Archive footage of director on filming Led Zeppelin at Bath

When it comes to rock icons there’s perhaps no bigger band than Led Zeppelin, who changed the face of music and became one of the biggest-selling bands of all time.

Last week, footage recorded in 1970 of Led Zeppelin playing at the Bath Blues Festival emerged on YouTube. It was filmed by counter culture filmmaker Peter Whitehead, whose archive is held at De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) by the Cinema and Television History Institute.   

Whitehead – who also shot the 1965 Rolling Stones film Charlie is My Darling – talks about his experiences filming with the band in conversation with DMU researcher Dr Alissa Clarke.

The Led Zeppelin footage had long been thought lost to time until in 2017, DMU’s Professor Steve Chibnall revealed that while cataloguing the Whitehead archive, he had come across film reels of the footage.

The new Led Zeppelin film has been uploaded by Kinolibrary YouTube Channel without sound.

Prof Chibnall said: “This is most of the Peter Whitehead footage, although missing the rushes shot after sunset (perhaps 5 minutes), and I believe there were some shots of Page using a bow on his guitar strings.

“It is in Whitehead’s style and the same clapper-board is used. Great that it has finally surfaced. I’m sure the sound is out there somewhere.”

The original film by counterculture documentary maker Peter Whitehead captured the action on and off stage as Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham performed at the Bath Festival in 1970. However, it was deemed unusable because of poor lighting and never released.  

It had been thought no film footage survived from the Bath concert. Whitehead donated his archive to CATH in 2016 which includes unseen film, diaries, journals, cuttings and all kinds of material covering his output and it was there that the cans containing the Led Zep footage were found.