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@lemonpagezoso
JIMMY PAGE BREAKING MY HEART WITH HIS UNREASONABLY AND ASTONISHINGLY PRECIOUS VOICE!!!!!!!
THE TEARS WON’T STOP FALLING I CAN’T EVEN
jesus, he’s speaking Spanish
It is a weird mixture of spanish german english and french… YEAH
Buenos noches, buenos noches😂😂 he sounds so aggressive when he says good evening
Buenas tardes, buenas naches jajaja
always thinking about him ♡
Jimmy Page interview, Beat Instrumental, April 1976, by Gary Cooper
Text
Jimmy Page enters Swan Song Record's comfortable if sparsely furnished office looking quite disconcertingly youthful. Despite a sleepless night there's an air of light humour hovering about him—albeit tinged with that unfathomable mystique that Zeppelin have had since day one of their travels through the rock and roll desert. He lowers himself into a chair takes a sip of beer and grins. It's probably his first interview in a long while and he somehow feels restless to get it rolling. It's not a desire to get it out of the way though, he just seems full of ideas ripe for communication. I return the grin, fiddle with the tape machine (uttering a silent invocation to the gods of electronics that the conversation gets properly recorded) and launch off. It's a long long while since Beat spoke last with him so I launch right back to the very beginning.
Jimmy, why play guitar at all? What started it?
Well, when I got turned onto Rock music in the early days it was very much a subculture thing. The one record that really turned me on to want to play the guitar was Baby, Let's Play House, a Presley / Scotty Moore thing—it sounded so full. Even now, although it possibly sounds very simple, it has a definite essence to it. All those early Presley records had it, in fact all those early rock and roll records had it. They knew that they were breaking barriers and it really was something new, it was going like a bloody great avalanche.
Anyway, I had an old Spanish guitar that was given to the family and no-one had ever touched it but I think I managed to find someone to help me play. In those days it was really bad for a beginner. Whenever a guitar was seen at school it just kept getting taken away but I wanted to take mine with me everywhere so that I could have the time to learn how to play.
So, although you began like everyone else, when did your style become Jimmy Page?
I guess it must have come when I was doing recording sessions really, although it's hard to say, but I was making up riffs and things and ended up playing solos that I guess were really just a conglomeration of everything I'd ever learned all mixed-up and put through the mincer. One's automatically got an identity and I've always felt that other good guitarists could tell, I mean you can read an identity, like a psychiatrist could, read all about someone from their playing.
Still staying in the past, I remember that when I first saw Zeppelin, in a pub in Welwyn Garden City, that you had some really weird Rickenbacker amps. Where did they come from and what became of them?
Yeah, I remember that gig too, we were late! Those amps were something we managed to connive out of Rickenbacker in the Yardbirds. We had these cabinets and the amps were terrible, they kept blowing-up and farting—really dreadful, but the cabinets had these really good JBL speakers in them so I got rid of these transistorised amps—I hate transistor amps anyway, they've got no meat in them.
Can I quote you on that?
Yeah! Electricians say that it's because they don't use good quality transistors that they sound so flat but I don't believe that. I just don't think they can get it—you've got to have something burning, something moving, I mean you can see that movement, that bloody power! You whack a chord and you can see them all light up. I mean, with a transistor it just doesn't happen does it? You can really recognize a transistor amp. Personally, I still use Marshalls on stage doctored up with KT 88's and they really put it out. In the studio I've been more or less using AC 30's and this old amp I've got called a Supro which again is an old valve amp. I used that one all the way through the first album and I nearly always end up doing solos on it and sticking Robert's harps through it.
On the subject of gear, what happened to that old Telecaster that you used to use?
Jeff (Beck) gave it to me as a present—it was a beautiful gesture if you think about it. As you know I was asked to join the Yardbirds and said no, but I recommended them to ring Jeff. Anyway, they did and were knocked out. So he came round one day, knocked on the door and said, "It's yours" and it was a really beautiful instrument. The trouble is it got buggered-up. I was away on tour and a friend of mine painted the guitar and knocked a wire off which he tried to put back on again. All you could get when you switched the pickups was the neck one. I couldn't work out what was wrong so we took it along to a certain shop in the West End with the faults written down on paper but when it came back they'd re-wired both pick-ups. It was finished. That was it, the neck's still fine but I just couldn't bring myself to play it again. You could really play that guitar, it worked with you. It was wiped-out by some idiot.
So is that what brought you onto the Les Paul?
No, it was just that the group was getting louder, the drum kit started to increase in size—not getting more drums, but just the drums getting bigger and louder. Bonzo's amazing like that, he doesn't really thrash the drums and if you watch him you'll hardly see his arms move at all but he's got so much attack from the wrist. Anyway, this poor old Telecaster was beginning to start screaming with feedback as I moved the volume up. So I thought I'd just have to go over to a Gibson where at least you could control the feedback.
Do you prefer the Gibson to the Fender?
They're just totally different, one a very clean guitar with what I'd call a very glassy sound, whereas the Gibson's got a fat sound. I don't have a preference, it's just horses for courses. I mean, all those country licks that you can get out of a Telecaster, you just can't get them to sound right with a Les Paul.
Are there any special Jimmy Page playing techniques that you could talk about?
Well, I suppose my whole approach to the guitar is hardly technical in relation to, say, classical guitar. I mean I'm using my thumb and this sort of thing which is right out technically and that's just a minor thing. Really there are just loads of little things which you come across when you're playing. If it works and if you use it at the right time then it's valid. I've never had a very good technique and I've always felt that it was very sloppy playing really, but then people tell me I'm too self-critical but that's just the way it is.
Who do you listen to these days?
Well, I don't really listen to that many things at all. In fact I stopped listening to anybody for about 18 months because I didn't want to start picking-up on other people's things. In the early days of Zeppelin I was still listening to a lot of people like Bert Jansch because I thought that he was such an innovator. Nowadays I listen to a lot of folk music, street music really, and try to adapt their scales and rhythms to what I'm doing rather than listen to other rock and roll guitarists because I reckon that I've got a pretty good knowledge of straight rock and roll and now I just want to keep extending in lots of different areas not just trying one style. Even though I might not be able to play all the things really well. I'd rather be able to dabble at everything, if you can appreciate different ideas in music then you can find something for every mood.
Are you still searching round through Indian music?
I really got so enveloped on the technical side of that. The fact that they measured their quarter and eight tones with so many intervals, I think about eleven, and I found the fact that they could measure and work with these amazing. At the time that I was really getting into that I was doing session work and the people there are very staid in their approach to theoretical music. And when I said to them that you just can't write this stuff in your system they said "Well, it doesn't matter anyway".
Where do you go from here with the guitar?
I've got this whole guitar orchestration instrumental which brings in many different sections of guitar and that was going on the last L.P. but as we didn't have enough time to record it I decided to save it. I really think that a good guitar orchestration has yet to come. The way I've discussed it with Robert it will have just four short sections of vocals on it, he's really very keen on it.
In the booklet that was on sale at the Earls Court gigs last year there was a description of you sitting there with your guitar in your hands just waiting for something to come through. How true a picture was that?
Very true really. One minute your sitting there with the guitar, then you're playing and you realise that something has come through. It's like guitar solos—I'll get warmed up and knock-off three and one of them, with any luck, will be all right, but I didn't plan it that way, it just came through. On stage, for example, I'm really trying to open-up, open myself and clear my mind out. It sounds awfully pretentious but I'm sorry that's how it is. Half the time I don't know what I'm playing and I know that could be made into a huge kind of a joke—don't even print it if it doesn't read right, but that's how it is. I'll go into the studio one night and come out in the morning and the whole thing's done but when I went in I went in with nothing.
There are limits to just how good a scribe you are though, otherwise we'd have people who are as great as the great lyrical composers—I mean, who's going to come through with the strength of a Wagner? That's where you have to own up and admit that it is just a music of the streets and it only goes so far. O.K., it's important sociologically, but culturally, watch out! No matter how much people like to waffle about it I really think that it's just a folk music reflecting the sociological condition of today.
If you're saying that we lack really great composers of the stature of people like Wagner, isn't that as true of all art it is of music? I mean, it's missing from graphic art too isn't it?
Yes, you're right. When I was at art college the whole thing was gimmickry and I said it's got to go back to realism. I mean I was interested in the Pre-Raphaelites and they laughed. There is eventually going to be some sort of rennaissance and it will be a sort of heavy intellectual romantic thing which will really stir people with its intensity.
Will it come from established musicians like yourself?
Judging by what I see coming from the younger musicians now there doesn't seem to be that much going on but there could be something lingering on there that could be a fight against all that nonsense. I'm just a musician of the day though I'm not saying that I could do it but I know it's going to happen.
It's an obvious question, but do you practice much these days?
No, not like I ought to. Not unless there's something that I've got in my head that is difficult to play. Obviously, I work out harmonic things but not solos. Now when I went to India I met this guy and he made me feel quite ashamed. He'd never met a Western guitarist but he'd got it all sussed-out. He had his guitar properly strung and he'd got his approach right. This chap had only learned by people sending him out the occasional Guitar Player mag and probably yours too. He'd been a sitarist for seven years and he asked me that very question so I said, oh, about an hour a day and he said "Well, I always get to play for at least eight hours a day". Here was a chap who was really struggling and quite probably would never get to be heard but he was putting so much work into it. It did make me think was I putting enough effort into what I was doing?
Time was against us running through more questions although Jimmy seemed willing enough to go on talking all day. It's only when I think back to the conversation that I realise just how much more I could have asked and just how deeply immersed in his role as some sort of musical scribe Jimmy is. The wider ramifications of being a rock and roll superstar are there in his mind in terms of the power he can tap when he's on stage. But it's a power taken from the audiences and used to bring something back that can be heard in his writing and playing. Just the ancient role of the artist and scribe . . . perhaps re-vitalised in an age when such things are not widely recognized but are still there nevertheless.
"Playing music is a very high sexual act. It’s an emotional release and the sexual drive comes in along with all the other impulses."
—Jimmy Page, Disc and Music Echo, 22 April 1972
Led Zeppelin interview with Rolling Stone, 20 September 1990
By J.D. Considine, republished in the Rolling Stone Collector's Edition: Led Zeppelin — The Ultimate Guide to Their Music & Legend, 2013
Text (transcript of original article copied from Rolling Stone's website, hence the different intro)
At the time, nobody thought it would work. Keith Moon, after hearing the Yardbirds’ Jimmy Page explain his idea for a new blues-based band, simply laughed. The band, the Who’s drummer predicted, would go over not like a lead balloon but like a lead zeppelin.
Needless to say, Moon was wrong. Led Zeppelin was a smash virtually from the moment its first album, Led Zeppelin, was released in 1969, and the band would dominate rock & roll for the next decade. Yet it was an entirely new kind of success. Unlike the rock titans of the Sixties, Led Zeppelin had little use for singles; albums were the band’s currency, generating a whole new canon, including tracks like “No Quarter,” “Immigrant Song,” “Communication Breakdown” and the eternally popular “Stairway to Heaven.”
Classics, every one of them, but classics of a new sort. Other bands had done their best to make rock seem bigger, louder, tougher and more ambitious, but it was Led Zeppelin that made the music heavy. From the galloping rumble of “Whole Lotta Love ” and the blues-spiked growl of “Black Dog” to the exoticisms of “Kashmir,” Led Zeppelin’s sound was invariably larger than life. Yet the band’s music rarely conveyed the brutality of proto-metal acts like Black Sabbath or Deep Purple; its impact was more a matter of intensity than jackhammer insistence.
Live, Led Zeppelin was without peer. Constantly reinventing itself onstage, the band made improvisational forays through songs like “Dazed and Confused” that were the stuff of legend. And as the fans flocked to its concerts, Led Zeppelin seemed to tower over its competition; by 1975, the band was unquestionably the most popular group in rock. It may also have been the most powerful, thanks to the band’s manager, Peter Grant, who changed the way business was done on the concert circuit, shifting the power and the money from the pockets of the promoters to the hands of the artists.
Such success, of course, was not without its cost. Before long, Led Zeppelin’s very preeminence assumed the status of myth, and all sorts of stories sprang up. Some were sinister, some salacious, some downright silly. The band was alleged to have indulged in everything from secret devil messages (ostensibly on “Stairway to Heaven”) to seafood orgies (in which willing groupies took in the catch of the day). There were also tragedies along the way, among them a car accident in Greece that put singer Robert Plant in a wheelchair (and nearly killed his wife) and an altercation in Oakland, California, with promoter Bill Graham that landed drummer John “Bonzo” Bonham in jail. But it was Bonham’s death in 1980 that finally grounded Led Zeppelin. Apart from Coda, an album of previously unreleased material that emerged in 1982, there has been no new music from Led Zeppelin in more than a decade.
Since Bonham’s death, the three surviving members of the band Page, Plant and bassist John Paul Jones have performed in public only twice, at Live Aid, with drummers Phil Collins and Tony Thompson, and at Atlantic Records’ fortieth-anniversary concert, with Bonham’s son Jason on drums. There seems to be little chance of a Who-style reunion for the band. “For me, it’s impossible to consider Led Zeppelin in the present tense,” Plant said in Cleveland recently.”Because if you took Bonzo’s drumming away, the band would sound useless. I think apart from the pride in the work that I did in that band, everything is very much in the past tense.”
Indeed, all three are busy with post-Zeppelin pursuits. Although Page recently returned to London after remastering tracks for a 54-song Led Zeppelin retrospective due for release in October, his first priority is the solo career he took up after the demise of the Firm. Plant is now touring behind Manic Nirvana, his sixth solo album. Jones has been in Barcelona, Spain, recording an “industrial flamenco” group called La Sura Dels Baus.
It’s been almost a whole decade since Led Zeppelin broke up, and yet for a lot of fans, it’s like it never ended.
Plant: Well, it hasn’t ended for anybody, really. I mean, Bing Crosby hasn’t ended, either, you know? Elvis certainly hasn’t.
Do you worry about that?
Page: Oh, good Lord, no. Why should I? I thought I was in the greatest band in the world. But musically, around that point in time, things were so healthy in so many areas.
Did you, as you were remastering tracks for the box set, find yourself thinking about where Led Zeppelin stands right now in rock history?
Page: Yes, and I realized what an absolutely brilliant textbook it was, and obviously still is. Because of the different areas of music that we touched on, and the different pathways that we were prepared to tread down sometimes really mosey down, steamroller down that gave such a wide variety of styles. And you know, pretty much it was all done really very well. There was a lot of soul and depth in it.
These days, though, radio particularly classic-rock radio seems to be a major factor in preserving the Zeppelin legacy. Do you think that’s a healthy perspective?
Plant: It depends. If that had happened in 1968, I don’t think we’d ever have been heard at all. If we’d been on the receiving end of this conservatism, maybe we’d have never been exposed. Because we didn’t sound like Tommy James, and we didn’t sound like Gary Puckett or whatever.
But Led Zeppelin did meet a lot of resistance early on, from press and radio.
Plant: Not from radio. Just from the press. And that was because we just didn’t play whatever game the game was. We figured the best thing to do was shut the fuck up and play, you know? It’s no good trying to be prophetic when you’re 20 years old. So the thing was, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, keep quiet.
Jones: The first review we got from Rolling Stone [“RS 29”] was... the total subject matter was all about the hype of Led Zeppelin. You know “It’s just another band of do-nothings, and here they are hyped up by everybody, and it’s a bunch of shit anyway.” And that was really hurtful at the time, because we knew we’d done a good record. It helped foster my general hatred of the press.
But the audiences had no difficulty responding to what you were doing.
Jones: Yeah, well, they came to the gigs. That was the difference. It was the same thing in England. We packed our gigs everywhere we went. There were lines right way round the block where the clubs or pubs were. Purely people there by word of mouth. You know “This is a good band, this will be a good gig. Go to it.” And they did. And the press, I feel, were a little bit miffed at the fact that they weren’t really there at the making of the band. So they chose then to ignore it, and we chose to ignore them. It was actually quite nice, not having to answer an enormous amount of stupid questions. I’m not saying that this is the case at this very moment [laughs], but you know what I mean.
Plant: It’s funny, really, because the acclaim always came from the street, never from the written critique. And really, in a much more basic manner, the same thing is happening to me now. Because people are comparing me, or not comparing me, or trying to screw me down, or complaining about my constant changes as a solo artist. All I’m doing is what I was always part of doing anyway I’m having a great time and weaving around like a fucking lunatic. But it’s the same kind of situation, two generations on journalists who were sucking their mother’s breast when the first querulous Led Zeppelin reviews came in are now doing the same thing to me.
You know, Led Zeppelin’s sledgehammer attitude or reputation, if you like, was only just one part of the whole spectrum of what it was. Sometimes it was gross and very indecent, and sometimes it was delicate and beautiful you know?
Jones: Certain people just don’t get it at all. There was a lot of humor in the group, a lot of humor in the music. Not all this glowering, satanic crap [laughs].
What about the way Led Zeppelin has begun to be seen in almost mythic terms?
Page: It’s only a myth to people who never heard us live, I suppose. I mean, if you heard us live, you’d know exactly where it was at.
Obviously, though, there are quite a few bands out there whose only point of reference is Zeppelin’s recorded word and that make almost slavish attempts to recapture the power of those recordings. Isn’t that a sort mythification?
Page: They miss the point. They miss the whole spirit that was behind it and the passion passion’s the word. They just get caught up in imitating the riffs without going for what was underneath. It was a very passionate band, and that’s what really comes through the whole thing.
What about the fans? Do you think they understand what the band was about? Or do they have their own vision of what made Led Zeppelin great?
Plant: Well, I don’t know, because nobody ever tells me anything about what they feel. They just go, “Yeah, man, Zeppelin.” And that’s it! They don’t say, “Did you really fuck somebody with a snake on your head?” [Laughs] You don’t get the dreamscapes.
Well, did you ever fuck somebody with a snake on your head?
Plant: Ahhh, no, that must have been Jimmy [laughs]. But there’s a devotion, and I don’t think the contributing factor is the hedonistic lifestyle or anything like that. I think the fact is that some songs do actually have a timeless appeal. I don’t know whether it would have been better that they didn’t, so that I could get on with my life without constantly having to cross t’s and dot i’s that belong in sentences way back, you know? But it doesn’t matter, really. One should always be proud of any good piece of work. And there are whole bunches of good pieces of work going back there.
Did you have a concept for the group?
Page: Well, certainly on the first album, I had a very good idea of what I wanted to try and get with the band. Because at that stage, I was extremely instrumental in the total direction of it. Obviously, there was a definite concept of what one was trying to do and achieve there, and it was done. But we were definitely right out there on a limb, weren’t we? Doing what we believed in. And it didn’t really follow any sort of trend that was going on at all or certainly nothing relative to any other band.
Did you ever look at other bands as competition the way, for instance, the Beatles looked at the Stones?
Plant: We were more concerned with diversity, self-satisfaction, creativity. So, really, there was nobody to compete with, because we were trying to entertain ourselves first and foremost, with no intentional stab at a pretty song for a pretty song’s sake.
From the beginning, really, it was a group policy that singles were not to be considered, that the whole game would be that if you wanted to find out about Led Zeppelin, you had to get into the whole thing. We would not put out singles as calling cards. So, really, there was nobody to compete with. It would be nice to think that we could walk alongside Kaleidoscope or Buffalo Springfield for diversity. I don’t think Jimmy’d agree with that [laughs], because I don’t think he thought much of Buffalo Springfield.
But I think the way the music moved around in its Englishness and its blues roots the inspiration didn’t allow it to compete with anybody, really. Because it wasn’t a pop band. I mean, it’s popular, but it certainly was not pop.
There’s probably no better example of that than “Stairway to Heaven.” which may be the most popular radio song of all time yet has never been available as a single.
Plant: Yeah, but the fact that it caught people’s imagination is interesting, really. Because it’s kind of the legend that created “Stairway to Heaven.”
How do you mean?
Plant: Well, because when we played it at the beginning, before the album came out, you could often see people settling down to have forty winks.
Really?
Plant: Yeah! Because people hadn’t heard it. They didn’t know what it was.
Page: Oh, that’s not true. No, I remember playing that at the L.A. Forum, and... I’m not saying the whole audience gave us a standing ovation, but there was this sizable standing ovation there. And I thought: “This is incredible, because no one’s heard this number yet. This is the first time they’re hearing it!” It obviously touched them, you know. And that was at the L.A. Forum, so I knew we were onto something with that one. Because it’s always difficult to hear a number, especially something that long, which you’ve never heard before.
Jones: “Stairway” embodies a lot of what Led Zeppelin was about. It actually had a sort of precedent in a song on the first album called “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You,” which had many of the same elements: the acoustic start, the build and the sort of “heavy” end.
It’s a good tune, for a start. Jimmy came up with the original guitar phrases and the original idea, and I think Robert might have had a short lyric, a first verse or something, a couple lines. And then Jimmy and I basically sat down, just the two of us sat down and worked out the entire arrangement, we plotted it through. It came together, basically, through quite a lot of hard work.
What strikes me about “Stairway to Heaven” is that there are folk-oriented songs like “The Battle of Evermore” and “Going to California,” and there are hard-rock songs like “Black Dog” and “When the Levee Breaks” and “Stairway” seems to be where the two sides meet.
Plant: Yeah, I think you’re right I mean, it wasn’t particularly unique, that approach, because some of the West Coast bands were doing it, combining that sort of stuff. It’s just that it’s ambiguous to such a degree that the only thing you know about it is that it’s affirmative, and it’s going the right way.
Obviously, Led Zeppelin drew from a wide range of musical styles how did the band find its common ground?
Jones: It wasn’t a purist band, as you get nowadays, where the entire band listens to the same type of music. Between the blues influences of Robert and the rock & roll influences of Jimmy who also had strong blues influences the soul influences of Bonzo and my soul and jazz influences, there seemed to be a common area, which was Led Zeppelin. The fusion of all different types of music and interests.
There was also quite a difference in experience, too, between the four members. Robert, what was it like for you and Bonham who were essentially unknown before joining Led Zeppelin to be thrown in with established, successful players like Page and Jones?
Plant: Everything is in the eye of the beholder. Jimmy was a member of the Yardbirds, and he was a session musician, so he was successful. Jonesy was much more the back-room boy I didn’t care, really, whether he’d produced “Mellow Yellow” or not, because it was a pop song, and it just started and stopped. Pretty song, but somebody had to write the song, never mind organize it. So their sort of positions and previous roles weren’t really that daunting.
But how they handled themselves with us was important Jonesy was a bit... not withdrawn, but he stands back a little and shoots the odd bit of dialogue into the air. It’s good stuff, but an acquired taste, really. And Jimmy’s personality, initially, was... I don’t think I’d ever come across a personality like it before. He had a demeanor which you had to adjust to; it certainly wasn’t very casual to start with. But then again, the music was so intense that everything was intense. The ambition was intense, and the delivery was intense, and where we were going was intense. Nobody knew what the fuck it was, but we all knew that this power was ridiculous from the beginning. So it was very hard to relax, sit down, have a beer and be the guys from the Black Country. Bonzo and I were much more basic in every respect in how to deal with everything including Jimmy. Because he had to be dealt with.
It must not have been all that difficult, though. Didn’t the lineup click from the first time the four of you got together?
Page: Yeah. We got together in this small rehearsal room and just played “Train Kept a-Rollin’ ” which was a number I used to do with the Yardbirds, and I think Robert knew it. And at the end of it we knew that it was really happening, really electrifying. Exciting is the word. We went on from there to start rehearsing for the album.
What was it about the way you four played together that made the music so exciting?
Jones: In a band like that, everybody’s got their ears open. That’s what it is. It is a chemistry, I suppose, that nonmusicians might not understand, but you follow the music, really. All sorts of ways, in all sorts of combinations. Which was very important for us. There’s no way I could have been in a band where you’d have to tho me records note for note every night and the only person who got to play any different was the lead guitarist you know what I mean? And at the time we really didn’t think about how anything would go down. We weren’t worried about making a record that would sell. The records were primarily for us, I think. So it wasn’t a case of analyzing the first album to work out what was successful, like they do these days. It was like “That’s done now it’s ever onward.”
Zeppelin had an ability to skip from style to style. Where did that come from?
Plant: Personalities.
There must be more to it than that.
Plant: Yeah, but you didn’t see the Band of Joy, before Zeppelin. And that was the same.
Really?
Plant: Yeah! Me and Bonzo in the Band of Joy we used to do versions of “White Rabbit,” the Airplane thing, with “March of the Siamese Children,” from The King and I, in the middle. In half time. We did all sorts of strange stuff... “Hey, Grandma,” from Moby Grape, which turned into something else most peculiar. There was always that looking around and getting goose bumps. When I first heard Om Kalsoum, it was a very important day for me, because it opened, it just enriched my life so much Even though I hardly understand a word she’s singing, because it’s in Arabic, I had to take some of the effect it had on me and put it into the music. As with Manic Nirvana right now, you stimulate yourself through your own excitement.
Don’t you still need a certain amount of ability to pull that off?
Plant: But if nobody else is doing it, you’ve got nothing to be measured against. We got it right, at times. Tracks like “Friends” and “Four Sticks” Jimmy and I went to India, and we recorded versions of these two tracks with the Bombay Symphony. We’d got a sort of disheveled gang of musicians together in Bombay, and we recorded two Led Zeppelin tracks. The session went very well until I got a bottle of brandy out, and there’s nothing like a good Indian, and there were no good Indians in that room at the end of the bottle. It’s a shame, really, that they won’t include it on this box set.
Why not?
Plant: I don’t know. Maybe Pagey didn’t think about it [laughs]. I didn’t think about it until just a second ago.
Page: Well, the only things that were left over that had complete vocals all came out on Coda. Those tracks were something that we were going to work on, probably at some later point in time. The actual master plan after having done that was to maybe do a tour through the Far East, going through Egypt and Bombay, then on to Thailand and all the rest of it, and then recording in those places. And that was like a first taste, to see how it would go. Of course, we never got that far. But that’s one of the game plans we had at the time.
Plant: We liked to travel and explore. I mean, we can’t be considered anthropologists or anything like that, but we knew of a few good brothels in the Far East.
“Knew a few good brothels” — now, that’s more typical of the Led Zeppelin myth than imagining you guys with the Bombay Symphony.
Plant: You can do a lot of things in one day.
Indeed. Of course, back then there was what now seems an almost legendary groupie scene the likes of which may never be seen again. That seems to leave a lot of younger fans feeling as if they’ve been gypped.
Page: You mean the whole scene, in the younger fans’ minds, has changed from sex, drugs and rock & roll to contraceptives, no drugs and rock & roll? [Laughs] That’s what you mean, is it?
Exactly. Was it as wonderful back, then as kids today imagine?
Page: You’d better ask Robert [laughs].
Plant: Yeah. That era, the whole thing of the G.T.O.’s and what was that Zappa album? 10,000 Hotels? “I’ve Been to Bed With Robert Planet.”. . . Yeah, shoving the Plaster Casters’ cast of Jimi Hendrix’s penis up one of the girls’ assholes at some hotel in Detroit was... quite fun, actually. I don’t remember who did it, but I remember I was in the hotel at the time.
It was... free love.
And it’s pretty much gone now, isn’t it?
Plant: Well, I think you now have to adapt a totally different attitude to the whole thing. Just when my stamina is really getting good, too [laughs].
But it was great. And that whole preposterous thing of the vocalist being larger than life — the way I was viewed in the mid-1970s was hysterical. Actually, I couldn’t take myself seriously for very long, because I would be constantly hacked to pieces by my fellow band members, who’d be giggling at me.
Didn’t they call you Percy?
Plant: Mmmm.
After Percival, the hero?
Plant: It was something to do with my anatomy. At the time. Maybe they wouldn’t call me that now, I dunno [laughs].
While we’re on the subject of Led Zeppelin legends, fundamentalist groups have claimed for years that there are satanic messages backward-masked onto “Stairway to Heaven.” Is there any truth to the charges?
Page: Well, I don’t pass any comment on them [sighs].
Plant: I mean, who on earth would have ever thought of doing that in the first place? You’ve got to have a lot of time on your hands to even consider that people would do that. Especially with “Stairway.” I mean, we were so proud of that thing, and its intentions are so positive, that the last thing one would do would be. . .I found it foul, the whole idea, you know? But. . . it’s very American. Nowhere else in the world has anybody ever considered it or been concerned or bothered at all about that. I figure if backward masking really worked, every record in the store would have “Buy this album!” hidden on it.
Page: You’ve got it, you’ve hit the nail on the head. And that’s all there is to say about it.
Jones: Of course, it’s fatal, you know, because you tend to wind these people up after a while. If you go around saying, “Oh, yes, if you play track 8 at 36 rpms, you’ll definitely hear a message,” they’ll say, “All right,” and go right home and try it. English bands tend to be more ironic and sarcastic, and once they discover the average American lack of irony and humor, it’s just sitting ducks, really. You just sort of have to go for it.
That cuts both ways, though. I mean, just look at all the fans who think Stephen Davis’s “Hammer of the Gods” is actually some sort of tribute to Led Zeppelin. I would imagine you three were a little less enthusiastic about it.
Page: I think I opened it up in the middle somewhere and started to read, and I just threw it out the window. I was living by a river then, so it actually found its way to the bottom of the sea [laughs]. That’s a fact.
I mean, I couldn’t bother to wade through that sort of stuff. I mean, that’s true masochism. The whole humor of the band disappeared in the parts that I read, and it was just a sensationalist book. I can understand obviously what you’re saying that fans read it just purely out of interest. And there’s no smoke without fire. But it wasn’t a very factual account.
Thinking about the way Led Zeppelin is perceived now, I wonder: Would people even recognize Led Zeppelin if it were around today?
Plant: Of course not. It couldn’t possibly be anything like where it was when it stopped. We’d probably be a lounge act now in San Antonio who knows? I mean, it wouldn’t be recognizable, I wouldn’t think. Could we play “Black Dog” for a further 10 years? I don’t think so. Only if it turned out like Dread Zeppelin, and then you could enjoy yourself. I mean, we were doing reggae versions of “Stairway to Heaven” when Tortelvis was thin. Just doing sound checks and stuff like that. I mean, it wasn’t sending the thing up it was just like “Here’s another way of doing it.”
Page: Our trademark, so to speak I suppose you could tell it anywhere. Like Robert’s voice is his trademark. And hopefully the same can be said of my guitar [laughs]. So even though we obviously would have gone through a lot of changes and tried all different musical approaches, nevertheless that would have been the telltale clue that it was Zeppelin. It would be immediately recognizable by the audible qualities of the four players.
What was that quality, though? What was it that gave Led Zeppelin and its music such a distinctive spirit?
Plant: Muddy Waters said — when? 15 years ago? — that nobody’s got the deep blues anymore. Maybe now, in this second or third generation of Zeppelinisms, people are losing the plot. Maybe people... they don’t feel it the way it was felt originally. But we had it. And that’s a hell of a sweeping statement. But we did have something up there, which was not just token cloning or token theft or whatever it was. We had a weave of... I don’t know. It was conspiratorial elegance, if you like. In the middle of it all, occasionally, it really did work. And it was wholehearted, and we gave it all a new personality.
The Zeppelin remains the same
Jimmy Page scotches rumours of a Led Zeppelin split in an interview with Chris Welch. Melody Maker, 5 November 1977
Text
JIMMY PAGE is perplexed and upset. In recent weeks, speculation about the future of Led Zeppelin in the light of recent tragic events has mounted. This week, Page, the guitar idol of a generation of rock fans, wanted to put an end to damaging and hurtful stories.
When he met the MM he seemed tired and strained, although there were flashes of the quick enthusiasm that has guided Zeppelin through eight tremendous years of international success. He talked at length about a variety of topics but his main theme, which he returned to frequently was that Zeppelin were NOT about to break up. And he denied emphatically stories about either he or Robert Plant joining any other group.
He admitted that since Robert suffered the loss of his young son earlier in the year, which put an abrupt end to the group's American tour, there had been no real thought of the band returning to active service while Robert wished to remain with his family.
It would be callous to suggest that Robert should return at such a time. But that did not mean that the group had ceased to exist or function.
A new studio album was being prepared slowly, with Jimmy working on an extended guitar instrumental theme, and there was also an album of live archive material to be assembled in chronological order.
Jimmy spoke happily and confidently about these projects. But when it came to the delicate subject that somehow there was a curse on the band, and that the forces of karma were at work, he became visibly distressed, and his voice frequently sank to the barely audible whisper.
"So much rubbish has been written about us recently. There was one thing about me joining the Stones, and it even got to the point of them asking Mick Jagger if Robert was joining.
"I thought, 'this is getting really silly.' There were rumours that the group was breaking up, and all this sort of crap, and for some reason I don't understand, it just keeps going on."
I explained to Jimmy that I, too, had heard, the same rumours and had posed the question to Mick Jagger recently without seriously expecting it to be true. Indeed, Mick had laughed at the stupidity of such a suggestion.
"Yeah," said Jimmy. "I see," he added thoughtfully. "In fact I've been very busy for the past few months, but unless you are being monitored all the time people think you are doing nothing."
At this point Jimmy veered away from the whole subject of the rumours and tried instead to present a picture of positive action and plans for the future. But it was obvious that he was greatly disturbed.
"I've got a studio at home — finally," he said as if the thought of it was a welcome distraction. "It's taken me 15 years to turn it into a reality. It's all together and last weekend was the first playback of the tape.
"The console was installed last January, and it's taken me all this time to sort out the acoustics.
"I've been listening to lots of live tapes of the band, going back to the concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 1969. I know that 'Song Remains The Same' was a live album, but it wasn't THE best performances, it was just one that happened to have celluloid with it.
"And there are loads of howling guitar mistakes on it. Normally, one would be inclined to cut them out, but you can't when it's a soundtrack.
"It's an honest album in its own way, but a chronological live album is something I've always fancied, and now I've got the facilities at home to play back all the hundreds of hours of tape, it's definitely on. There's great stuff there, and it takes us right up to this year."
Armoury
Jimmy was also keen about a new addition to his musical armoury — a guitar synthesizer. "It's really phenomenal, a Roland synthesizer, and it's a knockout.
"There are three guitar synthesizers available at the moment, and I guess you know there is this problem with getting a polyphonic sound.
"Well, the other two only play one note at a time and you can get harmonies with the oscillators, but THIS one plays chords. It's just a whole new world.
"No, I haven't used it on stage yet, but we were trying to get it together just before the end of the American tour. It's definitely something to use on stage.
"So while I've been totally self-indulgent and knocking myself out with new things, there has been all this stuff going on in the press, so I thought it was a good idea to, er, speak . . . ask me what you want."
Was it true, then, as rumours suggested, that Zeppelin would break up?
"No, definitely not. I've gotta say to you right now there are areas that are bloody touchy. You see, I've never known a family to have such bad luck as Robert's, and it's really awful . . ."
Here Jimmy seemed so upset his voice almost ground to a halt and he asked that as little should be said about the tragedy as possible.
But this left unresolved several questions about the future that Jimmy tried his best to answer during a conversation that meandered over the next two hours. He wanted to emphasise that plans were still being made for the future.
"As well as listening to the old tapes, I'm preparing material for the new LP, which I'll pace along with the live stuff. But I'd like the new studio album out first.
"I thing I've spoken to you before about a long piece I'd written which was to have gone on 'Presence.' I had it all planned out and arranged, but it was too dangerous to rely on because of the time factor.
"I knew how much time would be needed for overdubs, and it wasn't the sort of thing John Paul Jones and I could do together.
"I wanted to orchestrate the guitar and put it through various treatments, which with the guitar synthesizer will be even easier now.
"I once worked on a guitar epic when I was doing studio work with Mike Leander. It was a classical thing rocked up.
"All the guitars were playing in unison and it didn't work. But I know now the whole thing can work, and from the trial runs I've laid down, it does work.
"Think of Django Reinhardt, Les Paul and Jimi Hendrix, all as different tonally as chalk from cheese, and imagine them blocked together! That's what I'm seriously involved with right now, and another long piece . . ."
Theme
Would you involve the rest of the group, or is it a solo project?
"No, no, no — with the rest of the guys. But it's basically an instrumental.
"The original idea was to have four sections for the vocals, coming back to the same theme each time. But there would be four separate melody lines dealing with the four seasons.
"He (Robert) would be doing the lyrics for it, but right now it's difficult to tell if the lyrics would deal with the seasons.
"We're used to doing complete demo tapes of songs and it's a bloody nuisance, actually, because I've lost two and a half years of work. The cassette briefcase . . . it's gone.
Jimmy began to look even more dejected. "My luggage was being brought back through the customs by somebody else, and it's just gone.
"You get so used to working with cassettes you don't bother to learn it. Once it's on the tape you feel safe, and that's the record of a particular idea.
"There were loads of orchestrated sections . . . it's a damn nuisance. Fortunately, the excitement of having the new studio transcends the grief of losing all those demos, and I'll be coming up with new stuff anyway."
Was the studio in Scotland?
"No, Plumpton, not Scotland. I've got a house there but I don't spend nearly as much time there as I'd like to."
Jimmy had been under a lot of pressure and a lot of unfortunate things had happened. How was he coping personally?
"The worst thing is not being able to do anything . . a feeling of helplessness, really. The studio console arriving now has helped me to get on with something . . ."
At this point, John Paul Jones, Zeppelin's keyboard player, burst cheerily into the room and swept Jimmy away for a quarter of an hour chat. He returned in a slightly more cheerful frame of mind and ready to talk further about the various old Zeppelin tapes for the compilation album.
"There's a winning version of 'No Quarter' from the Earls Court concert, and from the Albert Hall '69 there's 'I Can't Quit You Baby.' The 'How Many More Times' is pretty good.
"It's great hearing them again, numbers that we'll probably never play again. We've got numbers from Southampton University, and some small clubs."
How did Jimmy feel about the Zeppelin bootleg albums which proliferated in the Sixties and Seventies?
"I'm furious about them. The quality and the pricing of them . . . when you think about the overheads that the bootleggers have, pretty much nil and they charge more than the price of a regular album. And they're re-recorded on tiny cassette players.
Shock
"None of the ones I heard actually came from the mixing board. I remember going into Chicago which had a wall completely full of bootleg albums, which came as a shock as I thought the legislation had stopped them.
"There was one called 'The Genius Of Pete Townshend' which was all his home demos. I don't know how they got hold of them.
"They can be very interesting, but the main thing about bootlegs is the quality. I had one of us live in Japan, and it's slow. It's a tone and a half down, and that was selling."
Jimmy is most impressed by new wave bands like the Damned. "They are a knockout. I had heard so many derogatory statements about punk, as it was called then, and I was really curious to see what it was all about, and they were the best initiation one could have had.
"So powerful and tight. Exactly what rock and roll is all about, sheer adrenalin music. I think the new wave is the most important thing that's happened since Hendrix.
"But the ones that are good will last, like XTC, who seem to have a lot going for them — nice arrangements and chord changes, really interesting.
"And the Pistols, a couple of tracks are really great. There is a lot of energy there and I hope it becomes more positive, because one detects the negative vibe going on, which is really silly."
Did the new wave alter the way Jimmy thought about rock and Led Zeppelin?
"I suppose it did, really. Difficult to say how. We're on uncharted ground and you have to get it together — not that we aren't getting it together!
"The thing about Hendrix was that he had so many ideas linked to energy that were streets ahead of his contemporaries. Now there is a new energy statement being made, and love it or hate it, it's definitely there."
Zeppelin have enjoyed worldwide success over the last eight years. They have earned fame and riches. But were there any ambitions that Jimmy had unfulfilled.?
"We had a great plan to spend our non-British residence period soaking up the musical vibe in places like Morocco. We went there after Earls Court and spent quite a lot of time driving around there.
"We got turned back at the border on our way to the Sahara because there was a lot of mobilisation of troops going on.
"But we heard a lot of local music and I was really influenced by them in tunes like 'Achilles Last Stand.' "The week of Robert's accident we had planned to go to Japan and Australia and then work our way back slowly through the East. Any we wanted to record in Bangkok, Delhi and Cairo, and soak up the vibes, as we had done in Morocco.
"We didn't want to sound like a half-baked imitation but to use the acoustic qualities of their music. It was an interesting challenge to attempt. That would have been a milestone in our career, an aim fulfilled, but for circumstances.
Ahead
"At that time we had considered shelving the film (The Song Remains The Same) to film the forthcoming American tour. We had learnt a lot and wanted to re-do the film.
"But then, after Robert's accident, we had to fill the gap and go ahead with the film."
Once again Jimmy's thoughts turned to Robert and the bad luck that seemed to dog the group. He was particularly upset by the use of the expression "karma" that had been used about the group's ill-fortunes in some articles.
"It's just the wrong term to ever use, and how somebody could write that down, knowing the full facts about what has happened, I don't know. It shocks me.
"The whole concept of the band is of entertainment. I don't see any link between that and karma, and yet I've seen it written a few times about us, like 'yet another incident in Zeppelin's karma — John Paul Jones has a broken hand'. It's nonsense, that was YEARS back. It's all crap."
Had Zeppelin made enemies over the years, so that people should want to start those sort of rumours? Jimmy sat silently for some minutes.
"No I don't think so . . . there was only the thing with Bill Graham, and that was just a case of manhandling going on at the back of the stage, people getting pulled over the barriers and being given whacks.*
"But I didn't know anything about that, I didn't see what happened. I know that heavy vibe thing has surrounded us, but it's more like . . . well, when Peter (Grant) did his scene in the film, it was really tongue-in-cheek.
"You couldn't find a gentler man, but people totally misunderstood him.
"And that thing about karma really bothers me. Where's the clue? I'm putting it to you to supply the answer. Why are they using that term? It's a horrible, tasteless thing to say."
Well, Jimmy, as you and the band have been popular and successful for a long time, then you become something of a target. It happens to people in all fields.
"Yeah, I know that. It goes on and you can see it. We can take constructive criticisms and attacks, and one comes to terms with that and laugh it off and . . . I'm only thinking out loud, really.
"We shouldn't even discuss it. Just say that Jimmy Page is perplexed by the use of the word 'karma.' I just don't know what's going on."
*Jim Matzorkis, a Bill Graham security guard, was severely beaten in Oakland by Peter Grant and John Bindon.
Peter once rang me at the office, and he was sobbing. I thought something awful must have happened, but he said, "This book's come out." It was the Bill Graham book. I asked Peter to fax through the pages about Oakland, and after I'd read them, I called him back and asked if it was true. He said, "Yes. But I don't want to be thought as a bad person."
—Ed Bicknell, Led Zeppelin: The Oral History of the World's Greatest Rock Band, Barney Hoskyns, 2012
The making of “Whole lotta love” | London - Los Angeles (April - May 1969) Photos by Dominique Tarlé
@psychedeliagroove here are the Jonesy photos... 😉😉😉
Terry Reid is sanguine about being forever known as the man who turned down Led Zeppelin. But he’d rather be known as the man who put together Led Zeppelin. “Jimmy [Page] asked me what he should do with the band,” explains Reid, Zooming in from his home in Indio, California. “He needed a singer who could sing around those guitar licks, and not everybody could do that. I’d seen Robert with John Bonham, so I said to him, ‘Not only is Robert perfect, you’ve got to get the drummer – he’s an animal!’”
You’re probably sick of talking about missing out on the chance to front Led Zeppelin. But how do you think you’d have fared amid the subsequent madness surrounding them?
TR: There’s a lot of different bands we all could’ve been involved in. And, you know, [Led Zeppelin] did well! Five billion people can’t be wrong. So I figured that we actually did a real good job putting it together. I would still be interested in working with Jimmy [Page], because he’s got a lot more to offer guitar-wise than Zeppelin licks, and he works really well with people. Maybe we could get a piano player. He’s been to a couple of my gigs, so you never know what’ll happen next.
An Audience With Terry Reid, Uncut, October 2023
In 1968, fast-rising soul singer Aretha Franklin famously declared: "There are only three things happening in England: the Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Terry Reid".
TR: I actually got to be friends with Aretha, which I could never quite get over. On the inside she was very warm and tender, but you didn't mess with that woman. The lady was a force. She drove [label head] Ahmet Ertegun crazy at Atlantic. Obviously she's the greatest singer I ever heard in my life. So when I finally got to meet her I'm thinking: "Do I tell her how much I love her voice?" We were talking one day, and she suddenly just stopped, gave me a funny look and went: "I never figured you loved me as much as you do. But you really do, don't you?" And I burst into tears.
Given that this is an interview for Classic Rock, I have to mention the whole Led Zeppelin thing…
I'm not interested in that. There's nothing more to say about it, y'know.
Okay, I understand. But if you'll indulge me, I just wondered whether the chemistry between Robert Plant and John Bonham was immediately obvious to you?
They were frigging perfect. Nobody looks at it like a group concept. If Robert Plant hadn't have joined the group, then you wouldn't have had John Bonham. For me, there's only been two or three drummers that could even stand in the same room with Bonham. If you want a rock'n'roll drummer, don't fuck around. Get one that's heavy-duty. Not only that, John Bonham had the most incredible timing. Robert could sing all those phrases that Jimmy Page played on guitar, which makes it very musical, but John Bonham really gave the group its meat. My whole comment now on Led Zeppelin is God bless them. It was a magic thing that happened. And ten billion people can't be wrong.
And you helped make it happen.
Yeah. Put it this way, I was part of the team that made it happen.
Classic Rock, October 2025
Robert Plant and other stars pay tribute to Terry Reid—also extracted from the October '25 issue of Classic Rock
whatever
Pagey's Saturday Smile ❤️
“Around 8:00 A.M., I ended up going to bed with Jimmy. As soon as we got onto the bed, Jimmy performed oral sex on me. He told me I would sleep much better if I had an orgasm...”—Bebe Buell, Rebel Heart, 2001.
I love this quote! It proves that Jimmy Page was a rascal, but he was considerate too. Just a great lover he was! Also, to my fellow groupies, this book Rebel Heart is a GREAT read! Got my copy at a used book sale, so I’d recommend checking amazon or ThriftBooks:)
I'm still not over this interview. Robert getting closer to jimmy when he leans over to put his cigarette out but not moving back to his original position. Jimmy losing all ability to be coherent because he can't hide the effect Robert has on him.
Snippets from Cameron Crowe’s upcoming memoir ‘The Uncool’ ˙⋆✮
the ‘spot’ incident 😔
i love how they covered it up in this one 😌✨
