Led Zeppelin: Dazed & Confused

Led Zeppelin: Dazed & Confused (2009)

*** (out of 4)

If you're looking for an all out rocking documentary on Led Zeppelin then you're not going to find it here. What you get here is a rather cheap and quick look at who the band were, how they got together and we hear some stories about their rise to fame and their eventual end when their drummer died. At less than an hour there's really nothing too detailed here as we're basically given information that even the smallest Zeppelin fan should know. We learn about The Yardbirds, how the band formed, being influenced by the blues and then we hear about their manager, the U.S. tours, the various drug issues and of course the end. Most fans of the band are already going to know this stuff and much, much more so that's why they will probably be most disappointed. If you're not familiar with the band or are just going to know them then I think this documentary will work because it will at least give you some basic information and then you can go out there and search for more detailed stuff. There's no Zeppelin music played but we do get some behind the scenes footage, which was nice but we certainly needed more of it.

This is 60 minutes of bad garage band covers that only get worse the further you get into it. Then the director sliced up old interviews from probably 4 or 5 different decades and combined that with newer interviews from people you've never even heard of.

You can learn some good history here of the band nevertheless, it does have its moments and that warrants at least 5 stars I suppose.

Good documentary but what's up with the music ? The Zep catalog of music is at your disposal but you choose to use How many more times, Dazed and confused and Kashmir over and over again ?? Don't get me wrong, those are great compositions but how about mixing in some of their other outstanding material. Halfway through watching I was like " please... the Rain Song ? Or Stairway solo live from The song remains the same ?" I don't get it.

Overall, a really insightful look into the band. Always good to hear these anecdotes right from band members. I've been into them for 30+ years now & even I walked away with some new info. The only negative for me- the absence of actual LZ music within. & I get why; $$£. But it would've made it that much better. It was frustrating seeing all this amazing footage of them with generic Zepp riffs playing in the background minus any vocals.

Definitely recommended for any LZ fan, but a great entry level intro for the newbie.

I can't imagine how difficult it must have been for the surviving members of the band to deal with the death of John Bonham & I get the reasoning for not continuing, but I honestly wish they did. I think they had so much more in them that they could have offered to the world. But hey, thankfully they existed in the first place!