Becoming Led Zeppelin – interview with Bernard MacMahon and Allison McGourty

Публикация в группе: Осторожный оптимизм

Director Bernard MacMahon & Producer Allison McGourty had previously worked on the five-hour-plus defining documentary series on the birth of American recorded roots music, American Epic. Becoming Led Zeppelin is their new smash hit film, breaking records…

We meet one night in the heart of London.

I’ve just come running from a funeral in the countryside of my ex-guitarist Warren Wilson who was an absolute genius guitarist, obsessed with Zeppelin. They played Zeppelin at the funeral. I hadn’t slept yet. So for me, the air was already charged and the pictures of Warren were strewn on the seating around us as we started to talk Zeppelin, roots and country blues…

(We start by speaking about the IMAX preview of Becoming Led Zeppelin)

Bernard MacMahon: Andy Mackay from Roxy was there. He was going completely nuts about it, it was lovely. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds were watching it the other night in the Picturehouse around the corner and they’re all going again tomorrow night.

Are you going to go?

Bernard: Yeah I think I’ll go, why not?

Yeah, well it’s good, because they can speak to you afterwards.

Bernard: Well, Warren (Ellis, from the Bad Seeds) said it inspired him to go and make an album after watching it. Which is really nice. That’s what the big purpose of the movie is: showing you how to do it…

Bernard: When I was 12, my mum was an antiques dealer. The house was filled with boxes of bric-a-brac. One of the bottom of one of these boxes (when I was 12) was this little paperback book: Led Zeppelin. I discovered much years later that it was the first ever book published about them. Howard Mylett. Yes. I was doing an interview with the really nice Dave Lewis from Tight But Loose. Lovely man. He said to me – it’s very interesting – he said that ‘this book, you read this when you were 12…a lot of that information has been lost. It’s no longer part of Zeppelin law’. He said ‘there was a huge amount of insight into that book, as to who these guys were and by someone that’s there at the beginning’. Because at the end of Zeppelin and how Zeppelin ended, the insane levels of fame in the ’70s, the books that were published in the ’80s (which I’ve never read), where someone’s on the road with them for a week on some massive, insane tour, on jet planes and all this business, there’s this very different perspective from Mylett’s book, which is, in the beginning, looking forward.

So the story’s not ended in Mylett’s book. Tragedy has not really hit yet, so the perspective on Mylett’s book, if you’re a 12 year old, is the story of these four guys and how they’re doing this thing. So to me as a kid, it was really useful. So I’m reading this book as a ‘how-to’ guide to do stuff. And so my memory of the book (which I’ve not read since I was 12) but I did read it twice when I was 12 – that’s how interested I was in it. I used to like ‘quest’ stories, because I thought they were helpful. I used to love the Odyssey, Ladies of Hercules, Jason and the Argonauts…and this book, for me, fell in the same category. What I liked about it was that it was four, completely different boys with very different parents; literally, north, south, east and west. In our film, we discover that you’ve got one whose parents are vaudeville entertainers – so he actually grows up in the wings of show business. You’ve got one whose father thinks he should get a proper job, but the mother’s very supportive of his artistic ambitions. Then you have one where the parents are neutral: they love the kid, and as long as he’s paying for his kid and his wife, he can do this music lark, otherwise he can work for the family building business. And then at the other end of the spectrum, you have this kid and his parents are saying ‘unless you become a chartered accountant, we’re gonna throw you out of the house and disown you’. So as a little boy, knowing the friends I had at school, I thought: your parents are going to be one of those four categories, if you’re wanting to do something a little different, whatever it might be.

Allison McGourty: A photographer, writer…anything creative…

Bernard: Anything creative, or anything that’s a little bit ‘out of the norm’. My mum was really good at always taking us around Britain and visiting castles, stately homes and galleries…things like that. She was always filling our head with culture. So I was kind of familiar with England more broadly than maybe a lot of small boys were. So I knew when I was reading the book, that this union of people from the West Midlands and the London suburbs was highly unusual. I understood that even though the Midlands, West Midlands, is the cradle of British culture, it’s the home of Shakespeare, it’s the home of Tolkien. There’s this intense snobbery in London towards people outside of London. So these guys in the West Midlands that are desperately trying to break into the British London music scene and can’t.

And then they’re meeting these guys that are not only the London music scene, they’re the absolute inner workings of it; they’re session musicians. As John Paul Jones said to me at one time, “When I met them for the first time, I thought they must think that we were tweed-jacketed, pipe-smoking, readers of the Angling Times”. He was kind of humorously referring to this as a real, sort of like culture shock. I remember him making some joking references, imagining what they were thinking ‘you southern poofs’ and all this business. And then what they’re thinking ‘Oh, you middle whatever’s’. So I think it’s just highly unusual, this cultural meeting.

Becoming Led Zeppelin – interview with Bernard MacMahon and Allison McGourty The equivalent in America would be, my god, I mean, it’d be like – imagine the biggest group in America were two guys from Manhattan and two guys from Tennessee? So I can’t think of a precedent in music or in culture where there’s this union – and that’s part of the power of it. So the message I got from the story, and why it was chosen to follow American Epic and why that one story was enough to be five in all those categories, was because what I took from this tape, from the story, all the research that we did in putting this film together (because we had about 170 background interviews across the board to research and fact check what we’re putting on the screen), what I understood and we understood from this was you have four people from very early teendom…they literally do not waste A. Single. Day. They are out there trying to advance their music careers in any way they can.

So the guys from the Midlands, yeah, they can’t get arrested in the snobby music scene, but it’s not stopping them. Robert Plant’s already recorded three singles for CBS. I mean, they sell nothing, but he’s out there, putting it out there. He’s a mod. He’s a kind of wannabe Tom Jones. He’s like a Buffalo Springfield (English version of). Then he’s singing with Alexis Korner. I mean, anything, he’s trying anything. He’s a compere for Stevie Wonder shows in the ’60s in Midlands clubs. He’s everywhere. He’s trying to get attention in the local press. John Bonham is literally in countless bands. All of them made little singles on their own, they sold nothing – every single member. And then, you’ve got the session guys, so they’re learning the whole time and then you can see that when you watch the film, that John Bonham’s not a rocker. The first thing he sees is Gene Krupa in The Benny Goodman Story. So that’s what you hear and see in the movie. Then he’s talking about James Brown. He was a soul boy. And then similarly, Jonesy: not interested really in rock. I mean, he liked a Little Richard song. He liked the Everly Brothers as a kid and he liked quite a bit of blues, but his main interest was jazz, soul and classical. So he’s coming from that angle.

Then you’ve got these two guys in the session world, Jimmy and Jonesy. Jimmy was showing me all these records – amazingly broad tastes. He was bringing out all these old ’50s records he’s owned when he was a teenager; these really rare records now, of Indian music, Arabic music. And these were legitimate things he was buying as a teenager. So he had remarkably broad tastes. He showed me a little 10 inch copy of the Johnny Burnett Trio Rock ‘n Roll album, which was just put out as a 10 inch LP in Britain. Very few people owned that record and it’s his copy, it’s got notations on it and it’s played to death because he was using it to learn all the parts.

So this is a person with really serious sponge-like interests in all kinds of music. So when they’re doing the session world, they’re playing on all kinds of stuff, from rhythm guitar for The Kinks to Shirley Bassey to elevator music, which is probably the majority of it, that kind of stuff… The Bachelors… All these things. And they’re in there, they’re soaking it up and this is the message of the film. They’re not just turning up and doing this work, which they’re doing really hard. They’re learning everything that’s going on. So he’s peeking into the control room and figuring out how they’re making these sounds. He’s not just turning up, plugging and playing guitar and taking a cheque and going home; he’s listening to all this stuff and they’re all like this, you know? Jonesey’s like the king of ‘fake it till you make it’, which his dad said – “you never turn down work”. So Mickey Most says “do you do arrangements?” in the movie and he says “oh yeah, all the time” like that and he wings it. Then he manages probably a couple of awful sounding arrangements, and then they start to probably sound reasonably good. Then by ‘67 he’s arranged the biggest record in America of 1967 which was To Sir With Love’. Mickey Most hated that song. I don’t think it was even given a proper release in Britain. So I wasn’t that familiar with that record, but we were in every supermarket in America. You hear that song. When I looked it up in Billboard: biggest record of the year, beating the Beatles and everyone. And that’s his arrangement. So he taught himself to do all that; along with learning the bass guitar (ironically) ‘a novelty instrument’.

“Get yourself a saxophone – you’ll always work” is my favourite line of the film.

You can clearly feel that, when you’re watching it…it’s an exciting film. It’s an exhilarating film. The way it’s edited, it seems to get faster and faster. Yeah it does. It feels that way. I didn’t analyse it. I just felt it. It felt like it was getting faster. We’re going to take off and you’ve even got the analogy of the rocket taking off in 1968, as their careers took off.

Allison: That’s what that’s there for. Very well spotted.

Bernard: Very well spotted. I was looking at the timelines of everything…

Allison: First of all, we made a timeline, then we wrote a script and then we created the storyboard.

(Bernard shows the storyboard: a huge collection of photographs of the group and events, placed in an old album of pages originally created for 78 rpm records.)

Bernard: We made this, and it’s, like, 100 pages.

I saw you with the book the other day, but I didn’t see what was inside…

Bernard: So this is a 1930 78 rpm album which you store your records in. So I thought this is a perfect vehicle from American Epic to follow on. So, yeah, this is the story. The whole thing was storyboarded like this, John as a baby…Gene Krupa…

These kids (looking at photos of Zeppelin as children), are they their photographs themselves?

Bernard: We found all these. You found them? Yeah and then they came to the interviews (we’ll come to that later). So this was all made and then all of this was committed to memory. And how far does that go? Well, right to the end of the film. So the whole film was mapped out before we met them, exactly as it is on the screen, the finished movie. Then when we met with them, I thought, I’m not going to write a word. I’m not have a single printed word, it’ll just be images and memorised…like every place, every day.

I remember when we met Jimmy…

Allison: The first meeting was seven hours…

Bernard: He turned up with these Waitrose shopping bags…

I know that Waitrose. I went to school opposite there.

I thought, oh, he’s brought sandwiches or something. He’s just put them by the door. Then we sat down and that’s when I discovered that they were fans of American Epic. I thought, oh, okay, that’s good.

So that didn’t come through the grapevine, while you were making American Epic?

Bernard: No, no. We were doing this speculatively and I think that that afforded the meeting. I mean, you know, the spirit of them (you’ve watched them) the spirit of the films speak for themselves. I mean, these are films that are made for love…Yeah you can see… And he can see that. They are artistic films. So we’re going through this and he’s really enthused as we’re walking him through the story…

Allison: He threw in the odd test as we were going through this…

Bernard: So I think I mentioned this at the IMAX, but yeah, the one I remember was, we said “this is the point where you meet Robert Plant for the first time, you see him singing”.

Allison: And he said “what was the name of the group that Robert was singing with?”

Bernard: Obs-Tweedle. Jimmy Page said “Very good”.

Allison: So there was a moment like that…

Bernard: And it gets to the end and he says “I’m in”. You know what I mean?

How excited were you when he said that? Because famously, they don’t sanction anything, they don’t say anything to anyone.

Bernard: It was a lovely thing, because what I loved about it was that we have these questions, and then there’s something where I was saying ‘oh, and then in June, you do this’ and he says, “are you sure about that?” I said ‘yeah, pretty certain it’s June, whatever’. And he says “let’s check”. Then he goes to the plastic bags and pours them out over the table. And it’s all his diaries going back to the beginning of his session career.

So firstly you met him out of the house, then you met him at Holland Park I guess?

Allison: Yeah, the first meeting was at the Royal Garden Hotel. Then after that, we went on another occasion. Well, there was a meeting before we went to the tower house.

Bernard: That’s the very first meeting. What year was this? This was 2017

Allison: And then a few days later, he phoned up and said “how would you like to come to Pangbourne with me?” Wow. So we said “yes, of course”. He said “OK, I’ll meet you at Paddington at 10 o’clock”. We bought our tickets and got on this train to Pangbourne and wandered around the town on the other side of the river to look at the back of the boathouse.

Bernard: It was really beautiful, because this guy was bringing you back to this place…
Alison: What was really moving, was that we found out later that it was the first time he’d ever been back since 1970. So that was a real honour.

He took you through his past…

Bernard: I was looking from my point of view, I thought for me to go back to somewhere that I had been, I don’t like to go back to places from the past.

Back to the old house.

Bernard: It was very significant that gesture, to do that; to get on a suburban train with all commuters and go down together, and no one says anything. Just the normal passengers. And he takes us around, shows us the house from outside, and talks about very emotional, really, really intimate recollections. “Come into my world. I want you to understand, this was where this was all put together”. So there’s this very strong feeling of connection. We feel like kindred spirits, that we have similar interests. Through American Epic it was obvious we had similar interests and all of those guys – I’ll come to John Paul Jones and Robert – very similar interests to us. So we’re actually united in having this fascination with the origins of where things come from. And these are things that bind you. The things where the artistic collaborations are best are where you’re shoulder to shoulder, looking out together. You’re not actually staring at each other’s face, you’re looking in the same direction. And so this was very meaningful.

The interesting thing was, we go touring around here, we’re hours there and then we get back on this tiny little station at Pangbourne (it’s one platform), we go in there and suddenly all these kids have been let out of school, all these 13 year old boys. And they all run up to him and say “you’re Jimmy Page!”. They know. They all know. So being on the commuter train no-one knew, but the 13 year old kids, they all knew who he was. I just remember this little boy came up, “you’re Jimmy Page!”, and it was a really funny conversation and Jimmy is joking with him and he says “thank you for telling me” and “nice to meet you”, and all this stuff. Then one of the kids says “do you know the best album you ever made?” and he says, “go on, tell me” and he says “the one you did in Montserrat”. Well they didn’t make a record in Montserrat. And he says “I don’t remember that one”. He says “Well, that was the best one you did!”. It was very sweet, really sweet. And this message, going through, this is what I’m talking about. It was: we’d done this thing, we’d met and gone into this story, then he’s taken us to the heart of where this thing was all put together.

Jimmy Page said “Those are the people you’re making this film for. The next generation. Those kids”. So it was symbolic of all the middle-aged people on the train… He’s very distinctive. He is. The sign is ‘that’s who you’re making the film for. You’re making it for them, to explain what this is’.

Allison: Interesting you picked up in the film about it feeling like it’s picking up pace as it progresses, because we wanted to make it very much like a musical that you could watch time and again, like The Rocky Horror Picture Show or Singing In The Rain. So we used lots of feature film techniques to accomplish that. We’re very inspired by Frank Capra and the films of the ’30s and ’40s, the golden age of cinema. So we use a lot of those techniques, like montage work. And we film everything – like the tickets dropping, like the newspapers opening that you see – to propel the story forward.

We were using the lyrics of the song. So in Communication Breakdown you’re seeing the scene with the kids with the fingers in their ears. Then when Jimmy is going to America to get the deal with Atlantic, you’re hearing Your Time Is Gonna Come. Then later on, as we’re flying across America, we’re hearing Ramble On playing. So we’re using every technique in the book to propel the story forwards and tell the story.

Bernard: So the songs are always advancing the story. If you look at it, there’s never a performance that appears as just a song being played, it’s always moving. So the first performance in Denmark is the first time you hear them play, and what you’re listening to is all the ingredients we’ve shown you in the first 30 minutes that have been put into that pot. This is what you’re being served up. So you’re hearing what these guys are doing and your ear has been attuned to what to be listening for. That’s why, when we screen for people like Bob Weir and Taj Mahal and Peter Coyote – you know, the heads of the counterculture; they kind of passed them by somewhat – they’re hearing different tracks. They were like, ‘oh my god!’ They’re watching the video…Weir turned to me and said “they’re like the John Coltrain Trio with a singer”. He could hear the jazz influence in the playing and the sophistication in the rhythm section.

Taj said to me “that film rearranged my molecules”. I remember him coming out and he said “I supported Otis Redding at the ‘Whiskey’ and watched him every night. I supported Sam Cook and watched him every night and that film is right up there with those experiences.

Woah, how does that make you feel? It doesn’t get any higher does it?

Bernard: It’s amazing, because what it means is all that work is worthwhile because he can now hear what it is they’re doing. You crystallised it. Yeah, you’ve made this legacy-defining thing where you hear a musician that never caught it, for whatever reason, for 55 years, is in that cinema, and he says “one of the greatest rhythm sections of all time”. I think he said “they never coast for a second” and he could hear it. He could hear what it was they were doing and you’ve got to have your ear tuned into certain things, because what they’re doing is not what a lot of people think they’re doing, it’s much cleverer, because the thing is..

Especially Bonham…

Bernard: And Jonesey. I mean, they’re all incredible, but we’re cutting this film for five years, you know? I mean, if it was a feature film, it would have been finished editing in nine months, you know, but it’s using archive. We want it to look and feel like a feature film. So that’s a lot of work, you know?

Allison: If you want to write War And Peace, but you don’t have a typewriter or a pen, you have to cut out every word from a newspaper and stick it together and then make it look beautiful. That’s how hard it is.

Bernard: Like it was a printed book. So, it’s not like one of the Jamie Reed ransom notes, it actually looks like a printed book. You’ve had to cut out all the letters out from other places. That’s a ton of work

Allison: You should not go into making a historical document film lightly. It’s a lot more work than you think.

Bernard: Certainly this style of thing.

I love what you said about Robert at the playback with his grandchildren:

There were quite a lot of tears. After watching the film, he turned to his sons and grandchildren and said: “This is my story.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDKC77QS8WM

We reviewed Becoming Led Zeppelin here

Words by Toby Strain. This is Toby’s first interview for Louder Than War.

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