What is and what should always be

And if I say to you tomorrow
Take my hand, child come with me
It’s to a castle I will take you
Where what’s to be, they say will be

(Led Zeppelin, What is and What Should Never Be)

There is a scene in the current documentary film Becoming Led Zeppelin directed by Bernard McMahon, in which the singer Robert Plant tells us how during his childhood he visited every mystical peak in England with his parents, as well as many former fortresses, strongly feeling on those occasions what the past was telling him through its long-disappeared inhabitants. Perhaps this is the crux of understanding the phenomenon of Led Zeppelin, a band that did not want to move on when one of its equal members, drummer John Bonham, tragically ended his life on September 25, 1980.

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Let's go back though. Yes, we were contemporaries of Led Zeppelin, albeit quite unaware of its beginnings. In our tender teenage years, we were shocked by the passing of the band's drummer, John Bonham, which we learned from Jukebox, clutching the last Led Zeppelin record tightly to his body In Through the Out Door (1979), which was released under license by Suzy Records in the former Yugoslavia. At the time, we had no idea that just a few months later, in an even more terrible way, our great hero John Lennon would also lose his life. The year 1980 was obviously not at all kind to the greats of the most glorious days rock music. But Led Zeppelin! A young Robert Plant with a bush of golden hair in full glory, like some half-naked deity from Valhalla. Or a live broadcast of an ancient jousting tournament with guitar tools in the unique artistry of Jimmy Page. John Bonham as the drumming embodiment of the god Perun himself. And John Paul Jones in the role of a discreet bass hero who with a primal sound adds his jet propulsion to this irresistible sound machine.

Led Zeppelin brought the mystique of sex into our confused youthful lives, instilled in us the maturity of lore men and women, and along the way informed us that parental control was over for good. As it once was in the antediluvian era of the creation of the world, it seems to have been. You know that, Adam and Eve, the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge, with which the serpent tests human obedience. Well, when you're 13 or 15 years old - that sensory epistle is really worth the money.

ITS SOLE OWNER

Film Becoming Led Zeppelin it's probably the closest we'll ever get to the inside of Led Zeppelin. In fact, after the screening of the film in the MTS hall, we are momentarily carried away by the idea that for two hours we ourselves were somehow members of this unsurpassed group, reaching almost within reach of the special emotion that made up the composition and connected all its members. The mere fact that the remaining members of Led Zeppelin allowed this film to be made at all is a miracle, and shows how badly they wanted an honest opportunity to finally explain everything in person: Becoming Led Zeppelin it is not, namely, a corporate product, because this music is not owned by any company: the band was its sole owner from the very beginning. Here, therefore, "their story" was told for the first time in history.

It is this detail that is extremely important, because Led Zeppelin are one of the most secretive big bands out there rock dinosaurs. Exposed to the scorn of the "serious" music press at the time of their appearance, but often unfortunately also later, they opted for an honorable mystery instead of giving any interviews and other appearances to meet the prying eyes of the media. From them, the public could only get as much as they themselves wanted to give it - for the most part of their career, it was exclusively albums, sometimes nameless, as well as memorable live concerts.

Becoming Led Zeppelin it shows us the life path of the four members of the group before it finally came together, as well as during the first 15 months of its existence. In that short time, the band had four American and four British tours, releasing two albums (Led Zeppelin i Led Zeppelin II, both 1969) that would completely change the course of the music business. This is the story of a thorny path woven from boyhood dreams of doing music and making a living from music, to the number one spot in the English and American charts, "ahead of the Beatles" (with the album Abbey Road) - as one of them will mention in the film, with a mixture of delight and awe before that business and artistic fact.

SEXUAL ENERGY ROCK'N ROLLA

Led Zeppelin are the best and most famous offshoot of the famous British band blues schools from the 1960s, although at that time no one would say that they were - blues band. When you think about it, from today's perspective, what else would they be? That one hard rock, respectively proto-heavy metal - the expression they created - was definitely grounded in deep blacks blues roots, with original interpretations of a young, white, tortured man. In this regard, Robert Plant explains to you in the film how he "squeezed" the lyrics of the old blacks blues singer through his own bitter experience as a son exiled from a warm parental home, an unsuspecting accountant and almost homeless in the 1960s - you absolutely have to believe him. It is extremely instructive, at the same time, to see how the film Becoming Led Zeppelin it captures the atmosphere of the very root of the misunderstanding that Led Zeppelin had with critics, practically since they appeared. At the time when rock counterculture was becoming the most important new fact of civilization, and singer-songwriters with guitars, psychedelic and progressive rock bands searching for wisdom in their songs, explaining where this world is going... suddenly this troupe of sexual mystics takes the stage with their deafening from punk-blues, cheekily deconstructing all the false screens of the fashionable "spreading of consciousness" in front of him, and with them demolishing the positions of foils of all colors. No intellectual upgrade was required to listen to Led Zeppelin, no prior knowledge at all. They were there to open all senses, so - who survives.

The orgasmic quality of Led Zeppelin's music mesmerized audiences at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s. It was a challenge for a generation that heard far more about the sexual revolution supposedly gushing in torrents all around, than actually dared to practice this propagated free-thinking in their real relationships. Suddenly someone told them everything that could be said about it publicly, without twists and winking allusions. In the guise of Led Zeppelin code, sexual energy rock'n'rolla it received the most faithful interpreters of the new era. It was undoubtedly male music, but not the boringly self-sufficient kind, but the music that was looking for a woman without whom she could not even imagine her existence. The band corresponded to youthful fantasies to such an extent that it seemed to advocate a necessary return to that mythical creation of the world - but reset from the beginning! - and that humanity could exist at all.

And although in the version of the song Dazed and Confused from the movie The Song Remains the Same in the middle of the performance he directly quotes the famous refrain of Scott McKenzie: "If you go to San Francisco, make sure you put flowers in your hair" - Led Zeppelin were in many ways the antithesis of the naivete of hippies. Next to them, everything was bold. Audience and history are confronted here with a paradigm rock band for all future times: Robert Plant personified the image of the blond male model, Jimmy Page was his black opposite, and together with the others they offered rock and roll a circus like no other on the music scene before, at least not in this spectacularly erotic and at the same time ethereal way.

Because what in those long ago days Robert Plant radiated in front of everyone, hissing and wailing on stage as if in a frenzied love ecstasy, was also broadcast by the other members of the group. Really, when you see the way Page handles his guitar, sensually swiping the bow across its strings, and Bonham has virtually no intermediaries between his body and the drum kit, while Jones produces those visceral detonations from somewhere inside... it's clear why fans flocked to this ceremony of fulfillment of all their deepest desires.

INTIMATE AT THE END

Becoming Led Zeppelin through interviews with each of the group's members - and no one else - reveals to us what it all really looked like behind one of the most powerful rock scenery ever. It is historical justice that one of the biggest and loudest bands of all time leaves behind such a warm and tenderly intimate documentary, in which he explains himself in the best possible way. Even the unfortunate Bonham gets his chance to address us, through a lost interview given to an Australian radio station just at the time of their ascension to the throne. The huge research effort invested by the director-production team brings us more sweet moments that we will remember forever: for example, the scene of small children trying to cover their ears exposed to the noise of the track Communication Breakdown at one of Led Zeppelin's first live British performances, while at the same time young people in America instantly grasped the new vibe; then unseen pictures from the tours and from the studio, and finally shots of equally enthusiastic audiences in San Francisco and London, whose styling, for some reason, still seems so terribly modern, while the outfits of the band members can still be considered an unattainable fashion task.

Finally, watch this film about Led Zeppelin in the former House of Unions, where a screening of their legendary concert film was once held at FEST in 1977 at 10:XNUMX a.m. The Song Remains The Same, to which the then students of the First Belgrade High School were brought, as part of the "working Saturday"... is also in a way historical justice. It's all positive urban mythology about what is and what should always be.

I know what it means to be alone
I sure do wish I was at home
I don’t care what the neighbors say
I’m gonna love you each and every day
You can feel the beat within my heart
Realize, sweet babe, we ain’t ever gonna part

(Led Zeppelin, Good Times Bad Times)