film review: Becoming Led Zeppelin

 

Directed by Bernard MacMahon

ChinoKino review: A- (in IMAX)

Reviewed by Allan Tong

First of all, this movie rocks on a giant screen. True, some footage is grainy on an IMAX screen, and the sound is bright in places, but this long-gestating doc effectively chronicles the sudden rise of the top hard-rock band of all time.

Led Zep's three surviving members, plus deceased drummer John Bonham heard in a rare 1980 interview, tell their early life stories. Guitarists Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones were top session men in Swinging Sixties London, lending riffs to everything from the Goldfinger theme to the early Kinks hits, while singer Robert Plant and mate Bonham were gigging in various blues-rock bands up in Birmingham. By the time they coalesced in the summer of 1968, all four were seasoned professionals. Page built the band from the ashes of the legendary Yardbirds, knowing his way around both a studio and stage. By the time of his birthday in January 1970, Led Zeppelin were the top band in the world. 

Their rise was that swift, that sudden. For once, a rock band isn't inflating its own importance. Becoming Led Zeppelin is told only by the band members. No confidantes, no ex-wives, no rock historians. It doesn't need to. If the story was about the later debauchery that gripped the band's world tours (i.e. underage groupies, drunk "The Beast" Bonham running amok), then such a film would need other perspectives. Here, the band alone suffices.

That said, manager Peter Grant needs some colour in Becoming Led Zeppelin. He was crucial to their rise by securing a golden record deal with Atlantic Records as well as record-breaking fees at the box office. Grant was a rare manager who protected and didn't exploit his band. He was also a former wrestler, infamous for intimidating tour promoters.

Another criticism is that a lot of the live footage in the film is taken from the excellent two-DVD set, Led Zeppelin. This includes the brief, but memorable performance from Tous en Scene, shot in Paris in June 1969 and broadcast on French TV. What is lost on home TV screens is magnified here--and it's not the band. Rather, it's the audience of ordinary folk--moms, dads, kids. Two little children plug their ears while their elders stare blankly as these screeching long-hairs. (I wonder if they later they boasted of seeing one of the first Zeppelin gigs.)

Another clip from the DVD set is the extended Dazed and Confused from UK's Supershow. It has been played often on TV and easily found online. However, this clip was the showstopper at the IMAX screening I saw. It is mesmerizing on a giant screen.

The film ends with a glimpse of the January 9, 1970 show at London's Royal Albert Hall. The entire gig is presented on the DVD, but looks disappointingly grainy on the big screen. That said, the two hours leading up to this point are a thrilling ride. You may not need to purchase the inevitable blu-ray or DVD of this doc, but fans should catch it on the big screen while they can.

Becoming Led Zeppelin opens across Canada in 13 cities in IMAX on Feb. 7.

film review: Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis)

 

Directed by Anton Corbijn

ChinoKino score: A

Review by Allan Tong

Atom Heart Mother, Band on the Run, Peter Gabriel 2, Houses of the Holy, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Dark Side of the Moon. Those are a few of the album covers that legendary studio, Hipgnosis, designed in the 1970s, and this terrific, entertaining new documentary tells their story.

That story centers on company founders Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey (Po) Powell, two Cambridge lads who were mates with a young band called Pink Floyd in the mid-1960s. The careers of Hipgnosis and Pink Floyd would be forever linked as the thorny, but brilliant Thorgerson and the meticulous Powell designed most of the Floyd's early and later albums. Both entities hit the jackpot with 1973's Dark Side of the Moon, with the multi-coloured prism on the cover forever being the band's visual signature.

The documentary is generous with vintage interviews of Thorgerson (who died in 2013) and contemporary ones of Powell, former collaborators as well as clients Pink Floyd (Waters, Gilmour and Mason), Paul McCartney, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel, and Graham Gouldman of 10CC. Noel Gallagher offers an outsider's perspective as a fan, and is as witty as always. The meat of the film lies in the astonishing stories of some of Hipgnosis' most famous covers. For Wish You Were Here, Powell set a stuntman on fire 15 times, until the stuntman's face nearly burned. Remember, these were the days before Photoshop. For Wings' Greatest Hits, the duo flew to the top of Mount Everest by helicopter to photograph a small statue that Paul McCartney had bought. Terrified of heights, Powell risked sliding down thousands of icy feet to his death. Of course, Hipgnosis could have just placed the statue on a bed of salt inside their London studio, but, hey, that would have been too easy.

It was also the 1970s, after all, the golden age of rock albums which sold in the multi-millions, and Hipgnosis was charging a fortune to design covers. That may boggle today's young minds, as Gallagher notes, who see only a postage-stamp icon of an album on their phones. However, covers were a big deal back in the day because they shaped the image of a band and conveyed the message of the music within.

Director Anton Corbijn evocatively lights his interviews in black and white and uses striking animation to announce each album cover like a chapter page in a book. Corbijn knows a thing or two about album covers, since he has photographed a few for bands like U2.

The hero and villain of this story is Thorgerson, whom everyone in the film recalls as a pain in the ass, but also sharp and charming. He and the more level-headed Powell rode the excesses of 1970s rock until they crashed in the early-1980s in bankruptcy and acrimony. It was a bitter ending, which abruptly ends the film and begs for more detail. However, enough time has passed to heal those wounds and celebrate the surreal imagination of the greatest album designers of all time.

Squaring the Circle opens Friday, June 9 in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Victoria in select cinemas, then expands to other cities in Ontario as well as Quebec City and Charlottetown this month.