The filmmakers behind the upcoming film “Becoming Led Zeppelin” which explores the origins of Led Zeppelin are using a 1972 radio interview with John Bonham and Robert Plant to include audio of Bonham throughout the film, accompanying new interviews with Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones.

Last year, LedZepNews published emails from the filmmakers that show them tracking down the original tapes for this interview which was conducted by radio presenter Graeme Berry for the Sydney radio station 2SM while he was in the UK.

The new trailer for “Becoming Led Zeppelin” falsely claims this is a “never-before-heard interview” with Bonham, despite the full audio recording having been available online and via vinyl bootleg releases for years.

In fact, “Becoming Led Zeppelin” director Bernard MacMahon said in the 2021 Venice press conference for the film that he first heard the interview on a vinyl bootleg. “I came across this bootleg and it was a short interview with John talking. It was on an old vinyl record,” he said during the press conference.

Once the filmmakers tracked down the tapes of the interview, they attempted to prevent the public from accessing the tapes from the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia in an attempt to falsely claim the interview was unheard before its inclusion in “Becoming Led Zeppelin”, the emails previously released by LedZepNews show.

“As it’s been unavailable for 47 years could you kindly keep the tape out of the public catalogue for a few months till the film comes out so it has a great surprise and we can do some promo on you finding it,” MacMahon wrote in an email to the archives on May 1, 2019. “We’ll also be able to use more of it if its unheard.”

Despite an issue with the filmmakers failing to send the licensing payment for the audio in 2022, resulting in the archives demanding at one point that the interview was removed from the film, the audio is present in the final cut of the film that will be released next year and its inclusion was the final reveal in its new trailer.

LedZepNews has found that audio of Bonham in the film’s new trailer, in which he can be heard saying “the first time we played together it was stunning, it was like a gift from heaven, wasn’t it,” was edited together using four portions of audio from the 1972 interview, including two clips in which he was actually talking about The Beatles.

Since this 1972 interview plays a key role in “Becoming Led Zeppelin” as a way to bring Bonham into the film, and with false claims of the interview being unheard and the possibility of further misleading editing of the audio, LedZepNews has produced a full transcript of the 53-minute interview to ensure readers can access an accurate copy of it.

Read the full interview transcript below:

Graeme Berry: John, first of all, John Bonham. When did your musical career start, right from the beginning?

John Bonham: I was 14 years old, I think, something like that, when I was at school. That was about the beginning of it. Played in a school pantomime. And it just sort of materialised from there, you know.

Left school and we formed small groups and things like that. You know, played locally and everything.

Graeme Berry: What musicians can you remember being impressed with when you were at school?

John Bonham: Oh, crikey. It’s easy to say groups really. I mean, in those days it was sort of like Johnny Kid and the Pirates and Liverpool groups like The Hollies and things like that were a strong influence then. But particular musicians, that’s hard.

Graham Bond was one of those then, wasn’t he? Which included Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. They were sort of one of those things then, when I was at school. Well, more or less when I left, I think.

Graeme Berry: Did you go straight into music when you left school?

John Bonham: No, no. Well, I used to play, but I used to have a job as well. I used to be working all the time. You know, the job, gradually, you know, everybody seems to have done that and the job gradually gets less and the music more, you know, that’s what seems to happen.

Graeme Berry: What was your job?

John Bonham: What, when I first left school? I was working with my father, building trains. We used to be good builders then.

Graeme Berry: Okay, so when did you first become a full-time musician then?

John Bonham: Well, when I was 16, I went full-time for a while. You know, we had off and on periods, you’d like have an attempt, you know, to make a success of a professional group and then it wouldn’t go the way you all planned it out to go. And you’d end up having to go back to work to get a little bit of money to carry on, you know, to sort of live with, really.

And that’s how it used to go, really. You know, you’d have a time going on the road and everything would be roses and then all of a sudden no more gigs, no more money, and get back to where you started, you know. And that’s how it went on, really, right up until, you know, just before Zeppelin started.

Graeme Berry: What sort of music were you playing then?

John Bonham: Oh, well, you know, going back as far as that, most of those groups, we used to just sort of play other people’s stuff, you know.

It was like you’d play anything from the latest hit by the Hollies to sort of, you know, to something by a blues artist. It was that, you know, that sort of thing you’ve got to do, you know, to survive, really, to play locally anyway.

You know, and that was about it then, because we, you know, didn’t do any writing or anything in those days.

Graeme Berry: Did you have any particular tastes in music at that time, developed?

John Bonham: No, I don’t think so, not really. You know, I used to sort of, then, I just, you know, used to buy old, completely different sort of records, you know.

Even now, you know, I still do. You know, you might like the most poppiest record ever, you know. You might just like it for some reason, you know. I don’t think I’ve ever been sort of really set on something.

Graeme Berry: How did you first come to join Led Zeppelin then?

John Bonham: Well, I’ve known Robert for a number of years, because we, you know, were in two groups previously. I was in a group with Robert when we were about 16, weren’t we, first of all? We had that group, and then we also got back together only about a year before Zeppelin formed, wasn’t it?

Was it a bit before that, was it? Yeah. And, well, the story of how it started is better from Robert, because he was, you know, around before me, so it’d be better really for him to sort of explain how I came, you know, to be with him. So, you know, it’d be easier sort of coming from Robert.

Graeme Berry: Robert Plant, which indeed is your name, when did you first start off in music?

Robert Plant: I was about the same age as John, but I was at school at the time, and the people who had any influence at all on me weren’t the people who had…

Well, there were a lot of people at school who had about five pounds a week pocket money, you know, which was a lot of money to have for pocket money, and they used to buy all the records that were around at the time. But they didn’t really intrigue me.

There was a folk club in the area, and going to that on a Friday night and seeing all these people with sloppy jumpers and beards and long hair, I went, well, that’s an alternative, and the music was also an alternative.

So I ended up playing in little blues duets, you know, in these folk clubs, disastrously, playing harmonica and all that, but it was the beginnings of it.

And we formed several old blues bands that we used to hire a room in a pub on a Friday night and charge about three shillings to get in, you know, and you get about a hundred people in.

Chris Wood used to play with us from Traffic, and we had an amazing bass player who ended up driving Ringo around, who adored Mick Jagger and looked a little bit like Bill Wyman, and he used to hold his … he had the same bass guitar held right up as if he was Trooping the Colour, you know. So it was quite an amazing start to things.

There were a lot of influences that I’d care not to mention.

Graeme Berry: Go on, mention one.

Robert Plant: No, no, no, not with the Australian government.

And so that set me off on the road, and I suddenly found out that Friday nights weren’t really as rewarding as Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, you know, so it had to be, it was down to a group of some sort and keeping that music around as well.

So we started different groups, Black Snake Moan, and The Crawling Kingsnakes, which John and I had.

But as time went on, we found the only way to keep, what, ten shillings in your pocket was to play something apart from blues, you know, so we ended up playing ‘Watch Your Step’-type stuff, Bobby Parker, or things around that weren’t really overplayed by anybody, you know, but they were really good things to do. I mean, people are still doing them now.

So that was the start. Then I eventually went professional when I left school. I was supposed to be trained to be a chartered accountant, and after three weeks of an adding machine and tea bags, that was out.

And we turned professional and tried to pull everything out of the bag that could be pulled out of the bag in publicity and everything, but it was no good, because the group wasn’t really any good.

And by about 1966, 67, the San Francisco music was just crossing over to here, in records, if not in flourishing record critics’ trumpetteering, you know, and all that.

So there was Moby Grape’s first album, and Love, and people like that. So we formed the Band of Joy. John eventually came into that, and we were doing Jefferson Airplane stuff, ‘She Has Funny Cars’, and all that sort of thing, ‘Plastic Fantastic Lover’, but nobody wanted to hear it, you know.

So we’d do about three gigs a week, some places around this area, which was the only places we could travel. You know, we had no agent in London, or manager, or anything like that. The music wasn’t really a saleable commodity, you know.

Like, if you’re getting 15 pounds a night, or something like that, you’ve got to stick in this area, you know, otherwise you just don’t make any money at all.

So that was what it was all about, poverty. So after about 12 months of poverty, John started playing with Tim Rose on drums, and I eventually started doing a blues duet, yet again, but with Alexis Korner.

And Alexis never works on anything that’s a permanent basis, it’s always very temporary, you know, he’s got these TV commercials that he must do, and he has to write books on the blues and things, so he says, well, you can play with me when I feel like playing, you know, I’m going to Essen in about a month’s time, come with me and all that, but I won’t be doing anything in between.

So I had to get something more solid together, and nothing came along at all.

And then all of a sudden I had a telegram out of the blue saying Keith Relf had left The Yardbirds, you know. And I didn’t believe it, you know.

I’ve still got the telegram somewhere, but I didn’t believe it, because I went, oh, somebody’s getting me at it. And about a month later I was at Jimmy’s place, and we…

Graeme Berry: How did he hear of you?

Robert Plant: Through Terry Reid, another singer, who I’d worked with in some far-reaching place about 12 months before. And we’d sat and watched each other and had a great time.

And then the next thing I know, 12 months later, he’d recommended me for the job, after turning it down himself.

So I went down to James’s place, and he wasn’t there, so I just went through all his records and pulled out the ones I liked, and he got back, and apparently he liked the same sort of thing, you know. So that was a start.

We hadn’t got a drummer, and I knew that there was only one drummer that was really any good that I’d ever seen, and that was John.

It was the same trick with the telegrams and the telephone, and he didn’t believe it either. He was working around with Tim Rose and earning some money. And I came up to try and persuade him, ‘this group is going to be a giant and all that, it’s got to be.’

And he was going, yes, I know. Anyway, I’ve got to get off now, and I spent the whole weekend traipsing around to gigs with him, every time I could get him up a corner saying, listen. And so eventually he came down, and I think we had two rehearsals, and then we recorded the first album.

Graeme Berry: What about John Paul Jones? How did he…?

Robert Plant: Well, he’d been doing sessions with Jimmy for a long time. You know, they’d been playing on other people’s records for about three or four years.

So he knew Jimmy, and he was fed up of just walking into sessions with an amp and a guitar, you know. And so Jimmy said, well, I’ve got this bass player, and he’s a … I don’t know whether … He’s come about this point in a different way to you, you know what I mean?

I mean, I’ve been playing around and around and around, and he’d been in the studio. But he got so fed up with it that he was ready to have a go at the stage. Which is a strange way around of doing it, but anyway, that’s how it happened.

Graeme Berry: Have you ever done any session work?

Robert Plant: Yeah, I played harmonica on a PJ Proby album. That’s about as far as I got.

Well, there’s not really … I could sing backing for Lulu, I suppose, or something like that.

But, you know how it is, everybody does their own material and goes as far as they can inside themselves, you know what I mean, really. Unless you’re doing a big fantasia.

I don’t really like the idea anyway, you know. I like to sing when I’ve written something, and I can work out the melody lines and the harmonies and things myself. But to go in and be told to sing something, I can’t do that anyway.

Graeme Berry: With your writing, do you find you write better on your own or with the others?

Robert Plant: Well, usually with the others, you know, because you’ve got to be put into momentum by something in the first place. So I’m not really that competent on a guitar to be able to sit down and compose a whole thing on my own.

You know, I couldn’t … I look after the lyrics.

But it’s only recently that I’ve started playing instruments so I can construct whole songs, you know.

So I prefer to write with other people at the same time. You know, when something’s being initially born in its first stage, 90% of the song.

Graeme Berry: Now back to John Bonham. John, what could you describe to us in minute detail what it was like the first time the four of you got together?

John Bonham: Pretty strange, really. The first time the four of us got together was, as Rob said really, a day was arranged at Jimmy’s house at Pangbourne for us all to meet. You know, and apart from myself knowing Robert, I didn’t know anybody else.

So it was the first time I met Jimmy. No, sorry. I met Jimmy when Robert and Jimmy came to see me playing in London one night. But it was only for a few minutes, really, you know, and then they went.

It was quite strange, really, meeting sort of like John Paul and Jimmy, you know, coming from where I’d come from. You know, I’d sort of been playing in local groups.

And as Robert said, that’s why we all thought, you know, it was a bit of a joke getting the sort of telegrams and things, you know. That there’s a chance of becoming one of The Yardbirds sort of thing. It was like a gift from heaven, wasn’t it?

Robert Plant: It doesn’t mean we’re not brilliant, you know.

Graeme Berry: Say that again.

Robert Plant: It doesn’t mean we’re not brilliant. It just means that, like, when you’re up here, it’s like the dark lands of the borders of Mordor, you know, really. Because promoters and the whole music scene is set on a very strange level in this area, even now, you know.

There’s venues that they can fill up, you know, they can fill a place of 1,500 people with the world, they can stick the world’s worst group on, you know. And so long as it plays nice beat harmony music, I mean, you must have that situation in Australia.

The people will just come just to dance and hop around, you know. But there has to come an end to the dancing and hopping around. And we never really thought that we’d ever get out of these silly people who’d say, right, we’ll have you on … we’ll take your contract for a year, we’ll give you 30 quid a week each. Ask no questions and play this, this, this and this, you know.

And we hadn’t for about 18 months or two years. And we were really feeling a bit whacked from not toeing the line, you know. So really, it should have come or we might have even done it ourselves eventually.

But it was just that we never expected it to come unexpectedly, you know what I mean. It just came, bang.

Graeme Berry: Okay, back to John. So what was it like that first time that you all got together and played?

John Bonham: Well, I was pretty shy, you know. I was sort of, I just sort of, you know, the best thing I had to do was to sort of, when you’re in a situation like that, is not to say much and just to sort of soldier along and suss it all out sort of thing, you know.

And we had a good play that day. And it went quite well, you know.

But it wasn’t, you know, it got together very quickly because there was, at this stage, you know, there was already sort of a tour that had to be done by The Yardbirds, which was a few dates, you see. And we actually went there as The Yardbirds. Well, of course, it got built as The New Yardbirds and all this sort of thing.

And then it went so well, really, that, you know, the group became strong enough, really, to start fresh, you know, rather than sort of keep the Yardbirds name. It was a sort of decision that we’d change the name.

And we made the album straight after coming back from Scandinavia, the first one, you know. And, I mean, how long had we been together about then? What, a month?

Robert Plant: No, not that long.

John Bonham: It wasn’t that, you know. And yet it went well, you know. There was a lot of ideas that came out. And it was really good. The playing was good, you know.

Even the first time we played together, you know, there’s a feeling, you know, when you play in a group, whether it’s going to be any good or whether it’s not, you know.

And it was good. It was very good indeed. And it sort of went on from there, really, you know.

At that time, I don’t think I had any idea that the group was going to, you know, achieve what it has.

You know, you could tell it was going to be a good group, you know, like, you know, not being sort of flashy about it. But I am.

And that, you know, I didn’t give it much thought, really, you know. But in no time, it sort of grows, you know. You suddenly find yourself sitting back, you know, and, you know, the next album came out and all this. I mean, we went to America.

But it was things up until really, I think. See, we were formed in what? It was the end of 68. And it was at least the middle of 69 before anything reaction in Britain as far as, you know, compared anywhere else.

We went to the States, you know, which we had to because nobody would touch the group in England. You know, you say, you know, do you want to take some dates on Led Zeppelin, oh Led Zeppelin? You know, and all this sort of thing. You know, people wouldn’t even book you.

And then you came back from America after, you know, the first album and all this sort of, you know, being sort of a number one album and everything. And, of course, everybody wanted to book the group. And it was like a change of tune, you know, it was like.

And that’s really why, you know, a lot of people said, you know, they go on about going to America and abandon them, really, and all this. You know, why don’t you play for us? But at that time, you pretty well couldn’t. Nobody booked the band, you know. You couldn’t play there. So, you know, we sort of had to go to America to play, you know.

Graeme Berry: You did it the other way around to this group like The Beatles who made it here. And then, you know, it was quite tough for them to crack America for a start.

John Bonham: Yeah. It was opposite. But, you know, I always liked playing in Britain probably more than anywhere else.

You know, it’s a funny thing. You know, if we ever play in gigs in England, I really, you know, we always look forward to it. You know, you can go to America, really. And it’s so much easier to play in England. You know, you can get the motor out of the garage and toddle off. And you’re so at ease all the time, you know.

Whereas if you’re in America, you’re all day in a hotel somewhere having arguments with the rednecks and, you know, turd heads and everything.

And then you’ve got to go to the gig, you know, where all the kids are going to think, you know, that you should be doing your best and playing, you know, and feeling good about it all and everything. But, you know, it does affect you like what’s happened previously in a day.

Whereas in England, you know, you’re in your own atmosphere all the time. You know, you’re in your own homes and everything. And you get to a gig and you feel bloody great, you know, because you’ve gone through nothing to get there. Do you understand what I mean? You know, that’s the difference of it, really.

Graeme Berry: Robert, we’ll just have a word with you on the same subject. Do you feel that the thing that John’s talking about could be because of the audiences at all?

Robert Plant: Well, the thing of preferring to play here than in America? Well, I don’t really know. England’s always been classic for saying, for seeing something get ginormous and then turning around and saying, oh, well, I knew it all the time, you know.

But I’m English as well. And so I can, you know, I mean, I’ve been a part of all that old rubbish.

Audiences are strange things and the power of word of mouth is even stranger, you know, which is what it was to begin with for us. Until we started playing and we did the first, the second Bath Festival or the first one. I think it was the first one. And it just went so well, you know, so really so well.

I don’t mind where I play. I don’t really dig America, you know.

Graeme Berry: I can remember in Australia because I was doing a program that was an all-album show. And I can remember that when you first came out with the first album, then everybody was sort of discovering everybody who was supposedly into progressive music and discovering Led Zeppelin. Jimmy Page’s new band and everything like this.

Then after a couple of albums had come out and a few singles were successful as well, it seemed like you committed some sort of unpardonable sin. And everybody started saying, well, they’re no longer a progressive band. They’re all commercial and everything. Do you get the same thing happening in England?

Robert Plant: Well, really, you see, I don’t really know because everybody’s entitled to that. I mean, when people listen to music at a concert, everybody comes away with a different impression.

They must do, you know, otherwise people aren’t individuals at all. You know what I mean? Every person can’t think the same way. And they can’t all or you can’t split them down the middle and say, well, half think that you’re doing this and half think that you’re doing that. You know, it’s just something to talk about, I suppose.

But really, when you think about the fact that the music that was called progressive is now majority music anyway. So you’ve got most people listening to it, most people buying it, and most people going to the concerts.

You get to a point where it really doesn’t matter what you do in any way so long as people are digging it. And if a lot of people are buying it, and it’s still the same as it ever was, then there’s no question at all. There’s no argument even, you know what I mean?

Graeme Berry: When you first got the band together, you must have had some basic ideas, basic musical concepts as a group that you wanted to follow. How would you sum those up?

Robert Plant: Well, at the beginning it was the construction of things with different time patterns and the changes just like that. You know, like in ‘Dazed and Confused’ and ‘How Many More Times’, which somehow or other came to us like that, you know.

Everybody just slipped in and fell in so that it never, very seldom did it sort of ease its way into another change. It just fell automatically, you know. So that was the first thing that we got into, you know, those sort of things.

Then I suppose it just followed those lines on and on and on until we were writing small songs, little songs, big songs, you know, acoustic things like that.

It all just, it fits in with as time goes by and what you listen to during the time, you know. The whole influence of everything around you. So you just carry on just changing gradually.

That’s why every album can’t be the same, you know. That’s why a ‘Whole Lotta Love’ can’t come five times a year. You know what I mean?

Graeme Berry: And what influences were there?

Robert Plant: Well, you can’t really tell, can you? Because, I mean, you like a lot of things. I can tell you who I like, you know.

But it’s all sorts of things that hit you in the back of your mind, maybe, and you don’t even know about, you know. And attitudes and states of mind and everything. And the whole thing flows like that.

Graeme Berry: While you’re sort of progressing along your own musical development sort of road, if you like, do you find that there are people that you really like? Say, for instance, when Led Zeppelin started, that you’re now embarrassed about liking?

Robert Plant: No, no. No, I don’t think so. I don’t think my tastes have changed much. I’ve just encompassed a lot more, you know. Because there was a time when I wouldn’t listen to, well, not The Kinks, but groups who at that time everybody said, oh, dear me, The Hollies and all that. But all of a sudden I realised they’re really good, you know, for what they were, they were incredible.

So I listened to Arthur Lee, Love and Moby Grape, things like that, which I really dug and I still dig them now, you know. I play them as much now as I did when I bought them, you know, three years ago.

Graeme Berry: Right, and what about now? Is there anyone particularly stands out to you or any group?

Robert Plant: I like Joni Mitchell a lot, you know. I think she’s like a, that is a musical poet, you know. Somebody who’s really, her voice and the guitar and everything is so sympathetic to what she’s talking about, you know. I really like that.

Group-wise, The Youngbloods I like, now and again. They’re really funny. Freddie King, I think, I like.

But there’s so many, so many, I mean, I talk about The Capris and The Dartells and all these people way back. But I mean, just anything goes all the time, really.

Graeme Berry: Do you find, even though musicians are thinking anything goes at the moment, do you find any difficulty with the media like radio stations and the television channels?

Robert Plant: Well, we avoid as much of it as we want to, you know, for a start. We don’t do any television because it’s a bit of a fiasco. If you’ve been to Top of the Pops set, yeah, you know, you see. No, I don’t think so.

Graeme Berry: So you don’t really come across any hassles like this, say, with getting airplay and so on?

Robert Plant: Well, it’s up to, the way we look at it is, it’s up to people to put it on if they want to, I think. You know, that’s why we don’t embark in great big sort of flashes of publicity. Because, I mean, then you’d just be committed all the time to, you know, following your own tail.

So really it’s up to, at the moment, because the album prior to the one that comes out sells well. They’re playing it, you know, I suppose. But it’s also very good, so it’s up to them, up to the… In America you get a case of it, it’ll be played on the FM stations.

In England, there’s two disc jockeys, I suppose, that choose three tracks that they like and might play them for about a month, you know. And that’s it. That’s all you get. But this is the power of word of mouth, you know, working.

Graeme Berry: The term of journalists at the moment is, you know, you see your question asked in just about every interview. Do you think you have sold out?

Robert Plant: Well, what on earth is selling out when the majority are digging the kind of music that you’re playing? They’ve come to you, you haven’t gone to them. You know, we started off playing the way we’re playing now, really. It’s just that we’ve written a lot more things.

And at the time when we first started, maybe 10 people knew who we were. And now, because maybe 10 million do, you know, and more. But it don’t make any difference, you know, we’re still playing, you know what I mean? You can’t… What do you do to sell out? I really don’t know, you know, you’re either popular or you’re not.

Graeme Berry: Well, just speaking about the same thing, do you find any pressures coming from your success? Any pressures to write when normally before you probably would have sat around?

Robert Plant: No, no, because I sit around all the time anyway. It’s not very often that I do write. Sometimes I’ll have a burst for about half an hour, you know. And then one day we’ll all get together and it’ll go bang, and I’ll be for a month, you know, engrossed.

I fiddle around on the guitar and things like that. And when something really good comes out, then I’ll do the lyrics to that as well. But most of the time I just sit around.

Graeme Berry: There’s no heavy pressure from the record companies to get that next album ready or anything like that?

Robert Plant: If there is, we don’t hear it. You know, make sure of that. No, I don’t think so, because we’ve got a good, reasonable working association with them, you know. They know what we want to do. You know, they know the pace we want to go at. And sometimes this pace is a little too fast, but sitting around is pretty good.

Graeme Berry: Do you feel, as a musician, and obviously in a point of influence, if you had anything to say to the world, do you feel any responsibility in this direction?

Robert Plant: Now and again, yeah. It’s hard to build a foundation on what… that you should have to be responsible for anything, you know, because the whole idea of what you do is so…

The responsibilities are only the ones that you incur on yourself and not the media or anything like that. But you do see a lot of things and you do get tear-gassed.

And you do see situations that build up and are presented to the general public in the wrong way. You know, totally the wrong way. And you worry, and you discuss it, and you say, forget it. But you don’t forget it at all, so it creeps in now and again, you know, if you listen hard to what’s going on.

Graeme Berry: What sort of subjects do you feel this way about?

Robert Plant: Well, just the general direction of everything, really. You know, I mean, I’m not complacent, and I don’t think…

The trouble is with the Englishman, he’s always noted that when the time is nearly over for him, he’ll roll his sleeves up and get into battle, you know, and the English race is a fine race. But the problems that we’re going to be faced with soon aren’t going to require the same way of stopping them as they did in the past, you know.

So the problems that we’ve got, like, with the rivers and all that sort of rubbish, and the general run of things, you know, and the fact that so many more people are aware of how things are going, you know what I mean, as far as pollution and all that sort of thing.

It’s so evident now that, you know, people are talking about it, Cliff Richard’s singing about it. You know, the whole thing is ready, and I think, well, I don’t know what we’re waiting for, you know, because I don’t really know what happens next, except for that there’s going to be the brakes that have got to be put on.

Graeme Berry: Well, you obviously introduce certain things where you feel it in your lyrics. Is there any particular song that you wrote, sort of to use an old term, a protest song?

Robert Plant: Well, they’re not protest songs, they’re just sort of epithet statements almost, you know, because a point of view is a point of view, and the only reason that we don’t solve all our problems when they come up is because everybody’s got a point of view, you know. And they don’t gel very often, you know, they’re not meant to.

So things like, if you listen to a lot of the songs, things like ‘Celebration Day’, you know, which I say is dedicated to New York, but it ain’t really. It’s just dedicated to anywhere you like that’s no good, you know, and to the run of things.

But they don’t go into the ifs and whys and wherefores, they just say, well, look, you know, because I’m in no position to offer any alternatives, really.

‘Stairway to Heaven’, in a way, I suppose, just as a way of being, but it’s very epithetic. And ‘Going to California’, ‘Misty Mountain Hop’, but they’re all, they’re not digging so much as just stating about different things, you know.

Graeme Berry: Do you feel, then, that this is your responsibility?

Robert Plant: No, no, no, no, not really. It’s just that they’re the only things that intrigue me, really, more often than not, to mention, you know what I mean? Because you can talk about love, and you can express love in a thousand songs, and you can express it differently each time.

But when there’s things that stick in your mind and you want to write about them, like when we got tear-gassed in Italy, you know, and there was 250 riot troops lined up before we went on stage, the whole thing was expected, and I think the whole thing was done on purpose, you know.

I think they wanted to disrupt the concert just so that they could say no more, you know. So I’ve written a thing about that, but we haven’t done it yet.

There’s all sorts of things, but only in a very cheerful way, you know. We told them that the earth was round, that wasn’t how they wrote it down, you know what I mean?

So I suppose, I don’t know. And there’s always a feeling of movement as well, because I don’t really like sitting still for very long in one place, you know. It doesn’t really have to be travelling the world, it just has to be going from here to Wales and from Wales to somewhere else in Wales and all that.

So there’s all sorts of things involved, but I don’t, it isn’t, I’m not sort of going into the politics of it. Because then, I mean, I just get snared in my own trap, I think, because I can’t say any more than anybody else.

Graeme Berry: Do the rest of the guys, we’ll ask John this, how do you feel on subjects like this? Do you have any political things or anything like this that you feel strongly about?

John Bonham: Well, there’s a number of things, you know, that happen that you think, you know, shouldn’t be happening. It depends, you know, you can, you know, there’s different musicians, you know, you think back on have written songs and everything, but it depends whether it’s going to do any good, but, you know, I don’t think you should sit down and say, I’m going to write about it, you know, like sit down and write a song just because, you know, that the rivers are polluted.

Which Robert was just saying, you don’t, you know, if it happens to, you know, come into a song, you know, you just put it lightheartedly and not actually digging, you know, not saying, oh, you know, listen, I’m telling you sort of thing.

It just comes in and, you know, says, look, have a, you know, look if you want, but no, I don’t, I don’t really know. Some songs, I don’t know, some writers have written some songs and I don’t know whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Graeme Berry: Do you envisage anything happening with the band like the George Harrison Bangladesh thing?

John Bonham: I don’t know. We often talk about doing different things, but you have to make sure, you know, before I would do anything like that, I would do what Harrison did and go there, you know, see what sort of state it was, and just make sure that you actually donated the money to, say, the governor or something like that, or somebody who was actually going to use it, because you can give it to a charity organisation.

But before they pay it to anybody else, that money pays for the cost of their organisation running, you know, and sometimes it can be quite frightening what they actually end up paying out to these people, you know. He’s got to pay, like, 20 people’s wages, office staff, he’ll pay for the premises and all this, you see, and what’s left then they donate to these countries and things that need the money.

So I think I’d rather just do something and take the money there myself, you know, and at least go there first anyway to make sure that it’s worth giving them something. And there’s a lot of things there are, you know, I mean, there’s a lot of people, a lot of countries in a bit of a state, you know.

Graeme Berry: Let’s get back to music again. What are your feelings on where the individual Beatles are at, for instance, now?

John Bonham: Oh, individual Beatles. I don’t know. They seem to be sort of very different at the moment. You can like each one of them, you know, for what they’re doing, sort of thing.

But, you know, like, it’s been a terrific change, you know, especially if you, like, you’ve lived in England all the time, you’ve actually seen it happen in front of your eyes.

And if you listen to Beatles albums, you know, the songs got much more individual, you know, towards the end. Like, McCartney would do a song, Lennon would do a song, you know, and a lot of all together singing songs gradually filtered out from sort of Hard Day’s Night stuff, which was all like multiple singing all the time, you know. And it got much more individual, didn’t it, on later albums.

And I think, you know, they just got different. I mean, let’s face it, how many years were they together, you know, it’s a long time. But I would have liked to have seen them stay together, really would. It’s quite a shame to see a group like that suddenly break up, you know.

I thought, you know, I like, you know, I think everybody really used to just say Beatles, and there isn’t many people, you know, no matter from like two years old to sort of to a hundred years old, everybody seems to like The Beatles. It was just amazing, wasn’t it, you know.

You know, you can go around with us and there’ll be, like, loads of saying, oh, no, I don’t like Zeppelin. But with The Beatles, it was just ridiculous. Everybody seemed to like them, you know. It’s like a fever.

Graeme Berry: What’s your favourite thing that stood out in the whole Beatles time?

John Bonham: Oh, I don’t know, about one favourite thing, loads, I think. One thing I always love to see of theirs is the film when they played at Shea Stadium, you know.

I don’t know whether you’ve seen that film yourself. It’s just, it’s about, like, we usually get it about once a year on our Christmas edition of ‘Top of the Pops’.

But it’s one of the amazing pieces of film you’ve ever seen if you want to see sort of absolute, you know, girls just collapsing at the sight of them and it was just absolutely stunning. You know, ridiculous. Getting them into the gig in an armoured car, you know. They’d been ripped to pieces. It was just amazing.

But the actual fact that you look back at that film and that concert went incredibly well. If you’d have looked at the police force they had at that concert compared, if you tried to do that concert again now, you’d find it completely different. Because they were more or less a skeleton police force. You know, it was just unheard of, you know, that there’d be any trouble. You know, they had enough to keep the crowd sort of back sort of thing.

But there was none of this great sort of truncheons and all that. It’s quite comical because you see great pictures of the cops sort of doing this, you know, to all the Beatles stuff.

But if you did that concert now you’d probably find yourself with, like, wagons full of riot police outside waiting for any trouble. And all this sort of thing. It’s changed a lot since then, you know. People weren’t looking for trouble in music then. Because it didn’t, you know, it didn’t alter them in their own back garden sort of thing. You know, oh well that’s okay, let that go on. It’s not doing anything to me.

But then when it came a whole thing where, you know, every kid grew up and liked, you know, this sort of music. And then it started to affect them. And that’s why, you know, it’s gone through a big change.

Robert Plant: It’s down to the paranoia of the people who see what’s going on. And try and avert it. You know what I mean? I mean, try and avert it because they’re frightened. And I don’t know what all that’s about anyway. But they do.

And as soon as that happens, that’s when the vibe starts. And it’s just grown and grown and grown. Those concerts are a meeting of a lot of people. And they use it to express all sorts of things, you know.

And it’s stupid. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

Graeme Berry: You recently did a concert. It was the first one for a while in England, wasn’t it?

Robert Plant: Well, we did a whole tour.

Graeme Berry: Yeah, right, a whole tour. And the one that was given the big write-up was where was it?

Robert Plant Wembley.

Graeme Berry: At Wembley, that’s right.

Robert Plant: Empire Pool. We did two nights.

Graeme Berry: And how was the audience reaction that night? What was the feeling?

Robert Plant: It was just like the Band of Joy, really. The first night, we had nerves. And we were hopping up and down, saying, let’s get on. Because it was really cold there. It’s an ice rink. I thought, ice skaters’ paradise. And they hadn’t put the heaters on until half an hour before. Nine and a half thousand people freezing. And we were freezing.

But it was good. It was really good. Because once we got started. Everybody was opening up everywhere. And the second night, they’d left the heating on all night long. So everybody was in a different mood again. It went really, really well.

In America, you just get a bit pensive. Because you don’t see things worked in England as they are there. The whole system of what they call keeping the people down, or whatever it is. It doesn’t stretch here to the entertainment, really.

A lot of people come up and compliment you. And they’re usually the ambulance crews, or first aid, or the police, or something like that. And they say, good, well done. Because over here, it’s an occasion. It’s still used as a way of enjoying yourself. So it just felt like having a good gig.

Graeme Berry: And did you have any girls screaming that night, the second night?

Robert Plant: I don’t think there were any. Now and again, there’s a scream as if somebody’s finally found what they were born for. And that, oh dear me, you can never see them because they shut up too quick.

But now and again, it’s usually in smaller towns that you get the occasional little chick. But it’s not the done thing, you see, now. So you have to stifle yourself.

Graeme Berry: It’s starting to happen with people like Mark Bolan and Rod Stewart and Faces. They’re getting screams. Do you feel you’re in a different musical plane?

Robert Plant: No, not really. I think it’s all down to entertainment, anyway. What we were talking about before was that when the mass listens to something, it’s just popular or not popular.

So I don’t think we’re any different to The Faces or anything like that. I suppose that we could go about the whole thing in another way and so induce a state of mass hysteria. You can be done, you know what I mean?

Graeme Berry: Do you like the idea of mass hysteria coming back in like it was in the Beatles’ heyday?

Robert Plant: Well, it’d be an improvement on antagonists and this, that and the other and all the old crap. Because it really just boils down to those people are owning up that they can really let themselves totally go, you know.

You should just shake hands at the beginning of a concert. And at the end of it, you should feel fulfilled, the audience should, you know.

So however they get off the best is the best way to do it. I’m sure a lot more people would scream if the boyfriends didn’t say, where are you at, you know. Because it’s still a good way of expressing yourself, isn’t it?

Apparently in Singapore where we might be going, the boys scream there too. And when Jimmy was in The Yardbirds, he said, there’s one thing I must tell you about Singapore.

Graeme Berry: Speaking about Jimmy, Jimmy Page sort of got the whole band together, started the whole thing moving. Has he been the leader of the band all the way through?

Robert Plant: Well, it’s hard to say what a leader is. He’s, at the beginning, his decisions were the only ones because he was the only one who knew anything, you know, really about what we were just about to go into.

But since then, I mean, we just sit down and talk and work everything out, really. But he did start it.

Because you can’t really just, there’s no such thing as a leader in any group because if a person was in that position to make all the decisions without considering anybody, it just wouldn’t work.

Well, I suppose it does work, you know, if it’s Count Basie or somebody like that. Or Tom Jones or something like that. But not on the way that we, when it’s four individuals all donating, you know, towards the music.

Graeme Berry: With your singing, always in big publicity and so on, how you’d have baffles up in the studio because your voice was so powerful and everything, do you have any difficulty pulling back and singing something soft?

Robert Plant: Well, you’ll have to listen to that album a little bit. And then you can answer it for yourself. But I can. I do. You know, because it’s just encompassing different things all the time.

Graeme Berry: Why I ask was not because I hadn’t heard you singing softly. I just wondered whether it was difficult for you.

Robert Plant: Oh, no, not really. It’s probably the easiest. I don’t really know.

See, it’s the mood of the music that makes you, you can sing anything in a high-pitched pseudo-spayed voice all the time, you know, if you want to. But then you have to acquire a high-pitched pseudo-spayed voice. You know, if you just sing, then you’re all right.

When I sing loud and when I want to put a point over or something like that, then the higher part of my voice will come out, and normally it’s just, I’m just rocking along, you know.

I don’t have to stand that far back and go…

There was a time when I used to have to sing loud all the time when I had no PA. Well, not no PA, but virtually no PA, because with John playing and all that.

The first days of the group, we had a lousy PA. Everywhere we went, at the end of the night, I was absolutely hoarse, you know. And still nobody would hear me.

Graeme Berry: What difficulties do you come across when you actually go into the studio to record?

Robert Plant: I don’t think we do, really. It’s really a case that you’ve got to find a studio and a sound that really transmits what you sound like on stage, you know. So, really, the hardest thing about getting into a studio is finding the right one.

Graeme Berry: What about the new album now? Let’s talk a little bit about that. What is your personal feeling on the new album?

Robert Plant: It took a long time to come out, because there was this… a fuck up here and a cock up there, and it… It shouldn’t have gone into the months that it went into in preparation.

But, you see, unfortunately, we’re in a… fortunately, we’re in a position where we do the albums ourselves. It’s all our time until we give the finished thing to the company. But they have to organise the cover.

We decide what we want on it, identically, and pass it on to them, the prints, the proofs and everything. But, of course, they keep on sending you back their idea of it, and they might alter the shade of the whole cover, you know.

And when you’re trying to put across a mood or something, then the shade of the cover matters, so you have to go through a rigmarole, a total rigmarole, you know. This is where you fall down, you know, with the record company itself.

I think it was a good album. I think it still is a good album. I think it’s… I don’t know. Every album is so different, you know. I think at the beginning, everybody wanted it not to be. People who listened to us wanted the first album, every album, you know. Maybe the next album will be like the first one.

But it’s good. It’s the fourth album. I like the third album a lot.

Graeme Berry: What particular things do you like on the third album?

Robert Plant: ‘Friends’ and ‘Bron-Y-Aur Stomp’. ‘Immigrant Song’ I really like, too. That’s really good. You know, we always… Well, I say we always start with it.

But when you do play that, I feel like a surge coming out, you know, because the thing knits so well. And the fourth album, there are really good things on that, too.

‘Stairway to Heaven’ and ‘When the Levee Breaks’, things like that. You can just go on. I think I like them more, actually. It’s a good groove.

Graeme Berry: Right. Back to John again. What significance does the fourth album have for you?

John Bonham: I don’t know. I suppose the fourth album really… One little thing that it was for me that I found… The drum sound, the sound I got on a couple of tracks was a sound that I’ve stumbled on and yet looked for for three years, if you know what I mean.

But apart from that, no more than any other album. Because I can still listen to, say, one and two and three and still get as much from them as I would from listening to the fourth. I don’t think the fourth is any better than the other albums.

It’s just the fourth album and doing stuff that happened at the time, whereas one was what we were doing then.

But you’ll find each member of the group actually, you’re asked your favourite tracks. They’re all probably a lot different. Everybody’s got their little favourites on each album and yet there’s an album that I like them all.

Robert Plant: I don’t think any of us have been dissatisfied with any of the albums, which puts us in the position where we’ve been happy with everything, really. And every time you change, if you concoct the whole thing yourself anyway, then you’ve got to be happy with it.

So really, it’s hard to… You can’t rave on about it. But at the same time, we had quite a bit of material and those are the ones that we chose and they’re good.

With your own album, you can’t really go overboard because you’ve worked and worked and worked on it and you reckon it’s good, but you can’t take it any farther than that.

Graeme Berry: What about just one or two favourite tracks that you’ve got something to play into from the album that’s yours.

John Bonham: What, from the fourth album? Oh, crikey, it’s hard to pick. I think favourites are things that you get over a period of time.

I wasn’t particularly talking about the fourth album, I was talking about the past albums because you just find yourself liking songs perhaps more than others. But that will change as well. You often start out, like when an album comes out, and you’ll probably like so-and-so a bit better than the others. In a year’s time, you might play it and decide, oh, no, you know, this is…

But on the fourth at the moment, I like them all. If I play it, I don’t pick any tracks out at all.

Graeme Berry: Robert, what would happen if Led Zeppelin made no more money? How would it affect you, losing the success and everything?

Robert Plant: Well, then I’d have to milk me goats more often, I think. Um… It’s impossible, really. But I think I’d just carry on singing what I’m singing now or carry on writing. I don’t think it would make much difference, really. Because I don’t spend a lot of money anyway.

Graeme Berry: What about the future of Led Zeppelin from here? What are the plans now that this album’s released?

Robert Plant: Australia. We’re going to a lot of places, South America.

Graeme Berry: What date are you in Australia?

Robert Plant: No idea. I’m going to Bombay first. I’ll think about Australia when I leave Bombay.

John Bonham: We do the first date in Australia on the 16th, in Perth. That’s the first one. The rest, I’ve got a list, but I don’t know it now. But most of the major cities, I think it’s Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, all those sort of places.

Graeme Berry: Yes, it’s excellent that you are going to Australia because we’ve had so many times in the past where a band’s gone to Australia after they’ve worn out all the gigs everywhere else and you’re still right up their band.

Was there any particular… Was it your idea to go to Australia or how did it all come about?

Robert Plant: I’ve got a cousin called Colin Kane and… I’m freaking John out.

Well, I don’t really know. You see, near to Australia there’s an island called Bali and I wouldn’t mind going there. If by chance the plane has to land there for a refuel, I might never go anywhere else. I just thought I’d get near to it.

I don’t know. Australia’s a dominion, isn’t it, of England? Is it?

Graeme Berry: No, it’s in the Commonwealth.

Robert Plant: Is it? Fantastic. Well, all the more reason.

Graeme Berry: You’ll sing ‘Rule Britannia’ in harmonies. Right, so would you be changing the act at all for Australia?

Robert Plant: The act? Now then. Well, I usually swivel my hips from left to right. I don’t think there’ll be any change of that.

John Bonham: Apart from we’ve dropped the Highland song and started singing ‘Tie Your Kangaroo Down’.

Robert Plant: I don’t really know. No, I don’t think we can change it. Besides that, we haven’t rehearsed for about four years. So I don’t think so.

Graeme Berry: Seriously, what can Australian audiences expect from you on stage?

Robert Plant: Well, I don’t know what the feel is towards Led Zeppelin being nice and soft and quiet occasionally, but there’ll be some of that.

It depends how many cakes get thrown at us and things like that. I don’t know. It depends how we feel or what we want to play, really.

We’ve got some things that we do every night regularly, and they go into different constructions, like I spoke about at the beginning. But I think there’ll be favourites to suit everyone.

John Bonham: Sometimes, say we go there and we find that sometimes there might be a big favourite that people have got. We’ll often perhaps put that in just because it makes them feel good, even if we haven’t played it for some time. We very often do it. And you always get this at concerts, you know.

But our concerts are quite long, really, and it would be best for us when we do go there if they just sort of wait the concert out. Because what happens with a lot of them is they start shouting out for all these songs, you see.

Then just a minute, you’ve got one shouting for something, and if they eventually sit the concert out, they’ll find we play most of them anyway, you see.

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