Full audio interview: Director Peter Michael Dowd on his film 'Mr. Jimmy'

The new feature-length documentary film “Mr. Jimmy” follows Japanese musician Akio Sakurai, known professionally as both Mr Jimmy and Jimmy Sakurai, as he hones his craft emulating the appearance and sound of Jimmy Page.

The film, which opened in cinemas on September 1 and had its premiere in the UK this weekend, is an exploration of one man’s decades-long passion for Led Zeppelin and Page in particular.

LedZepNews spoke to Peter Michael Dowd, the film’s director, to discuss the film and its release. You can read our feature on the film, including an interview with Sakurai, on the LedZepNews website here.

Paying subscribers can listen to the full audio interview above and read the complete transcript of our conversation with Peter Michael Dowd below:

LedZepNews: I love the film. I watched it on Friday night. It's really excellent. I want to start off with the boring, obvious question of how did you find Mr. Jimmy? You know, he's sort of been around in the periphery of the world of Led Zeppelin fandom, not massively well known. How did you stumble upon him and what made you want to devote years of your life to documenting him?

Peter Michael Dowd: Yeah, well, it's funny, it all started with a text message from a friend on like a Friday night eight years ago and they knew I was a huge Led Zeppelin fan and they said ‘Hey Peter, I just saw a Led Zeppelin tribute band in Boston that wasn't total shit.’

Now it turns out it wasn't even wasn't even Jimmy but it got my mind going about tribute bands and I found the concept kind of interesting. It's sort of like you can copy a Van Gogh, but then do you also dress like him? Do you also cut off your ear? The idea of copying the artist's work, but then trying to form yourself in the shape of the artist, I thought was pretty interesting.

And then I went down a rabbit hole on YouTube of all the tribute bands out there and no disrespect, but most of them simply aren't that good. So I started to think maybe this was a bad idea because I don't want to make a film about someone unless I really feel like I love them. I love what they do and I didn't want to make a movie that was just sort of taking the piss out of somebody or was a parody of a tribute band.

So for a bit, I thought, well, maybe this isn't really a good idea. Then all of a sudden I saw this clip of Akio in Japan, and I think it was labelled 'Rain Song 1979 version.' So me being a Zeppelin nut, I'm thinking 'Oh this is rather particular'. So I click on it and just in a second I knew something was up because he had the blue button down shirt, he had the white linen pants. He had the loafers. The complete outfit of Page from Knebworth August 1979 and I'm thinking 'Shit, this is amazing.'