
the at the American Folk Blues Festival and who he

(28:33):
actually costed in the Toilet, which is I wanted to
put that in a film. It's such a weird story.
It costs it in the toilet, and you know, and
Sonny Boy just said funk off kid like this, you know,
but it didn't bother Robert. He just was It was
next to his idle. As he says in the movie.
You know, he said, this was Sonny Boy was my

(28:54):
musical bloodstream. You know, Andy, it's the props he plays him,
and he talks about the writing of a whole lot of
love and there's a lot of generosity in the film.
They really pay tribute for things in the movie that
influenced them.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
You know, it did at the beginning.

Speaker 3 (29:12):
None of them did really good. They all all those
groups were, you know, and they never figured it out.
I mean with the Stones and all these people. I
think also the publishers quite like, oh, we'll put your
name on it, you know what I mean. Don't forget
they're making money out of it too. So you know,
sometimes I don't know where you should really appropriate the blames.
I said, music publisher is happy if his artist has

(29:34):
written all the songs, you know, so you know, but yeah,
I think it's it very much is part of that
kind of extended you know, well, that's American story.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
That's why that was where I started asking you, because
it seemed so logical in that way that this would
be well it was they an American story, you know,
from my perspective going over to Europe, nothing I believe that. Well,
but they're not as big there. They've never been any
nowhere as big in UK or France or anything like that.

(30:09):
Because I saw a plant in France, nobody cared, you know,
he was opening up for Lenny Kravitz, all right, But
but here they're on the radio every ten minutes and
in fact, and are they love the enthusiasm that we
the Americans have for them?

Speaker 3 (30:30):
Yeah? I mean, you know, the film you see it
in the film. What set of moving is these these
four kids, and you know they're growing up in the
rubble of World War two and they're looking over this
to technicolor dream that is rock and roll with diners

(30:51):
and Cadillacs and this exciting music and these big movies
and they're going, we want to be there, and don't
forget the thing. I thought that Taj Mahal recently sent
me these interviews that you know, Bill Wyman had been
recorded now in his dotagees has some very interesting observations
on this, and he said, you know, we were growing up.

(31:13):
As you see in the led Zeppelin film, Britain was
very poor. It did not recover quickly from the war
like America, which literally was became a booming, superpowered in
a few years. No, there was rationing all throughout Jimmy
and John Paul Jones and Rob Plant's childhood. People queuing
up with food stamps for things like this. So you

(31:33):
imagine you managed to go to the cinema once or
twice a week, or you get these little forty fives
in how exciting this looks, you know what I mean?
And so that's the journey. It's the quest. It's the
childhood quest of like this is this is?

Speaker 2 (31:49):
It was like for us as well, though, I mean
we wanted to come to America too, didn't we.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
Well, you're that is why I related to it. Yeah,
Allison's right as a little boy, and I was making
my am meet his film. I was sitting in our
little garden in suburban London and a semi detached house,
and I would look at the planes flying over from
Heathrow and imagine that they were going to America and
wishing I could be on them.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
Well, you've certainly come this far and you're going to
go obviously a lot further with this film. Did you
expect that this film would garner the amount of attention?
I mean, you're hoping.

Speaker 3 (32:27):
I'm no.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
It's mind blowing, really, it's astonishing. I mean, we were
a fiery concert at the Forum La Forum, and we
heard Pink doing the cover of the they Were Going
to Leave You And it was only when the lights
went flashing I was like, That's when I realized, hope.
I thought this is led Zeppelin. We've just made the
led Zeppelin. Until I saw the crowds and the lights,

(32:48):
I don't think it hit me quite how big this was.

Speaker 3 (32:51):
Yeah, the way we made it like American epic, just
about the story and the music, and so they were
like this subject like Sunhouse or Charlie Patton that we liked,
and just who is this? Who are these people? And
so it was very intimate for us. The interviews are
very intimate. So it was a very intimate story for us.

(33:12):
And it was, as you say, when we were at
the forum when we heard the brilliance, the dynamics and
mean the she blew every other track out of the water.
She did a very faithful version she did. So when
you hear the dynamics of that song in that room,
you went, my god, the construction of this. And that's
where we walked out and went, we've just made the
led Zeppelin film.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
But the thing is they took what have you heard
the Joan Baez version that that they were listening to.
That is so shrill, it's so high, you know, and
what they did to it was amazing and went Pink
did a great job. Well, I wanted to. I know,
we have to wrap it up, but gee, I had
more questions. What was the most difficult, difficult piece of

(33:58):
not memorabilia Archive yes, archive that you had to get.

Speaker 3 (34:01):
Well, the hardest what was was finding the job. There
were three three John Bonham interviews that are in the film.
That was the hardest because when when we sat down
with Robert, I'd said to Robert, you know, we we
we we want we want everyone to have an equal
voice in the film.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
And we didn't know actually how we were going to
have John Bonham speak. But fortunately Deborah Bonham, his sister,
gave us the eight millimeter films that his father, Jack Bonham,
had shot when he was a kid, so we could
tell we could see.

Speaker 3 (34:31):
Him, see him as a child, like playing his first
drum kit.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
And then Bernard fortunately discovered this tape in Australia.

Speaker 3 (34:40):
And then two others in America, and you know, and
the and the and the and it was like a
real detective search. I would hear a little fragments of
some bootleg and then have to track down but I
could hear these were quarter inch tapes, and so I
was able to track these things down and it was
just what was amazing when they came in. He was

(35:03):
saying all these things that the rest of the band
hadn't said in the movie, and so it was almost
like he was coming in from the astral plane.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
And you see Robert Plant getting so emotional.

Speaker 3 (35:16):
Well, Robert, that's the key thing. Robert's story is so emotional.
You know, he's made homeless by his parents because he
won't become a chart of account. We wanted him to
be able to just tell his own story. And the
thing is Zeppelin is of all the groups. It is
four key people that are equally contributing to this thing

(35:38):
and making it work. You take any one of those
things out, the watch doesn't work anymore. And so and
so it's it's super crucial that you understand that they're
all fundamental. So you've got to try and find a
way that they've all got a voice, you know.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yes, and you certainly did get John Bonham in there.
You know what, I what I wanted to ask you.
They're all come, they're all watching the film, but not
at the same time. No, they weren't all there together.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
Well, we were all brought from the same place. We'd
met all the group together. But when you make films,
you have to make an assessment when you meet the subjects.
Should I interview you separately or should I interview you together?
It is incredibly rare as a film director to meet

(36:27):
a group of three people that talk well together and
in a balanced way hand the topic from one to
the other and back again. That is very, very rare.
So it's no comment on Zeppelin. If they had had
some kind of Laurel and hardy banter between them, I
would have for sure done it with them. But because

(36:48):
it's so intimate, and a lot of it.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
Is before the time they became a led Zeppeline. So
the first you know, forty minutes of the film, it's
getting to know them as kids and young men establishing
their careers. And so you can't have people sitting.

Speaker 3 (37:03):
At John Paul Jones taking you through he's becoming the
organist and choirmas and just sitting ten feet away Jimmy
and John blah blah blah plant got twelve their thumbs,
you know. So you know, yeah, because I'm going to
go we're going deep into this stuff. You know in
the film, we were going and we're finding photographs of
that church he hasn't seen in sixty years. It was

(37:25):
Bulldoze two years after he left, and putting those on screen.
So he's like going, oh my god, there's that place.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
So where was it that they were seated? Is it
your place, their place? Where? Where was where.

Speaker 3 (37:36):
We we we set up a special place to do
the interviews, and our main thing was we wanted something
that read as England. Oh yeah, because this is the
ultimate English group. And and and what's interesting about led
Zeppelin is, apart from these four different musical characters, you
got two from the Midlands at West Midlands and who

(38:00):
from the London environs. Now those factions normally never collaborate.
So the Midlands is West Midlands is like the home
of Shakespeare, it's the home of Tolkien, means the heart
of British culture. But there's an enormous snobbery in London
towards the Midlands and other places. And my mum's from Yorkshire.
I mean they just people in London where I grew up.

(38:21):
They look down on everybody. So go back. Those two
groups coming together in one band is unique. I was
going through my mind of the most successful groups and
I could not think of one. I mean, the comparison
would be something like you know in America, like two
members of Talking Heads fusing with two men members of

(38:42):
Lenards skinnered. Two groups that happened to absolutely love you
know what I mean, you know, but just very unusual fusion.
You know.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yes, now I know, we've got to wrap it up.
What was I was to have to ask what was
the most surprising element that you found talking to them
putting it together? What surprised you the most because you
had already written a storyboard?

Speaker 2 (39:06):
Just yeah, it was amazing how warm and personable they were.
And one of the surprises was after our first meeting
with Jimmy, he phoned up a couple of days later
and said, how would you like to come to Pangborn
with me? And so we said, yes, of course, and
we met him at the train station and we bought
a ticket from the machine and the The's got on
a train out to Pangbourn and we walked around this

(39:30):
beautiful sort of medieval village and it turned out that
it was the first time he had been back there
since he in fifty years, since he lived there. Wow,
And so that was astonishing.

Speaker 3 (39:41):
Oh yeah, it was this really wonderful thing. And yeah,
and it was like, I'm going to take you into
my world, a world that I haven't actually even been
back into these places in all this time, and you
see that place very emotional.

Speaker 2 (39:53):
And we see that in the film, and he brings
us back to Pangbourn and the viewers sees this house,
the boat house where they their very first meeting.

Speaker 3 (40:01):
Yes, and you were saying, this is this is the
heart of He's saying taking it, this is the heart
of where it happens. I'm going to walk those fields
with you of where this is where I got these ideas,
you know.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
Very very all fantastic. Yeah, I know, I mean I
could You've got to go and I could be you.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
Know, we would love to come back. Yeah, I'd love
to come back.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
Come on back tomorrow. I'm on the air to morrow
and I'm squeezing to get the let out or something
like that. No, seriously, but first of all, congratulations on
the success of the film and any plans further after this.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
Yeah, well the film it's only I mix at the moment,
but I think from tomorrow it opens white a thousand
cinemas in every single state in America, including Puerto Rico.

Speaker 3 (40:53):
So just take I know, it's wonderful the published. Just
bring your friends down. This is made to be enjoyed
with a group of friends and make some noise, and
that's what people do. In the screenings I've been to,
they like they're lively. You know, that's what it's for.
You know, this is not a movie to watch on

(41:15):
your sofa on your own. This is like down like
on the.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
Go on to the show. And yeah, last one I
went to, I got a funny story, but that's for
another time. So anyway, I want to thank Bernard McMahon,
Alison mcgordy. It's an honor to have you here Q
one of four to three Premiere networks. iHeart get the
let out and what power to you?

Speaker 3 (41:41):
Thank you, Carol, thank you so much. Thank you,