Documentary film “Becoming Led Zeppelin”, which is currently available on Netflix in South Korea, works best whenever it simply takes time on focusing on the music of Led Zeppelin, which was one of the most popular English rock bands during the 1960s. While the success story of the band is not particularly fresh or deep in my humble opinion, the documentary thankfully provides a bunch of vivid and impressive musical moments to remember, and you may willingly overlook some shortcomings in the documentary.

The early part of the documentary is pretty typical as presenting the formative years of the four band members of Led Zeppelin: Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, Robert Plant, and John Bonham, who cannot be interviewed in contrast to his colleagues due to his early death in 1980 and is mainly represented by the excerpts from his interview recordings. Just like many other young men in UK during the post-World War II period, these four young men were ready for something new and exciting as showing each own considerable musical talent, and they gladly tell us about how much they were influenced by the rapid rise of American pop music during the 1950s.

Needless to say, their respective early careers were a series of small and big struggles, but it did not take much time for each of them to distinguish themselves in one way or another. For example, Page and Jones came to earn their meager living as session players to be hired by local recording studios such as, yes, Abbey Road Studios, and, though they actually never met the Beatles, they instead participated in the recording session for the theme song for “Goldfinger” (1964). In case of Bonham, he came to build considerable reputation as a fairly good drummer, and he and Plant became close friends as frequently performing together, though Bonham’s wife did not approve much of this at first just because she thought Plant was not a good friend for her husband.

How these four duded founded their band was pretty accidental to say the least. Not long after Page joined a local rock band named the Yardbirds in 1966, he became the lead guitarist due to the sudden exit of his predecessor, and he decided to take the band toward a new direction. While Jones gladly joined him as a bassist, Plant was subsequently recruited as the new vocalist for the band, and then he recommended Bonham to Page as the new drummer for their band.

Once they came to horn their skills together under the new name of their band, something began to click among them, though things did not go as well as they hoped at first. After the fairly successful result from their concert tour in Scandinavian countries, the band tried on the East coast areas of US, but this did not generate much popularity on the whole.

However, after it had a big successful night in California, Led Zeppelin came to have its first forward step toward bigger successes to come. Thanks to their resourceful manager Peter Grant, they could make a very advantageous deal on their very first album with one of the most prominent recording companies in US, and they were certainly willing to push their talents further than before.

Unfortunately, the initial reviews on the first album of Led Zeppelin were quite harsh to say the least, but that did not deter its members much at all. Besides enjoying receiving much more attention than before, they were just happy to have a fun time together via their shared passion toward music, and they soon moved onto producing the next album to be released while also doing more concerts here and there in US.

As the members of the band talk more about those early years of their band, the documentary doles out their concert footage clips from that period, which give us a close and vivid look into their undeniable artistry. In case of one particular archival clip, it is quite damaged due to a technical problem, but this thankfully remains as a minor distraction as our ears come to pay more attention to the musical performance inside this flawed archival clip.

While it did not receive much recognition in UK at the time of its first album release, Led Zeppelin became gradually popular in both US and UK around the time when it was going to release its second album in 1969, which became one of the most successful albums in US during that year. Naturally, their immense success in US led to them having much more popularity in UK than before, and they eventually had one of the biggest moments for their band around the end of 1969.

Around that point, the documentary focuses more on music rather than letting itself merely driven by the interviews from the three surviving members of Led Zeppelin. Thanks to its dexterous collage of archival footage clips, we do not need much explanation on how much the band excited and galvanized audiences, and you may enjoy some psychedelic touches shown from this part (Well, this is the 1960s, isn’t it?).

Overall, “Becoming Led Zeppelin”, directed by Bernard MacMahon, does not go that deep into the personal aspects of its main subject, but it does not disappoint us at all in case of presenting the artistry and excitement observed from the members of Red Zeppelin during that time. Yes, it could show and tell more in my trivial opinion, but the documentary did its main job well during a fairly ample amount of running time (122 minutes), so I will not grumble for now.