Led Zeppelin at Bath Festival, 1969 Photo:
They're in one of the biggest rock bands of all time, but the three surviving members of Led Zeppelin have been mysteriously media-shy - until now.
In the new doco Becoming Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones speak candidly about their early lives and rise to mega-stardom, while the band's late drummer John Bonham is heard talking about his experiences in a rare early interview.
Bernard MacMahon - Becoming Led Zeppelin's director and also a big fan of the band - was just 12 when he first read an old paperback about their beginnings as "four boys trying to find their way in music".
"I always remembered that story, and I thought telling it would be inspirational to other young people."
To secure an 'all-access pass' to make the first-ever authorised Led Zeppelin documentary, he had to first win over the band with his 2017 roots music doco American Epic.
MacMahon then presented each of the three musicians with a big leather-bound book containing storyboards for every single shot in the film.
"After spending a good seven hours going over the book while making detailed comments and observations, Page finally said he'd love to be part of the film, as did John Paul Jones and Robert Plant."
While there's something very pure about the decades-long silence Led Zeppelin has observed, the band's seemingly sudden decision not only to participate in a film but tell their stories on camera for the first time ever is still pretty amazing to MacMahon.
"It's like they're telling their nephew what they did and how they did it."
Thanks to a rare early interview Bonham and Plant gave an Australian journalist, Becoming Led Zeppelin features the four band members all speaking an equal amount in their own voices.
Although Bonham - who was just 32 when he died of alcohol-related illness - didn't enjoy giving interviews before Led Zeppelin toured Australia, a "fantastic" local journalist asked him a lot of questions directly and didn't allow Plant to dominate the conversation.
"It's very moving to hear Bonham. This was the first time the band had heard him speak since he passed away in 1980."
When Led Zeppelin formed in 1968, the "very British" Midlands culture of Bonham and Plant got melded with "the snobbish London music scene" in which Page and Jones worked as top session musicians, McMahon says.
When the four played together for the first time, these two very different sensibilities were fused into a sound with its own "very, very unusual chemistry".
Although Plant and Bonham had played in a band together before and Page and Jones were acquainted, the four men were close to strangers when they first made music together.
But until Bonham's sudden death in 1980, Led Zeppelin functioned like a Swiss watch made of four interlocking, individually extraordinary pieces, McMahon says.
Without one of its essential four members, the remaining members could no longer be Led Zeppelin, he says, and less than two months after Bonham died they officially disbanded.
For MacMahon, one of the most special moments in Becoming Led Zeppelin is bass player John Paul Jones' recollections of his beloved parents, who were known for their vaudevillian music numbers. Jones wells up talking about his father's reaction to seeing his first-ever Led Zeppelin show in January 1970.
"I'm really proud of you, you know. My God, it's got real passion and fire," he told his son.
Led Zeppelin's (L-R) John Paul Jones, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page in 2012. Photo: AFP
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
