How ‘Becoming Led Zeppelin’ Became One of the Modern Era’s Great Rock Docs: Lots of Cooperation, Zero Interference and a Director Who Cared Most About the Music

There hasn’t been any shortage of music documentaries on big screens lately, but most are presented as special events that come in and out for one or two nights on a weekend, without settling in for a regular run. The Sony Classics release “Becoming Led Zeppelin,” though, has defied expectations of what a modern rock doc can do in cinemas, on its way to finding the favor of fans as a home video hit, too. Its success is, well, highly becoming.

Director Bernard MacMahon sat down with Variety to talk about the long process of making and then finding a buyer for the film, admitting there were plenty of companies that turned it down. The objections were plentiful, as he recalls it, when he and producer Allison McGourty were touring executive suites. But maybe most curious of all, to those who didn’t get the film, is that it doesn’t follow a traditional “VH1 Behind the Music” rise, fall and embattled rebirth narrative. “Becoming Led Zeppelin” is a rise-and-rise story, climaxing with the recording of “Led Zeppelin II.” If someone wanted to make a movie about how things got bigger and more out of control later on, they were welcome to it, but MacMahon knew how Zeppelin changed the music world at their outset was more than enough to fill two gratifying hours. And sending music lovers out of the world’s theaters happy and humming (to the extent that anyone can hum “Black Mountain Side”) is a byproduct of the decision to focus on a celebratory but still revelatory origin story.

The signs were good in February when the doc grossed $2.6 million in its first weekend, playing a limited run on Imax screens — the best number ever for an Imax music film — before crossing over to regular cinemas. By the first week of April, the film had grossed $10 million domestically and more than $12 million worldwide, rare territory for a documentary. Now, fans everywhere are re-streaming the home release and trying to tweak their speakers to make it sound as good as it did in state-of-the-art theaters… though MacMahon stresses that he only wanted to make the film sound as good as the original pressing of “Led Zeppelin II” did roaring out of mere stereo speakers.

Way back, my mom was an antique dealer, and when I had just turned 12, one of her boxes had this paperback book in it called “Led Zeppelin” (by Howard Mylett). It was quite beat-up then, but it was published in in the mid-‘70s, covering the early part of their career — the first (long-form) thing that had been written about them. I didn’t have any idea who they were, but I found the story completely fascinating and inspiring.