A to Zeppelin: The Story of Led Zeppelin (2004)
The Led Zeppelin Story documents the colorful and outrageous history of rock's heaviest band. This unique DVD features candid interviews with long-time tour manager Richard Cole, members of The Yardbirds, Bad Company, The Ramones, Foreigner, Vanilla Fudge, engineer Andy Johns, ex-girlfriends, Lori Mattix and Pamela Des Barres and more. Rare archival interview footage with John Bonham, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and manager Peter Grant, along with rare photos spanning the "New Yardbirds" era through the breakup of Led Zeppelin illustrates their fascinating story.
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Instant Favorite.
A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.
Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.
I hope that's not a spoiler. You'd think a documentary about one of the most famous rock bands of the 20th Century would have A) Their Music and B) The band members themselves! They only had old black and white footage from interviews long past. Plus dozens of other people who may or may not have met LZ at some point. I could only stand about 30 minutes or so. When they hadn't played a single note of Led Zeppelin, I was thinking "These guys don't have permission or copyright to play any music. They saved money on royalties by not using the boys themselves or their music. Now, I don't really know how these laws work, but I guess you have to purchase the right to play their songs, which comes out of your production budget. Oh well, I'm glad I didn't pay to see this otherwise I would have been mad.
I don't know where to start...There's few people interviewed in this E! Entertainment styled, very superficial program. Too bad that Page, Plant and Bonham (well, him obviously) only appear in short archive footage clips from the 70's. John Paul Jones gets no exposure at all!The interviewed are mostly their old road managers, engineers and Page's ex-girlfriends without anything insightful to add, just talking superlatives any fan could give: "Bonham was the best drummer ever", "Page was a complete guitarist" and so on. The ex-girlfriends mostly contribute in telling how they met him and what a genuine person he was and blah blah.Studio albums are handled incredibly quickly! Zeppelin 1 gets some attention and the rest are handled in a fast forward fashion, except the 3rd album where we are momentarily stopped to awe the greatness of Stairway. Most latter albums are mentioned by their names - nothing more.Those aside I found it pretty funny/sad how the documentary include a clip where Page tells that he attended (before the formation of Led Z) to muzak sessions where he had to play some non-stop non-inspiring music, and how he loathed that "crappy elevator music". Combine that with the fact that a documentary about one of the most influential rock bands ever doesn't have any music from Led Zeppelin. Instead some soft generic guitar MUZAK that might or might not resemble anything by LZ is playing on the background from start to finish. And when Elvis is mentioned the muzak slightly resembles his 'Suspicious Minds'.Of course a 45-minute "A to Z" Zeppelin documentary is going to be poor. A more complete documentary would have to be much longer.update: Having now seen a documentary "The Van Halen Story: Early Years" from the same people I'm convinced that the director/producer Mr. McLaughlin is only interested in making a quick buck with this lowlife format he has copied from those trashy E! Entertainment shows. Must have McLaughed all the way to the bank!