I recently watched the excellent ‘Becoming Led Zeppelin’ film. It tracks the band’s individual members from the mid-Sixties until the inception of the band and the recording of their first two albums and sell out US tours.
(I presume this film is Part I of their incredible story and part II, III and Runes/4 Symbols chapters will follow soon (a little in joke for fellow Zep fans. 😉 )

Anyway it got me thinking about music films in general and how they affected and shaped my musical tastes in the late ’60s and ’70s and even to this day.

My earliest memory of seeing a pop music film is from 1964 when my Dad took my brother and myself to La Scala cinema in Clydebank to see ‘A Hard Day’s Night.’

We were very excited as we had been listening to their hit singles and collecting posters and bubble gum cards for about 18 months. We both even had ‘moptop’ haircuts, but maybe that was the only style our local Jensas barbers could cut!

We were loaded down with sweets and juice cartons as we took our seats and the lights dimmed. Dad leaned over to say if we needed the toilet to let him kn…..
and that was the last words we heard as the film and the screaming started!
And it never stopped for the next 90 minutes. We couldn’t hear a single word of dialogue or note of music. The story seemed to consist of the Fab Four being endlessly chased by manic fans down streets and train platforms which resulted in even louder screaming! 

Now and again there would be a disruption in a nearby row as a young girl had fainted and was being carried to safety by an overwrought parent or older sibling.

The film ended, the house lights came on and my brother and I stood up to leave but Dad put an arm across us and said ‘We’re going nowhere’
This was in the days when films were shown on a loop with only 5 minutes or so in between showings.
Most of the audience did leave and their vacated seats were eagerly taken by new pre-teens and scared looking parents who’d obviously seen the distraught, crying kids in the foyer.

So we stayed in our seats and ‘watched’ nay endured, another 90 minutes of screaming and fainting! Again we never heard a single word…..

The following year we went to see ‘HELP’ also by The Beatles.

This time we were allowed to go on our own with friends.
We were, after all by that time, all seasoned veterans of the Saturday morning ABC Minors Club.

There was an urban myth doing the rounds at the time, that somebody had been stabbed by a Hell’s Angel at a previous showing. It was unclear whether this had happened at Clydebank, Liverpool or London or if it had actually happened at all, but it was wisely decided by our group NOT to mention it to our respective parents.

The other main difference was that HELP was in glorious Technicolour!

There was still a lot of screaming but at least we could follow the story and hear most of the music.

I do, however, remember feeling quite anxious (I was only eight) when the baddie played by Leo McKern, threatened to cut off Ringo’s finger to retrieve the sacred ring that he ends up wearing!

Again there were lots of chase scenes and madcap antics.

The next rock/pop film we went to see was ‘Farewell Concert’ featuring Cream’s last gig filmed at The Albert Hall in 1968. 

They would reform and play again in 2005 but that’s another story.

I think it was around 1971/72 that my brother and I and quite a few of our highschool friends bunked off school and descended on the La Scala cinema to watch it, as it was
bizarrely being shown at 2pm on a Wednesday afternoon.
When it was released on VHS in 1977, the critics weren’t kind…..
‘The audio is turgid sonic sludge. The visuals are even worse…..layering the picture with dated and distracting psychedelic light effects’

But remember that review was 9 years after the gig!

I, on the other hand, was completely blown away by the sheer power and volume of the music. Plus the hippy lava lamp effect superimposed over the visuals seemed pretty cool to fourteen year old me. Everyone there felt the same.

I remember saying to my brother that I felt a bit sad, as up to recently, I’d never even heard of Cream and now they were gone!

I do wish that the entire gig had been recorded as the support acts were an up and coming prog rock band called YES and the Irish power trio TASTE fronted by a young Rory Gallagher.

Around ’74  we saw The Concert for Bangladesh at The Glasgow Apollo, which used to show movies when there were no gigs.

The concert was filmed at Madison Square Garden on the first of August 1971. It was the brainchild of George Harrison to raise money for the famine in Bangladesh and was the first all star charity rock show.

It had an impressive lineup of George, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Ravi Shankar, Leon Russell and Badfinger among others.

The film was very entertaining but slightly spoiled by some drunken 15 year olds who mistook George Harrison, dressed in a white suit, for David Essex and thought that Leon Russell was ‘Zat bloke frae Wizzard!’

In November 1976 the eagerly awaited Led Zeppelin film ‘The Song Remains The Same’ finally hit the screens.
Again myself and a crowd of fellow Zep fans filed into La Scala to watch the spectacle.

The live footage was filmed over three nights at Madison Square Garden.in the summer of 1973. 

The film also showcased quite bizarre, fantasy sequences filmed by each individual band member and manager Peter Grant at Shepperton Studios. These sequences have garnered a lot of criticism, both at the time and in subsequent years but I enjoyed them. They showed the band members in a very different light especially in an era where they didn’t give many, if any, interviews.

The live album which was released to accompany the film is spectacular too.

I watched it again recently and yes it has dated and the ‘fantasy’ sequences ARE a bit silly but The Songs Remain The (Majestic) Same!

Nowadays thanks to YouTube and other streaming services there is an abundance of Rock Docs. However most of them are pretty awful with many of them ridiculously not even having permission to play their subjects’ music! Kinda defeats the purpose eh?……

However one exception to this is the excellent  ‘Ghost Blues’ the story of Rory Gallagher’s life and music. Available on BBC iPlayer.

Also as I’m writing this, another one has appeared on my must watch radar.
Namely the remastered ‘Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii’ now at a cinema near you! 

(Post by Mark Arbuckle from Glasgow – May 2025)