I caught the middle of a Led Zeppelin documentary this weekend, but went and did dishes rather than watch the whole thing. Which is saying something, because I really like Led Zeppelin and I hate doing dishes. But I realized that I don’t really give a shit about two hours of talking very little about the music and talking a lot about what life was like for the band. And, I mean, I guess that’s a fine subject for a band. But I am, at this point, really only interested in hearing a couple of things about/from the guys in Led Zeppelin.
1. I will never grow tired of hearing them talk about the music, about what they loved about it, what they didn’t, what influenced them, how they hope they were influential. And how they live with that kind of artistic legacy now. I want to hear about them as artists.
2. I’d like someone to sit down with Page, if he’d be willing, which I doubt, and talk about the occult influences on his art. It’s completely obvious, but I can’t find a single interview where someone who knew what they were talking about asked him really engaging questions about it. And now I’m guessing the time has passed.
But I’m more interested in what people understand themselves to be up to than I am with rehashing the same old facts, I guess.
I also enjoy listening to musicians talk about their music more than their lives as musicians.
You might like, and have probably seen, the Classic Albums series on VH1. I have only caught a few episodes but apparently there are many. The ones I have seen were exactly what I wanted to know, which is perfectly summarized by the wikipedia entry: “Almost all songs are dealt with, focusing almost entirely on the music itself, how it was composed/realised. Personal aspects of the band or members are occasionally dealt with, but mostly only if they serve this purpose.”
Oh, I’m going to have to look for that! One of the most frustrating parts about this documentary is that it’s very obvious that the members of Led Zeppelin have some real thoughts about their music (for better or for worse) and what they thought they were up to and what they wanted to do and yet, just when you were like “Oh, this is about to go someplace good!” it was all “And then they went on tour.”
I imagine their are some bands that can’t really talk articulately about why they’re doing what they’re doing. And maybe those bands should just have “we went there and did this” documentaries.
But this just seemed like a really wasted opportunity.
I also just really get a kick at how much most of the musicians/engineers/producers get a kick out of sitting at the board and breaking down the parts of the songs. You learn a lot about how deliberate and layered things are. I mean, we all know these things are deliberate and layered, but it almost makes me like Lindsey Buckingham as a person when he talks about everything going on in “Gold Dust Woman.”
See! That’s what I want. I don’t, honestly, want to know all the details about how Buckingham did Nicks wrong, you know? But the details about how he made that song work? Oh, yes, that’s exactly it.