Japanese musician Akio Sakurai channels spirit of legendary Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page
- ‘I consider what I do to be a revival band,’ says Akio Sakurai said. ‘It’s like [what Steven] Spielberg did with dinosaurs in Jurassic Park’
Name the date and the place of the concert and Sakurai can play the song as Page did – the same timing, phrasing, and tone, not to mention the wearing of the appropriate duds, including a perfect facsimile of the black dragon suit, right down to the colours of the stitching.
Mr. Jimmy, a documentary by American director Peter Michael Dowd, follows 55-year-old Sakurai on his journey from playing basement clubs in Tokyo to joining one of the longest-running Led Zeppelin tribute bands in Los Angeles to playing with Jason Bonham, the son of the late Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham.
Dowd discovered Sakurai on YouTube performing The Rain Song and was instantly awed at how accurately Sakurai copied Led Zeppelin’s August 4, 1979, performance at the Knebworth Festival.
“I thought, this is not a tribute guy. This is an artist and someone with a story. This is a movie,” Dowd said.