The Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant was driving through America 20 years ago when he heard a radio station announce that if any listener donated $10,000, they’d never play ‘Stairway to Heaven’ again. Somewhat tired of the song himself, Plant rang up and pledged the cash. ‘It’s not that I don’t like it,’ he later said. ‘It’s just that I’ve heard it before.’
Rather the same attitude seems to have been taken in the band’s new biopic, Becoming Led Zeppelin, which was released in British cinemas last week. The trailer calls it the band’s ‘first ever authorised documentary’, but fans hoping that this means seeing rough cuts of ‘Stairway’ should beware: all that glitters is not gold. The documentary focuses mainly on the band’s first two years from 1968, with no mention of their most famous song, or other classics from their 1970s pomp such as ‘Kashmir’.
Some believe this may simply leave room for a Part II – in which case, the sequel-makers had better get cracking, given that Jimmy Page is already aged 81. Others suspect that by focusing on the band’s early years, it conveniently dodges mention of the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll excess that later earned them infamy. Page, for example, was known for his fondness for groupies – some allegedly underage – which does not sit well in the #MeToo era.
One thing that both critics and fans of the film can probably agree on, however, is that it’s a Zeppelin-sized improvement on the band’s previous screen outing, The Song Remains the Same. Released to great anticipation in 1976, it’s widely regarded as one of the worst rock ’n’ roll films of all time, a monument to 1970s rock-star indulgence. Apart from some good live footage, everything else looks like the work of a drugged-up Zeppelin roadie with film school pretensions. It opens, inexplicably, with a scene featuring the band’s thuggish manager, Peter Grant, as a Mafia don gunning down his rivals. Other lowlights include a tedious backstage row about merchandising, Robert Plant doing medieval role-play, and endless Bonham drum solos. Plus, more shots of Plant’s gyrating crotch than even the most ardent Zep groupie would want.
To his credit, Plant later denounced the film as ‘a load of bollocks’. It is, however, just one of many dire pop music biopics made by British pop legends at the height of their fame, when creative judgments were skewed by egos, substance abuse and yes-men. Not only do they fail to do justice to some of our greatest cultural exports, but they also act as bed-blockers for better retakes, complicating licensing rights and giving band members a good excuse to say, ‘No, not again.’
Two prominent examples of this are Sex Pistols and the Clash, who, despite being prog-rock nemeses, were the subject of equally crummy contemporaneous rockumentaries. The Pistols’ 1980 film, The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle, has a plot so incoherent it’s hard to make sense of, but it essentially re-invents the entire punk explosion as a clever Situationist con by manager Malcolm McLaren on a gullible music industry. Guitarist Steve Jones plays a libidinous private detective on the trail of ‘Swindler’ McLaren, Sid Vicious shoots an audience member with a revolver, and there’s a tasteless appearance by a man playing ex-Nazi Martin Bormann. The only person who emerges with dignity intact is Johnny Rotten, who refused to have anything to do with it. To get around this, he is played by a cartoon character resembling a spiky-haired Shaggy from Scooby-Doo. The film is indeed a swindle in every sense.
Also disappointing audiences that year was Rude Boy, the Clash rockumentary. Once again, what could have been the ground-zero story of punk’s genesis is sidelined for a tedious fictional plot about a sex shop worker who becomes a Clash roadie. The filmmakers had limited chemistry with the band – at one point, a spittle-flecked Joe Strummer is shown screaming, ‘Get off the fucking stage!’ at their camera. The band themselves despised the resulting product, so much so that they commissioned badges for their fans urging a boycott.
Other notable flops by big British acts include The Wall, a piece of agit-pop featuring Bob Geldof as a pop star turned fascist, and Spiceworld, in which Posh, Ginger et al. drive around in a Union Jack-painted bus, dodging scheming promoters and tabloid hacks. It’s Magical Mystery Tour with a touch of Malory Towers, and appealed mainly to the Fab Five’s prepubescent fan base (notwithstanding a cameo role by Gary Glitter, deleted after his arrest on child pornography charges).
True, in the case of both the Pistols and the Clash, the record has since been set straight with proper documentaries – The Filth and the Fury for the Pistols in 2000, and the posthumous Joe Strummer biopic, The Future Is Unwritten, in 2007. But in both cases, fans had to wait nearly a quarter of a century, while in the case of Becoming Led Zeppelin, it’s been nigh on half a century.
Part of the problem is that music biopics can be as tricky to make as investigative documentaries. It’s not just the legal complexities of securing the audio and visual performing rights, which can span multiple recording deals. To have any credibility, a biopic requires the participation of at least the lead singer and some of the rest of the band, who’ve often either fallen out or no longer court fame. Bernard MacMahon, the director of Becoming Led Zeppelin, spent nearly a year researching his subjects’ history before he even approached them to ask for co-operation, half-expecting the answer to be no.
A major Rolling Stones drama, word of which first emerged in 2020, is now reportedly on hold because of funding cuts at Disney
Time can also help. Interviewees can talk as mature adults rather than as naïve rock brats. And as most bands reflect the time and place from which they sprang, a good biopic can be a good social affairs documentary too. But time is also running out. Britain’s rock heritage is one of its great pop assets, yet many of our best bands may well be dead before anyone gets round to bringing out a decent definitive biopic of them – let alone ones with Netflix-level budgets and production standards. A major Rolling Stones drama, word of which first emerged in 2020, is now reportedly on hold because of funding cuts at Disney. Work on a Fleetwood Mac rockumentary was only announced late last year, two years after Christine McVie’s death.
Other promising projects have fallen foul of artistic red tape. A 2020 Bowie biopic starring Johnny Flynn flopped, the late singer’s estate refusing to grant rights to use Bowie’s music. A biopic of one of my own favourite bands, the Stranglers – work on which began 13 years ago – is also reportedly stuck in limbo due to disputes between surviving band members. Meanwhile, countless lesser bands – who are still household names – may never get decent documentaries made about them at all.
Personally, I’d like to see the rockumentary equivalent of an Encyclopaedia Cool Britannica, to record the stories of every band that ever made it to Top of the Pops, and their lives in the provincial towns and cities (most interviews will begin with the words: ‘So-and-so was a very boring place in those days…’). Sadly, the golden age of streaming is already coming to an end, with production budgets being slashed. Still, if we let Britain’s rich pop history go undocumented for future generations, we’ll have committed the greatest rock ’n’ roll swindle of them all.
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