Led Zeppelin: Dazed & Confused

Sonia Anderson's unauthorized Led Zeppelin profile features a small group of primary speakers—including filmmaker Tony Palmer, producer Nick Tauber, and music journalist Chris Needs—as well as lots of archival interviews, featuring Yardbirds member Chris Dreja, Atlantic Records head Ahmet Ertegun, Machiavellian manager Peter Grant, Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, and band members Jimmy Page (guitar), Robert Plant (vocals), John Paul Jones (bass, keyboards), and John "Bonzo" Bonham (drums). The narrative begins with Page's tenure in the Yardbirds and as an in-demand session player. The quartet originated in 1968 as the New Yardbirds, who included a nascent version of "Dazed and Confused" in their repertoire. After wisely discarding possible names (like Whoopee Cushion), they became Led Zeppelin. As Needs notes, the band could be brazen in their songwriting—such as transforming Howlin' Wolf's "How Many More Years" into "How Many More Times," and calling it an original—but despite negative media coverage at home in England and a Grant-imposed ban on singles, interviews, and TV appearances, they became massively successful and impressively dissolute, blazing a trail of trashed hotel rooms, alcoholism, and drug addiction. Just as punk arrived to beat them down further, Bonham's alcohol-related death in 1980 put an end to the band's 12-year run. The documentary concludes with a look at some of their subsequent activities, including a reunion concert. Although fans are likely to have seen many of these interviews and performances before, Dazed & Confused still serves as a useful introduction to these progenitors of heavy metal. Recommended. (K. Fennessy)