Led Zeppelin Announce Landmark 50th Anniversary Documentary
The film, which traces their formative years, features new interviews with Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones.
Led Zeppelin have announced the imminent release of a new documentary celebrating the band on their 50th anniversary.
The still-untitled film, directed by Bernard MacMahon (who also helmed the 2017 documentary American Epic, about the first recordings of rural music in the U.S.), “traces the journeys of the four members through the music scene of the Sixties, their meeting in the summer of 1968 for a rehearsal that will change the future of rock, and culminates in 1970 when their second album knocks the Beatles off the top of the charts and they become the number one band in the world.”
The documentary features brand new interviews with Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones, as well as rare archival interviews with the late John Bonham. There's also never-before-seen archive film and photographs, state-of-the-art audio transfers of the band’s music, as well as some of the music that helped to shape Zeppelin's sound.
The film marks the first and only time the band have participated in a documentary.
Said Jimmy Page: "When I saw everything Bernard had done both visually and sonically on the remarkable achievement that is American Epic, I knew he would be qualified to tell our story.”
Added Robert Plant: “Seeing Will Shade, and so many other important early American musicians, brought to life on the big screen in American Epic inspired me to contribute to a very interesting and exciting story.”
“The time was right for us to tell our own story for the first time in our own words, and I think that this film will really bring that story to life,” said John Paul Jones.
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Rich is the co-author of the best-selling Nöthin' But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the '80s Hard Rock Explosion. He is also a recording and performing musician, and a former editor of Guitar World magazine and executive editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine. He has authored several additional books, among them Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, the companion to the documentary of the same name.
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