The new documentary Becoming Led Zeppelin may never have happened had the film’s director, Bernard MacMahon, not accepted an invitation from the band’s legendary guitarist Jimmy Page.
In a new interview with The Guardian, MacMahon says he kew going into the project there was a good chance he’d have trouble getting the surviving band members – Page, John Paul Jones and Robert Plant – to agree to the film.
He tells the paper he knew “it was incredibly likely that once I put in a phone call, the group might say they were not interested. There was every chance we would not even get a meeting.”
It was Page who was the first to agree to a meeting, at a London hotel in 2017. They spent seven hours talking, with Page quizzing him on band facts and also showing him “old diaries, dating back to the ’60s.” In the end, Page agreed to the project, telling the director, “I’m in – but you have to get the others on board.”
But it seems Page’s decision had conditions. He later asked MacMahon to join him at Pangbourne, the boathouse where he once lived and the band rehearsed, and luckily he agreed.
“Later he revealed it had been a test,” the film’s producer, Allison McGourty, says. “If you had said no to Pangbourne we wouldn’t have done the film.’”
MacMahon eventually got Jones and Plant to sign on to the project, and the members were then interviewed in 2018, with MacMahon telling the paper none of the rockers had any editorial demands regarding the film.
Becoming Led Zeppelin will open exclusively in IMAX theaters on Feb. 7, with early access screenings in 18 markets starting Feb. 5. It will then hit theaters nationwide on Feb. 14.
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