Peter Whitehead’s footage of Led Zeppelin performing at Bath Festival on June 28, 1970 is one of the holy grails of Led Zeppelin footage.
The material, shot for a planned Led Zeppelin documentary that was later abandoned as LedZepNews detailed in a 2023 article using documents from Whitehead’s archives, remains largely unreleased. For decades, it was thought by the members of Led Zeppelin and most of the band’s fans that Whitehead’s footage was unusable.
It was only on May 27, 2017 when it was revealed that between 20 and 30 minutes of the Bath Festival film survives. Then on September 29, 2022, British film licensing company Kinolibrary published parts of the film on YouTube without fanfare.
The emergence of the film, which comprises colour and close-up footage of Led Zeppelin, shocked fans. “This footage is mind blowing! Thank you so much for sharing. I’m speechless,” wrote one user on Led Zeppelin’s official forum. “Holy fucking fuck,” wrote another person on the Royal Orleans forum.
However, the deletion of the footage from YouTube in 2024 has led to speculation regarding how much of Whitehead’s film exists and whether it will be officially released.
Hathor Publishing UK, a clip licensing agency run by Whitehead’s estate, is now seeking to license the Bath Festival film and quietly published a new trailer featuring previously unheard professionally recorded audio from the show.
Robert Chilcott, an archivist at the business who also edited the trailer, tells LedZepNews that eight reels of footage from Bath Festival 1970 have been found. With each reel containing roughly 11 minutes of footage give or take a few minutes, that means more than an hour’s worth of unreleased film exists.
The rediscovery of Whitehead’s film was an “accident”, Chilcott says. “A number of cans were not clearly labelled. [Network Distributing] transferred a random batch of materials which they thought related to ‘Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London’ and showed it to [De Montfort University] to identify it. Mixed in with this was the 30+ minutes of the Bath 1970 Festival.”
A film label originating from Peter Whitehead’s archives that was shown at an event at the Royal Albert Hall in London on May 27, 2017 (LedZepNews)
The 2017 announcement by Steve Chibnall, a professor at De Montfort University, of the rediscovery of around 30 minutes of Bath Festival 1970 footage was both “bittersweet” and “oxymoronic”, Chilcott says, as more video from Led Zeppelin’s performance at the festival was discovered shortly afterwards.
“Further research not long after revealed that Contemporary Films had a Beta SP transfer of the entire eight reels telecined some 15 years earlier, tucked away on their shelves in Crouch End,” he says.
“These Mini DVs were subsequently digitised for Contemporary [Films] during the lockdown and they are the BITC versions that Kinolibrary, a then client of Contemporary’s, put on YouTube. So your earlier article, impressively in-depth, cites eight reels, approx 11 minutes per reel, give or take a few minutes at the head and tail of the reel.”
Whitehead’s archives were scattered between several businesses and organisations, meaning it’s only since his death in 2019 that the full extent of his surviving footage has re-emerged.
Whitehead donated his papers to De Montfort University, while his video footage was stored at Network Distributing and Contemporary Films, the latter of which sought to license it via Kinolibrary, resulting in the publication in 2022 of parts of the Bath Festival film on YouTube.
John Paul Jones (left), Robert Plant (centre) and Jimmy Page (right) of Led Zeppelin performing “That’s The Way” at Bath Festival 1970 in Shepton Mallet on June 28, 1970 (Hathor Publishing UK)
When work on “Becoming Led Zeppelin” began, the filmmakers approached the companies managing Whitehead’s archives in search of the Bath Festival 1970 footage for possible use in the project, Chilcott explains.
“Network [Distributing], anticipating a good payday for clip licensing, did a full 4K transfer of all eight reels, though I’m not sure it went to 4K as it was originally 16mm and if you blow that up too much it can look worse than SD,” the archivist says.
Whitehead’s more than an hour of footage is “unlikely” to contain full videos of Led Zeppelin songs, Chilcott says: “It was only supposed to be B-roll for a proposed documentary on the band by Whitehead until he abandoned it.
But as the footage was transferred for possible inclusion in “Becoming Led Zeppelin”, synchronised stage-recorded audio of “Immigrant Song” was discovered.
“During the telecine, one of the reels had some sync sound mag stock that married up to the beginnings of a cutting copy, so you have the start of the first song,” Chilcott says. “After that, you have the film reel rushes stopping and starting, so it’s a big job to sync it all up.”
A portion of Douglas Macintosh’s 2003 letter to Peter Whitehead (Reproduced with permission from The Peter Whitehead Archive at the Cinema and Television History Institute at De Montfort University)
Whitehead’s film crew recorded six reels of quarter-inch tape of their own audio of Led Zeppelin’s Bath Festival 1970 performance using a Nagra III reel-to-reel tape recorder manned by Douglas Macintosh, which Macintosh referred to in a handwritten letter dated August 8, 2003 that he sent to Whitehead.
“There was sync by the traditional pulse cable from the camera motor to the Nagra’s Neopilot head until we got on the stage, but Ernie [Vincze] soon found his movements being restricted and unplugged it, so after that there was no sync pulse on the tapes,” Macintosh wrote.
Without having access to a synchronised version of the film that marries the video and audio, Whitehead’s family are left with the task of reuniting both components.
“Until someone – a patient editor and a Led Zeppelin fan (or both) – sits down in front of an Avid and painstakingly syncs it up, then we don’t know [which songs were filmed]. The footage goes into dusk and then night-time, pretty dark, difficult to see which song they are singing/playing,” Chilcott says.
Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin performing “Thank You” at Bath Festival 1970 in Shepton Mallet on June 28, 1970 (Hathor Publishing UK)
The synchronised “Immigrant Song” footage did allow Chilcott to create the new trailer, however.
“Whitehead’s restless zooms have their own energy, just let them play out,” he says. “It’s more of a taster, obviously as a sizzler for the Peter Whitehead archive and clip sales. [I] kept it simple: key shots of each of the four guys, plus backstage flashes of Donovan, Julie Felix and even Penny Slinger (Whitehead’s then girlfriend), all leading into the start of the gig. The crowd are great – spoilt for choice with that footage!”
Despite the interest from the filmmakers behind “Becoming Led Zeppelin”, the film’s narrative ends with footage also overseen by Whitehead of the band’s January 9, 1970 performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London. No footage of Led Zeppelin’s Bath Festival 1970 performance was included in the documentary.
According to Chilcott, a potential sequel to the film might be the best chance fans have at seeing Whitehead’s footage. “We’ll have to wait for the sequel to ‘Becoming Led Zeppelin’ as the narrative there stops a few months before the gig,” he says.
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