Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Bernard MacMahon

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

Bernard MacMahon is a filmmaker, most recently directing Becoming Led Zeppelin, a music documentary that holds the record for the highest-grossing opening weekend across IMAX theaters worldwide and is currently the highest-grossing documentary of 2025. He gained international acclaim with the American Epic series, which chronicles the origins of American roots music and the revolutionary impact of early sound recording technology. MacMahon has been recognized for his groundbreaking approach to documentary filmmaking, blending historical research, rare archival footage, and innovative audiovisual storytelling. His work has earned multiple prestigious awards, including audience honors at major film festivals, Emmy, BAFTA, and Grammy nominations and wins. Becoming Led Zeppelin was released in IMAX on February 7, 2025, with a wider cinema release following on February 14, 2025. The film is streaming now on Netflix, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime Video.  ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: Athletic Nicotine https://www.athleticnicotine.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://drinklmnt.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Tetragrammaton When I was 12 years old, my mom was an antique My mum was an antique dealer and there was always boxes of totty junk around the house. And in one of the boxes was a little paperback book called Led Zeppelin by Howard Milit. And I actually have a copy of it here. Fantastic. I'd like to see it. And it was in the bottom of book and I didn't know who they were. I found the story really inspiring because it's four very different.

guys that as little boys have this idea of doing music and they kind of pursue this dream each in their different ways you know two of them becoming session musicians and working within right in the belly of the beast you know yeah and the other two as west midlanders who you know are kind of ostracized by the london music scene so you were not a le le zeppelin fan when you read i didn't know who they were yeah never heard a note of their music so the book really was your introduction yeah i found out years later when this film came out and i was meeting aficionados yes they said this guy was on the few people the group were close and friendly with interesting and he actually he had lots of access to them they didn't collaborate

on the book but he was around yes and he was there was a tiny number of people that were allowed into sort of the zeppelin in a circle and he was one of them and so there was a really sense of who these people were. And then I subsequently got into the group's music and started thinking, well, let's listen to this music. Do you remember what was the first thing you heard of theirs? Led Zeppelin IV was the first thing. And then I went back to three, then to two, then to one. And then I went forward the other way to House the Holy. But Zeppelin 4 was the first thing I heard and I played it. And I remember being completely George. dropped at the end of when the levy breaks.

And I went, who put this onto this piece of plastic? How is this even done? It seems so beyond what any, what I would hear for people doing in a room. And I'm looking at the label that said, produced by Jimmy Page. I went, oh, I guess that's the alchemist that made this. What was your musical taste like before that? My friend's older brother was into the clash.

So I used to play that first clash album obsessively. Punk rock is happening when you're growing up. up. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. So by the time that you got interested in them, they were already gone. It was, it was from the past. Yes, but there was a connection. When my mum saw me reading this book for the second time, she said, do you remember this gentleman used to come around to the house and he would talk to you and you'd sit on his knee and he was always trying to buy antiques from me and our fireplace specifically. And I said, yeah, I remember this guy. He said, that's the manager of that group, Peter Grant, who used to come to our house. What were your

memories of Peter Grant from childhood? Huge guy. Yeah. Very imposing. Yeah. Had a sort of Fumanchu beard and very, very friendly to me as a kid. And my mom charming. Would you say it was imposing just by his physicality or by his demeanor? But the interesting thing is, he resembled a lot of antique dealers that would buy from my mum. A lot of them looked like him. So he was not atypical, even though he's very striking me seeing his pictures. I'd seen other guys with that appearance. So he used to come and my mum had been recommended to him.

My mum was like an entry-level antique dealer. She would buy things and have a stall in Camden Passage. So he'd heard from another dealer down the road that you could get really good deals from my mum before the stuff went into Regent Street in these expensive. stores. So he'd shut up. My dad came home from teaching at Imperial College one day and saw Peter leaving the house and he parked his car out of view around the corner. It was a silver shadow at Rolls-Royce. So my mum then found out what it was he did. And he confessed he was the manager

of Led Zeppelin. But I remember him always trying to buy the fireplace in our living room and he said he wanted it for his daughter's bedroom. It was a rather than lovely Art Nouveau fireplace and my mom refused to tell it to him so when i had took my mom for afternoon tea last month i was asking i said did i remember all this stuff about peter grott correctly and she said yes he said yes and i said and i'm the only person that ever said no to peter groan so you read the book and then what happens next in your personal led zeppelin experience you listen to four you go back to one and then you get through the catalog and are you would you say, lifelong fan from there on?

Yeah, I mean, I kind of, I completely fell in love with it. And I think one of the things that enhanced my love for it was knowing about who they were and how they put it together. Yeah. So the book really informed you. Oh, the book was hugely influential on my life. It's probably one of the two most influential books on how I do things as a filmmaker. Yeah.

Because the book was about when you're a child, you have this light within you. We all have it. And it's like this flame that burns inside you. And you hopefully find a direction for that passion. And in my case, it was film. In their case, it was music. And it strikes me as you go through life. You have to protect that flame against people that will try and snuff it out.

And then as you go into the commercial world, we have to find ways to protect it against the business forces that come in. So they have Peter Grant that's a shield. them in this bell jar. Yeah. And so I only realized, and I was thinking about this, at the end of becoming Led Zeppelin, I asked Jimmy, please give a message to your 13-year-old self and other 13-year-olds out there. What can we learn from this journey?

And he paused a minute. He said, he looks to me and looks straight out, and he says, if you have something different inside of yourself, you have to work and work and work. But if your aim is true, you can achieve your dreams. I believe this can be done because this is what happens. He's talking about the inner light, you know, inside of himself. And so I think what impressed me about this was these guys, they kind of were fueling that. And it was these people that they don't waste a minute, each member of Led Zeppelin.

They are never sitting on the sofa or doing the criminal and looking at their telephones. They are constantly out there interacting with people. And I found that very inspiring. So with Jimmy and John Paul Jones, they're doing all these studio sessions. And every single job that comes up, they'll take it. So when Mickey Moe says to John Paul Jones studio arrangements, he goes, yeah, all the time, like this. And he figures out to do it on the hoof. Or Jimmy goes into the studio and he's wandering into the control room and trying to figure out how they're getting reverb, how they're making this effect.

So they're learning everything. And the same with John Bonham and Robert, even though. the London music scene is shutting them out. They're literally in countless groups. I mean, it took me almost a year making the film to even figure out tracking all the things they did. It's so complex, all the different groups they're in. And the main thing is they're using every second.

They're not wasting a moment. And then when that first meeting happens, this is so true of life. And they're in that rehearsal space in Girard Street. and they start playing, train, kept a roll, and they know what it is they've got. All that time, all that interaction with countless people, all those experiences they've thrown themselves into,

they recognize what that moment is. And the only way they could really know how special it was was because of all the work they had done leading up to it. Correct. This was different than all of the other things they had been doing. Yeah. And they'd been doing some really good things. Yeah.

So when I was a kid, you know, I was like, I was lucky. I got thrown into cinema. My dad banned television, so I wasn't able to watch TV as a small child, which is probably one of the best things he ever did. He just wanted us to become academics, his kids. What was your father? He talked at Imperial College, hydrodynamics, so he was like an engineer and a scientist, very intellectual guy, an inspiring man. But I wanted to work in the arts from a very small age. And so when I was my next-door neighbor is a birthday president. for mowing her lawn. When I was about seven, she brought me tickets to my first cinema show, which, when I got the cinema, I realized it was Harold Lloyd, silent comedy safety last, with an old lady accompanying it on piano. Well, to a seven-year-old, you've never seen a movie before,

this is like mind-blowing with him hanging off the clock tower. That's amazing. And so that stayed with me, and then a month later or two, my mum took me to my next cinema show, which was a giant Odeon in Streatham, which was held 2,700 people, and it was a rerun of Gone with the Wind. Wow.

So those are my first two films that I saw in a cinema, and so my mind was blown. And then I got a VHS about the making of Gone with the Wind narrated by Clistler Plummer, and I must have watched that about 150 times. It was all about how the film was made. It was so complex and nail-viting.

And then my next film neighbor, she had David Niven's book, The Moon is the Balloon, which are all these vignettes about Hollywood. You know, each one, a chapter on a legendary Hollywood character who was meeting with. And I went, I want to work in that world. It's absolutely fascinating. So that was my background. And this is somehow related to Zeppelin. I just, it was that thing of experience.

At what point did you decide, I want to make a Led Zeppelin movie? When did that happen? Okay, so we made a series of four films called American Epic that we did with Robert Redford narrating and producing and um and that's the history of american music it was on the first electrical sound recordings of the first blues country gospel so it's essentially where all contemporary music today comes from where did the idea for that one come from i had become very interested in those early 20s recordings so the background to this is the film codifies this period that really hasn't been understood and essentially in 1926 the majority of music

sold in America was in the big cities like Chicago, New York, Boston and it was like classical show tunes, big band jazz, this kind of thing. Radio exploded in 25, 26 and within a couple of a year or so, record sales in America dropped by 80%. I didn't know this Most people don't Yeah And so Kind of familiar to people

That lived at the end of the 20th century Yes Napster So all these people in the city Were like, we'll just play radio now And you know So the record companies went into a panic And they thought we're going to be out of business

They came up with the idea Why don't we record poor people in rural America So They realized quickly The rural American people would not buy what they were selling in the cities. But they were confident there was a market there because most of the rural communities

didn't have electricity in their homes. They thought, well, we don't have to worry about radio. And we can sell them these little wind-up record players. So they organized talent contests across the whole of the South, saying Columbia Records will be in Johnson City on February the 1st, 1927, if you want to be immortalized, the phonograph record, be here. And literally thousands of people traveled hundreds of miles.

And it coincided with the invention of the first electrical recording equipment, so the first microphone, the first amplifier, which they all packed into these enormous trucks, and they traveled with, like, trucks filled with wet cell batteries that were power, all this stuff, and then a pulley-driven lathe. Because this is pre-tape, they went straight to disk. Straight to disc, cutting to a wax disc. The wax discs from these recordings were then shipped in ice back to the fresh. pressing plants in New Jersey where they would then be plated and the 78s would be recorded. This was like this golden time that people at Frank Zappa talk about where the people running the industry don't understand what the music is. And this is when the most creative things happen. Often the case actually. Yes. And you would be certainly an individual would have ridden the crest of a whole wave of music that people in the industry when you were starting Def Chan would be going, what the hell is this? Yes.

You know, but you had some instinct for it and some connection with these artists. And there was this golden point when you were breaking through this stuff where the suits did not understand what this was. Not only did they not like it, they thought it wasn't music. That's how foreign it was. And so this is the best time, artistically, isn't it? This is the greatest time. And all they know is Rick's bringing in this non-music rubbish. That people seem to like.

But they're buying it. So all Karen pressing it for him, you know, and make money off it. The moment they think they understand it and they have ideas, it's over. Yeah, they ruin it. So in this case, you know, the record companies, they're coming in it, and there's this Cajun music from Louisiana, you know, the Brofares. And they're like, what the hell's this? But it's selling.

Lydia Mendoza with the Tijuana music. Don't know what it is, but it's selling. And the blues music from Mississippi and the country. These records started selling hundreds of thousands of copies. And what was a total surprise to the record companies was that the Memphis Jug Band that would be the first kind of, I mean, that would be the prototype of hip-hop. I had Nars in the American Epic doing one of their tracks. And it literally is a hip-hop song on the road again.

And he says that. He says, God, I didn't realize this went back to 1927. Yeah. And The Grateful Dead based their whole trip on Jod bands as well. They grew out of Jugg bands. Correct. Yeah. So these records started being ordered. The big surprise was the records being recorded in Memphis were being ordered in Illinois, in Massachusetts. And they weren't expecting that. They thought it would be local for the community, but the records traveled. Yeah. And so I described it as the first time America heard itself. Yes, beautiful. And I took it to Robert Redford, and he said, this is America's greatest untouched. told story and I'll help you get this made.

Fantastic. So it was three films traveling through, filming in 38 states and telling the untold stories of nine key musicians, all from totally different backgrounds. Name one of your favorite tracks from the first. Oh, from the first that episode, probably on the road again by the Memphis Judd Band. That's a sudden.

You know, I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. And I'm going to be. I would not black woman tell the reason why. Black woman's evil do things on the slide. You look for yourself to be good and hot.

She's never put a neckbone in the pot. She's on the road again. She's on the road again. She's on the road again. No, a nasty born eastman on the road again. I went to my window, my window was propped. I went to my door, my door was locked. I stepped right back, I shook my head.

A big black nigger in my folding bed. I shot through the window I broke the glance I never seen a little nigga run so fast He's on the road again Oh, Lord of nasty born eastman on the road again Oh, no one of nightly born eastman on the road again Your friend come to your house

That's from what year? 98. Wow. Amazing. And you tell the story of them. Yeah. It's the first time their stories ever been told on film. Beautiful.

So I have footage of them that hadn't been seen before images. They've never been, before we made the film, this is one of the most influential African-American groups at all time. You could make a case of the very first American pop group. Yeah. Yeah, really unbelievably powerful music, amazing story. In a world of artificial highs and harsh stimulants, there is something different.

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com slash tetra And experience next level performance With athletic nicotine Warning this product contains nicotine Nicotine is an addictive chemical Tell me about looking for the archival material. It sounds like this is all lost material. Yeah, yeah, it was all lost.

There's nothing in the Smithsonian Northern Library of Congress. How do you start out, first of all, how do you know what to look for? And then when you know what to look for, how do you find it? So first off, in the period, I realized this was like, this was the well string where everything came from, these recordings. And the ones I was familiar with, I went, without this. None of these acts that we know today would exist. You know, it's all codified then. So I was like, well, how do I tell these stories?

So the first thing I did was I got about 100 acts whose records was so impactful to me that I thought, I'm going to research all hundred of these people and then pick out what are the greatest stories. And so the 100 acts you can find that we did a, with Sony, a box. called the American Epic Collection, and it's a hundred songs on a five-cd-set of what I consider to be the greatest recordings were made in those extraordinary recording sessions that Columbia and Victor and Paramount did. And were most of those things out of print? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Long out of print. Long out of print, yeah. So I'll give an example of one of the stories in the film. To discover what the greatest records are, I went to a group of 78 collections. and I'd be traveling to their houses across America. Richard Nevins, he's out in New Jersey.

It was John Teff Teller, the legendary blues collector in Oregon. And then Michael Kiefer, one of the great across the board, all genres from that era collector based in Los Angeles. And I would spend days in their house pulling 78s off the shelves. Would they turn you on to things? Yeah, and there would go, you've got to hear this, or you've got to hear this. And so there was a whole bunch of things that had never being reissued on CD, you know, in any form. And I was just collecting the ones that just

blew my mind. I was looking for things that I thought anyone today that heard this, this piece of music that stopped them in their tracks and go, what hell is that? Who are they? So I'm looking at these hundred acts. And so one of the ones was in the gospel area was this 1927 recording called My Hearts Keep Singing by Elder Birch and Congregation. And it has this wonderful incredibly familiar sound to me that when I played the Taj Mahal, he goes, no, that's West Indian. That's a whole West Indian thing going on there. And it was just credited to elder Birch and congregation, my heart keeps singing. And I just love this track. No one knew anything about who this person was. And this track had been reissued on a number of CD

compilations and was highly regarded. So Victor, that put it out, is a owned by Sony BMG. So I went to the Sony BMG archives with the help of Adam Block at Legacy who let me just wander around. They had all the recording sheets that the engineers would type up at these remote sessions they were doing,

field sessions. It had the Elder Birch sheet from 1927. It said, Elder Birch, Chiraw, South Carolina. So I got on a plane to Chirot, South Carolina. So this is the first bit of information. That's all I've got. You've got. You've got the name of a city. And I've no idea if this

is his town. And it's a hundred years ago that you're looking for information. Yes. In this little town from a hundred years ago. Yes. So I go to this little town and your first place you go is the library. They'll always be fascinated with an English person turning up wanting to know about some record made almost a hundred years ago. It really gets librarians going. That's why libraries are so important. Yeah. Other than these internet things, they're much more. important because there are people that care about this stuff so i arrive and they're completely baffled they never heard this elder birch and then i meet all the various white dignitaries in the town fascinated but don't know who is and eventually i get sent over the tracks to the african-americans

part of the town and i'm introduced this elderly gentleman ted bradley who's in his 80s his eyes start welling up and he goes elder birch my god i haven't heard that name in years he goes yeah he's He had a big story to buy popsicles from him, and he describes the church he had. He built the church, this triumph sanctified church, with his bare hands. And he said, and we would all sit outside the church and listen to the music. And he said, the white people used to all drive up in their cars. This is in the 20s and sit outside the church and listen to this extraordinary music. And he said, Birch was the founder, one of the founders of the NAACP in South Carolina.

a big force in this. And he goes, but you know who Elder Birch really influenced? And I said, no. And he goes, a kid that lived two doors up from his church and would hear that music from his bedroom all Sunday long. I said, who is that? He goes, Dizzy Gillespie. Wow, that's amazing.

Let's listen to that track. Yeah. Every since my sin. Every since my sin. They're taken away. Then taking away Our heart Keep singing,

Slinging, Slinging All the God Then see that wise He in his love His love Keep singing Slinging and all the town He taught me how

He taught me how You have a watch and free. And now I live in the noise and everything. Says Jesus why, Tell Jesus why, He's in his love My heart keeps singing, singing, sing it all the time. I'm sanctified

I'm sanctified And the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost, my heart keep singing, singing all the time. And Jesus was, and he's love. Me and his love, my heart is singing, singing, singing all the time. Ever since my sin, ever since my sin. And taking away. And taking away. My heart keeps singing, singing all the time.

Incredible. Beautiful, isn't it? Absolutely beautiful. So he brings me over to the Triumph Church and is still standing, the little old church that Birch built. Wow. And the preacher's there, the current preacher, Donnie Chapman. And if there is a definition of spirituality, it's that preacher that I met, Donnie Chapman.

Whenever someone's there's some terrible wreck on the freeway and there's someone dying, he gets a call four in the morning he's there and he's tending to that person. And so I came in and we filmed there and I found all these people in the town that African Americans that remembered Birch and the impact he had. And then Dizzy Gillespie's cousin came in and he had all Dizzy's notes for his autobiography in which he'd written about how absolutely all this musical inspiration came from going to Older Birch's church every weekend and listening to that music. That was what inspired him.

Amazing. All came from that. The rhythms, the sound and the thing. And so the triumph church is part of a small sanctified movement across America. called Triumph. And so all the best singers came to that tiny little village in the film. We had them perform. My Heart keeps singing in this unbelievably rousing wild performance, you know,

brought his memory back, you know. So these stories like this. So this was the guy that, you know, they kind of chased the Ku Klux Klan out of Choror, you know. And this was music, unifying this community. I mean, this was in the depths of segregation. And yet, as I said, all the white people would be open around that church on the Sunday is listening to that music. Do you think the fact that your first cinema experience was a Harold Lloyd with a live pianist that, for you, music and film are just intertwined?

Your love of it, they go together. That's a very perceptive observation. I fundamentally think that's true. Yeah, I don't, I've never thought about that. Absolutely. I think you're absolutely right. Yes, I see visuals and live music performance as being absolutely intertwined. God, I'm really glad I came here today. That's really clever. That's absolutely, yeah, because it was a very physical experience. You know, there's this extraordinary imagery, but this woman, she's improvising. There's no score. When you go to those

silent movie things, if you do meet people that do that, yeah, they improvise the music. I think the studio's occasion would send over some general cues. It was very rare that you'd have a whole score that were sent out. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. And so I think that music and film are incredibly closely related. I think that a movie has to work like a symphony with movements. And the whole thing has to tie together and it needs to be themes that appear. So you know, when you have a musical, there'll be an overture at the beginning where they play all the highlighted, like South Pacific, the highlighted, the key. The key. melody lines so that when you get into it, you kind of go, oh, I know that. Do you think that

coming from the UK was advantageous to see it with new eyes? Looking at American music with new eyes? Yes. I think there's a number of things I realized this research was hugely enjoyable because people, they're very, very kind and welcoming people in rural America. But they're particularly fascinated if you're coming in from Britain and you're coming into some tiny town and you're interested in this cultural thing that happened almost 100 years ago. Particularly if a lot of them aren't even familiar to this person's there. So I would sometimes meet family members of musicians whose songs have been covered by Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash and they had no idea.

Wow. They had no idea that their dad's music had made that impact. Firstly, when you go into the... rural areas of the south you see huge amounts of old England there so it's actually very familiar yeah because these are settlers that went over and sometimes and scotland and ireland yes and i'm half irish so yeah and that's the roots of country music it's the roots of blues taj mahal told me blues is the combination so this is taj's thing and i think he's right he said blues is the combination of african music with irish folk music it's those

elements combined. That's how he sees it. And I can't think of anyone that's being more deep plugged into that history than him. Yeah. It's also interesting that after the American project, you go on Led Zeppelin, who are so totally influenced by American music. There is no English music in their vocabulary. No. It's representation of America from far away. And it takes it to an extreme that most Americans would not take it to because they know too much to amplify it that much. Do you know what I'm saying? In some ways, the freedom that comes with this foreign thing that you can interpret and make it

yours, in their minds, maybe they think this is how it is in America, but really it's because their love of this foreign thing is so extravagant in their minds, they take it to this extravagant place where it never was before. I think that's a very sage observation. There's this huge romanticization of America and American music. It's like spaghetti western movies. Same thing. It's like the idea of taking it to this extreme, this poetic extreme. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. That is why if you look at that generation and the subsequent generations, the love of the original rockabilly, the rock and roll music, there's nowhere more fervent than Britain for the adoration of that. It's hugely romanticized. And similarly, the blues. The blues is just massively romanticized in Britain. And jazz as well. And jazz in Europe. Yes, you're right. American jazz in Europe is much more popular today than it is in America. Yeah. Yeah, because, you know, when James Reese Europe came in in the First World War with the Harlem Hellcats and he brought jazz to the European battlefields, that's where the

French fell in love with it. Yeah. You know, so he's bringing in, you know, those WC. Handy songs and stuff like this, and the French were like, what the hell's this, you know? And this was, I guess, music brought in to rouse the troops of the Americans, but to the French, this was exotic and exciting. The Zeppelin story came out, we made American epic, we made these three historical films and the fourth film our sound engineer that worked on zeppelin rebuilt from original past the full recording lathe the amplifier and the microphones and we brought a whole group of artists in to record for the first time in almost a hundred years exactly how you would have done in 1997 beautiful and they all had to come in do it live to the wax disc yes and then we pressed up the

records um yeah the first three films were the history of the carthaginian wars and then And then the fourth film was like, we film a group of people crossing the Alps on the elephants, you know, and doing it ourselves. So this film, I wanted to do one more music film that picked up from where American Epic left off, which would be sort of World War II. And something that took us from World War II to, say, 1970, this felt like a very, very exciting arc in communication and music. This is the arrival of tape and countless other things. And I thought, you know, it would be kind of good rather than researching 100 acts. And this area, my previous era was super mysterious American epic

and there's nothing known about most of these acts. Is there one act that rides that wave? I remembered that book I read when I was 12. And I went, Settling. And no one's ever told their story before. Yes, they're as mysterious as the Memphis Jugbed. Yes. The records all known.

It's one of the things that's so interesting about the old blues artists where there might be one photograph, you know, like Robert Johnson, there's one photograph. Maybe with Led Zeppelin, they made it a point to never put themselves on the covers. They kept, they also had this mystery about them always. Yeah. You know, before them, the Beatles were always on their album covers. Absolutely. They were pop groups.

But Led Zeppelin was something else. Yeah. Zeppelin is surrounded with myth and conjecture. Yes. I remember as I got into Zeppelin's music after reading that book and totally falling in love with it, I remember talking to kids my age and contemporaries that were listening to it too, going back and listening to it's music,

and thinking that my sense of what this group was was different from theirs, having read this long out-out-print paperback book. Yes. And I realized it was Zeppelin, the story has been codified by books published in the 80s and beyond that are looking back. They're looking from John Don Bonham's death backwards. Yes. The interesting thing about this obscure little book that I read that said long out of print was it's looking forward.

Yes. The end is the mid-70s. The end is not written. So the whole perspective in the book is from the perspective of these children on this journey. and they haven't even reached the end of it by the time the book's printed so my perspective on this was by thanks that little paperback,

it was very different and the best book ended with a world of possibilities as does the film yeah this is what you want in a movie you want something the purpose I think of a movie

is to inspire people yes I want them to walk out of the cinema and go you know I'm going to form a group or I'm going to apply these things to something I've learned or something I'm doing. Anything you do that helps you when you leave the cinema, I go, I figure this out. This is what I'm going to do. That's the highest goal you can have is someone that creates something.

And that's how the book influenced you. It wasn't so much about music. It was about following your inner light. Yeah. It was like, how do you make music, demystify. What are the things you knew to do creative things? because what we all do in this creative field, we're craftsmen. And I think the great myth about this is people tout around words like genius and things like this,

and oruteur, as if we're kind of touched by, certain people are touched by the hand of God. My experience in what I do and looking at, say, Led Zeppelin, is that it's an enormous amount of hard work. Masses of incremental work that eventually becomes, it's so many bricks that eventually you have the great mass. of China. And you're like, how the hell? You can see this thing from space. And this is the same here. And that's, I suppose, what people might term as genius. But it's very counterproductive to use those terms. Yeah. And so what I liked about this is it was showing you, the book was

showing, and the film is showing the practical things that you do. And then it lets the music play to hear the music. Another part of it is that you can only put in that time if you really love something. Yeah. Yeah. You've got to really love it. So I was looking at this follow-up, and I said, this is the story. This is the story we've got to make after American Epic. I said, this group takes us through from Jimmy's born, and he's the oldest in 1944. So it takes you from World War II through to 1970.

And I knew the exact point where I wanted the film to end, which should be with their homecoming at the Albert Hall. And so with all the films I'd do. do, I would never knock on someone's door and say, hey, I've got an idea I want to do a film with it. I've got to, in my mind, I have to work out exactly how I'm going to make that film and can I do it? How would I do it? So with this, I spend about eight months writing a script and tracking down archive. So this is in preparation before you've ever talked to anyone in the group. Yes. And they could very easily say no. Correct. I was aware

going into that they had never participated in a documentary. Yes. They had never, ever sat down and formally told their story in any form to a biographer or anything like that. So the received was absolutely, it would be no. Yes. So you spend eight months putting together what you would do in a dream project that likely would not happen.

Your mindset was, I'm making this film with these people. Yes. That was my mindset. And you've not met them, you don't know them. Don't know them, no. In fairness, I had met Robert Plant. I'd been introduced to Robert Plant through a wonderful musician called Justin Adams,

you know, who discovered Tanara Wen and all those great groups. And Justin, that was through David James, the great music manager. And Justin had brought me backstage to meet Robert, long before Epic was finished. And so Robert was familiar with our work. But I could tell what I knew of Robert Plant, that that would have no impact. on, you know, other than he kind of the American epics, I thought, hmm. But yeah, so

hadn't met them and certainly didn't met Jimmy or John Paul Jones. So much of today's life happens on the web. Squarespace is your home base for building your dream presence in an online world. Designing a website is easy, using one of Squarespace's best-in-class With the built-in style kit, you can change fonts, imagery, margins, and menus. So your design will be perfectly tailored to your needs. Discover unbreakable creativity with fluid engine, a highly intuitive drag-and-drop editor. No coding or technical experience is required. Understand your site's performance with in-depth website analytics tools.

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They do none. Yes. I mean, I think when the last big series of reissues came out with the double LPs and the CDs, I don't think a Robert Platt, John, Paul Jones, did a single interview or post, any kind of no social media. The last two things I remember anyone doing were there was a concert that was filmed and recorded, where they changed the way

the songs were presented. Oh, yes, yes, yes. That was Robert and Jimmy. And that was sometime maybe in the 80s or 90s. I actually saw that show by it. How was it? Fantastic. Pure chance. Friend had a spare ticket. No media fan.

I knew someone. They said, do you want to come? So it was these all these, all these, interesting things. I'd actually got lucky and seen these things. I was actually too young to seen Zeppelin. So all these things that kind of were pointing the way this is your film, you know? And then, you know, I got a last minute ticket to see the O2 show as well. Yeah. And O2 show also, there was no publicity. There was one show. It was announced. They did the show and that was it. Yeah. Exactly. So I think it's fantastic. That's what I love

about them is they don't do any of that stuff. I mean, like, you know, you know, the thing it's exciting about Zeppelin is what I've often wondered apart from the musicianship which is you know when I say apart from the extraordinary musicianship and the songwriting production is I think what makes them very exciting is when they appeared in 69 as the Beatles were essentially falling apart yes this group appears that literally has no Beatles in its DNA whatsoever yeah and of all the big groups even pink floyd there's elements of beetles in there there's zero beetles in the in the Zeppelin to my ears yes and I think that was what the public needed and wanted after this massive almost

decade long infatuation influence of the Beatles this group appears and is so different in its DNA that it caught their interest you know there's a moment in the film where you show the album chart with Led Zeppelin number one and Beatles number two. And I'll say, it's a shocking thing to see because the Beatles are still the Beatles. Yeah, that's exactly. You know, as he said, a hugely important and fantastic group.

And yet Zeppelin is so different in every way. And I love Jimmy says in the movie, he played on everybody's records except the Beatles. It's like no Beatles connection. Yeah. And as you say, he's so interesting. It's like it's almost like it's destiny. This thing is, you know.

And those things are exciting things where something it comes in and it's the polar opposite of whatever dominated the thing for 10 years. Those are the things that are exciting. But also, they're the most difficult things to break through because nobody in the business gets it. Yeah, there's no point of reference for it. Yeah. It's brand new. It's revolutionary.

By and large, can't stand them. Yes. You know? No record company in Britain was interested in paying in advance with them. Incredible. And you listen to that album. Yeah. You know, if you talk to Glenn Johns, which I, you know, I did extensive background interviews, he brought that lacquer of album one and played it to all the prominent people in the music business. He told me he played to meet Jagged, potentially get them on the Rolling Stone Circus.

Jaggard, like, didn't get it at all, he said, and hired Jethro Tull instead. he played it to certainly to George Harrison I can't remember if he played it to other Beatles and Pete Housen and he played to all these people same thing happened with the Beatles right yes exactly nobody would sign the Beatles either exactly

yes you're absolutely right yeah it was like rock rock bands are finished isn't it yeah it's over because they were kind of like they had that Motown thing they loved but they were really a throwback to the their big things were you know the crickets the crickets and

Carl Perkins, those songwriting rockabillies. Yeah. That's what they liked. And yeah, that was considered in 1996, late 1960s. That was considered completely out of date, wasn't it? Yeah. God knows what those record companies were wanting to throw us into, you know? I mean, it wasn't it all Bobby Darren and all this kind of? It was definitely going super middle of the road, wasn't it?

I think that's what the industry wanted. I think the industry wanted to get rid of these drug-taking, pot smoking, rockabilly musicians and replace them with entertainers again you know what do you think made led zeppelin it's the the sheer technical ability of these four master musicians i can say that having made this film it's been you know years editing this film and however tricky it was to get it to the film it is now in terms of like the way it's sequence when the performances would play in the edit bay every single time I heard them my heart would jump for joy how amazing they sounded I never got bored of that music I was never less than elated when that music came in so it's a combination

of like from the ground up you know bottoms drumming absolutely mind-boggling I mean He's a jazzer. He's a jazer with strong love of soul music. He's not a rocker. He's not on the four at all. Everything swings with Bonham. So the first thing you've got is a rhythm section that swings. And I think that's so many of the groups that want to be inspired by Led Zeppelin.

Unfortunately, they don't get it that what makes Zeppelin works is the rhythm section swings. Yeah. People mistake Led Zeppelin for heavy metal. Yeah. And it's totally not. And it's something else. And then you move to John. Paul Jones, who literally didn't

told me, did not understand what music was, as it was in the late 60s. This is not his thing at all. So he comes in with a whole different... So you listen to these things like good times, bad times, the opening track. I mean, he's playing like Motown

style bass lines on these songs. I mean, no rock bass player would think of the playing what he plays. So there's, he's got him with John Bonham. so you have Bonham's extraordinary patterns his drumming is so sophisticated it showed up technical flaws in how every movie is delivered to the cinema I could hear errors in the way

the DCP which is the thing he lives in the way that had been packaged because Bonham's drumming is so sophisticated it shows up if things aren't in sync yeah you know then you got Jonesy coming in weaving in and out of that with his extraordinary imagination again this is the guy that's played on countless types of music and then jimmy i mean we opened the film the second song you hear is the johnny bennett trio train kept rolling and i got an original 45 of that you know and just the sound of that is so ferocious it's so exciting there's no drums on it it's a double bass electric and rhythm guitar and a vocal

And I think, I talk you to Jimmy, that track is like a total touchstone for him. So you have Elvis in Memphis, and he was working for electrical company, and he was the driver, and the electrician was Johnny Burnett. So these two guys are in a truck together. And Elvis goes to Sun and does the sessions with Sun, with this wonderful soaring voice. And Johnny is the hardcore feral rockabilly. he does those initial records for coral like train kept to rolling i mean that's about as aggressive as you can get and i think it's just jimmy's meat that sound yes i remember playing howling wolf with him and he was like he just like his face lights up that kind of real feral

edgy raw so you got that and then then he was showing me at his house jimmy he had this collection of like early arabic music these are records from the 50s that he had as a kid so this is sitar music and these are rare records but they were put out you know on his master's voice and you could tell these were original copy you'd had from childhood yeah so that whole eastern music thing he was into that from his childhood so all that's in the mix you know and he has this enormously broad session career and then robert robert had sung in almost every star who could imagine before was that playing he's like a troubadour you know yeah so he'd he'd been a mod He'd been a soul singer.

He'd been a Tom Jones type singer. As he said, throwing it against the wall, seeing if it sticks. But there was this big passion for blues. And just before Zeppelin, you know, I came across all these recordings he'd made with Alexis Corner, who's like the father of British blues. And it's Robert singing, and you can hear this sort of template emerging and this different voice emerges. He'd do not all these things, but, you know, he describes in the film, you know, that as a kid going to see Sunny Boy Williamson on the American Folk Blues tour

at the Birmingham Town Hall was like a life-changing experience. And so I think it's the combination of these guys coming together with all their different interests and the fact that unlike most groups, they're meeting as relative strangers in that room. You know, Platt and John Bonham knew each other, and they played with some groups together. But as Robert says, you know, John Bonham's lovely wife, had said, don't play with that planted.

Don't go near him. It's a disaster. So they were kind of like, you know, it was sort of almost a covert operation. It's so funny because we think of Bonham as the outlaw character in the band, but it was Robert. Yeah, I think Robert's the most outlawish. He's the most outlawish.

He was thrown out of his house by his parents. Yeah. You know, so the great thing also about the Zeppelin stories, if you're a kid and you're setting out on your journey, whatever that journey might be, and you have something you want to do that is not what your school, your parents are telling you should be doing, whatever it might be. You are one of the four members of Led Zeppelin on that journey. They're archetypes.

They're archetypes. So John Paul Jones, his parents are vaudeville entertainers. So they're in the theatre business. The only difference is that John Paul Jones's father thinks bass guitars a novelty instrument in two years' time, will never be heard of a game. Get yourself a saxophone, you'll always work. It's my favorite line in the film. I just love it.

And he goes, no, dad, I don't want bass guitar. He'd heard shaking all over by Johnny Kid and the Pirates and the bass thundering through the jukebox. He goes, that's why I want to play. And so, you know, he goes on that journey with, so he grew up literally standing on the wings of these shows. Then you have Jimmy, who's, I relate to a lot because he's, mother like mine was very supportive of his music and all his school friends that he

introduced us to remembered Patricia his mom as like encouraging them to rehearse in the living room and whereas Jimmy's father was more like get your studies done what's all this guitar business but the mother was saw something and she encouraged it and then you have John Bonham whose parents are neutral like there as long as your paying for your kid and your wife, that's fine with this music thing, but there's always a job for you at the family building firm. And then the other end of the spectrum is Robert Platt, where parents want him to be a charter accountant. And when it emerges, he doesn't want to do that, they throw him out of the house. So if you're a kid, you are one of those archetypes.

That's the full, all of the four points on the compass. So that's another thing about the story that struck me is its usefulness. I thought, everyone has an entry. point in this story. You're one of those kids. You've got the support of both parents, one parent, neutral or no support. You're one of them. And so those are the things I'm interested in the film that, like, what's the means that none of this film was ever approached in the point of, oh, this could make a lot of money. I never, it never entered my mind. I just remember, I love this 12. And boy, would this music make an extraordinary score for a movie? You know? So I had the South Pacific story, you know, which is in South Pacific, it's like

this thing about racial harmony. In Led Zeppelin, it's a story of a quest. And we had songs every bit as good as Barley High or Happy Talk with Zeppelin, dazed and confused. So you've got this amazing story that's illustrated by communication breakdown, you know? Yeah. A whole lot of love, ramble on. So to me, it was like, that was what I was thinking. I was thinking of it like a musical, like I was a, I wanted to make a film that I could go to the Brixton Ritzie like I used to when I was a teenager and I could watch it three times a year. Yes. That was a whole thought in my head. I wouldn't make that kind of film and with the best

sound possible, you know, and take it to listen. It sounds, it's insane how it sounds. It's so good. L-M-N-T, Element Electrolites. Have you ever felt dehydrated after an intense workout or a long day in the sun? Do you want to maximize your endurance and feel your best? Add Element Electrolites to your daily routine. Perform better and sleep deeper. Improve your cognitive function.

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So visit drinklm-n-tie.com slash tetra. And stay salty with element electrolytes, L-M-N-T. tell me when you first met jimmy page so i'd i'd done all this research got a storyboard together and so the storyboard is where you you create the film in pictures so i'd written a script and then i i had this storyboard a bound storyboard and um this is it here oh fantastic yeah so it's got a bit tatty now but this it's it's it's housed in a 19 these are in this is the 1920's 78 RPM album and I've taken the wallets out and so I basically had the whole story depicted through this is all their childhoods a series of photographs yeah both of them

and what was going on in their lives at that time correct exactly it's a young jimmy page yeah lonnie donagan yeah john paul jones i hadn't tracked down the church yet because john paul jones played organ in the church yes so i had this storyboard ready and i reached out i wrote to jimmy page and said i'd like to meet and i didn't say why i wanted to meet and a meeting was granted that's odd yeah and it transpired when i got to the meeting that he was very familiar with american epic i see and had watched all the films and he had the book and the soundtracks there were nine soundtrack albums

all of this is because of American epic because of the work on that film so I sort sat down he arrived with some like shopping bags which he like a bunch of them which he put down by the door and we were in a hotel and I pulled the storyboard out and said look I got this film

and I started walking him through the storyboard and he became very animated and was like making lots of observations that I was walking through and it was very kind of meticulous like I remember I planned to maybe spend two hours doing this was seven hours of just absolutely constant conversation there was only a break in the middle for we went for afternoon tea up the road at the orangery

which is where afternoon tea was invented wow and so we kept so seven hours going through And like not stopping for breath, just, I'm walking through and he's adding all these things and additional observations and going, yes, and this was the handler. And every now and then, he would just fire a question at me. So I think at one point I said, so this is the point where you travel up on Terry Reed's recommendation to go and see Robert Plant singing at the teacher's training codenies, I think it was. And he turned to me and he said, what was the name of the band? in. And I'm like, Ops Tweedle. He goes, very good. Carry on. Testing you. As well he should. You know, as well he should. I mean, I would. I would. So what happened here is the storyboards, like 100 pages of images. And there's not a single piece of text written on it. So you're telling the

story. You're looking at the images and explaining the story. Yeah. So I have everything committed to memory every date every person every place it's all committed to memory and so jimmy in this process i mean it was very enjoyable in goating but i realized afterwards that was seven hours of memory yes that i had to have i couldn't look up anything and so at one point i said to him oh such and such happened in may and he sort of he was like i thought it was early june and i went no i'm sure it's May, it was something like this. And he went, let's check. And he went to the bags he'd brought. And he took out the bags and poured the bags over the content of the bags. And it was all his diaries going back to 62. Wow. I bought a picture of it here to show you. And so this is that first

meeting. Amazing. And those are the diaries in front of him. Yeah, he looks happy. Yes. Yes. He's a really, really nice guy. He's a really, really nice person. Describe his personality to me. super enthusiastic i mean total real love of music like he opened up with the dress book and gave me the numbers of like he gave him the number of rod wyatt who was still very close to who taught him his first chords on his guitar and i met rod and rob was this just wonderful kid still this kid he was like approaching 80 but he was this kid and he had this passion and i recognized and i met all jimmy's friends i went he's got the same passion for music he did when he was 13, 14, 15. He's never lost it.

That thing of music he has is totally unjaded. And so when we would talk about things and we were talking about pieces of music that were entering the story, he just saw eyes would light up when he was recording Johnny Burnett. He still feels the same way about the record like when he first heard it. So I think what I loved about liked about him was just the joy, the excitement in it. There was no cynicism once you're, when you're in the inner circle and you're just talking about the stuff, real enthusiasm. Do you get the sense that he still plays?

Yes. I mean, he came out and did like a year ago. He did, they were inducting Link Ray into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He came out and like, completely out and turned up and played Rumble, you know, at that, like a fucking champ. I mean, it's so powerful. Actually, I haven't asked him, like, do you sit and play? I mean, if I'm making a film with somebody, my relationship really centers around with them on the film.

Yes. And so I kind of like to keep that relationship about the period that I'm covering. So if it's from childhood to 1970, I quite like to stay in that zone. with the subject. So when they meet me, their head's totally in that zone. Yes. And so if you watch,

and you see the film, they're never in the film talking, looking at it now, this is what I think. I wish I'd known it. They're in the moment. They're walking you through the film. They're living it in real time.

Unless someone starts chatting away, which some of them do about things, I don't probe into like the day-to-day specifics of how he might play today or whatever. My view is that that's a whole other book. Yeah. The film is not who they are today. The film was a moment in time.

Yeah. And we're living it with them. Exactly. So the first thing I went through is when he's talking, the first thing I'm looking is like, I'm with this guy and he can see, you make an American for love. You don't make an American athlete to make money.

Yeah. You make it because it's an important story. It needs to be told. And it's the last window before anyone that was there is dead. Yeah. And that was the thing that fueled epic. And he could tell when I walked into that room that I actually loved this story

and I thought this story was meaningful and it was the world would be a better place, particularly for kids if the true story of how this group did what they did was out there. And I just saw all those sort of tabloid-y books that were published in the 80s about largely written by people that went on a jumbo jet with them for a day, a week or so

and hung out of some parties. Well, that's not how you get to from 1944 to 1970. That's a whole bunch of insane work to get you to that place. And so when I'm talking with him, what was really interesting, he was like, he just got really enthused. He was like literally brought back to that time as we were going through the pages. And because the film, as you see, is quite thorough in each of these stages.

I thought I was probably talking to him for two or three hours before we even got to Girard Street. Wow. You know? So he was going so into this world. And what was nice, I think, for him, was that I had learned all this stuff or as much as I could.

And so it became very collegial, and you'd be filling me in on things. Well, actually, it was also this, and there was this. And so I could tell straight away he was collaborative. Yes. So the other thing that's really lovely about Jimmy Page is I know there's this sort of image of him as this iconic guitarist.

And of course, you know, on stage, you know, he is this. But the thing I thought was interesting meeting him and is at the core of, I think, of Zeppelin stories, he's actually a very collaborative person in my experience. So when he meets Robert Plant, who's this 19-year-old kid singing in Obstweedle, and it's just recommended by Terry Reid. He wouldn't have had any way of hearing Robert Plant. I mean, Robert had made some records, but it was so obscure. Jimmy wouldn't have been able to get his hand. And Jimmy was already both a top studio musician and in the Yardbirds. In the Yardbirds, absolutely.

Which were a significant band. Yeah, and I met Shell Talmy. You know, I did about 170 interviews as background research for this film. Wow. I'm going to showtow me. And he said, if you were trying to make a contemporary record and you couldn't get Ginny Page or John Paul Jones, forget it. If you needed additional musicians to supplement a group because you didn't think the group was tight enough to play the record. their first single or whatever.

So they were the sound of British music at that way. Unspoken, behind the scenes, but they were the sound already, before Zeppelin. Yeah, absolutely. They were the guys. And Shell tell me, he said, it ain't happening if you know if those guys on it. Wow. Unless you're trying to do some middle of the right. If you don't do something, it's men of sound, contemporary.

It's meant to be saying to a teenage audience. If you can't get those guys, forget it. That's how highly they were regarded. Yeah, it was also remarkable hearing. that the famous telecaster was given to him by Jeff Beck. Right, yes. I think he told me that, I mean, they were childhood friends. I think he said Jeff made a guitar himself.

I don't know what I thought he was a bass. I can't remember. He made a guitar. I had the impression it was quite crudely fashioned, you know. They go way back, and he said it was all about, I mean, they loved James Burton. They loved him. I mean, when I was a kid and I heard,

believe what you say, that single, good God, and that Burton solo rips out. You're like, is that even a human being playing this thing? I mean, it's just mind-boggling. So he said they were all like, let's hear your version of my babe. And it would be in one of Ricky Nelson's track. So those kids, you know, they were like, of the rock and roll records, James Burton was the real touchstone guitarist. And he doesn't get props for Ricky Nelson now, but those records are amazing.

And it's Burton, you know, Burton's a guitar. on Susie Q. That's him. Age freaking 16 or something. I didn't know that. Yeah, that's James Burton. Wow. Dale Hawkins, one of my second ever concert I went to. Yeah, but anyway, so he goes up to see Robert Plant and obviously he's impressed and invites him to his house in Pangborn to try him out. And he, you know, it's well-known story. He says, I want to do a reinterpretation of this Joan Baez recording, you know, babe, I'm going to leave. I've got this idea for how to do it. He's plant scenes and he's totally thrilled with it.

And they both know this is something incredible. And at that point, he tells Robert, you know, I've got this band together. And Robert's like, no, no, no, whatever drumming you've got in mind, you've got to see this guy, I know. And I think this tells you about Jimmy Page and why he's different from other people. he is the most experienced session musician in London he's played with all the greats period exactly and he's in the yard birds so he's been in the counterculture he's seen all those musicians up on the west coast

I mean who's had more experience yet he listens to this 19 year old kid and he goes to some gig with Tim Rose to watch this guy drumming and I just think how many people if you're 24 whatever he was then, 24, and a 19-year-old that you think is a good thing. I said, you go, that's all right, kid.

Because you're only in 19, 24, that's a big age difference. Yes. And yet he listens to him. I think there's a lot that tells you about Jimmy Page, that he's got this incredible focus vision about what he wants to do. And I think this is the aspirational, but yet he's open to ideas. And so when I was going through with him, I felt he's a collaborator. And all he wants to know is that you're the right singer,

or you're the right filmmaker. So when it got to the end of the presentation, I said, he said, how do you want to do this? And I said, well, I want to do it with everyone, all the bands. And he goes, ah, so that's a bit more of a task, you know. And he says, you know, he said, well, you have to get the other two on board.

And I said, yeah. And he said, well, I'll help it anyway I can. You know, and I said, but he didn't speak for the others. No, not at all. Yeah. No, it's very much like a kind of a democracy. And he indicated this would not necessarily be easy.

Yes, absolutely. Like he would be supportive and helpful. He would be supportive. What's the next step? So I said the other thing, Jimmy, is it needs to be an independent production. I'm making this as an important historical film. And as you can see, I'm bringing into full film together. I want to make a film focusing on music and this musical journey that's inspiration.

He goes, so it needs to be independent film. He goes, that's fine. You make the film. And so from then on, you know, I went to track down John Paul Jones and he hadn't seen American Epic. So I sent a copy of the American Epic films to his manager and said, would you just ask him to watch 20 minutes of this? Yeah. And if he's not interested, you'll never hear from us again. Yeah. And I think it was a day or two later. I got a phone call and the manager says he wants to meet you in there tomorrow.

Great. You're free. Great. And so we met at this club in Chiswick, and I sat down with him. And that was in a magical meeting, because John Paul Jones is the most press shy, that does the least amount of media of a group that does no media. And John Bonham even less. Yeah.

But John Paul Jones, no, John Paul Jones might have done the least media of any of them. Yeah. He doesn't feel any compunction to be, like, blathering to the press at all. Yeah. So I'd done a huge amount of research on him And I was fascinated by his story And so I sat down with him And started walking through the storyboard

And the first thing that struck me That I'd never seen in the few fragments of bits and pieces he's done He's an incredibly charismatic guy Really funny I mean you see it in the film, can't you? I mean, he is a natural raconteur And I was saying, I mean I have to say I was looking from a filmmaker's point of view

and I was going, this guy's absolute gold. This was him comfortable and relaxed in a private place and I'm walking through and I'm talking through all these details about his childhood and his musical background. There's tons of stuff like two hours before we get to the first Zeppelin and rehearsal and I'm into this.

And you can see how I'm interested in this stuff. And so he's like piling in all. Now he had lots of stuff that is not known because he is the most mysterious of any of the Zeppelin things. If you look online, before when we started, there's not even a picture of his parents anywhere, you know, which is unheard of with an act of that magnitude.

There's always little bits and pieces. He is incredibly mysterious figure. So he's every bit as mysterious his life as the 1920s blues out. How would you say the meeting with John Paul Jones and Jimmy were different? Jimmy's meeting was very focused on all the details that make up the whole. And Jimmy has this real attention to detail, like, it's all the bricks make the giant castle. And so he's going through and you're going talking through the whole film. And he's essentially trying to ensure that all the pieces are there.

Yes. And if there's any additional things, he's going, well, that led to this and this is to this. And then this is, you know, so he's like checking all the wiring. John Paul Jones was more of a raconteur, and so he was like a great after-dinner speaker. He would try and give you the feel of those times, that he was really was someone trying to evoke, like when he would talk about the vaudeville careers of his parents, he'd really try and bring you into those theatres with those acts. When he's playing his little band and he's chatting to this,

because all those little bands they'd play in youth clubs, and youth clubs were generally run by churches. And so this preacher comes up to him and says, do you play the organ? And John plays a bit piano. He kind of goes, oh, yeah? He says, well, we're looking for an organ. Then we also need an organ.

And Jones, he's just 14, just says, I can get you an organ. So the priest, who's actually a young priest, I think he's only like 24 or something. The Rev Gordon Bates, I found out later. I tracked him down, the priest. He was still alive. He's now 90.

Wow. The loveliest man. So he's the one when I tracked him down. He provided all the photographs you see of the church with the congregation. Because that church that Jonesy goes to, it was bulldozed like a couple of years later in 64. I think he was there in about 61. And so all that stuff is like completely lost a time in the Red Gordon Bates. And the Red Gordon Bates also had all these old cuttings.

including a picture of Jonesy's first band, The Shadows, at the youth club. He had a photograph of that. And so amazing stuff. And so Jonesy was really good at evoking these places and the atmosphere. And I just found like I was in these streets with him. He talked about as a little boy, he wanted to be a studio musician. And he didn't get his dad to set it up for him. He went down to this street in London where all the musicians would congregate

called Archer Street, which is in Soho. And it'll be like, you need a bass player, you need a drama, like this. And he's there with these old, grizzled old session musicians, this little kid with his bass guitar. And he gets a gig playing with one of the shadows, you know, Tony Meehan. And so I remember thinking with him, he was very effective at giving you a feel of places, what atmospheres were like. And so you see in the film, he's the one that really is quite evocative about being in that

room in that first rehearsal and he's like there's all this equipment and it's like he's so-and-so meet so-and-so so I thought he was brilliant because he made me feel like I was in these rooms in these studios at the end of that first meeting with him did you get the sense this could happen he said at the end of the he said he's been very engaging for the whole time but he didn't make any comment on the on the overall film and he just looks at me and he had this sort of half smile with somewhat impassive expression and he goes by the way this is me excited when can we start wow amazing so next is robert he's yeah tell me about that so robert was the only person that was aware of us we were on his radar as i said through american epic the person that really got me started in the entertainment

business was brian eno i was working on a multimedia project called towering inferno and bry I had gone to see him and asked for his help, which he very, very kindly extended to us. And he was a very important thing about the Holocaust. I was the only Gentile in all Jewish production. And Brian lent enormous support and guidance to help get this thing. And I got the soundtrack signed to Island Records. And Brian recommended, I said, look, he said, you need an experienced person helping you navigate, getting in funding for this and doing. so he recommended this amazing manager called David James,

who managed Jar Wobble and all these people like this. And Justin was a member of Invaders of the Heart, Jar Wobbles Band, Justin Adams. So these were the guys that got me into the business on the music side. And so Justin and I had stayed in touch through David James, and Justin then had become Robert's musical director for many, many albums years. They were very close. and all those wonderful things

where they were going and playing in the desert and stuff like this. That was all with Justin because Justin's area is like Robert's hugely broad in that musical area. So Justin had been telling him about these guys he knew that were tramping around the South and had found photographs of Henry Thomas, photographs of such and such.

So occasionally I think some of these things we were founding that I was texting Justin were being passed on to Robert. So we'd met Jimmy, we'd met Jonesy and the next thing was to meet Robert and I was just reaching out to each

of them individually in just whatever seemed to be the easiest order and I didn't say when I made the meeting I've met with so-and-so and normally at the end of the presentation I think Jonesy might have said you've seen Jimmy I said yeah I saw him last week is he in I went yeah who's in

and he goes in so it was like that so Robert had just begun a tour and one of the first dates on the tour was in Perth, Scotland, which is where my producer, Alison Magorty's family are. And so we went up there and Justin Adams put us on the guest list of the show. And so we come backstage and it's this big old theatre full of people. But wonderfully, for some reason, no one had been given backstage passes apart from us. It was like a dream, basically.

So we're on our own in the backstage, Justin, and Robert strolls in and comes and gives this really warm greeting and sort of says, I just want to say how much I've enjoyed American epic. The films are amazing, the book and everything. It's all this wonderful stuff. And he turns to me and he says, what are you going to do next? So I said, funny you mentioned that. We'd like to do you, Led Zefflin.

And he sort of looks at me like somewhat like, blankly. And I brought like a piece of archive. I thought I'd never dream of pitching someone a film at an aftershow. But I thought, I think I brought something like a piece of proof of where that first rehearsal was. I think I got some paperwork. Because it's always been a source of mystery. It's on Girard Street. That's been, no, there's been some people at the speculate, but generally was understood it was on Girard Street in Soho, which is Chinatown now. But the exact building until we did this film as being lost in the midst of time so i had some piece of research i'd found that indicated the address of where that was and he was like i could see his eyebrow

raise and then we just changed the subject and uh we chatted about lots of things and stuff like that super friendly and at the end of the evening he just uh he shook hands and said goodbye to alison and me and then he went out of the room and he stuck his head back in the door and he goes i know you're game and I'm interested, meet me in Sheffield. So a few days later, we went down to a show in Fresh Sheffield, and we mess him there, had this really nice chat, but he had loads of people backstage there. And then he said, at the end of the evening, he said, meet me in Los Angeles, which is where I live. So it's like, I know a few week, a week or two later, we're back in Los Angeles and we go to see him at the Orphium. And this wonderful concert, really, really memorable

show and it was quite good was actually I really loved the concert he was playing it was like a fantastic concert I wasn't really did this version of bluebirds over the mountain it was just a terrific show so I was getting to see these shows each these missions had to watch the show before meeting him but I really enjoyed that show so it was kind of very memorable that whole thing but if you go backstage in Los Angeles there must have been like 200 people then he comes and says a quick polite hello and he talks to every single person in the room really politely goes to more so it's like two hours later, and eventually I said, two hours, I said, oh, we should go, so he was out, and she says, no, stay. And eventually everyone's gone, it's this giant room, and he's

standing against one wall with his manager, Nicola, and we're at the other wall, and then he just walks over, and comes over and says, are we going to do this? And I said, yeah, and he goes, meet me in Birmingham. So you go on a plane, we go to Birmingham, and then God bless him, he walks into the hotel, and standing next to him, is Pat Bonham. And so I thought, you lovely man, you've spoken to Pat, you've told her about who we are. You haven't been pitched to film, but you obviously take... He understood. Yeah, it was very, it was heartwarming.

A kid called her up and said, we should come to this. And I just sat down and went through it. And she came, she was so lovely, she came as pile of photographs, you know, that had never been seen before of John Bonham. Yeah. All these images. and they chatted through when Robert saw the story he was really funny

and I just saw this side of him I'd never seen in the media before so open like kind of wanting to be understood and we're going through the story and I remember he he could see his spirits raise when he saw it went up to 1970

yeah that was when it ended and I kind of mentioned this with him and he said this is so wonderful because this was a really wonderful time for me Yes. He said it was, it was before it was all kind of formalized being into it. So he said, we're playing to these wonderful hippie girls dancing. And it said, and there was no plan.

We were just winging it, you know? Now, of course, Jimmy had a plan, but it was this energy. I understood. And I totally got it. I think he saw, yes, this film. And even though Jimmy had a plan, there's no telling what's going to happen. Absolutely. There's no telling.

So for this was like, this was all the exciting. So I'd brought a little piece of paper up that was said like, I think I got it here. I bought this little piece of paper up that was like, we're going to do this film, you know, kind of thing so I could have something. No law or anything like that. He just signs it straight away with Pat. This is incredible. Yeah. This is incredible.

Yeah. He was like, I'm in. Wow. Great guy. So then we set up the interviews, and we have this, we have a meeting with all of them, all three of them together. And how's that? And how are they different together versus independently? Well, you know that rhythm that you have that people like, they just have a, it's all of us. You know, when we have like, if you put me in the room with my brother and my dad, I'm going to talk differently than if I'm on my own.

So it's no different from any of those things. You just get a slightly different rhythm to the people. You know, one person might be quieter than they are when they're with you. Yes. Another person might be louder. Yes, it was one of those things. When you make documentary films, this is very common. Yes. Tell me the differences, though.

Tell me in the group meeting what was different. Well, I mean, this is a meeting to really formally decide, are we going to do this film kind of thing? Are we going to let you, are we going to allow you to make this film? In the sense, you can't make a documentary about someone without their permission to use the music. So I think in terms of that meeting, what was really cool about it was that they agreed that the film and supported the film, we should have complete artistic freedom to make the film. So collectively, they agreed that. And I thought that was unprecedented in terms of like an act of that magnitude.

Yes. And so they never ordered a frame of the film. And so they're not producers of the film. but it was very personable they're very individually very entertaining and charming people to be with but when I was with the three of them together that was the first time I had this sense of like this is like a major organization there was something about the gravitas for the three of them in the room together probably even for them yeah I mean those meetings are rare as I understand It was very kind of them to organise that.

So, yeah, you felt like you were at a summit meeting of like these, almost these three countries or something. Very cool. It was very, yeah, so that was the point. So it was like, you know, when they agreed to this artistic freedom and they were like, yeah, you make it, looking back on it, what I felt was really ingenious. I mean, we required it, but it wasn't like something

we had to kind of like push for. What was really smart about it is that, when they made a decision as a group that they were going to do something and as you know the last one was the O2 so these are very rare these things and that's one of the wonderful things about Led Zeppelin is they're not like

pushing product down people's throats. They let the music stand for itself as I see it what I thought was really great about is they put all the onus on you, the filmmaker because you go I'm in this place that no one's allowed to be in to make this film and they've given me the freedom to make it So it better be bloody good, you know, because you've got no one to blame by yourself if it's not working.

Yeah. I thought that was, on so many levels, it's smart, you know? And so we set about putting the thing together and then we did the interviews with them. And first, the other thing that's worth mention is having incredible memories, like way better than mine, like astonishingly good memories. Don't forget, I've done 175 background interviews with everyone from Vic Flick to Glenn Johns to you know, Rev Gordon Bates. Yes. None of which is in the movie.

It's just the information you need to make the movie. Yes. Only voices in the movie are the band. Are then because... And the music. Because they're alive, apart from John. And so let the audience, they've agreed to let them talk. Don't interrupt them and tell the story.

I knew after meeting them, I thought, they're reliable witnesses. So I'd done it at eight months of... I was obviously very familiar with Led Zeppelin before. But I've done eight months of hardcore research. And so I'm aware when I'm talking to someone, if they're a credible witness, you know, do they remember things correct? How did you find the Bonham audio interviews?

So I'm thinking, what, if we have all three of them talking, we have to have John in there. And I thought, God, this is a high bar because he was super press wary. And so I thought, I've got to try and track down something with him talking. And I remember Robert saying, because I think I said to them,

I want to have John to have an evening. to have an equal presence and i remember robert saying how are you going to do that it's like i don't recall hearing anything of him talking more than a few sentences and i said we'll find it and i think he said something like well he did american epic i guess you found all that stuff from the 20s yeah you know so how i did that was i tracked down every interview that john had done in the print media and anywhere else and i contacted all the journalists most of whom were alive and said, did you have a tape? And in most cases, they either had done shorthand or they discarded the tape or whatever it been.

And eventually I'm talking to Sam Rappello, who runs the Led Zeppelin website, who's a huge repository of, like, Led Zeppelin material. And he passes on this bootleg recording of an interview with Robert and John, and it's like a really good interview. It's a short excerpt, but it's excellent journalists. And the sound quality was not good enough to use in the kind of film we make for a cinema. It was like third or fourth generation, but I could tell it was originally from a quarter inch tape. And I could tell it was also a radio journalist because he was not talking over them.

And he had an Australian accent. And so I contacted the University of Canberra in Australia, which is where radio tapes in Australia, That's where they get sent if someone can be bothered to send them in. And fortunately, the University of Cambridge done a giant American epic festival. So they were helpful. You had a relationship. I had a relationship. So I sent through the tape an excerpt of the tape with the journalist speaking and saying,

can you identify who this is? And they identified him as this journalist from a Sydney radio station. And he was a stringer that had obviously been doing this interview in advance of their first Australian tour. I went to the radio station, they said, we don't have that tape. So I went back to the University of Canberra and said, has this tape ever been sent to you? And they looked and they went, no, we don't have it. And then before I put the phone down, I said, how many unmarked reels do you have? And they went thousands.

Because doing epic, I found that with the Library of Congress in these things, there are pallets of stuff that get bequeathed to them that they receive. but it can take years to process that material. So they said thousands of unmarked reels. And so I persuaded them to start looking through the unmarked reels. I think it was a couple of months later. I got a phone call and they said, go to your email like that. And I opened up the email.

And there was a MP3 transfer. And it was that interview and it sounded bloody amazing. Wow. And so I persuaded them to send a reel. Great. into our endpoint audio where our engineer Nick Berg and we transferred it, it was fantastic. And it was just like the dream interview. So many comments from him that other band members hadn't said.

Wow. And then after that, we found two other American interviews that just discovered shorter ones. And between those three, there he was. Yes. And I said, he was never doubling up what the rest of the band said. and he was talking about all these things in the moment I remember Jimmy's sort of saying he said in the funny sort of way

he's like the star of the show isn't he? Because he said he's right there in the moment because his interview is so close to the events when they're happening. So he's got he's fresh and he's got all these perspectives. So those were the elements that came together and when the band turned up to the interviews

I said all of them turned up with bags of photographs and sound recordings. Everything I'd never seen before. So Robert turns up with all these pictures of him from his different groups and his bands, but also a lacquer of this track that him and John Bonneman in their group, Robert Platt and the Band of Joy, called Memory Lane, they'd written together. And no one had ever heard that before.

So cool. And so he said, there you go, have this. And all of them, John Paul Jones, all, it just, I think this is anything with Zeppelin. That's all I'll say. I mean, I don't want to speak for them, you know, but what I did notice, And the lesson, the lesson I said, the kids, when they go for it, they go for it. Yes. They do it properly.

They don't hold back. And I think those interviews in the film, they're super candid. Those are people really telling you what they feel. Where did the footage come from of the live performances? I searched everywhere bar the Mariana trench for any existing footage. So there were two or three known performances that were filmed from that time and a lot of material that isn't been seen before but there were two or three known forms so the first thing i would do is i would track down the filmmakers or whoever had filmed it and i'd go to those facilities and i'd go

through and get all the rushes and the original element so with this film everything you see in the screen has been in our hands so you know like here so this is the actual negative for the performance of dazed and confused amazing this is what comes into our hands so we have all these pieces back in the days of the 40s and 50s, sound was like one of the highest priorities in the Hollywood movies and really, hence, the enormous attendance figures that movies used to have then.

Now Sound is kind of a bit of an afterthought in films. And so when we get these films in here, what we're doing is we're transferring the original film and we're able to do really high-quality scans. But what makes this difference is that Nick Berg is probably the best transfer engineer on the planet for pulling audio off all these different mediums because he did the American epic film so he didn't just like learn

how to transfer 78s he has the original recording system each era of Hollywood he has all the original mixing desks he so you know we were working on the mixing desk that they mixed Oklahoma on I see yeah and so he understands all that material he's able to record this stuff going in and so he knows what he's meant to be hearing when he's getting the original nags of the elements, what's meant to be coming out. And so, you know, I experienced that when we were using the original 1920s recording kit for American Epic, I suddenly knew how the 78s were men of sound because I was making them. I was making them with Willie Nelson and Nas and Jack Y. I could hear what these things are going to sound like. So when I would get the 78s from the 20s, I would know

what was a product of deficiencies on that disc as opposed to what the actual wax disc it was cut to sounded like, you know? See, all these things you get to learn. Every medium brings something to the recording positive or negative. Correct. It always does something. Like, we fetishize vinyl because it sounds so good, but it doesn't sound like what the tape sounds like.

It sounds like vinyl. Exactly right. And so that's the fundamental thing of the movie when you watch it is actually what you're listening to. So with Lode Zeppelin support, we have access to master tape. remasters of the Zeppelin material but from Epic I also started listening to the original discs and I remember thinking what are we going to give the public as you mentioned when you make a record sounds different yeah there are three

steps in that process you have your quarter inch master that Glyn Johns and Jimmy mixed down in in Olympic for Led Zeppelin one then that goes to Atlanta and a production master's made. And various things are done to that tape to get it ready for being cut. Then stage three, a lacquer is cut by a George Pyrus or a Bob Ludwig. And that has a huge amount of stuff done to it, as you know.

So in the case of, say, Zeppelin II, Bob Ludwig hugely gooseed that cutting of that record so that it has this extraordinary sound. that record is so loud that after they pressed the first, I don't know, 250,000 of them, they were getting complaints from people that had cheap turntables because the needle is moving, you know, when you play a record, the volume is created by the needle moving more violently, so you have more dramatic peaks and troughs for the needle to be passing through,

and that creates the volume. And so in the cheap record player, the needle will jump out. And so that Ludwig cut is like magical. And so I started assembling all these records. I brought a few here to show you. So this is the original Ludwig, you know, this was sealed when I bought it. So I had to buy a whole bunch of these,

what appeared to be very first pressing sealed, hoping that there would be one of the Ludwig versions in there. And then similarly, this is like the legendary, you know, first turquoise pressing of Zeppelin 1. But my favorite version when I was playing, it is this version here. Did you AB the sound on all the other?

We had masses of copies of these records. But I'm saying you would pick based on what sounded good, not based on what you thought was what sounded good. Reported to be the best. You always went by what sounded best. So, yeah, with these records, what you have here is in America, I think there are four pressing plants, a pressing Zeppelin one. And each of them have different.

cutting engineers all approaching and this tape is a tricky tape there's some azimuth issues on zeppelin one the production master that was made by atlantic and so they're trying to work correct for this and so all these lacquer cuts are very different and the british ones different so we must have had about i don't know 16 17 versions of what were you playing them back on oh we were at end point probably the best playbacks of lathe on the planet you know And so we're going through these. And what I notice is these original records, they have a quality to them. There's a quality of the sound.

I went, this is what the public heard. This is what excited the public. And I thought, why don't we in this film give the public what they heard in 1969, but on the best copy of that disc on Planet Earth played back on the best hi-fi on Planet Earth. Which is not hearable other than in your movie today. Yeah. You can't hear that. You can't hear this.

But it's the truest sound to what was originally intended. Because, of course, when these were made, when Jimmy's and the band are in the studio making these records, they completely know that the endpoint is that disc. Yes. The master tape is not going to be distributed. No. And in fact, the master tape is made, knowing in mind,

that all these things are going to be done to it. Yes. So in the case of this example here, Led Zeppelin 2, this is this extraordinary cut by Robert Ludwig, which I remember Jimmy saying to me, this is the way to hear Zeppelin, too, is this particular pressing. Wow. Now, this is made one of the plants called Presswell.

Atlantic were notorious for using bad, impure vinyl to save money. So Atlantic pressings are traditionally quite noisy. So this one here happened to be what we call a really good clean puck, and it's in one of the best pressing plants. And so this one was incredibly clean copy. So what we did is we're presenting this, and this is in the film, with no equalization, no compression. All we've done is if there's any minor clicks in the transfer,

they're manually removed. So you're hearing the music. The way it was intended, the day it came out, and we're serving it to like a pineapple, cut off the tree in Kauai, sliced in half, and put on your plate. That's what we're doing musically. And it sounds, I've been listening to Led Zeppelin music

for as long as it's been around, and I've never heard it sound like it sounds in the movie and it's thrilling. It is thrilling, breathtaking. Thank you. However you did it, it worked. So for me, when you hear the recordings that are the studio recordings like Little Richard

and Johnny Benet, you're again hearing the original disc with those original lack of cuts as they were done. And if you know a bit about like, early recording, those 50s records, like the chess records, you know, howling more from things like that or the early rock and roll records, those cutting engineers were applying reverb as the lacquer was being cut. So when you listen to the original Chuck Berry records from the 50s, that's the only way you'll hear that original sound is getting the original records. They were also sped up often with the Chuck Berry records.

Yeah, you're right. Yes, I'd forgotten about that, yeah. Because they wanted Chuck's voice to sound younger. Yeah, yeah. So they sped up the record. So there's this enormous amount of like artistry that goes into cutting those records that 50, 60 years later you can't get back to. So what I'm interested in the film is if you want to make a two-hour film about Led Zeppelin and you think a film about Led Zeppelin is worth an audience spending 20 bucks and sitting in a cinema for two hours, do not mess with the music. And so my view is, we're all here because of this music.

So give it to the audience in the purest form you possibly can. And when I go through all the variables, I go, the purest form is what you would have heard the day it came out. When they approved on that test pressing, I went, okay, that's fine. That's the Finnish article that the public heard. So I'm giving it to you on a system, a copy in a system is beyond anything you could own domestically. If you're doing this story that takes you from 1944 through to when they meet in 68, you're hearing each of those pieces of music that influenced them or that they played on like Goldfinger. You're hearing those records as they were cut in 56, as they were cut in 62, as they were cut in 65.

So you're hearing the exact sound of how those records were envisioned in each other of years so that you're taking a musical journey through time, a recording journey through time in the film. There was a damaged piece of film of Jimmy playing acoustic guitar. Where did that come from? He appeared on a BBC TV show called The Julie Felix Show, and she was like a folk singer. they had two tape machines recording the performance one of which there was some grit or something on the head of the machine and so the recording was damage that was being made the other copy was lost years ago we have searched high and low for that everywhere not turned up so all that survived was that damaged tape but the sound was undamaged the sound is phenomenal yes and and so I went to see Melissa Quintas, who is one of the VFX artists for James Cameron and Avatar, and she did some restoration work on film footage for American Epic.

And I presented this to her and I said, look, we can't afford the budgets of Avatar. But would you and your downtime look and see if you can approve this? And she very kindly spent months and months in her, the few hours she had off making Avatar way of the water or whatever. but she would tinker with this and just literally frame by frame try and paint out the worst of the lines that were running across it. And what she did is compared to the original tape

is a miracle. The original tape would induce like an epileptic fit or something watching it. So she did a phenomenal job. So there's no AI whatsoever in the film. Anything we've done is old school. But what was very touching about is I remember screening the film for Jimmy

before the restoration was done. Yeah, sometimes you do these screenings to the group, you know, just in case someone watches something and goes, oh, I've actually got a photograph of that, you know? And he watched it, and then he turns and he goes, I do hope that stays in the film, that clip. He says, because I imagine when you sell this film, there'll be probably people try and tell you to take it out, because it was very damaged then. It's still damage, but it's one of the highlights of the film. It's so out of context of anything we've seen of Jimmy playing. We've never seen anything like that, sitting down with an acoustic guitar and killing it, which he does.

Yeah. It's breathtaking. Thanks. Yeah, and that's that folk, that's that folk eastern, eastern side. Yeah. What's the first time you got to see the film on a big screen? Directors Guild. I did a rough cut of the film, tail in the pandemic.

and the only way we could screen it in front of an audience was to submit it to the Venice Film Festival and it wasn't finished but they accepted it and we opened the festival with it and I took it to the Directors Guild theatre in Hollywood and I screened it on that giant screen and what was the experience for you oh mind-blowing all the work that we put in getting all those original prints all the original sound that's when you see it blown up makes it all worthwhile but the thing that was the most mind-blowing was that I took the film to, went to New York and I went with Sony Pictures Classics and screened a film for Tom Bernard, who runs that company and his team. He's like the old Hollywood bosses that I read about in David Niven's book. I didn't think people like him exist anymore. They're like, shoot from the hit kind of guys. No marketing plans. Just like, do it, you know? And if they're in, they're in and they go for it. So I screened the film for him. And I just made some comment and he went okay we want to do this you know and he had seen zeppelin live at the texas pop festival in 69 and his head of sales a guy called tom prasus had seen the film that's the guy

that sells the film to all the theaters he'd seen zeppelin on that first tour so what are the chances you with the studio with the two key guys had been to see the group in that period that the film's covering you know that early period so i knew were in the right place and i just turned to Tom and I said, hey, you know, it'll be really cool, I think, with this. I don't like this normal thing where you ram stuff down people's strokes and there's posters everywhere, this giant marketing thing. That's so on Zeppelin as well. It'd be really cool if the film was introduced like Zeppelin were back then, like it just comes in in the underground on the West Coast and gradually word and mouth spreads. And he took that idea and he ran with it. And he called up and

he said, oh, you need to go and screen it for IMAX. And he'd approach to IMAX because IMAX have, I don't know, just a limited number of cinemas around America. I don't know if it's like 500 or something like that they'd got. And so we turn that to IMAX and I have to screen the film, test screen it at IMAX before all the heads of IMAX watch it. I never win my wildest dreams imagined that our movie would be on in IMAX. And I'm sitting watching it and it comes up on the screen.

And I was like, Jesus, this was made for IMAX. It really was. And this is where music films live is in IMACs. Because you know what it's like, Rick? When you have the musical things, you kind of want to be in that world. Yes. So your dream is to be inside the biggest speaker system and to be completely enveloped. No one wants to listen to music through a tinny transistor.

You know what I mean? Yeah. You want to hear it big. So I'm in there. And of course, all that work, we killed ourselves to get our hands on every. single film print, every photograph, and everything's scanned at this extraordinary high level so it could be literally projected on the Empire Strait building, you know? And so when I'm getting into IMAX, I was going, thank God we did all that work because

you can blow this thing up, huge. So I'm watching it in there, and amazingly, IMAX said, we'll do it. So what he'd done, which was clever, is we ended up having this exclusive run in IMAX. So it's a limited number of cinemas. And the whole opening two days sold out. Amazing. So it was like the way Zeppelin was launched. He didn't set up a single review or anything like that, no media.

He just invited a bunch of interesting people to come down and watch it in IMAX. These are musicians and film people. And there was no instructions, don't post on social media. So they just literally told their friends. So that's how the word of the film got out. It was not done through any campaign. It was just like, play it to a bunch of people, and they told other people. And how is it doing so far?

I'm kind of embarrassed to say, in a way, but, I mean, IMAX said it's their most successful music release of all time. Wow. Beautiful. Yeah. Beautiful, and it deserves it. Oh, thanks, yeah. I mean, what I'm hearing is a lot of people going to see the film two, three, four times. Well, it's like you listen to Led Zeppelin, too, a million times.

Why wouldn't you go see the movie? over and over. Makes perfect sense. Do you know that's a funny thing about the film? Obviously, I'm working intensely in Zeppelin 1 and Zeppelin 2. I'll confide here what my hope was. When I made the film, that's why you've got these full songs, and there's so much work on just giving you the pure sound. You know the way you get a fix, and there's something you want to hear,

and you have a hankering to listen to, I don't know, it might be Beyonce or Howling Wolf or The New York Doll. or whatever it might be, or the Beastie Boys. I thought, if you have that yen once a month to go to early Zeppelin one and two, I thought, I'd love if I could make a film that could equally fulfill that yen. Yes.

If I want to go into that zone, I could put the albums on and blast them, or I could watch this film for two hours and get all that music with the visuals and everything accompanied. And that could be an equally appealing point. opposition. Absolutely. The communication breakdown footage is incredible because the reception is so nonplussed. Tell me about when did you first see that footage?

One of the tenets of the story, I mean, it's a journey to America. This is an American Quest. So, as you said, it's like in Britain and Europe, initially, certain audience had been non-plus by Zeppelin and did not know what to make of them. So I came across this footage that had been shot for this French show called Tutansan. And when I looked at the footage, I thought I've got to go to the facility, the Chutoncine archives. And I went there and I got all the rushes for this and some footage that hadn't been seen before. Everything was shot. So if you look at the film, if there's a performance that is in the movie that has been seen,

A number of people have spotted this already. It's completely recut with different camera angles. So you're not watching anything that is in a form that it's been seen before. Yes. So we've looked at it as like film directors going, you know, but this is a Hollywood movie. I would be hitting him the bass player on this cue. The broadcasters missed the cues. Yes.

You know, and you see it all the time. Yes. The singers start singing. They're still looking at the drama. You know what I mean? So we are using the footage to correct for anything. like that so you're getting this super impactful performance so i was going through the rushes and i noticed these kids in the audience with their fingers in their ears yeah there's a there's a woman with a

baby in arms she's holding her baby and she's next to her husband and the band are blaring away and she's just shaking her head in just horror people look bored yeah they're completely bored and the band are just they're going for it obviously they're going like gangbusters yeah so what i was able to do was I was able to get these additional camera angles where I could pan across the audience. And if you look how it's cut, I've got other camera angles from behind the group, which confirmed those kids with their fingers in it, they're still there. The particular image, you can see that it's not fun. You can see what the band is seeing, the lack of reaction.

Yeah, exactly. And so what was wonderful about it was like this perfect thing. It was like, the whole film is constructed like a Hollywood musical in that the songs are used advance the story so they're not getting it over what are they singing communication breakdown you know when jimmy goes to try and get the deal in america what what are you hearing your time is going to come yeah so all the songs are kind of chosen to work this way but the thing in the film that was the joy was in terms of getting the story across is so they're playing for this european audience with their fingers and their ears that aren't getting it then they get on the plane and

they go to the west coast of america which is where Jimmy had envisaged, this was where this group was going to take off. And he saw that as the future. Yeah, this was where it was about these long shows, albums, not singles, in all this business. And he's on his way out there. When they get to the Fillmore, and this is the thing Jimmy told me, when I first presented to him, he goes, it's all about that Fillmore show. We had this warm-up show in L.A., but we were all sick with flu at the Whiskey ago. go but he said the film war was the make or break show and he said if that show hadn't worked it wouldn't have happened this was where it happened and he said because we were hitting

dead center in the counterculture yeah and it was like here it is and the world would have spread out one way or the other and it was like boom and then interestingly totally independently robert plant said to me said that peter garat had come up to him before the show and he said you better be good tonight. He said, because if you don't cut it here, it's over. That's in the film, Robert says that. Amazing. You know, so it was all on that show. And so what's brilliant, what are they playing there? Communication breakdown the second time. You normally wouldn't use a song twice, but that version. It tells a story. Yeah, it tells us, it's ferocious. Yes. It's absolutely almost Ramon's intensity performance. Yeah. And it gets over.

How would you say each of the band members deal with the legacy of Led Zeppelin? You know, it's interesting. This isn't for me to speak for them. What is for me is to put across in a film what they're telling me. And what they're telling me is also informed as a filmmaker by, as I said, 175 background interviews. I'm trying to be in a position when Robert Plant says one sentence to me, in a five-hour interview, I know that's important because I've spoken to all the people you grew up with. We don't often deliver some of our most important things in giant

monologues. Sometimes one passing comment might allude to an enormously important thing, so you have to do that background to know what you're listening to. Yes. And that background is, you can be talking to me and we're speaking English, but unless I really have looked into your background, for example, I don't necessarily understand everything you're telling me. I've got to know what you mean, you know? Yeah. And so if I've done that research, hopefully, when you're telling me something. So I think in terms of this, my sense of it was off the top of my head.

These guys strike me as musicians, professional musicians, first and foremost. I have no sense of that this was done for self-aggrandizement. or to make money, I think the principal motivator was to make music and to try and make music in the least messed with way possible, to have the ability to pursue these ideas in the purest form in a collaborative collective whole. There's a point where John Paul Jones in the film says, when he gets to Pang War and they're all about to start rehearsing properly. And he goes, we didn't want to be on TV. We just wanted to make music really badly.

And that might have been different than a lot of other bands at that time. I think it's very different from a lot of other bands. Because a lot of other bands, they all know each other. They've all sat in front of the TV set and watched the Beatles come on the Ed Sullivan show or they've gone to see the Sex Pistols or whatever their entry point is

or black flag or whatever it might be. And there's this element of like, you know posing in front of the mirror with your hairbrush singing you know and reading about these things in magazines what's interesting about these guys is that you have two of them that are so fundamental are seriously professionals even though they're so young they're professional studio musicians and john paul jones was telling me his day was get up super early in the morning go to say Abbey Road or wherever and I think the first session

might have been as early as 8am and that was jingles then there would be three sessions a day and your session was considered total failing unless you've got three songs fully in the can I've never asked why it was three you thought it would be two for a single

it was three so whether it was the who the kinks or lulu three songs and that's in a three-hour session and you have three of those a day then he was writing arrangements and so he would go home at night and be up until the small hours writing arrangements for the next day or the day after some driver would pick those up then he'd be off crack of dawn mad hours and he was doing that i think like six days a week i'd you know professionals serious professional so you've got half of lead zeppelin coming in as that yeah then

You have two other guys coming in that are from a really like the beating hearts of the band because they're from the West Midlands. So that's the home of Shakespeare. That's the home of Tolkien. So that's in those guys' bloods. I mean, that's the epicenter of British culture where Robert and John Bonham come from. People in Britain, London, where I grew up, will try and tell you not. But it is.

When you go, they go, this is our wellspring here, up there. Anyway, these guys are coming in. They had worked so hard. It's one of the mid-teens. They are every day out there trying to get gigs, playing gigs, meeting in bands, all this business. So when they get their first, I mean, Robert had, don't get it, Robert had made singles.

He'd gone into London and made singles, but there were brief moments this would happen, and then the single wouldn't be promoted or it wouldn't take off. And he's 19. And he's 19. So when he comes in to this room with this 24-year-old and 23-year-old, top studio musicians. I think the way that

their separate and the music group was shaped by the experienced session guys. Yeah. Like, as John Paul Dern said, it was like, you don't arrange songs in a studio. You come knowing exactly what you're going. Studio time is money. You come in and you've got it worked out. So my sense of it with them is

like, despite the extraordinary flamboyance of the music and the wildness of it, the abiding feeling I have of this is that these are like kind of like master craftsmen. Yeah. And it's hard to reconcile that with the appearance and the long hair and the thing. And this was like a gig. This was a music gig. It just happened to be a music gig that was enormously successful. More importantly, enormously influential. I think that's the thing that's probably more important to them if I had to guess was that it was influential. So I got the impression it was

about all about music with them, which is why the film, and probably a little book I read made me feel like this is why the film is very focused on the music and the making of the music is because in the time I had the pleasure of spending in their company, no one ever talked about money or rewards or anything like that. None of that stuff came out. I just didn't seem to register at all. It's all about music. I think that's probably what's been the huge missing part of the story and you know is that the fundamental part is it was done for music and it says

very telling when Jonesy says that comment like we wanted to play music really bad. How many people say that? I don't think most people say that. I don't think people say that. I don't think people in interview saying that. You know, I just want to play music really bad. They're not really like anyone else that I've encountered.

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