Led Zeppelin Bring It On Home
“I’d like to maintain the dignity of the group. I’m very proud that people are so enchanted by it. And I think the way that it is now… what ever it was that people loved – is not going to be spoiled.
Led Zeppelin was bold and brave and chaotic and honest, in a very loose framework… It was honest – and it took risks and chances, which are no longer possible if you start from scratch.
I think its integrity, musically, captured all the elements of the kind of wondrous music that we’d all been exposed to… We were able to translate and kick on… It’s like we were a filter for all the good things… We filtered it and we begged, borrowed and stole. And we made something that was particularly original – by which a lot of other music has been measured.”
Robert Plant
Bring It On Home: Led Zeppelin and the West Midlands Radio Documentary Series · Absolute Radio · 2015
This two-part documentary series was produced for Absolute Radio and broadcast on 27 September and 4 October 2015, marking the 35th anniversary of the death of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham on 25 September 1980. The series also provided local content for the launch of Absolute Radio in the West Midlands on 105.2 FM.
Presented by rock author and broadcaster Mick Wall — whose book When Giants Walked the Earth remains one of the definitive accounts of the band — the documentaries celebrate Led Zeppelin's global legacy while exploring the little-known West Midlands roots of Robert Plant and John Bonham. Long before joining Jimmy Page's New Yardbirds, the group that would become Led Zeppelin, Plant and Bonham were established figures in the thriving Midlands music scene of the 1960s.
The first episode traces the venues and bands of their early years, examining the musical influences that shaped the Led Zeppelin sound, the decisive role of manager Peter Grant, and the hostility of critics on the group's emergence. The second follows the band through their defining albums, the tragedies of the 1970s, and Bonham's death in 1980 — before documenting the reunion of the surviving members with Jason Bonham on drums for a one-off concert at the O2 Arena, London, in 2007, and the band's Kennedy Center Award for their contribution to American culture, presented by President Obama in 2012.
"First-person accounts from people who saw their early musical ventures in local pubs, mixed with rare archive recordings of American blues players, make for a fresh understanding of a band who have been done to death." — Jane Anderson, Radio Times
Bring It On Home was a collaboration between Absolute Radio, the Radio Department at Birmingham City University, and the Birmingham Music Archive. The Archive's founder, Jez Collins, served as an advisory consultant on the project.
The series won a Silver Medal at the New York Radio Festival in the Best Music Documentary category, 2015.
Contributors:
Mick Wall, Chris Phipps, Bev Bevham (ELO, Black Sabbath and The Move’s drummer – and a close friend of Bonham), along with Roy Williams, Geoff Tristram, Johnny Doom, Claire Sturgess, Nial Doherty, Steve Palmer, Jim Simpson, and Graham Young… Plus archival interview material from Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones.
Many thanks to Paul Sylvester and Sammy James
