BP Fallon, the band's effusive press officer, recalls the impact Led Zeppelin had the moment they arrived in a city on the Starship. Band and entourage were ushered into a fleet of limousines before speeding through the streets with a police escort, sirens wailing towards a stadium where 50,000 people awaited in feverish anticipation. "The Stones sang about sex," he says. "The music of Led Zeppelin was sex. The audience knew that, the girls dug it and the guys too. This wasn't a knitting lesson. And remember too, you can do a lot during a wild drum solo — especially if you're not the drummer."
Led Zeppelin at Stargroves during the making of Houses of the Holy, 1972.
By the time they started playing the track [Dancing Days] with me, it just had the most amazing vibe, just a glorious groove. They all enjoyed playing it so much.
I'll never forget playing it back to them from the mobile truck and how excited they all were. It was a lovely sunny day, and there was Jimmy and Robert and a couple of others all sort of linking arms and dancing on the lawn.
Article on the fall of the Led Zeppelin "empire," Uncut, March 2011, by David Cavanagh
Text
1974, and the world of LED ZEPPELIN is expanding. Their new Swan Song label has signed Bad Company, their office walls are painted red so they "won't show the blood", and their manager is sending dead chickens to his staff. It is, apparently, "like being in Dante's Inferno but having a good time". But as the '70s roll on, the hedonism comes with more and more menace, and the immortals seem fallible. Three decades on, Uncut charts the decline and fall of the Zeppelin empire, and the tragedies that overwhelmed the band…
AT THE END OF OCTOBER 1973, as David Cassidy topped the pop charts and the world reeled from an Arab oil embargo, a little-publicized milestone was reached in rock 'n' roll. Led Zeppelin's five-year contract with Atlantic Records — signed on October 28, 1968 — came up for renegotiation. The most heavyweight, Dionysian, statistic-shattering rock group of the '70s used their bargaining power adeptly. As a condition for staying with Atlantic, they asked to be given their own record label. Atlantic could hardly refuse; Zeppelin accounted for a quarter of its annual sales.
Thus, a band more accustomed to chopping out cocaine in the comfort of a private jet, or riding motorbikes up and down hotel corridors, enthusiastically became record executives and A&R scouts. "This label won't be just Led Zeppelin, that's for sure," Robert Plant promised. "It's an outlet for people we admire and want to help. "They named it Swan Song, after the title of an unreleased composition by Jimmy Page. A swan's dying cry, Page earnestly explained to the label's American vice-president Danny Goldberg, was "one of the most beautiful sounds in the world". Not that anyone was expecting this particular swan to die. Financed and distributed by the mighty Atlantic, the new label would have prestige, lavish budgets and global reach, as well as personal supervision from Zeppelin's much-feared, much-esteemed manager, Peter Grant. "Obviously it will be a winning label, "Phil Carson, an Atlantic executive, enthused. "Peter does have a knack of seeing things coming."
But Grant, for all his managerial acumen, could not have foreseen one thing: that Swan Song would be much more than a label. Between 1974 and 1980, it would be the international facilitator for Zeppelin's debauchery and demolition, their high-stakes business deals, their ruthless entourage and their descent into darkness. "When you ask what Swan Song was like," says the actor and singer Michael Des Barres, whose band Detective signed to the label in 1975, "it was like being in Dante's Inferno but having a good time. It was an elitist, hierarchical place where you were untouchable and immortal. But that's where the darkness comes in, because one day you suddenly stop believing it."
THE KING'S ROAD was in transition when Swan Song opened its London office there in 1974. The city's fashion golden mile, stretching from affluent Sloane Square to the council blocks of World's End, was dotted with boutiques such as Alkasura (where Marc Bolan bought his glitter outfits), Granny Takes A Trip (the onetime psychedelic mecca, rapidly losing its lustre) and Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die, a little retro shop run by an odd couple named Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. Swan Song moved into No 484, behind the anonymous façade of a three-storey Victorian terraced house.
There was no glitz, glamour, smoked glass or parquet flooring. "We had the scruffiest offices you've ever seen," says Cynthia Sach, a former Swan Song secretary. "For all their millions, [Zeppelin] didn't spend a penny on doing the place up. It was just somewhere for them to hang their hat." The band's tour manager, Richard Cole, who lived locally, was a regular sight during the week. Telexes clattered and clacked back and forth between London and New York, where Danny Goldberg worked out of the plush Madison Avenue headquarters of Steve Weiss, Zeppelin's attorney. Peter Grant might telephone from his moated Sussex Tudor mansion—the girls at Swan Song kept a Zep album on the turntable just in case, so Grant would hear 'the boys' in the background—or perhaps he would materialise in person, his 25-stone body fee-fi-fo-fumming up the stairs. Jimmy Page would pop in for meetings, invariably looking underfed and trailing the bottoms of his flared jeans behind him. The girls found him charming. So polite! So thin!
"There was no 'eye of newt' or anything," remarks Unity MacLean, who left her job at CBS to become Swan Song's office manager and head of promotions. "Jimmy was a very pleasant, mild-mannered guy. He could be quite a nondescript character. The police picked him up one night and arrested him for stealing Jimmy Page's credit cards." But there was an aura, too, that this waif-like genius seemed to be able to switch on and off, as though he were half-mortal and half-Paganini.
Daniel Treacy, a King's Road teenager who spent a summer working at Swan Song, remembers his first encounter with Page. "Unity had told me not to look at him or speak to him," Treacy says. "He came in, looking very smart in a black frock coat with a scarf. I'm not joking, but it was like an icy cold blast blowing into the room on one of the hottest days of the summer." MacLean judged Page to be "an inquisitive man in awe of his own talent and presence. He was a little bit like quicksilver. Hard to get hold of."
Robert Plant was totally different. He didn't visit the office often, but he was usually in a genial mood and would sit fluffing up his hair in front of a mirror engraved with the name of his beloved football team, Wolverhampton Wanderers. Bassist John Paul Jones was more affable still, and so free of airs and graces that the staff would sometimes not notice he was in the room. But the most popular Zep member at Swan Song was drummer John Bonham, whose deranged behaviour on tour had earned him the nickname 'The Beast'. Cynthia Sach defends him: "Bonzo was lovely. One day he came into the office and asked for a pair of scissors. He got down on his knees and started cutting up the carpet. I said, 'Give me those scissors right now,' and snatched them out of his hand. He said, 'But it's my office!' I said, 'I don't care whose office it is, you're not cutting up the carpet.'"
And then there was Grant. And people's voices tend to go a bit quiet when they talk about Grant. "Did I ever meet Grant? I've probably still got the imprints on my neck," shudders Daniel Treacy. "He was like Shrek meets The Long Good Friday. Unity sent me to cash a cheque for £350 at Swan Song's bank in Mayfair, and I accidentally went to the wrong branch. The cashier refused to give me the money. When I got back to the office, Grant came stomping up the stairs, lifted me up and pinned me to a wall. He goes, 'You've really fucked it up for me and Jimmy, you little bastard.' Then he let go and I slid down the wall. I later found out that half the money was for a dress for Grant's daughter, and the other half was for a bike for Page."
Michael Des Barres was dazzled by Grant, an immense figure who exuded menace, action and power. The scenes in The Song Remains The Same, where Grant plays an Al Capone-style crime lord, were not intended to be a joke. "Peter epitomised '60s gangsterism," Des Barres notes, "and had the natural instinct of a general in the street war of rock 'n' roll. He was the leader. He was the Gangster Commandant." Unity MacLean had the dubious honour of being asked out by Grant on a date. She politely declined, preferring to keep their relationship on a professional footing. The next day, Grant sent her a package in the post. Inside was a dead chicken.
ONE OF THE first artists to sign to Swan Song was Maggie Bell, a razor-voiced Glaswegian blues singer tipped by Grant (who managed her) to become a household name like Janis Joplin. Grant also had high hopes for Bad Company (whom, again, he managed), a band formed by Paul Rodgers (ex-Free) and Mick Ralphs (ex-Mott The Hoople). Grant would be wrong about Bell, but spectacularly right about Bad Company, whose 1974 debut, Bad Co, gave Swan Song its first No 1 album in America. The taste of the champagne was only slightly diluted by the knowledge that Swan Song 'shared' Bad Company with another label, Island, who released their records in Britain. Even so, Bad Company were a Swan Song sensation. They'd begun their US tour as support to The Edgar Winter Group, and ended it as stadium headliners. If this was what it took to run a successful label, Zeppelin were making it look easy.
The other act on the roster was The Pretty Things, chameleonic veterans who could boast a mid-'60s R'n'B pedigree ("Rosalyn"), a pioneering psychedelic rock opera (S.F. Sorrow) and, more worryingly, an industry-wide reputation for being impossible to work with and prone to dire luck. Plant and Page were big fans. The Pretties' Silk Torpedo, one of the strongest albums of their career, became Swan Song's first worldwide synchronized release (in October 1974), an event celebrated with a party at Chislehurst Caves in Kent, featuring magicians, a fire eater, inexhaustible supplies of Kahlúa (Peter Grant's favourite) and women in cages dressed as nuns. The Pretty Things had never had such a welcome.
"We were sick of the business and we'd had a few raw deals," singer Phil May reminisces. "We said to Peter, 'OK, we'll join your label as long as you'll be our manager.' Peter said, 'Fuck off, I've heard you're unmanageable.' But it went well. He'd be there in his big old armchair, and we'd be on the floor smoking dope, with a big pile of coke on the table, and he'd say (holding the phone away from his ear), 'Ahmet [Ertegun, president of Atlantic] wants you to go into the studio.' And we'd say, 'We'd rather go back on the road, Peter. 'So he'd say, 'Ahmet, they ain't going into the studio. They're going on the fucking road.' Slam down the receiver, and that would be the entire conversation."
Silk Torpedo had not been cheap. For one song, the Pretties used the London Philharmonic Orchestra and a large brass band from Wales (who rolled into Abbey Road drunk), while most of the tracks were recorded at Headley Grange, the country house in Hampshire whose remarkable acoustics Zeppelin had exploited on "When The Levee Breaks" and "Rock And Roll". The Pretties arrived to find Headley Grange a shambles. "Bad Company and Zeppelin had been there before us," groans May. "There wasn't a bed with four legs left. There was a Canaletto hanging on the staircase with a big hole punched in it. There were all sorts of things missing." On the first day of recording, the band's bad luck returned to taunt them. May: "A Bosendorfer piano that we'd ordered from Harrods was dropped by the delivery men taking it off the lorry, and smashed to pieces. Our producer, Norman Smith, drove up in a Rolls-Royce and proceeded to walk out of the sessions within the first hour, because we had a song called 'Psychosomatic Boy' and Norman said, 'I'm not doing a song about cripples.' (Laughs) Peter Grant rings up and asks how it's going. I said, 'Well, the piano's in bits and the producer's gone.' He said, 'What do you mean, gone? You've only been there 20 minutes, you cunts. 'After we finally left Headley, we got a memo from Peter addressed to all the groups, saying, 'Could you kindly return the bamboo table with the glass top, the two Chinese duelling pistols, the such-and-such a painting…' I typed out a reply saying, 'Dear Peter, I am very offended by your insulting memo, and unless I receive an apology I will come round and blow your head off with my two Chinese duelling pistols.' In the end Swan Song paid the bill for everything—but it was Zeppelin who did most of the damage."
Swan Song flew the Pretties to LA to promote Silk Torpedo. There, they witnessed Zep-style destruction at first hand. Both bands were booked into the Continental Hyatt House—the infamous 'Riot House'—where the Pretties' drummer Skip Alan buddied up with John Bonham. "Zeppelin have got the top floor and we're underneath," says Alan. "Now, everything you've heard about Zeppelin, if you quadruple it, that's what it was like. Total lunacy. I stayed in Bonzo's room one night, and you know you hear about him breaking up rooms? I'm talking to him and all of a sudden he gets up and starts systematically wrecking all the furniture. All the flat pack wardrobes, he's whacking them down, kicking them and smashing them. Then, when he's flattened everything, he moves it into a big pile in the middle, and phones down to Cole to get him another room. It was unbelievable, really. It was like he felt he had a job to do. 'What time is it?' 'Three o'clock, Bonzo.' 'Better flatten the room, then.'"
May: "Sometimes we would travel to Zeppelin gigs in the limo with Bonham, and you're looking at him thinking, 'He can't possibly do three hours onstage.' None of us would have slept for two nights and we're all fucked. And Robert's got a sore throat, you know, and none of them have been looking after themselves. It's like watching a high-wire act. Will they fall? Then they go out onstage and it's absolute magic."
Alan: "They would get red carpet treatment wherever they went. As soon as they got into a club—say you were in Paris with them—they'd start picking up everything off the table and chucking food around. There'd be Dover soles going all round the restaurant. They were just insane. Cole would always sort out the aggro. He'd drop a few hundred quid to the manager and say, 'Sorry about that, mate.'"
But there was a nasty edge to the anarchy. Bonham had a way of spotting the happiest couple in the restaurant—a man dining innocently with his wife—and throwing a dinner plate at their heads. The plate would smash. The woman would scream. The man would leap to his feet. Zep's on-hand enforcers would very meaningfully tell him to sit down. Bonham would be brought another plate. For those outside the Swan Song bubble, it must have been hard to see how this could be someone's idea of fun.
IN FEBRUARY 1975, Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti became Swan Song's third long-playing release. It was an extravagant, super-confident double album with intricate artwork that had delayed its appearance for some months. A window into Zeppelin's world? Almost literally so. Experimenting with every kind of rock from Eastern to funk to black snake moans ("Kashmir", "Trampled Under Foot", "In My Time Of Dying"), it also entertained the purchaser with tantalising photos of the band in various states of dress (including drag). By revealing only this much and no more, Physical Graffiti added considerably to their mystique. Two million pre-orders ensured it went double platinum before even reaching the shops, at which point all five of Zeppelin's previous albums joined it in the US charts. Another stat to satisfy Grant; another first for rock 'n' roll.
Zeppelin, of course, could achieve these landmarks without any need for publicity. Their deep mistrust of the media had been an important factor in creating their mystery in the first place; but it was still a shock for Unity MacLean, Swan Song's head of promotions, to learn that her job entailed keeping the band out of the music papers, not putting them in. Grant's attitude of "fuck the press" had worked like a charm for Zeppelin, but here came the problem—because Grant's profane aloofness was no help to The Pretty Things (Silk Torpedo had failed to chart in either Britain or America), or to Maggie Bell, whose album Suicide Sal sold only moderately. "Mags was brilliant," says Cynthia Sach. "She should have gone far. But Peter Grant held her back. She was one of the best girl singers in the country, but he bloody wouldn't let her do anything."
Only Bad Company (Straight Shooter) had any degree of success in 1975. It was becoming clear that there were drawbacks when you signed to a label run by Zeppelin and Grant. "It was sometimes difficult," says Richard Cole, "because you had to get five opinions on everything. Anything sent through to the office would have to be sent to Peter, and he'd have to coordinate it with the other four. But two of them lived in Worcestershire and the other two lived in Sussex." And there were no emails or mobile phones. And when Grant's marriage broke up and his wife abandoned him to his isolated moated mansion, the grief-stricken giant began devoting less time to Swan Song and more time to drugs. Swan Song became, as Daniel Treacy puts it, "a ghost town record company". There were no board meetings or new releases. Tumbleweed blew through 484 King's Road for months at a time. Abe Hoch, the label's director of European operations, realised there were no European operations to direct. "I would look out the window, and there was a huge Durex sign outside. I would stare at this sign and think, 'My God, this is an indication of where my life's going.' There was nothing happening. Swan Song had become more illusion than reality."
INSIDIOUSLY, surreptitiously, the darkness had begun to seep in. Page, Bonham and Grant were all on heroin. In Page's case it didn't do a great deal for his weight. In Bonham's, it was helped down with cocaine and enormous quantities of alcohol. The gentleman farmer was increasingly given to irrational displays of rage. "When Bonham got drunk," says Danny Goldberg, "he was unpleasant, belligerent and scary. He was a very strong guy. Jimmy tended to be remote and distant, although when he wanted to be, he could be very nice. But when too much cocaine and heroin is around, it doesn't bring out the best in people." Goldberg avoided cocaine himself, and was nervous about the effect it had on Zeppelin's key personnel. "There was always a certain level of stress any time Zeppelin were around. The stakes always seemed so high."
Unity MacLean knows exactly what Goldberg means. She describes "a pervasive attitude in the office of aggression, frustration and self-destruction. There was always an underlying current of anger. There was a lot of anger in Peter. Paul Rodgers was a very angry man. Clive Coulson [Bad Company's co-manager] was always angry and threatening. There were all these angry people around, looking for a fight. One day they painted the walls in one of the rooms bright red. I was walking past and I said, 'God, that red's a bit overpowering. 'One of them turned to me and said, "Well, it won't show the blood then, will it?' That was the way they all talked. Angry conversations about revenge and violence, and whose head was going to get kicked in."
As an abstract concept, as a state of mind, Swan Song was all-powerful. As a label, however, it made no effort to adapt to the marketplace by scouting new talent. Demo tapes would accumulate in the office, posted by hopeful bands eager to work for Zeppelin, only to be discarded in cardboard boxes and go unheard for years. (One tape was Iron Maiden's. They signed to EMI instead.) "There was an act that I thought we really should have signed," says Abe Hoch. "A guy in Seattle had sent me a tape of two girls from Vancouver, with a note saying, 'One of these girls sings like Robert Plant with more balls.' It was Heart. There was a version of 'Rock And Roll' on the tape, and I wanted to play it to Robert, but he didn't even get past the note. 'Whaat? More balls than me?' So we never signed Heart."
All the same, two new additions came to the roster in 1975-6. One was an established hitmaker—Dave Edmunds, the lightning-fingered Welsh guitarist, who'd been identified as perfect for Swan Song by Plant. The other new signing was Detective, an Anglo-American quintet fronted by the handsome English nobleman Michael Des Barres, whose wife Pamela had had a long-running affair in California with Page. Phil May sniffs, "Detective always seemed like the odd chicken in the nest to me. The others I could understand—Bad Company, Maggie—and then suddenly there's Detective, who didn't really seem to fit."
Oh, but they did. Though they would struggle to get a commercial foothold on either continent, Detective were rock gods in their heads, every bit as rapacious in their drug consumption as Zeppelin. "We were precisely what rock 'n' roll should be," declares Des Barres. "Magic and chaos mingled." Their first album took more than a year to record, was scrapped at least once, and cost a fortune. Des Barres: "It was like if Caligula had a rock band. It was orgiastic, it was laborious, it was spectacular." Producer Jimmy Robinson remembers Page visiting the studio to see how Swan Song's exciting new charges were getting on. Robinson: "He listened to a few tracks and said (very hesitantly), 'Uh, don't you think it sounds a little bit like … us?' Which was hilarious because all Detective wanted to do was sound like Zeppelin. They were a good band, but this was the era when bands would be in the studio with half-a-million-dollar budgets and pounds of blow, thinking to themselves, 'Hey, we're living the dream.'"
Detective was released in April 1977 just as punk swept Britain. Its creators had become obsolete before anyone had even heard them. Detective made another album for Swan Song a year later (It Takes One To Know One), which comes as news to Des Barres, who has no recollection of it whatsoever.
IN ALL THE years that he worked for them, Richard Cole only heard Led Zeppelin talk about money on one occasion: in November 1975, in the bar of Munich's Arabella Hotel, during the recording of their seventh album, Presence. Bonham came down for a drink, buoyed after a conversation with Grant, and casually informed Cole that the members of Zeppelin had all just made €5 million each. Wealthier than their wildest dreams, Zep were now officially tax exiles. And then the bad things started to happen. Tours of America and the Far East had to be cancelled when Plant broke an ankle and an elbow in a car accident on the island of Rhodes. His leg was in a cast for several months, requiring him to sing his vocals on Presence from a wheelchair. Page, in the grip of heroin, somehow got the album over the finishing line in 17 days.
"Presence was pure anxiety and emotion," Page later commented. "We didn't know whether we'd ever be able to play in the same way again. It might have been a very dramatic change, if the worst had happened to Robert." Plant had been warned by doctors that he might never walk again, so Page was not exaggerating the fear. Presence was released in April 1976, to a widespread sense of anticlimax. Disappointment or not, Presence topped the world's charts. In October came the film (and accompanying soundtrack album) The Song Remains The Same, another huge hit, but another disappointment. This time even Page was critical. Bad Company continued to fly the Swan Song flag (Run With The Pack made the US Top 5 in 1976), but The Pretty Things' Savage Eye was unsuccessful and the band were, as Phil May puts it, "staggering around like an elephant that's been shot".
While Zep had been absent from the King's Road, their overthrow had been plotted by a new generation who drank in pubs a mere 200 yards to the east. First renamed Sex (and later Seditionaries), McLaren and Westwood's provocative premises became a centre of operations for punks in England's south-east. At Swan Song, where everyone wore jeans and cowboy boots, eyebrows were raised at the new fashion styles outside their window. "We used to see Jordan [punk fashionista Pamela Rooke] traipsing down the road in her leotard," says Cynthia Sach. "Nothing else, just a leotard." The look of the King's Road changed from hippy casual to safety pins and spiked hair. Yet it's often forgotten that Zeppelin approved of punk at first, and offered an early olive branch. Page and Plant were there when The Damned played The Roxy in January 1977, returning the week after with Bonham. But that was when it all went wrong. It was obvious the punks hated them. Bonham, 28, was humiliated and called an old fart after challenging Rat Scabies to a drumming contest.
"I lived in a King's Road council block and had a band called The Television Personalities," says Daniel Treacy. "We recorded our first single with money I'd saved from my Swan Song job, and we printed up 867 copies, which was all we could afford. Jimmy Page came into the office one day as I was reading about our single in Sounds. He said, 'Got a band, have you? Are you punks?' I explained that we were doing it all ourselves: the recording, the mastering, printing the labels. He was fascinated." Enterprise! Ingenuity! It was just what Swan Song lacked.
But jovial chats with Page were rare in 1977. Abe Hoch was noticing a darker, more paranoid atmosphere around Zeppelin than he was comfortable with. Danny Goldberg had left Swan Song in 1976, detecting a "sour, negative vibe". Michael Des Barres saw an escalation in drug abuse drive a wedge between the members of rock's biggest band. "You start to realise it's bullshit, all the drugs, all the adulation," he sighs. "The myth becomes so fragile, so flimsy and so absurd, that dark things start to happen. And then the fear grows, and friends start to separate from one another, and the creativity is lost. And that's what happened to Led Zeppelin."
In July 1977, the last rays of sunlight in Zeppelin's world were extinguished. An American tour, which saw them perform to an estimated 1.3 million fans in 30 cities, descended into horrific violence. An employee of Bill Graham, the promoter, was beaten unconscious by members of Zeppelin's entourage—including their new 'security coordinator', tough-guy actor John Bindon—and an appalled Graham, who filed a $2 million lawsuit against the band, swore never to book them again. "Bindon was very dangerous," notes Skip Alan of The Pretty Things. "One day we were in a van coming back from lunch. There was me, Robert, Bonzo, Cole and Bindon. We're driving along the King's Road and suddenly Bindon says, 'Who's that cunt looking at?' He opens the door, gets out, smacks some poor guy in the face and gets back in the van again. He was an absolute nutter."
"It has to be said, a lot of the darkness [Zeppelin] brought on themselves," reasons Phil May. "But at the same time, they needed heavy security. They'd go to a club in LA and if they didn't have 18 gorillas around, they wouldn't get a moment's peace. One time when Cole let them go off on their own, and they got in some huge ruckus. Peter Grant went fucking mad. Cole turned up to meet us at LAX [airport] with a big blackeye. That was the way we all used to live. When I look back on it now, I can see why we got a lot of flak."
The nightmare was just beginning. In his hotel room on the US tour, Robert Plant received a phone-call from his wife Maureen, giving him the shocking news that their five-year-old son Karac was dead. "That was a dreadful day. That was a disaster," says Unity MacLean, who manned the phones at Swan Song. "But you've got to weigh up the balance here. It was a freak accident that Robert's little boy died. It wasn't anything to do with a 'curse'. The poor child became dehydrated. It means they can't bounce back. People don't realise how quickly a child can go downhill."
In his book, Stairway To Heaven, Richard Cole writes that everyone in the Swan Song organisation wondered if this was the end of the band. On October3, Page held a radio press conference to rubbish rumours that they were splitting up. No more would be heard of Zeppelin until summer 1979.
A SPECTOR-OBSESSED producer whose career was a curious blend of cult status and commercial nous, Dave Edmunds had a reputation as a studio boffin and recreator of classic'50s rock 'n' roll sounds. He was also, as a co-founder of Rockpile with Nick Lowe, popular with new wave audiences. As Swan Song reeled from crisis to crisis, Edmunds became its ebullient saviour, bouncing up the charts with "Girls Talk" and "Queen Of Hearts". Edmunds remembers Swan Song fondly. "It was heaven from an artistic point of view. Besides the figures involved, which were generous, it freed me from the usual hang-ups that artists have with labels. The boys were interested in what I was doing, but wouldn't interfere. I've been getting royalty cheques every three months for the last 35 years. It's the best deal I ever had."
In August 1979, with "Girls Talk" chiming away in the Top 10, Zeppelin re-emerged after a two-year silence, releasing a new studio album (In Through The Out Door) and headlining two massive outdoor concerts at Knebworth. These should have been triumphant occasions. Instead, Peter Grant picked a fight with the promoter, Freddie Bannister, and the atmosphere backstage was murderous when Zeppelin strolled onstage. While they'd been out of the country, recording at ABBA's studio in Stockholm, John Bindon had burst into the Swan Song office, bleeding and panic-stricken, telling Cynthia Sach that he'd just stabbed John Darke, a renowned London gangster, to death. Could Cynthia phone Zeppelin and ask for their assistance? She most certainly could not.
Grant was now a recluse in Sussex. In October, he attempted (but failed) to suppress the news that a young photographer, Philip Hale, had been found dead at Page's home in Plumpton. An inquest ruled Hale's death as accidental. The following September, as Zeppelin rehearsed for their first US tour in three years, Grant phoned the office and told Unity MacLean to send everyone home. He gave no reason. "I went back to my flat," she recalls, "and my husband said,' Come and have a drink.' He took me to the pub round the corner, sat me down and said,'David Wigg from the Daily Express phoned. He wants to know if it's true that John Bonham died last night.' I couldn't believe it. It still gives me shivers to think of it."
The press were desperate for a Zeppelin comment. But they didn't get one. Bonham had died in bed, aged 32, at Page's home in Windsor after an all-day drinking binge. Not until December would the band release a statement announcing that they were discontinuing. It was left to the NME to wonder rhetorically, "Why do people associated with Led Zeppelin seem to die?" But the question suggested that there was some logical explanation, when there was only chaos, madness and tragedy.
"It all fell apart after Bonzo died," says Dave Edmunds sadly. The Pretty Things had split up. Bad Company were on an extended hiatus. Unity MacLean, pregnant and reluctant to "be around people who seemed hell-bent on destroying themselves," left Swan Song soon afterwards. The label remained active, nominally at least, for a further three years, releasing solo albums by Robert Plant and Jimmy Page among others. But the releases stopped in 1983. Peter Grant died in 1995.
The King's Road is different now. Bistros have replaced boutiques, and the Water Rat pub, where all the Swan Song coke deals were done, is now an Italian restaurant. McLaren & Westwood's shop is a Thai-Vietnamese eatery called Athitaya. There are two houses with the number 484 on their doors. Both have 'To Let' signs, and both are in serious need of a white paint touch-up. One of them has roller blinds pulled down on its first-floor and second-floor windows. Just for a moment, it looks eerily similar to the house on the cover of Physical Graffiti. Nobody answers the bell.
Interview with Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page, Uncut, May 2008
Republished in Uncut's Ultimate Music Guide to Led Zeppelin
Four months after the momentous Led Zeppelin reunion show, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones talk to Allan Jones and David Cavanagh about that historic night. About the ups and downs of their 40-year relationship. And, of course, about the future of their band. "One day," says Mr Plant, "we could do it again for another really, really good reason…"
Robert Plant is interviewed by Uncut at 10.30am on Friday, January 18, at the offices of his management company, Trinifold, in Camden. It's cold and blustery and Plant has just driven down from Worcestershire for a day of business in London, which has meant an early start and a long journey. Not that either has had anything remotely like a diminishing effect on Plant's evidently bountiful energy. He's 60 this year, but there's little sense about him of someone thinking of slowing down, taking it easy. The day after we meet, he's off to the States, where in April he starts a major tour with Alison Krauss and T Bone Burnett with whom last year he made Raising Sand, the best album of his solo career. For the next hour and a half, however, sitting on the edge of a huge leather sofa, he talks at candid length and with enormous affection about his 40-year relationship with Jimmy Page — "my brother" — the triumphs and troubles they have enjoyed and endured, his excitement at playing with an "on fire" Jimmy at the O2 reunion on December 10, and what comes next for Zep.
UNCUT: So what was it like stepping out on the O2 stage with Jimmy after all that time?
Robert Plant: The kind of resonance in the air — for people who didn't have to blink an eyelid to get in there, for people who come from Australia or Japan, to Jason [Bonham]'s family, John's family, all the families — anticipation and expectation was huge. The potential for failure was also great because nobody knew what it was going to be like.
Did the success of the show test your previously stated resolve not to reform for a full-blown reunion and tour?
RP: Not at all. I really enjoyed it. And hopefully, one day, we could do it again for another really, really good reason. Our profit is — it's metaphysical. And that's the thing, especially with my connection with Jimmy. I mean, the two of us are almost umbilically attached in some strange way and have been down the years. And that's survived everything. From the time I was 19 to now, when I'm 59.
You first met Jimmy when he came to see [Plant's pre-Zep band] Hobbstweedle play. Can you remember your initial impression of him?
RP: I remember it very clearly. He was very reserved, very polite, slightly withdrawn and definitely it was evident to me that he didn't have the common touch and probably didn't need it. Even though I was hot and pretty self-confident, Jimmy, with all his sort of quietude, he had a great advantage. I felt immediately this was a different kind of guy to anybody I'd met before. So I was welcomed into Jimmy's home and immediately I realised his interests and the whole landscape of his music and his life was very broad and esoteric. And I just couldn't believe it. I just thought, 'God' — quietly to myself — 'this is going to be a real learning curve.' And of course it was, right up until the drugs, right up until it got kind of unworkable in Zep.
Are you saying to some extent that looking at him was like looking into a mirror, that what you saw in him was a reflection of yourself?
RP: Only on a superficial level. I was brash and bullish, and he was very retiring. And as much as I was tactile, he was quite the opposite.
As you became more confident with your own role in the band, and started to get a lot more personal attention, was Jimmy cool with that? Or was it a source of friction, given that it was Jimmy's band?
RP: No, not at all. No. I mean, surely, bearing in mind that he's a very bright man and there's always reserve behind the reserve, and he's always got two or three things going on, plus his charm, and he's got buckets of that now, why would he have a problem with that? He was masterminding the whole thing, so he had to encourage it. And it was there to behold. I mean, I was doing what I was doing and he was doing what he was doing and it was the two guys at the front. If I'd have been static or if I hadn't had the appeal or the front myself, I'd have been out of there. Gone. And during Led Zep I [1969], as far as I was concerned, I thought that I was going to go anyway. I didn't feel that comfortable, because there were a lot of demands on me vocally — which there were all the way through the Zeppelin thing. And I was quite nervous and I didn't really get into enjoying it until II, because I thought, 'Shit!' The equipment was so inferior in those days for vocals, I could never hear myself. There were no monitors, nothing. So I was quite demure, but at the same time when it came to playing live, that was when I was OK. I could perform 'cos I believed in it. I can't do anything I don't believe in. Now, especially.
You've described a flourishing personal and creative relationship with Jimmy. When did it start to unravel?
RP: Well, we went to Bron-Yr-Aur [in 1970, to regroup after a gruelling US tour] to write, to begin work on III and we were brothers then. II had been created in a flurry, on the road in various studios. But here we were on the side of a mountain near Machynlleth, going, "Er, OK." But the great thing was that we wanted to change it, we wanted to make it more pastoral. I think Robin Williamson and some of The Incredible String Band were in Machynlleth with some Bulgarian singers in some farmhouse somewhere, so there was a vibe around. It was like, I don't know, just a feeling, you know, "We've got to be able to do something here." So we wandered off to a — guess what? — waterfall and played and sang and took the cassette machine, and it was to me bliss, pastoral bliss. Because I really wanted to bring music out of the ground, if you like, rather than out of the city, rather than out of some "squeeze my lemon" place. We wrote "That's The Way" one morning, and the lyrics were good — I was, I don't know, 23. And the magisterial movement of the chords in the stanzas between the verses, it was all one could ever wish for. And as a couple of guys, we really… we sat by the fire at night and I've still cassettes somewhere of the old grandfather clock ticking. There was no electricity, outside toilets, the smell of woodsmoke and alcohol. I don't think we even smoked dope then. I know Jimmy didn't. He didn't drink or smoke, really. And we were on a roll. We were spectacularly close and we knew we'd got something going which was genuine, not some fabricated bullshit, and being together was something very special. We were really, really good buddies. Later, when Jimmy's health wasnʼt too good [Plant is presumably referring to Page's heroin use] it wasn't the same… it was a different time.
As Jimmy became more insular and withdrawn, how much did you miss those adventures you used to share?
RP: Inevitably, perhaps, the intimacy changed as time went on. Now, health problems are one thing — but also a genuine reason for it to change was the fact we had families. So we became part-time adventurers and part-time dads. And you know that's just a shame. Because you can never really give enough to either side of it, the wanderlust or the commitment to family. So the intensity changed. And that period of adventure moved into Physical Graffiti [1975], which was spectacular, which was recorded similarly to Houses Of The Holy [1973], to the extent that we rented a place with a mobile studio, and everybody was pretty cool and it was all great, great, great. And if there were some dalliances in one direction or another, it certainly wasn't a solo project. We were all up to no good, one way or another. It's just a question of how much you're doing and how the constitution will take it. So I wasn't upset with Jimmy, I didn't become remote. He didn't become remote. We'd both just moved to another place. And if you think about the difference between III and Physical Graffiti, they're both great, but Physical Graffiti really is the band at its most creative and expressive. So, I don't think there was ever really a problem right up until perhaps just before I lost my boy [Plant's son, Karac, died in 1977] and then the actual thing of being on the road touring was quite questionable for me.
In what ways?
RP: Well… I just thought… I think it was so big that there was no infrastructure to contain it. By 1977, I was 29, just prior to Karac's passing, and that sort of wild energy that was there in the beginning had come to the point where we were showboating a bit. Unfortunately, we had no choice. We were on tours where places were going ape-shit. There was no way of containing the energy in those buildings. It was just insane. And we became more and more the victims of our own success. And the whole deal about the goldfish bowl and living in it, that kicked in. And that's what happens. Look at any big group. There's no way around it.
No matter how much you all love each other and no matter how instrumental Peter Grant was and no matter how many security guys we had and all this stuff, it was still insane, because there was no way out. It was like being a crazy Elvis. And so everybody retired to their own corners within the environment, in the hotels. Everybody had their own way of dealing with it. So the group moved and the individual personalities in the group evolved again. We changed, all of us. But all the time, Jimmy was pushing it, which was great. He was always thinking about stuff. I mean, by the time we were doing Presence - which is before'77—I was in a wheelchair. I was pretty banged up. You haven't got enough time and neither have I to go through all these changes, but they were all quite amazing, because something pretty constructive came out of them, even when things were very painful. And that's a great thing, I think. We were men. We weren't teasy-weasy kids. We had to be men because of the things that we had to share — even if we did go home to our own individual soliloquies. But it kind of went off the rails in the end because everybody got a little bit too relaxed and haywire. For me, then, it didn't really work from '77 onwards. However, there were moments at Knebworth that were spectacular. But the price you have to pay to get to those moments, I didn't think was worth it anymore. It wasn't my idea of constructive open-heart surgery.
Did you ever confront Jimmy about his heroin use and the effect it was having on himself and the band?
RP: I think with most users, the denial is part of the condition and because most everybody around was in one way or another denying something, there was no central point of solidarity. If Peter hadn't been so unavailable himself, he might have pulled the whole thing he together, 'cos his influence was huge. But it didn't work like that. But nonetheless, I still think that by that time Jimmy and I had become quite adept politically at keeping it going, even though I felt very compromised. I also felt for him, you know.
How could you not?
RP: Exactly, exactly, yeah, yeah. I mean, he was my buddy. He will always be my buddy. But, you know, everything happened that happened and Jimmy's come through it and he's got himself back. He's now the same guy, almost, whatever the scars and the surgery. He's got it, he's back.
How different was he at the O2 reunion from the guy you worked with on the UnLedded tour in 1994?
RP: If Jimmy was as healthy then and when we came to do Walking Into Clarksdale, if he'd been as open and as healthy and he'd had the resolve then that he has now, we'd probably have gone somewhere else again. Because I'm always exhilarated by hearing him play. I think he's met his demons now and he's made that public now as much as he can without losing face. Without giving too much away, the olive branch came out. And when he brought that branch out — he said, "I offer you an olive branch."
Which you were happy to accept?
RP: Yes. I mean, I wish he could've given it to himself so many years back.
Has it been painful to watch what he's been through?
RP: Not really, no. You've got to make your own way. I mean he's got great kids, I'm his friend, he's got a lot of friends. He's just got to be honest with himself. I think that's where he's at now.
To what do you attribute this new resolve?
RP: He's had a lot of wake-up calls. I suppose in a way he must be intrigued that some people have stuck around when, like in my case, I don't need anything from him at all. I just don't. After all that, after you survey your own projection on others, some people will just walk. Others won't. Because there's unfinished business, definitely.
Do you think it’ll ever be finished?
RP: No. I don’t think so. And I don’t think there’s any need for it to be finished. Because as long as he’s got a bit of creative electricity going through his nut, then there’s going to be something to do sometime. It’s just in what form and how much of a compromise it would be to the real root of what we had as Zeppelin. Because all that razzamatazz, people are addicted to it. Everybody wants to have some fun, but we would probably try to go to a different place to have that fun, musically. With a different sort of canvas. But it’s easy for me to say now, with Raising Sand reinventing itself every two weeks. I mean, it’s got its own life. I've never been involved with anything with its own life like this. Especially since I wasn’t expecting anything more than a position on the Americana charts in Billboard or something. But he’s been incredibly gracious about that. Because it was quite an unusual thing. I mean, we’d been planning the release of Raising Sand for about a year, because Alison had to finish her projects last summer, so the release was set for around Thanksgiving. And then, when we agreed that we [Zeppelin] play together, there was definitely a feeling of ‘What’ s going on here? How come he’s doing that, when we’re rehearsing for Led Zep?’ Well, I couldn’t help that.
Did that cause any friction?
RP: Not really. But it was a kind of incredulous moment when they realised that I was bluegrassing it…
Finally, how did you feel as you finished that set at the 02?
RP: First of all, we did what we set out to do and more, in every respect. We showed people that Led Zeppelin did go on a bit. There was an opportunity to get a drink occasionally during the show. But at the same time, that’s what we were. The personality of the audience has changed from those days when everybody was in the same condition as the band. Now it was more like the 68th wonder of the world, rather than a gig. So I felt a bit embarrassed. I felt a bit like I’d gone into character, in a way, even though I sang my nuts off. And the interplay between us all was excellent. I just wanted to take it somewhere else for a minute. I kept saying during rehearsals, “Maybe we can just drop that bit there and perhaps finish off with ‘Goodnight’ by The Incredible String Band?”
What, from “A Very Cellular Song”?
RP: Yeah, that’s it. [Sings]: “I was walking in Jerusalem, just like John… Lay down my sweet Jesus, won’t you lay and take your rest.” And, “Yeah,” Jimmy said. “We always said we’d do that.” And of course we didn’t, because the occasion was bigger than that. And that’s the trouble with the whole thing about Led Zeppelin. It was always bigger than the beauty of what we had in mind. So I felt like it was a job done, that we were friends, strong, good. Allan Jones
John Paul Jones is interviewed by telephone, on January 28, a few days before he presents an award to, and performs with, John Martyn at the Radio 2 Folk Awards, and less than a fortnight before he makes an appearance with the Foo Fighters at the Grammys, conducting the orchestral arrangement to their song, “The Pretender”. Jones, 62, is one of the most respected musicians in the world, whose recent activities (notably as a mandolin player) have seen him collaborate with artists as diverse as Robyn Hitchcock, Ben Harper and Gillian Welch. Jones, who could be seen playing a banjo backstage during the hours before Zeppelin’s O2 Arena concert (“It calms me down”), is a famously dry-witted soul, who precedes most of his answers with a slightly puzzled-sounding “erm…” Uncut receives a preliminary call from Jones’ office, 20 minutes before the interview, just to check that we’re ready and that we are who we say we are. Jones does not sound like a man who enjoys having his time wasted.
UNCUT: Firstly, what did it feel like to be playing with Jimmy again at the 02?
John Paul Jones: Pretty damn good. We put a lot of work into it — I'd done a lot of playing with him in the months preceding it — and it was fun revisiting the numbers and playing with a really good player again.
Is he as good as the Page of old?
JPJ: Yeah, he is. I know it sounds obvious, but he was always one of my favourite guitarists and as soon as we started rehearsing, I was amazed to hear how he’d actually improved. He seemed to have grown since I saw him last.
It’s difficult for him, isn’t it, to perform these songs live? Some of them have upwards of five or six tracks of guitar on the recordings.
JPJ: Obviously, we always used to do songs that had a lot of overdubs, and we used to have to come to some arrangement about doing them live. So we’re kind of used to it, but yeah, you've got to be pretty nimble to cover all the important parts. He did it without a second thought.
He came on wearing shades. Was he nervous?
JPJ: Ha! No, he seems to like wearing shades… for pictures and things like that.
I know that Ahmet Ertegun was the reason for the reunion, but what do you think it meant to Jimmy?
JPJ: Ahmet meant a lot to us all. We wanted to be on his label in the first place, so, yes, it was a tribute to a very important man. That we did a full Zeppelin show… albeit a short one, at two hours… [Jimmy] was very happy. It’s probably similar to what it meant to all of us, which is: it’s nice to be able to do it, to prove to yourself that you can do it.
Can we read anything into the fact Jimmy oversees all re-releases and DVDs? Does he care more about Zeppelin’s legacy than you and Robert?
JPJ: No. It’s true that he certainly puts more work into it — he was the producer in the band, and so it’s more a continuation of those duties, I suppose. But the band was his original vision, it holds a very special place in his heart. It holds a special place in all of our hearts.
I know you weren’t involved with UnLedded, but was there a part of you that was at least glad to see Jimmy working with Robert again?
JPJ: [Doubtfully] Yeah… I wasn’t particularly glad for anybody at that point. [Laughs] But yeah… it was mitigated by that thought. At least he was playing. It was probably good for him.
Can you and Jimmy joke about that now?
JPJ: We don’t actually joke about it. It was quite a hard time for me. But we’re past it, if you know what I mean.
Would you like to make another Led Zeppelin album?
JPJ: Exrr… I’d have to think about that.
Really?
JPJ: Led Zeppelin’s a… I mean, it was great to do the [02] show. We spoke afterwards, and we both thought the same — it felt like the first night of a tour. You think, ‘Oh, I could do that a bit better, or change something in that song.” And we didn’t get a chance to do any more.
Would it be hard to build that momentum back up again? Because Robert’s off on tour with…
JPJ: [Interrupting] Yeah. Yeah.
Do you think the reunion began and ended at the 02?
JPJ: It’s possible. It is possible.
You don’t sound too certain about the prospect of an album.
JPJ: No. I’m not sure. I'm not too certain about anything, right at the moment. I’ve got no idea what’s going to happen. But I'd certainly like to play with Jimmy again. David Cavanagh
Jimmy Page is the last Zeppelin member to be interviewed, on March 10, at the Gore Hotel, a discreet establishment in London’s Kensington. On the day that the UK is hit by its worst storms in 25 years, a healthy-looking Page — 64 years old, clad entirely in black, with slicked-back white hair — meets Uncut in a basement room of the Gore, which is decorated with tapestries, candelabras, ornate mirrors and log fireplaces. The tapestries have a slight Transylvanian aspect, with spooky castles half-visible through small gaps in dense forests. The room is painted a deep, rich, peppermint green. After friendly introductions, Page, who has recently been filming a documentary with Jack White and The Edge (“three generations of guitar players — yep, you've got it”) sits himself down on a low, purple velvet settee. Teetotal for some six years now (although he still enjoys the occasional cigarette), Page drinks black coffee and sips water throughout our interview. Shall we begin at the O2 Arena? “Why not!”
UNCUT: What memories and emotions from the night of December 10 stand out for you?
Jimmy Page: First of all, I think that what we intended to do, we accomplished. Judging by the feedback, it really moved a lot of people. It was a totally different show to the production rehearsal beforehand, but that was intended; we wanted to be able to move this way and that, musically, within the framework of the songs. So, yeah, on reflection, it was mission accomplished.
Was there a point in rehearsal when you thought, ‘We’re going to be OK, we’re going to pull this off…’
JP: Yes, at the first rehearsal. Look at the psychology of it. If the four members get to get together in a room to play, nobody wants to be the one who causes it not to work. Everyone went into that room with a will, I believe, to make it work. And it was really exciting to be playing the music with such intent.
You walked onstage at the O2 wearing shades. What could you see in the faces of the front rows?
JP: I wasn’t concentrating on the audience. It was heads-down for the first three numbers, which we did as a medley, non-stop, and when I took my glasses off, I didn’t see the audience then, either. I was just getting lost in the music. We’d paced ourselves for this concert, we’d given it our total commitment, and nothing was going to get in the way of it — not even broken fingers — forget it, nothing was going to get in the way of this.
What were the most stunning performances that night?
JP: From the feedback I've had, it all built towards “Kashmir”. Everybody who remarked on it, whether it was the public or other musicians, said that “Kashmir” was totally out of this world.
What was it like backstage afterwards? Was it emotional?
JP: It was. I had my young kids there. I was really keen to see them before the show, and then after it, as I knew it was going to be a very intense spectacle for them. I spent most of the time in a room downstairs with my family, and the families of John Paul Jones, Robert and Jason. It was emotional. It was extremely emotional onstage as well. Intense. But a positive emotion. It was a joyous experience, a celebration.
Almost all the reviews praised your playing, and John Paul Jones has told us there were times when he felt you were playing better than ever…
JP: That’s really kind of him. I must say there were moments. The thing is, when you’re going for the spontaneity of the night, if you like, you really want to know that you can still do it. I knew I could. People think I haven’t been playing lately, but I have. I've been playing all along.
Led Zeppelin’s music was written while you were in your twenties and thirties. Is there anything intrinsic in those songs that makes them fiendishly difficult to play in your sixties?
JP: No, I wouldn’t say so, providing you’re mentally and physically sound. The original players, that is; I wouldn’t say that any guys of 60 could play that music. It’s a more complicated music than what you seem to be saying. There’s a subtlety in how it all synchronises together…
Sure. I wasn’t suggesting that Uriah Heep, in their sixties, would suddenly be able to play Zep stuff.
JP: No, and I wouldn’t be able to play Uriah Heep stuff. But with Led Zeppelin, that music is probably going to go through to the DNA imprint of my children and my grandchildren. It’s so much a part of me. I just go into a sort of… For example, a number that we did in the rehearsals was “The Rover”. Now, we hadn’t played “The Rover” before, not in a complete version…
I always think of “The Rover” as a perfect illustration of Zep at their most confident.
JP: That sort of swagger? It’s got a real swagger about it. An intentional swagger.
Well, I was thinking more about the fact that you write this great song, which most bands would kill for, and then you casually leave it off the album [Houses Of The Holy] that it’s supposed to go on.
JP: Well, yes, but it had its time and its place. The place for “The Rover” is quite clearly where it comes, in Physical Graffiti, as that’s where it really works.
Will there be a CD and DVD from the 02?
JP: It was recorded, but we didn’t go in with the express purpose of making a DVD to come out at Christmas, or whatever. We haven’t seen the images or investigated the multitracks. It’s feasible that it might come out at some distant point, but it’ll be a massive job to embark upon.
We learn in our Sunday newspapers that Robert has turned down an offer to tour the world with Zeppelin. What’s the situation? Could a tour happen?
JP: The focus was towards the O2 show. That’s what I had my focus on. As for Robert, he had a parallel project [with Alison Krauss] and it’s been successful, which I suppose means he doesn’t have time for Led Zeppelin at this point. What I do know — what I do know — is that the rehearsals, and the O2 gig, were really inspiring. OK? That’s all I'll say.
Right, but are Led Zeppelin…
JP: That’s as fair an answer as I can give you.
Can’t you go any further than that?
JP: I don’t know what John Paul Jones has said, and I don’t know what Robert has said. But I know how I felt about the thing, and…
But it sounds like you, yourself, are open to the idea of a Zeppelin tour, and possibly an album? I don’t want to put words in your mouth…
JP: Well, don’t put words in my mouth. I know how… Look, I started this by saying that there was a will to succeed, if you like, in those original rehearsals. And everybody had such a commitment to it. Now, if you're talking about a tour — other dates, maybe recording together — there’s only one thing that’s going to be the common denominator with that. And that’s commitment. That’s how we did the O2.
Somewhere in a Zeppelin office, though, is the phone ringing off the hook? Offers from American promoters, inquiries from record companies…
JP: Oh, I'm sure there is. I'm sure there is.
Do you get bothered with that on a daily basis?
JP: In what respect would I get bothered with it? No, I don’t get bothered with it.
In the respect that…
JP:I do get bothered with it, I suppose, because there’s so many people, who may recognise me, who come up and say, either (a) they went to the O2 that night or (b) they didn’t and are you touring? And I have to say, “Well, at the moment, we’re not. At the moment, there are no plans.”
At the very least, has this given you a new boost of energy and purpose? For instance, you were interviewed in 2004 and said you were working on “new, radical, unexpected” material. What stage of development has that material reached?
JP: I'll tell you exactly the sort of music I've been writing. They’re the sort of vehicles and frameworks that could be applied — because I remember saying one thing in that interview, that “a good riff is a good riff” — but these are vehicles that could be used in various situations. I might have one thing that could be just as easily recorded with an ethnic drum orchestra as with a rock’n’roll band. Do you see what I mean? Or you could play it acoustic. It’s the application of it. But I'm ready. I'm ready, now, to present the stuff that I've got.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s been 10 years since you last released an album of new songs, which was Page & Plant’s Walking Into Clarksdale in 1998.
JP: That doesn’t matter! No! What does that matter?
There was a time when…
JP: No! I've done other things since then… There was a time when what?
When you’d have been desperate to let the public hear the latest music you’d created. To let it be heard, enjoyed and admired.
JP: What, you mean, within the working vehicle of a band? Oh, yes, yes, that’s right. But I haven’t had a band to tour with. No, but I’ve done a number of projects, though.
But not new albums. Not since 1998. You did a live album with The Black Crowes, but that wasn’t really a new album.
JP: Yes, but I've just done a documentary, and I did some of my new music in that. I've got enough new music to make it sort of… sort of tantalising and… yes, to reapply a commitment to that, shall we say.
When you look back at the way you put Led Zeppelin together in 1968, does it sometimes seem ridiculously easy? I mean, you ask Terry Reid to be the singer, who says no, but he knows this bloke, who’s absolutely perfect, and he just happens to know the best drummer in Britain…
JP: Have you heard River by Terry Reid? No? Because if you haven’t, I'm just trying to show you the reason why Terry Reid was considered. Also there’s something that’s relative to the whole timing of this. You just said that John Bonham was the greatest drummer in England. I thoroughly agree with you. But his reputation had not reached London. He hadn’t come out of the Midlands yet. He'd just started to play with Tim Rose — he certainly wasn’t playing with Robert — but when I heard John play, it was, well, there was just no doubt about it. Il tell you what, you just felt it. Everyone felt John Bonham.
If Terry Reid had said yes, Led Zeppelin would have got a great singer — but you wouldn’t have had that ethereal, haunting quality that Plant brings to the first album. It’s quite a disturbing sound in places; he’s almost on the cusp of male/female sexuality. Was anyone else singing like that at the time?
JP: Not to that degree, no. He stretched his vocal range way beyond what anyone else had done. The likes of Terry Reid and Steve Marriott had the attitude, and the mid-range, but Robert was doing sort of vocal gymnastics. He wasn’t singing like that when I heard him up in the Midlands. I don’t think he’d ever sung like that before the first Zeppelin album. I don’t think John Paul Jones had ever played like that before. Nobody had played like that before. I certainly hadn’t.
Is it true “Whole Lotta Love” was written onstage during a gig in America, when you were all jamming on a Garnet Mimms song?
JP: No. No. Absolutely incorrect. No, it was put together when we were rehearsing some music for the second album. I had a riff, everyone was at my house, and we kicked it in from there. Never was it written during a gig — where did you hear that?
I read it in a book.
JP: [Sarcastically] Oh good. I hope it was that Rough Guide. That’s the latest one, the most inaccurate. They’re all inaccurate, you know.
You were one of the first producers, around 1968, to realise people weren’t just listening to music on mono record-players anymore, but had moved onto stereo, and headphones.
JP: Yeah! Well, I'd been touring America with The Yardbirds, and something that was apparent was that there were two streams of radio. One was the Top 40 AM stations, which were playing the singles, and the other was the FM stations which put on whole albums. I thought this was magnificent, because you'd hear what a band was really up to. That registered with me. Those FM listeners were the sort of people I wanted to reach.
But the stereo aspect? There are a lot of very impressive sound effects on early Zeppelin LPs.
JP: I knew for sure that people were listening on headphones. It was something that was really important within the production. You get lots of movement going on [he waves his hands in the air]. Apart from the fact that it was fun to do, it presented an incredible picture in your head as you were listening.
How was the swirly effect at the end of “When The Levee Breaks” achieved? I always imagine you sitting there with a joystick…
JP: It’s sort of like that, isn’t it? It’s interesting on “…Levee Breaks”, you’ve got backwards harmonica, backwards echo, phasing, and there’s also flanging, and at the end you get this super-dense sound, in layers, that’s all built around the drum track. And you’ve got Robert, constant in the middle, and everything starts to spiral around him. It’s all done with panning.
Was it important that Zeppelin should become a huge band, an internationally renowned band, as well as a bloody good one?
JP: Initially, coming from The Yardbirds and putting it all together, I had a long-term plan that it wasn’t just going to be a band that would make singles and trite music. It was going to have longevity, and it was going to make profound music. That sort of ethic — well, you want to have success, don’t you, as that means your music is going to be heard. And also your contemporaries would say: “That’s a really good band you've got there.” And we didn’t — this is the key — we didn’t have to worry about singles, and ‘Is there a follow-up to “Whole Lotta Love” on the third album?’ No! We don’t want one! Because that’s going to restrict you. The whole thing was to burst out, burst open, and go over the horizon and beyond, and beyond, and beyond.
“In My Time Of Dying”, on Physical Graffiti, ends with a joke and a burst of laughter. It seems a bit inappropriate, I feel, after such a devastating 11-minute performance. Was that humorous reaction typical of Zeppelin in the studio?
JP: We were just having such a wonderful time. Look, we had a framework for “In My Time Of Dying”, OK, but then it just takes off and we're just doing what Led Zeppelin do. We’re jamming. We’re having a ball. We. Are. Playing.
When you worked on the DVD of The Song Remains The Same, what went through your mind as you watched footage of the young Jimmy Page in ’73?
JP: Well, it was sticky tape and glue, really. The live footage was shot by the film crew over three nights. They shot more than that, but they might have had problems with their communications because you’d find, when all the film was viewed, that they had whole areas that were missing in the songs. There were so many holes in it. So I'm sort of miming at Shepperton to what I'd played at Madison Square Garden, but of course, although I've got a rough approximation of what I was playing from night to night, it’s not exact. So the film that came out in the ’70s is a bit warts-and-all.
You haven’t quite answered my question. When you look at the guitar player in those scenes at Madison Square Garden — he’s the leader of the greatest rock band in the world, he’s dressed in a fabulous outfit, he’s playing guitar with a violin bow, he’s got the best haircut he’s had in his life…
JP: Hahahahaha!
…do you look at him and think, ‘Wow, my God, he’s pretty impressive?’
JP: [Pause] I look at him and think, ‘He’s really living it. He’s really, you know, in his music. And that’s wonderful. I can relate to that, and I can see him taking chances, and I can see him making mistakes.
You’re often described as the curator of Led Zeppelin’s heritage. Are you?
JP: No, I'm not, but I've certainly tried to make sure that there wasn’t a rape and pillage of it. I'm very conscious that less is more.
Was playing with Robert at the 02 a very different experience to the Page & Plant tours of the ’90s?
JP: Of course it was different, because it was better. With no disrespect to the musicians who played in Page & Plant, it’s got to be better to play the music with the key members who’ve written it. So that’s Robert, that’s me and that’s John Paul Jones.
Why did Page & Plant end when it did?
JP: The LP was all right, but it was scaled right down. There could have been a follow-up, but it’s a leading question, isn’t it? I had some material written for another album. I had about a dozen numbers, and some of them were really good, but Robert heard them and he wanted to go in another direction. He wanted to do a solo album. Fair enough.
Robert’s now touring with Alison Krauss. Does it infuriate you? Do you feel like saying: “But Robert, this is LED ZEPPELIN we’re talking about!”
JP: No, because he’s made many departures and that’s what he feels he needs to do. No, he can do what he wants. We’re all grown men, for heaven’s sake. But I know what is inspirational, and what is really challenging, and that is the sort of direction that I personally — personally — intend to go.
If there were to be a new Zep album, would you expect to be the producer as before?
JP: No, I'm not getting into that.
I know you built those Zeppelin albums to last, but could you really have imagined that people would be listening to them 40 years later?
JP: I hadn’t really considered that I would be around to witness 40 years later. But I knew that I listened to blues from the ’30s, and rock’n’roll from the early ’50s. I was listening to a lot of music that predated my birth. There was a possibility that [Led Zeppelin] would be listened to. I believed that the musicianship on the Led Zeppelin albums, is… I don’t want to say it’s a textbook for musicians, but it has a hint of that. Anyone who plays an instrument, and who appreciates the tactile quality of it, there’s a lot for them. And not only that. People who don’t play music at all — there’s still a lot there. You can hear it. You can appreciate how it was put together. David Cavanagh
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.
Half a century on from Led Zeppelin's explosive entrance, 38 since their tragic exit, the spirit of their music-making thrives, their legacy curated by their devoted guitarchitect, while his bandmates make peace with the legend as best they can. As a new book emerges, Jimmy Page talks Phil Alexander through the factors that fed their music and fields the question they can't avoid: will they ever play together again?
Plus Robert Plant on madness in Tampa, and the wisdom of John Bonham's mum.
John Paul Jones bemoans the myth-making, apologises for D'yer Mak'er.
Jason Bonham
The highs and lows of the last man to drum with Led Zep.
As dusk fell on those warm summer evenings of 1967, the young guitarist would slip into his motorboat and disappear on to the river, enjoying the simple freedom of not quite knowing where he was heading. On other occasions, he would aim for land once owned by Gilbert Beale, a wealthy local bird enthusiast. Beale loved peacocks and had established a nature reserve on the Thames, some two miles or so above Pangbourne, but his death at the age of 99 put plans to create a wildlife park on hold. Meanwhile, his island summer house remained empty. It was there that the 23-year-old Jimmy Page would head during many of his night-time sorties, soaking up the sounds and the stillness and, once he’d moored up on the island, wandering around “in a paradise of peacocks”. For Page, these bucolic rambles — launched from the boathouse that he’d recently bought — allowed him time to think and to escape from the turmoil that had begun to engulf The Yardbirds, the band for whom he’d abandoned a lucrative career as a session man in June 1966.
It's almost impossible to be exact about how many sessions Page played on, but his run of roughly 150 recordings from January 1963 had provided him the wherewithal to buy his Pangbourne residence, a few doors down from The Swan pub (itself famed for being mentioned in Jerome K Jerome's classic 1889 novel, Three Men In A Boat). His work as a jobbing guitarist had also provided Page with an impressive string of industry contacts, and when The Yardbirds split in 1968, he repaired to his boathouse and informed the band's manager, Peter Grant, of his intention to form a new outfit.
Page understood that the pop boom of the early '60s was at an end. It was time for something new, a step on from the music that had swept around the globe in the wake of The Beatles' success. All he needed now was a bunch of musicians that could bring his ideas to life. The first of those he welcomed to Pangbourne was 19-year-old, Black Country-born singer Robert Plant.
The pair famously bonded over music and tea during the space of a week, and it was Plant who suggested his former bandmate John Bonham as a suitable drummer for the music Page had in mind. The band was completed by Page's fellow session musician John Baldwin, AKA John Paul Jones, the four-piece convening for a brief rehearsal in London's Gerrard Street on August 12, 1968. While their name would come a little later, Led Zeppelin were up and running.
On an August afternoon almost 50 years to the day since that first rehearsal, Jimmy Page sits in the dining room of The Tower House, the London residence he bought from actor Richard Harris in 1972. Latterly, the building has become the focal point of Page's life, largely due to the ongoing battle between him and his new neighbour, singer Robbie Williams, whose proposed excavations threaten the foundations of Page's Grade 1-listed property, built by renowned Victorian architect and designer William Burges. In what are extraordinary steps for a man who values his privacy so intensely, Page has invited both press and TV cameras into his home in order to present his case. Discuss it with him and it becomes obvious that he views himself as The Tower House's custodian rather than merely its owner.
The same could probably be said of Led Zeppelin — the band whose memory Page has done so much to preserve since they split following the death of Bonham at the age of 32 on September 25, 1980. In the 38 years that have elapsed, Page has been the band's enthusiastic curator, single-handedly overseeing a substantial reissue programme, while Plant and Jones felt it less necessary to engage with the idea of legacy.
The band's 50th anniversary, however, sees all three surviving members collaborating on a book: Led Zeppelin By Led Zeppelin, published by Reel Art Press. All three have raided their personal photographic archives to deliver an impressive, weighty tome. The book also comes with annotations from the trio, presented as an appendix that charts the band's development. For Zeppelin fans, this is the closest they will come to the band's autobiography.
Sitting in his dining room, Page looks at the book in front of him with a certain amount of pride. "Everyone put something into it, and applied themselves," he says. The guitarist, now 74, is nursing a cold and a sore throat, but he insists that we soldier on with an interview, the aim of which is to tackle the band's legacy and his role within it. Most recently, he has returned to visit Pangbourne, so it seems fitting that we start back there and a period which, for Jimmy Page, represents "absolute freedom" and where the seeds of Led Zeppelin were sown.
Why did you move out of London to Pangbourne?
I'd done my apprenticeship as a studio musician in London. I worked seven days a week at times and it was pretty intense, so I wanted somewhere that was calm and on the Thames. I thought a houseboat would be a good idea but that turned out not to be too practical. But a boathouse? Well, my goodness gracious! When I saw that, it was almost as if it was there waiting for me to move in. I realised pretty quickly that if ever there was a location where you could experience the seasons and the flow, then this was it. It was just a magical place to be.
In the book, there are shots of you with a telescope standing in your lounge, and another next to a gigantic jardinière.
Yeah, you can see a few records, and the taste that I had at the time in that second shot. A lot of the furniture that I was buying was Arts and Crafts furniture [from the late 1880s] which, at that time, was literally being thrown out because it wasn't fashionable. You could just pick up really lovely things. That jardinière, though, came back from the flea market in Paris on the plane on the seat next to me because you could do that in those days.
You were also buying art and you'd been to art college. How did art school affect the music you made?
When I was in my teens and I was being introduced to records, I developed the ability to really hear things intently. I'd listen to records and work out what every instrument was doing and how it all gelled together. Then, when I worked in studios, I'd ask the engineers how things were done. The thing about going to art college, though, is that you learned how to see things in different ways. That's what it did for me: it provided me with a different perspective. I was sort of seeing music in the way that you were layering paints, or like a collage.
So do you actually 'see' music?
Well, I can definitely visualise it, there's no doubt about that. There are definitely things that we did along the way where I knew what they'd be like before we did them.
Like When The Levee Breaks [from Led Zeppelin IV]; from hearing the drum sound onwards, I knew straight away that I was going to put on this sort of backwards guitar to link into the riff. I said to Robert, "Right, let's do the electric harp now. I've got an idea of how we're going to do it with the reverse with the echo." I wanted the whole thing to be super-duper-dense, and it just is. At the end when it's repeating, on the stereo mix Robert is constant in the middle and everything is spiralling round him. I really had all that in mind.
You also had a definite view of what you wanted to do with the whole band from the beginning.
Yes. When Robert first came down to Pangbourne I played him the Joan Baez live album [Joan Baez In Concert]. Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You was the first track. I said to him, "It may sound a bit weird that we're even listening to a Joan Baez album, but if you can mirror that vocal, I've got a guitar part that will really work." I'd done all the acoustic guitar arrangements as you would hear it on the first album. All the other parts — like the pedal steel, and the acoustic overlays — I knew what I wanted to do with those too. Then again, it's all well and good knowing what you want to do with it, but if you've got somebody who is sympathetic to the idea then it really helps, and Robert was. Of course, once we started doing it with the band, then it just took off as a piece of music.
Alongside your interest in art, you'd read a lot and you'd listened to a lot of music. What influenced your thought process the most?
In the Jeff Beck documentary [Still On The Run], Jeff says that when he first came round to my house my record collection was really eclectic. Everyone else had largely rock'n'roll with some blues records from the Chess catalogue — and we were really young at that time — but I had sitar music, Arabic music and electronic music. I was also into a lot of musique concrète where they cut up music, almost like the musical equivalent of William Burroughs. I was also really into classical music, traditional and modern.
In The Yardbirds, this idea of mixing all sorts of different types of music together, textures and sounds, carried on. It was the same in Led Zeppelin. I was trying to create something that hadn't been heard before or, if it had been done before, then it hadn't been heard in the way in which we played it. That's what I was trying to do from those first chords (beats out the intro to Good Times, Bad Times on his knees) all the way through the band's career.
Recalling Led Zeppelin's first rehearsal, Robert described you and John Paul Jones as "exotic, stylish, mature", adding "and they played like a dream." Do you think Robert and John Bonham were somewhat in awe of you both?
Well, John Paul Jones and I were used to studio disciplines and maybe they hadn't walked into a rehearsal situation like that where we were ready to go and where it exploded from the start. Then again, I'd never walked into a rehearsal like that. None of us had.
The combination of the three instruments and what we were playing was stunning. For John Bonham, this was his opportunity for him to play in the way he felt he wanted to play. It was the same for Robert, for me, and for John Paul Jones. Regardless of what we'd done in the past, as soon as we started playing this whole new thing started moving and in a communal manner. It was an overwhelming experience for all of us. It was life-changing, and we all knew it.
In the book, Robert also mentions the daunting prospect of writing words to fit the band's music. He had to use his voice almost as…
(Interrupting) …an instrument! That was exactly what it was supposed to be. We didn't want a crooner over the top of what we were doing. We wanted someone who sounded uninhibited. Primeval! That's it. It was really clear that he was a vocal gymnast. He could really improvise too. Again, that was super-important to me. I wanted that improvisation and I wanted a singer who could really make a meal out of the songs.
So the words weren't important?
They kind of were. I was writing lyrics at first but I didn't consider myself to be a lyricist in the same way that I considered myself to be a musician or a producer. It came to the second album and I've got Thank You. I hadn't written the lyrics for most of it. When we were running through it, Robert said, "Do you mind if I do all of the words on this?" And I said, "Yeah, go ahead." That was music to my ears because I wanted to concentrate on the sound, the production and the music.
It's clear that by late 1968 you've moved away from the idea of pop music towards the idea of music as art.
Maybe. It gets a bit pretentious when people start talking about art in that sense. People recoil from that. It was just clear to me from my time in The Yardbirds that if you made the right album, then there was an audience willing to listen. I figured even before I even had the group that if an album could be done with enough contrast on it, with enough drama, and what we call the light and shade — which means the acoustic and then the choruses, and super-heavy electric playing — then that would be incredible. That's what we tried to do.
Throughout our career we had a guitar-led approach — not to take anything away from anyone else. And I was always determined to write and present music to the others that would really inspire them. If any piece of music turned up that sounded like what we'd done before, then it would just disappear, because it just wouldn't interest us at all.
Once you'd finished recording the first album, you and Peter Grant took it to Atlantic Records in New York where Jerry Wexler signed you. How did Jerry react when you first played it to him?
Well, he thought it was really good. I mean, he just really listened to it and he heard it the way everyone else heard it, because we didn't change a damn thing! He'd never heard anything like it, but he understood the musicianship involved, which is why he wanted to sign us.
Peter remained the band's manager throughout the band's career. What did he bring to Led Zeppelin?
He'd been in the business for many years and that was his world. It wasn't really mine but he was forensic about contracts. The best part was once he'd negotiated the record contract that gave us freedom to do things, we could continue our steady ascent without any interference. Then he starts to apply certain areas of his experience and business acumen by saying to promoters, “Well, you can have Led Zeppelin but you can have them this way around rather than your way around.” He did that because he had the clout to be able to do it because he was managing us. He was a real ally of mine and he could see what we had from the start. I think he must have thought at some point, “My god! I've backed the right horse!” But he totally backed us, and I got on really well with him.
The latest release from Zep Inc. — the remastered soundtrack to The Song Remains The Same — brings back perilous memories for Jimmy Page.
The Song Remains The Same — the film and its soundtrack — have often been viewed as missteps in a career which, up until the movie’s release in October 1976, had been nigh-on unstoppable.
In some respects, the film is symbolic of the turmoil that engulfed Led Zeppelin after Robert Plant was seriously injured in a car accident on Rhodes on August 4, 1975. As Plant writes in Led Zeppelin By Led Zeppelin, it would be seven months before he took his first step again, with soundman Benji LeFevre looking on as the singer fell on his face at the first attempt.
With Plant laid up, the idea of a Led Zep movie (which had its roots in 1970, and an initial filmed performance at London’s Royal Albert Hall) was revived. In July 1973, they’d shot portions of their three-night run at New York’s Madison Square Garden, but that footage came with its own problems. “When we saw the original rushes they didn't have any shots of Robert and they hadn't captured the vocals properly,” explains Page.
In the summer of 1974, Zeppelin repaired to Shepperton Studios in Surrey in a bid to capture the sound and images they needed. “But it wasn’t as simple as that,” Page continues, “because I had to try and replicate what I'd played in New York. That was more challenging for me because I was improvising through the original shows. But the most important thing was to get Robert covered.”
In addition to the Shepperton footage, the band had some off-stage material and a series of fantasy sequences, designed to provide a brief glimpse into the lives and thoughts of the band members. Page chose to film his sequence at Boleskine House, the property on the banks of Loch Ness which he had purchased in 1970 and which once belonged to philosopher and occultist Aleister Crowley.
“We all decided to do our own scenes but I don't think we even discussed what each scene would consist of,” Page recalls. “[The film’s original director] Joe Massot filmed my scene at Loch Ness and the idea was that I would climb this escarpment. I said to him, I want to do it when there's a full moon and snow there as well!” laughs Page. “So we went for the full moon and, lo and behold, there was actually snow there too when we started shooting. He thought that was quite magical.
"The idea behind the scene was the adept aspiring towards the beacon of truth, the light, and he’s making the ascent. A perilous ascent, it should be said! Actually, there’s one point where a bloody rock comes away and I'm halfway up! I'm there like an idiot. It was even worse when I got to the top because they said 'You've got to do it again.’ I thought, Oh my good gracious.”
In the film’s best-known sequence, the guitarist transforms into a Gandalf-esque character carrying a lantern, based on The Hermit, a symbol of wisdom found in several spiritual traditions and the inner gatefold of Led Zeppelin IV.
“I wanted to use the Hermit imagery,” says Page. “Then the beacon of light idea goes back to a [William] Holman Hunt pre-Raphaelite painting [The Light Of The World]. The idea was the journey of your life is being able to recognise the truth, the spiritual truth. But people can come up with any interpretation they want.
“It was a spiritual thing that I wanted to reflect but, whatever anybody thought of that, the bed of it, the music, could be heard on its own. Visually, though, the whole thing builds to this crescendo with The Hermit and the bow. It is pretty good.”
While he has never hidden his interests in esoteric spirituality, Page rarely discusses them in depth.
“I don't intend to really,” he says, “but The Song Remains The Same is out again and people will see that again so they may wonder what that scene’s all about, so it's worth explaining it.”
The Song Remains The Same (re-released on September 7) remains a flawed but entertaining experience.
“The momentum of the show itself is really good,” says Page. “The performances are really great. Yes, it's eccentric in parts but within the concert footage you can see how things were really done up close. As a musician, I'm always fascinated to see how other musicians do what they do, and the film really does that. It's a historical testament.”
By late ’69, around the release of the second album, Led Zeppelin seemed to be making heavy music for heavier times, suggesting that music would never be the same again…
I think that's from the first album actually. That first album said things had changed, and that continues to the second album, third album, fourth album, fifth album and Physical Graffiti. It just doesn’t stop until we start recording In Through The Out Door [in 1978] by which point there are machines that can re-create the ambience of rooms as a direct result of sounds we achieved earlier on in our career.
So as a producer, what are the accomplishments you're proudest of?
On Led Zeppelin I the drums are recorded right across the stereo pitch, or the mono pitch if it was in mono. I’m not sure anyone had ever done that before because they seemed to keep the drums sort of left of centre and right of centre. It happened because of the way John played, tuned and set up his kit. I felt it was really important to capture the full frequencies that were coming off his kit so you could feel it breathing as he played it.
But it’s not just the drums that breathe on those Led Zeppelin records…
No. Parts of Dazed And Confused are almost going towards the avant-garde. It's very spooky some of the stuff that’s going on. It’s actually disturbing to listen to. But it was meant to be. It's not meant to be polite. It's meant to cause a disturbance in your mind.
You were deliberately disturbing the listener?
Yes. Certainly the instrumental section in Whole Lotta Love was. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with that. It wasn’t done by chance. It was designed to be what it was. That was a good serious production in every respect.
Led Zeppelin II was a huge record for the band. You followed it up with III in October 1970, which contains some of your most intimate and acoustic music.
Yes. But the acoustic element has been there since the first album. That album is intimate. But then again, we go and play the Bath Festival — which curiously we'd already done the previous year in 1969 on exactly the same day which was June 28 — and the first number we do is Immigrant Song, the first cut from that third album. People literally just looked at us and thought, “Oh my god, what is this?!”
Bath is interesting in terms of image, too, with your beard/neo-farmer look. John Paul Jones says in the book that you never discussed image very much. In contrast, you say, “I was trying to project a certain style.” What was that style?
It was whatever I was living at that point in time. Seeing the footage from the Royal Albert Hall [in January, 1970], I realise that I probably haven't had a haircut since my time in The Yardbirds because things had been so intense! Then, at Bron-Yr-Aur [the cottage in west Wales where much of Led Zeppelin III was written] there’s no hot water and I just think, “Oh, I'm going to grow a beard!" Then, the beard started taking over! Suddenly, there were beards everywhere. So I shaved it off and more or less reverted to the way that I looked in The Yardbirds.
I had an idea of how I wanted to start looking, for sure. You can see it in The Song Remains The Same. I start getting into more flamboyant clothing, like the dragon suit. I wanted to wear things that reflected the image of the music.
Have you still got all your suits?
You're darn right I have! Yeah. The dragon suit looks brand new, too. It doesn’t look like it’s had this whole experience. It's an extraordinary piece, it really is.
After a three-hour show that suit must’ve been dripping with sweat.
Do you think I sweat, then? Let’s just say that I didn't do my own laundry! (Laughs) It's not a very palatable subject is it? Shall we move on?
Between 1968 and ‘73 you toured and recorded at a relentless pace. What impact did that have on you as people?
When I put the band together, John Paul Jones already had a family and John Bonham had a family too. Jason [Bonham] was already born. Robert was soon to have a family but I didn’t have one. So going on tour did have an impact on us and their families.
In America, once we started off, the response to the live show was so phenomenal. We all know the size of that continent, but we wanted to make a mark there so we had to spend as much time as we could there. The door opened, there was a glimmer of light, and we kicked the door down. That meant that we were over there for almost a full six months in 1969.
Then I had my daughter in 1971. Peter [Grant] also had a family and so it sort of came to the point where we weren’t doing tours as we had done and certainly we didn’t tour the way some people do now, where tours go on for two years. I'm not sure how anyone puts up with that length of touring.
By 1973, Led Zeppelin were the biggest band in the world. How did success impact on you as people?
We weathered the storms and we did that through the music. After Pangbourne, I was living in Sussex and it was very, very quiet there. Coming back off of a tour it would take about two days to settle back into a completely different way of life. All the rooms in your house seemed completely different from what you were used to and all of the sounds you heard seemed odd. It was almost as if you needed a debriefing to come off of a tour in order to settle in as the family man or whatever you'd been before you left. To me, that was the other side of the coin to all the extremities of being on the road and really enjoying being on the road. I mean, I didn’t go on the road to be miserable! I went on the road to really enjoy myself, you know.
The enjoyment has been quite well documented. In terms of playing live, the set was constantly evolving too.
Yes, and despite everything, I was always responsible to the show and the performance. I was pushing myself every night we went on stage because I wanted to explore the song and go further than the night before. That was constant: that desire to go further. The sets were going to three, three and a half hour sets. With that level of commitment to it, you would get worn out. There’s no doubt about that, but in another way you'd be extremely fit.
After a fashion.
No, you would be really fit in every respect!
It’s not like you were living the healthiest of lifestyles.
Well, I don’t know. It depends what you mean by healthy. I thought it was healthy!
The mythology of those early tours has at times obscured the music. Do you resent that?
Has it? No, it hasn’t. It has — and with all due respect to you — in journalistic or written form, but in the audible form it hasn't affected anything because of all these tens, hundreds of millions of albums that we're supposed to have sold, I don’t believe a single record got sold on the strength of a mud shark or any other sort of thing that is supposed to have caused outrage. It’s about what that music is and what it actually imparts to the listener and the effect it can have. And that's a great thing to be talking about after all this time, something that started 50 years ago and which young musicians are still coming to because it’s a remarkable textbook. That whole ethos of four musicians making music together in a live capacity is real and authentic, and the music is honest. That's why it lasted.
One thing in the new book really hits home: the press release that you issued when John Bonham passed away. It reads: “We wish it to be known that the loss of our dear friend and the deep respect we have for his family, together with a sense of undivided harmony felt by ourselves and our manager, have led us to decide that we could not continue as we were.” Who drafted that?
It was done at the office. I didn’t draft it. I don't know who drafted that. But obviously Peter circulated it around while we're all still in shock.
When John died, you must have all just felt lost…
Oh God, yeah. Obviously, it was just terrible. It was terrible for John’s family, it was terrible for the members of the band. It was also a great loss to the world of music. We were really affected because he was our musical comrade. He put so much love into the band, as did the others. But it was quite clear that every show was different because of our improvising; I knew that I couldn’t teach someone that aspect of the band. That's why it had to end. It was about the total respect that we felt for each other as musicians. That wasn't to say that the music should just stop at that point. There was a careful curation of what came out afterwards. There is a respect for the music as opposed to just flogging it.
Despite that shock, you were obligated to deliver another album, hence Coda.
That was not an easy thing to do. With all of that tragedy Peter put it to me that we owed Atlantic another album. I said, “You've got to be kidding!?” So, as you do when there’s really dark or negative times, you turn the situation over on top of itself so that there’s light, and I thought, “Yes! We've got Bonzo’s Montreux!” That was just him and I in the studio in Montreux at the casino. That should really have been on the previous album. I knew we had that, and what a celebration of his drumming and his invention that is. That, for me, was the whole rock to build Coda around. And when we reissued the album as a double [in 2015] that felt like a proper celebration.
You have overseen the remastering of the catalogue and every Led Zeppelin reissue. Has the band’s legacy ever been a millstone to you?
Well, Coda was very difficult but other than that, it hasn’t been because I've always really enjoyed listening to Led Zeppelin music. I've always found it stimulating and fascinating to listen to and that’s it. It's just the most extraordinary group on so many different levels.
A month after our meeting at the Tower House, Jimmy Page is on Led Zeppelin duty once again, arriving at London’s National Portrait Gallery on a September evening for the launch of Led Zeppelin By Led Zeppelin. Among the 200 guests are a few of the book’s surviving snappers and a number of Page’s children and grandchildren.
The gallery’s Main Hall is decked in Led Zeppelin livery. Following an introduction by cultural historian Sir Christopher Frayling that ends peppered with Zep puns (“I don’t want to Ramble On or leave you Dazed And Confused…”), Page speaks of his pride in the book. “I hope it travels through to the fans and meets their imaginations and expectations,” he smiles.
It’s 11 years since Led Zeppelin played their triumphant, one-off show at London’s O2 Arena with John Bonham’s son Jason on drums, and it now appears certain it was their last. “I think everyone knows where things are as far as that’s concerned,” says Page. “I don’t really see the point of discussing it any further.”
The book and the anniversary have given Page further time for reflection. It’s always seemed that his time leading Led Zeppelin was spent searching for something elusive. What does he think he was he looking for?
“Personally? Personally, I wanted to challenge myself to reveal music or open up music that was a challenge for me to play. There was this collective spirit coming together and what I wanted to do was to make music that could change the frontiers of what already existed.”
So, five decades on, why does Page think Led Zeppelin’s legacy has endured?
“It’s performance art at the end of the day. It’s art! It’s lines, it’s landscapes, it’s architecture, it’s Jackson Pollock, it’s everything! It’s every movement in art! But it’s in music and, in that respect, it’s a whole school of music unto itself. You could say it fits into this category, or that category, but quite clearly it’s just Led Zeppelin.
“There’s a lot of people who came in the wake of Led Zeppelin, who got the idea, and played in the spirit of it and sang in the spirit of it, but Led Zeppelin music was different from everything else. It was just a phenomenon.”
Robert Plant recalls “the humor and madness” of a time when rock 'n' roll was still feral. “Jesus Christ, where's the fucking troubadour gone?” he asks Andrew Perry.
With How The West Was Won, The Song Remains The Same, and this photographic book, it feels like there’s some momentum towards a collective celebration from you surviving band members.
There's been several books before, and none of them tell the truth, but this is a photographic book, put together by Dave Brolan, who's very capable. My only thing was, “Can you find anything that nobody's seen before, apart from all the other wives?”
When you talk about Zeppelin, it always feels like your energy drains a little. Why is that?
I just think about John Bonham. Because we were spars. The West Indians used to use that term for a friend, but we were spars in every respect. We were edgy, and we had shoulders out here. He was very, very important, all the way through my time, from The Crawling Kingsnakes, through the Band Of Joy — all the humour and madness and stuff.
Did listening back to the performances from the LA Forum and the Long Beach Arena on How The West Was Won bring back any fond memories?
It's not the Bonzo's birthday party one, is it? When Keith Moon was playing with us? [That show at the LA Forum was on June 23, 1977 — the album documents shows from June 1972.] That night, Moonie came and they set up his drums so we couldn’t see what was going on, and suddenly we had two drummers. We'd been there a week before when Jethro Tull was playing, and Bonzo took a fruit selection — a basket of fruit and vegetables to wang at them, some tomatoes and stuff like that — and he turned round and said to me, “Well, I've got a title for their live album…” I said, “What's that, John?" He said, "Bore 'Em At The Forum!” (laughs to the point of tears. So yeah, The New Yardbirds — it's come a long way, really.
Back at that first gig in Gladsaxe, Denmark on September 7, 1968, what you couldn’t have foreseen was that your band would revolutionise rock touring on a mass scale.
Sure, and you can also say, oblivious to cause and effect. I always think of that Doors album, Weird Scenes inside The Gold Mine — what a great title. I mean, nobody had a clue. There were just more people all the time. And then the streets were jammed with people, and there were roadblocks, and there were people climbing up the stage stark naked. And there was Janis Joplin helping me out with my sore throat by giving me neat vodka with a teaspoon of orange — a half pint of it! All that stuff was fantastic.
Going to America, the furore and the insane energies were so overwhelming, you'd be exhausted just by looking at a crowd. Just, “What the fuck — what's that?”
As a touring operation, did it feel streamlined and well-organised?
It wasn't. But to the best of everyone's ability, it was. Because there hadn't been anything like it on that scale before. So where could it stop? It didn’t stop. It kind of went on and on, and we ended up in the Guinness Book Of Records a few times. We played in Florida to 57,000 people at Tampa Bay Stadium [on May 5, 1973], and we didn't even have an opening act. There was another big one in Atlanta [the previous day], but in Tampa, we didn't have an opening act, the stage wasn't covered, and there was a torrential storm, so the US Air Force were up in the sky. And they were using radar to plot how long the storm would be if it came across, and once the crowd started climbing up the stage, and everything went up in the air, I found myself running as fast as I possibly could, with a kid under each arm, to get out of there.
I mean, the furore and chaos — it was just a great excuse for the fascists down there to come in with their see-through shields and truncheons, and they came diagonally across, so as we got into the plane and took off into this storm, popping a Valium on the kids' sandwiches as we went up. We looked back down and could see all the lights flashing, and this pincer action of the authorities.
It sounds like that scene from Apocalypse Now where the female dancers cause a riot and they have to escape by helicopter.
It was like some sort of awful dance competition of organised violence. Nowadays, if it's raining at Glastonbury… everything's covered. They have isolation transformers, nobody gets killed from weather. It's all planned, there’s people with laptops everywhere tap-tapping away. (Laughs) What a fucking mess! Jesus Christ, where's the fucking troubadour gone? Or the griot in the Tuareg world who just comes through and tells a story about his family.
So you remember those crazy mega-gigs in the early '70s fondly, because they were a leap into the unknown?
But isn't it amazing, because we played the Bath Blues Festival with the [Jefferson] Airplane, and then Michael [Eavis] came along and said, “I've got a farm nearby…”, and from those glorious days… That was the great thing about those times, that nobody really had a map — a literal map, or any kind of idea or theory of what the fuck was going on. We came to America in 1969 or '70, maybe three, four, five times, I think — so much so, that Carmen, my daughter, thought somebody else was her dad. And I really hope that isn't true!
The Beatles and the Stones stopped playing in the mid-'60s, because they couldn’t hear themselves. Did you find the actual playing satisfying?
Oh no, it was spectacular. it was magnificent, because we'd just shout out songs as we were going along. Like Jack White does now, to his credit. He's one of the real people on the scene — proper job! But no — it was amazing. Who knew what was gonna happen next? “Wow, look at that, look at that! I am the golden god! “There couldn’t be anything more absurd than that, really, and so I said it. But I was standing in a palm tree at Bonzo's birthday party. I couldn’t see anything more ridiculous, and so funny, at those times. And you know, there were no automatic tuners: we used to tune up with a harmonica and a guitar backstage and hope for the best. It was stone age.
Fast forward to December 10, 2007, and Led Zeppelin’s reunion concert at O2 Arena. In the aftermath, you said you'd felt a discomfort during the longer instrumental passages, that you didn't know what to do with yourself.
I thought the O2 was a triumph. (Pause) Triumph is the wrong word. That's how it would be construed. Rather, it was a lot of concentration and focus, turning out to be great on the night. We've had a few reunions apart from that — Live Aid [in Philadelphia in 1985] and so on, which were a shambles — my voice was fucked, or there were tuning issues — whatever it was. So those were a tragedy.
But what could I do when they were playing? I could enjoy them. Because I was no longer in it, I was a voyeur. So I didn’t have a responsibility to make it work with my hips, or my chest, or my shoulders, or do some kind of strange marionette job. I was just enjoying it, and it was really good.
But you skipped the formal aftershow at the 02, and made your own fun at the Marathon Bar — a kebab shop/after-hours boozer in Chalk Farm. What can we read into that?
Yeah, and the French guy with the bolero jacket was playing rock'n’roll guitar in there. They've since changed it in there — it's fancy. But anyway, for what it was, O2 was great, and you know what was really good? Bonzo's mum, Joan — she was holding court. Jason [John Bonham's son, who stood in for his late father as Zeppelin's drummer at O2] had his dressing room, and in there, he had his grandma, and Deborah Bonham [Bonzo's sister], and Pat, John's wife. And it was just really funny, because Joan always was quite glib, and she'd been more or less a second mum to me when I was 16, 17, because Bonzo and Pat lived in a trailer behind their shop. So, Joan’s sitting in state with her kind of chiffon and silk around her shoulders, and she looks at me and says, “You haven't changed a bit, Robert — still got all those girls screaming!” I said, “It's mostly blokes now, Joan!”
The Zeppelin songs you revisit with your current band are the folkier ones, Led Zeppelin III tracks like Gallows Pole and That's The Way. Is that the stuff you're most proud of, or still feel in tune with?
That one’s such a beautiful beast. All artists talk about the difficult third album. When Jimmy and I went up to Snowdonia, to Bron Yr Aur, That's The Way was one of the triumphs of that time, and what the fuck did we know about anything? We just knew that we were able to write songs together, and share silent company, and really try to go somewhere.
A few years ago, you told me a story about how you met Joe Strummer for the first time in autumn 2002 — a month or so before he passed away. The way you told it, you both pulled up in the car park at Rockfield studio in South Wales at the same moment. You each got out of your respective cars, and at a certain point on the walk to the entrance, you recognised each other, tried to speed up and slow down to avoid talking, but eventually you had to shake hands and say hello, and you ended up spending the whole day chatting and having a whale of a time. As well as two icons of differing rock generations, you were also two staunch reunion refuseniks, turning down the biggest pay-outs in live music. Did you talk about that stuff?
I don't really remember. The thing is, when the deal goes down, Strummer and so many of us can trace a part of our DNA back to Jerry Lee Lewis, and the rockin’ times — Jack Scott coming out of Detroit on Carlton Records singing Leroy, that sort of thing. There was a little bit of that in him. When you're with someone that’s part of the great network of the histories of rock’n’roll, I don’t think, "Oh, the snare drum was shit on London’s Burning,” or anything like that, and he doesn't have to think that some of my machinations back then were a bit absurd, because they were both just what they were, so once you're one-on-one with somebody, everything else disappears, unless either of you have a problem.
You even had that attitude at the height of punk, when you and Jimmy Page turned up to see The Damned play at the Roxy club in January 1977. How did that conversation go, when you chatted afterwards?
Well, they’re troupers, aren’t they? Rat Scabies tried to get a job in my band when he was at Rockfield. I can’t remember who was drumming with us at that time — I think it was Phil Collins! — but whatever it was, it was just great. Because that album that Nick Lowe produced [1977's Damned Damned Damned], with Fan Club, New Rose and all that, it was just exactly what everybody needed. When you ask me what was I thinking about, what would I do with myself during a 10-minute solo, I was probably wishing I was in The Damned! (Sings) “For my fan club!’ For a minute. And then happy to come back in when it's my turn.
John Paul Jones on a musical banquet with side order of exhaustion and disquiet. "It was a cri de coeur," the bassist/keysman tells Mark Blake.
Does it surprise you that Led Zeppelin still mean so much to people 50 years on?
It's very gratifying that people still remember us. But I always presumed I'd still be playing music 50 years on, because it's all I ever wanted to do.
In the new photo book’s epilogue, you write “It was all about the music, all of the time.”
It always was. Everything else was just incidental.
You came from a musical family; were you always going to become a musician?
Six months after leaving school, my dad said he knew a friend who could get me a job in a shipping office, if I wanted it. I said, "No thanks, I'll find a band.” My father was a pianist, my mother was a dancer and a singer —they were both in variety — and my granny used to play piano for silent movies.
You, Jimmy Page and Peter Grant bankrolled those early New Yardbirds/Zeppelin dates. Presumably, you knew you were onto a winner?
Yes. That first rehearsal was just so fantastic. Plus I knew Peter Grant, as he worked with [producer] Mickie Most and I'd been Mickie's arranger. Peter was a force of nature — and with him behind us I knew we could do really well.
From the outside it seemed as if Led Zeppelin were destined to be successful. Was there always a grand plan to conquer the world?
No. Jimmy had sussed out the lie of the land in America with The Yardbirds, but there was no formal plan. Maybe, a plan evolved later, after we realised touring America at the birth of FM radio was a great way to do it.
You and John Bonham seemed like polar opposites, and you were also a more experienced studio musician. Was that ever a problem?
There was never the slightest problem. John knew what he was doing and did it better than anyone I'd ever heard, John and I drifted apart when we weren't on-stage, but that’s how it was in Zeppelin.
You've said the four of you weren't close friends, but it was about coming together to play music.
Completely. Even if you'd been arguing earlier, it didn’t matter. That was left behind when we walked on stage. On-stage we were as one.
Is it true people sometimes thought Zeppelin had a hidden bass player when they saw you playing keyboards on-stage?
Yes. “Who's playing bass?" "I am! Look at my feet!”
Peter Grant once claimed Zeppelin considered hiring a keyboard player in the early days.
No, no, no (emphatically). Unless they were talking behind my back…. I even played keyboards at those early rehearsals at [Jimmy Page’s house in] Pangbourne. Page had a Hohner Pianet, if I recall. I played it when we did the Band song Chest Fever. Their album [Music From Big Pink] had just come out and we were so excited by what we were doing we just wanted to keep playing.
But you did threaten to leave in 1974 as it was taking you away from your family too much?
Yes. That was a bit of a cri de coeur. I just wanted to know what we were doing, say, two months in advance, rather than be told, "This is happening tomorrow.” Then everybody else got children and it all fell into place.
Was family life away of staying grounded amid all the madness of the road?
Very much. But even without my family on the road, I would arrive, check into my room and then go straight out the back door of the hotel and walk around the city. I remember The Beatles saying that on their first American tour they hardly left their hotel. I thought, “That's not going to happen to me."
Did you ever present an idea and have it rejected for not being, say, ‘Led Zeppelin’ enough?
No. If an idea was good it didn't matter what the musical slant was. If it didn't work, we'd all agree and move on, Obviously there area couple of our songs I'm not that crazy about…
Which ones?
D'yer Mak'er (laughs). Down By The Seaside, but I like that country piano I played on it. Generally, we didn’t put out stuff anybody in the band hated.
Songs sometimes took on a life of their own in concert.
I've always improvised. When I was 14 and playing the organ in church, I improvised — because I was never that good at playing Bach. Some songs stayed as ‘songs’ and others, like No Quarter, we took it somewhere else on-stage. I remember doing the Atlantic 40th [birthday concert, New York, in 1988, where Zeppelin performed with Jason Bonham]. We were in an elevator with the guy from Tears For Fears. He said, “God, I wish we could do what you do. Everything we do is to a click track, it sounds exactly the same every night…” We just listened in horror.
You had more writing credits on the last Zeppelin album, In The Out Door, than any before. How do you view that record now?
I like all our albums. But that one was a matter of logistics. Robert and I got to rehearsals and nobody else was there. Eventually we said, "OK, let’s try this.” It was never, “OK, I'm taking over This is my album.”
If John Bonham had lived, what would the next Zeppelin album have sounded like?
No idea. We had no idea from one album to the next. Nobody ever said (adopts slow, monotone voice) "Oh, let's do another Stairway To Heaven, let's do another Whole Lotta Love…”
Did you miss Zeppelin when it finished?
Yes. But I spent a lot of time with my family. I couldn't get arrested in the '80s — a very weird time. It wasn't until the end of the '90s when I made my first solo album [1999's Zooma]. We toured the world, sold out shows, then promoters started insisting (sounds appalled) I get a bloody singer. It was Instrumental music, but I'm not Jeff Beck. I remember a promoter saying, “We can't grow it”, Oh well, fuck you all.
Would you make another solo album?
No, no, no. I can't be arsed (laughing).
You've produced and collaborated with an eclectic mix of artists since Zeppelin, though: Diamanda Galas, Wings, Them Crooked Vultures, R.E.M., Rokia Traoré…
If it sounds interesting, I do it. I'm writing a chamber opera for [mezzo-soprano] Dame Sarah Connolly.
Is it refreshing working with musicians who don’t necessarily like Led Zeppelin?
Yes, but I just discovered Dame Sarah is a huge fan and knows all the stuff.
Do you allow her to ask a couple of questions?
Yes, occasionally (laughing). The same with Them Crooked Vultures. Dave Grohl would go, “Hey, what was Zeppelin's rider like?" Sometimes they're disappointed by the answer because the myth has become so built up.
The myth is also a part of it.
I suppose it is.
What's your proudest musical achievement in Led Zeppelin?
Oh lord… (long pause) No Quarter would be one. I always liked Physical Graffiti because of the scope of it, but | also liked the hardness of the first album.
What about since Zeppelin?
Touring with Gillian Welch, that first Sara Watkins record [2009's self-titled debut], and working with Diamanda Galas — I'm really proud of that. She’s my favourite pianist and singer. She's part of our family now.
Would you have liked to play more Zeppelin shows after the O2?
Absolutely. Jimmy, Jason and I did rehearse and looked for a singer — not to replace Zeppelin, but because it sounded so good, we all thought, “Let's do some more.” But it didn't work out.
It's never going to happen again, is it?
No, and if it’s not going to happen, I always move on. But I'm very happy doing what I'm doing now. All I ever wanted to do was play music. Any excuse — I don't care.
Jason Bonham on the trials and triumphs of living up to his dad. Interview by Danny Eccleston.
When were you first aware of what your dad did and what it meant to people?
When you don’t know anything else, it's just normal. Dad plays drums in a band. It wasn't like he was in The Beatles! And he never played much drums at home, and if he did it was on my kit. But even on my little kit he played like John Bonham.
John Bonham is most rock drummers' favourite drummer — why?
I think there’s this misunderstanding about his style. He was not a bish-bash drummer. He had a real finesse. If you watch things like the Royal Albert Hall show [from 1970] you'll see how far up he holds his sticks. That gave more control, less wallop. You think of him as this thunderous drummer, but he had an amazing left hand. And he had a swagger not matched by anyone.
Did you miss him when he went on tour?
I don't remember him being away that much. They'd do the big tours but then we'd go on these big family holidays in the south of France, for a month at a time, and people would come and join us: Lulu and Maurice Gibb; Ringo. They'd go out and party with Oliver Reed and Peter Sellers. That’s when dad shaved Ringo’s hair off. Which mum said was fine until they took the eyebrows off as well!
Did you always want to follow your dad into drumming?
I got really into racing dirt bikes and that was my distraction when dad was away. But when he was home, he really got into it, got up at six in the morning to make the bacon and egg sandwiches and drive me to Wales. We had a trailer on the back of a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud! I remember a guy from Kawasaki coming up to him and saying, "Your son's fast, we'd like to sponsor him.” And dad goes, “Nah. We can afford our own bikes…”
When you got back into drumming, how was it dealing with your dad’s legacy, on his own turf?
At 15, Robert would pick me up from school and I'd demo tracks for his solo album before Phil Collins came in. Looking back, it gave me a false sense of security. I was going to be the guy! It didn't help me in my choice of lifestyle. If someone would say, “Just like his old man!” even if I was being drunk and smashing something up, I'd take it as a compliment.
You did Jimmy's Outrider album, then the Zep reunion at the Atlantic 40th birthday party in 1988, What do you make of it now?
For me, and I think the people there, it was… it was what it was. It was unrehearsed. We'd had two hours in the afternoon. And looking back on it now, that's what it sounds like.
How did you feel when you were recalled for the O2 show?
It was June 10, 2007, I was on tour with Foreigner, had to get a stand-in. Flew to England on the red eye, went to the studio at 10 in the morning, setup my drums and at 12 the guys arrived, and we did nothing that was on the list of songs I'd been sent. But it went amazingly well. Jimmy and Robert looked at each other and looked at me and said, “This is as good as it’s ever sounded.” Robert had to go and said, "Uncle Jimmy wants to talk to you about something. Maybe your wish is gonna come true.” I remember bawling like a child and it was all, We're gonna do a new album, do this, that, Wow! All of a sudden it was on.
Then the next rehearsal, when we started rehearsing in August, it was a very different vibe. Once the managements got involved, now it was a serious event, it was a little bit less personal.
This must have been a whole new level of being Bonham Junior.
I was so paranoid about getting it wrong! I felt that I still hadn't proven to anybody that I could play drums well. With about a week to go, I met a friend for coffee on the way to rehearsals and they asked me, "Are you having fun?” And I was… " No. It's driving me crazy. I feel like I'm failing every day.” And they gave me the best advice they could've. They said, “Stop trying to be John. Be Jason and John will come naturally.” And it was at that rehearsal that Robert turned around to me after the first song and said, “Where’ve you been? Finally, you're here.”
But for me the show was only one part of it. Being round them for that amount of time, it made me feel… when I left the room it was as if maybe dad would walk back in, or when I came in it was like he'd just left. I feel very close to him when I'm with the three of them.
What do you remember most about the show?
Before we got on stage, Robert got us in a huddle and said, “Remember to have fun. Because whatever happens, they can't take that away from us…” Then I remember the roar and thinking, “I can’t swallow.” Robert said, “You are gonna sing the harmony, aren't you, on Good Times, Bad Times?” And I'm like, “What?!” It was a great decoy to stop me worrying about the bass-drum triplets! But once we got to Black Dog we were more relaxed. We'd started to improvise more than we had during rehearsal.
And after it?
I remember, as we'd got close to the show, my mum had said to me, “Will you be OK when it ends?” Because this is what I'd lived for as a kid. This is what I'd talked about in rehab. This was what was painful to me when Page And Plant was together and people asked me why wasn't I playing with them? This was the torment. This is what I wanted and never got until that moment.
It was crazy, overwhelming. I remember, afterwards, Robert trying to steal the lamps from his dressing room. He said, “I like these lamps, I'm having these!” The Gallagher brothers were in there. Paul McCartney, dancing. The Edge. Oh my God, look who's here! Then it was waiting for the bootlegs so I could checkup on the playing, ‘cos I knew I'd fluffed up on one bit and it was bothering me. But we did it!
Then Jimmy and John wanted to continue it?
That came a few months later. We lost someone who worked for Robert, Big Dave, shortly after the show. I remember being with Robert, with my family, in the Midlands, and Robert had promised to take me and my son to the Wolves game, but I knew Dave had died the night before, so I sald I didn't hold him to it, but he said, “No, come on.” I remember my son falling asleep in the car on the way back and I said to Robert, “I've gotta know, do you think we're gonna do it again?” And he said, "No. But don't ever think it was because you can't do it. There’s a lot more to it than you think, son.”
You rehearsed with different singers…
A guy called Myles Kennedy came in from a band called Alter Bridge. I kept mentioning Chris Cornell, but nobody seemed to reply. Then the strangest thing happened. I got a phone call from Robert. He said, “How's that new singer?” I thought, "Busted!”
In the end, it never came to pass. Where did that leave you?
If anything, it was harder to deal with than the O2. It was the thing that mum had said. I'd got sober in 2001. This was 2008 and it was like someone was trying to make me fall off the wagon. I'd been pressured to leave Foreigner and I was left with nothing. That wasn't the happiest time in my life.
But you'll always have the O2?
It's a tough thing — to have that seat for a short time. But I have a Grammy for it. It's carved in time: the only other person to have played drums on a Led Zeppelin album was also called Bonham. I'm happy to have achieved that. I'll always be compared to my dad, whatever I do or try not to do. But you know what? I'm very proud of him and I love the music.
You're doing this show: Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Evening…
I started it as a kind of therapy. It was trying to get the Led out of me. But I get to play those songs and feel good about it, as well as doing my other work with the other artists I play with. I hope to bring it to England one day. It's a trip down memory lane with home movies and video and telling stories. Everyone who sees the show tells me afterwards, "I get it. I absolutely get it.”
Have any of the others seen it?
I'm sure they have, somehow. A DJ tried to get Robert to comment on it, but all he got was, “Jason can do whatever he wants. No one plays those songs as good as him other than the man who isn't around. He has my blessing.” Robert always says, “I adore the passion you have for the music we made with your dad and your knowledge of it. But it scares me sometimes.”
