Good Times, Bad Times: Jimmy Page In Pictures
An audience with the Led Zeppelin guitarist…
By Simon Harper, 27 November 2014
There are certain members of rock royalty whose prospects for an autobiography seem a little optimistic. That Keith Richards managed to recollect anything for his book, Life, was nothing short of a miracle, however it’s likely that we’ll be waiting forever to read his more reticent counterpart Mick Jagger’s journals. And so it was with Led Zeppelin, who have always closely guarded their own backstage secrets despite – or, perhaps, because of – mounting speculation and improbable myths that surround their legacy. Until now, that is.
An intensely private person, it’s taken over four decades for guitarist Jimmy Page to enlighten his fans with an insight into the inner sanctum of his colourful past. A new book, simply titled Jimmy Page, attempts to lift the lid on the memories from throughout his career, but in a unique and authoritative manner that’s fitting of the musician’s exacting standards. The book’s narrative is told by a succession of photographs, painstakingly researched and collected over two years by Page, which definitively charts his progress, his rise to fame, and his stature now as a living legend.
“I like to pit my wits against something that is pretty epic,” he tells Clash. “I’ve done that all the way through, I realise, in my life, now. To have something that nobody else has done.”
The first ever authorised Led Zep publication assembles 500 pages of stunning imagery from the likes of Linda McCartney, Gered Mankowitz, Pennie Smith, Jim Marshall and more, alongside unseen photographs from Page’s own archives, rare Led Zep memorabilia, tour dates, passport scans and accompanying captions. It begins in the late-’50s with Page as a choirboy, before his obsession with the guitar sees him first become an in-demand session player, then a Yardbird, then form his own group, Led Zeppelin, and conquering the world. His post-Zep years are brought right up to date with the band’s 2007 reunion, his work with The Black Crowes, and his appearance at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
Originally designed as a 2,500-copy limited edition collectible, this new and expanded affordable version is an essential and illuminating document for any Led Zep fan.
Clash met Jimmy to talk through a selection of our favourite photos, and discovered the enigmatic icon wasn’t as restrained as we’d been led to believe…
– – –
FIRST GUITAR
“This is a picture of my first purchased guitar. My first [actual] guitar was a campfire-type guitar, which curiously enough was left behind at a house that my parents moved into. We moved from Middlesex to Surrey, to Epsom, where this is. There was this guitar there – nobody could play it in the family – and it was all strung up with six strings. You know when you see a guitar that’s been left behind and there’s strings missing? This was just there. Bit by bit, there was like an intervention into my life. I took to it like a duck to water.”
THE SESSION MAN
“When I was at art college, I was playing in the interval band at the Marquee club, which was on Oxford Street at the time; it was just really happening then at that time. I was at art college and I was playing in the interval band and I got headhunted to start doing sessions, and then they just came fast and furious. I had a break after one of the terms and I was doing like three sessions a day, five days a week. I had to go back to art college, and I had to make a serious decision. It was clear that I was a much better guitarist than what I was an artist. In those days, you weren’t just a specialist musician; you were just a guitarist and you were expected to be able to play in all these different genres.
“I played right across the board; from all the really, really good things like the group things, where I was brought in as a hired hand (for the likes of The Who, The Kinks and Them), to the point where I was doing muzak sessions. I worked with Brian Jones from The Rolling Stones for the film A Degree Of Murder. He said, ‘I’m doing a soundtrack for this thing. Have you got any ideas?’ I said, ‘I’ve got something straight away. I’ve got the bow (to play guitar with)!’ And he goes, ‘Oh! Listen to that!’ It was lovely working with a like-minded musician that was into the more avant-garde.”
THE YARDBIRDS
“The bass player Paul Samwell-Smith left the band. Their guitarist Jeff [Beck] and I were really good friends, had been friends since we were 12 – he thinks maybe even 11 – so I go in playing the bass, and then it gets to the point where there are two lead guitars, and Chris Dreja takes over on the bass. Jeff was really keen to have a dual lead guitar thing… Like, all those old blues records where they’ve got two guitarists going on, like the Howlin’ Wolf stuff and Muddy Waters; you hear some wonderful guitar parts blending. The Stones were doing that, but we wanted to have stuff that was more like a big band, with all the saxes – that sort of aspect, of all the riffs coming right out at you, and playing off each other. I was playing with the bow the minute I go in there, so we had a lot of interesting textures going on.”
LED ZEPPELIN
“I’d found Robert and routined stuff with him at home to see – because if he wasn’t going to get the ideas of what I had, then I’d have to look for someone else. I knew exactly what I was going to do. But it was like hand-in-glove, the two of us working. John Bonham hadn’t been playing with him for a while, I don’t think, but he said, ‘You’ve got to see John Bonham.’ I’d worked with John Paul Jones on sessions… Everybody just really suddenly took on their own persona, which moulded as the four and bonded. John Bonham had never had the chance to play the drums as John Bonham before Led Zeppelin. He’d just never had the chance to really flex his muscles musically, but that’s the same with all of us; everyone suddenly went into overdrive on this thing. It wasn’t over-playing, it was just playing in such a way with such attitude that it was just undeniable – this is some serious force going on here.”
LIVE
“It was supply and demand: we couldn’t supply the demand of people who wanted to come and see us, so you just see that these venues get bigger and bigger and bigger. Did I get nervous before big shows? Was it nerves or was it just the excitement and the adrenaline tap going on and champing at the bit like a horse before the shutters go up and it starts racing? It’s a bit like that, I think. Because the other thing about it is, by the time you’re looking at that picture there, we’re doing three-hour sets, and there was always going to be so much music that was going to come out on that night. Because every night was different, so it was quite exciting, you know? You knew what the set was, but the set’s gonna mutate. It was wonderful.”
THE FASHION
“I knew how I wanted to look, which was different to other people, and then it got to the point where I could actually afford to buy outfits – because they weren’t going to be cheap. On the dragon suit, it’s really raised up like a kimono, and it’s all gold threads. But I could afford to buy that. I think I had the trousers first (laughs), then I had to pay for the jacket so the jacket and trousers match up. Then I had the poppy suit made as well.”
FAMOUS FRIENDS
“I met Andy Warhol in November 1966 when The Yardbirds were in New York. Robert Plant and I met Elvis Presley in 1974 after his show in LA. I sort of got a chance to meet everyone. If I’m really honest, I would have liked to have worked with Bob Dylan. There’s still time, but there’s a whole period when I would really have liked to have worked with him. At the time, he’d had a conversion to Christianity, and everyone thought I was like the Devil incarnate, and maybe he thought it might not be the best [idea]. He might have thought it was like mixing oil and water, but actually in musical terms I would have been really sympathetic to him.”
01 - Hook & Ladder - Nancy Sinatra
02 - Why You Been Gone So Long - Clarence White
03 - Go Back Upstairs - Alex Richman
04 - Dance With Me Henry - Brenda Patterson
05 - Mad Love - Billy Mernit
06 - Silkie - Sal Valentino
07 - Ride on My Shoulder - Paul Revere & The Raiders
08 - Petaluma - Norman Greenbaum
09 - Any Old Time - Maria Muldaur
10 - 2:10 Train - Gentle Soul
11 - Del Rio Dan - The Everly Brothers
12 - Don't Talk Now - Longbranch Pennywhistle
13 - Smokey Joe's Cafe - Anders & Poncia
14 - Memo From Turner - Mick Jagger .
15 - Yellow Brick Road - Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band.
16 - Ballad of Tricky Fred - Arlo Guthrie.
17 - Rainy Day Crossroad Blues - The Doobie Brother.
18 - Struttin' Down Main Street - Fusion
19 - Soft Soundin' Music - Harpers Bizarre
20 - Teach It To The Children - Marc Benno
21 - October Road - James Taylor
22 - Tuckertown Fair - Larry Groce
23 - Wild About My Lovin' - John Sebastian
24 - Deep River Runs Blue - Ron Elliott
25 - Jesus Is Going To Make Up (My Dying Bed) - Pops Staples
26 - The Train That Carried My Girl - Mike Seeger
27 - Let's Burn Down The Cornfield - Randy Newman
28 - Born Under A Bad Sign - Rita Coolidge
29 - Periwinkle Blue - Mark Levine
Getting to the Bottom of the Page. By Pete Frame, Issue Number 27, December 1972
Jimmy Page Talks About Led Zeppelin. By Pete Frame, Issue Number 28, February 1973
Here is audio of Pete interviewing Jimmy, though the sound quality leaves much to be desired.
Record Collector republished parts one and two as one article on 9 April 2008, along with some context provided by Pete.
I did this interview in November 1972, at the offices shared by Peter Grant and Mickie Most, several floors above a Millets shop in Oxford Street. When I got there, Jimmy was examining the artwork for the sleeve of Houses Of The Holy, which was giving him consternation because the hand-tinting wasn’t quite right. The album was already in the can but wouldn’t now be released until March, missing both the upcoming UK tour and Christmas – not that this was too much of a problem because it was guaranteed to hit No 1, no matter when it came out.
Page was the essence of civility throughout. Manager Peter Grant was hovering in the background, probably making sure that this dubious-looking hippy wasn’t going to ask any wayward questions. Later on, I got to know Grant a bit and found him to be as sweet as pie – but back then he was this huge, hirsute, intimidating presence, obviously very protective of Jimmy.
I felt very privileged to be doing the interview. I don’t think Page did that many with small-circulation magazines like Zigzag, and I suspect that he might have been talked into it by his publicist, BP Fallon, who had been a mate of mine since the days when he was press officer at Island Records.
Afterwards, I phoned BP to tell him how well it had gone – which is when he introduced the quid-pro-quo. He wanted me to interview another of his clients – a new band called Silverhead, featuring Michael des Barres – and, of course, I could hardly say no. A few says later, he drove me up to a college in Kidderminster, where they were playing, and also invited local lads Robert Plant and John Bonham along, to yell encouragement at the stage. The night ended with a madhouse party at Plant’s farmhouse… but that’s another story.
Where do you start when you go to interview a musician like Jimmy Page? At the beginning, obviously…
Before you were doing session work, you began your professional musical career with Neil Christian & The Crusaders, didn’t you?
Yes, I was with them when I left school, but all the travelling to one-nighter gigs made me ill – I used to get sick in the van. When it came to the point when I wasn’t going to go on with Neil Christian any more, I was approached by Cyril Davies, who was forming a group, and I went as far as rehearsing with them before I came to the decision that there was no point in going on because I’d just get into the same situation of feeling sick during all the travelling, so I packed it in and went off to art school for about 18 months.
Then, when I left there, I began to do sessions bit by bit, and the work just began to escalate; at first, it was a nice scene, because there were good things to be done around the advent of the Beatles and Stones booms, and I worked as a freelance. Because I was a new face on the scene, I got bookings all over the place.
Legend has it that you got into sessions after you were spotted playing at the Marquee.
Yes, it was something like that. I used to go up there and play in the interval spot with three other guys. We didn’t really know each other outside the Marquee; we just used to meet there, and get up and play.
When you started doing sessions, could you pick and choose at all?
Not really. You’d get the sort of situation where, say, a violinist session-fixer, who didn’t really know many other session musicians, would hear that there was a new guitar player around, and he’d book me for what turned out to be a ludicrous session – like muzak for supermarkets or something like that, Sometimes, I’d be asked to do a session and the fixer would say “so-and-so wants you to do it” and I knew I’d be OK, that it’d be a suitable sort of job, but often I’d arrive without knowing what it was for, and as I got a little more experienced, those were the sort of things I learnt to avoid… I mean, they were just a headache, things I shouldn’t have been doing.
I think the sessions you’re probably best known for are those Shel Talmy productions, The Kinks in 1964 and The Who just a few months later.
I was thinking about those the other day, and I was wondering why Shel Talmy got so involved with the session men he used to use, because quite often, they just weren’t necessary at all. For instance, I wasn’t really needed on the Who’s I Can’t Explain session, but I was there, and all I managed to do was sneak in a couple of phrases on the B-side. Maybe Talmy used to have people like me standing by in case the group couldn’t quite make it on some level. I mean, The Kinks didn’t really want me around when they were recording. One aspect of being in the studio while potential hits were being made was the press; too many people were making a fuss about the use of session men. I wasn’t saying anything, obviously, but it just leaked out, and that sort of thing often led to considerable bad feeling.
Suffice it to say that, during the period of 1964- 1967, I was in there grovelling around on a lot of sessions, but if I went into details, it would be a bit of a nuisance for the people concerned.
Pete Townshend acknowledges your assistance on Can’t Explain, but Ray Davies is adamant that you played nothing but tambourine on any of The Kinks’ stuff.
That’s fair enough. I didn’t really do that much on The Kinks’ records. I know I managed to get a couple of riffs in on their album, but I can’t really remember. I know that he didn’t really approve of my presence.
As a session man, and as the bloke who turned down an offer to replace Clapton in The Yardbirds, you became a bit of a cult figure, especially regarding guitars. Like when you got hold of a Les Paul Custom, everybody wanted one. A lot of people learnt from you, but where did you learn from?
I chose that Les Paul Custom purely because it had three pick-ups and such a good range of sounds – it seemed to be the best all-rounder at the time. The Stratocaster is probably the best all-rounder now, but at that time it was the Les Paul. But Eric (Clapton) must take the credit for establishing the “Les Paul Sound”, the sort of playing he was doing in The Bluesbreakers, for instance. You see, even though I may have been one of the first to have a Les Paul, I didn’t often get the chance to get going on it.
On the odd occasion, I was able to put a bit of feedback onto some record or other, but it was only after all the other musicians had gone home, because when I played like that, they just used to put their fingers in their ears. The limitations were often really frustrating – a factor which eventually led to my leaving session work – because I rarely had a chance to roar into something. The sax players and violinists used to look at me as though I were some kind of joke.
So you had no free rein at the time – you just had to play as you were told to?
Not exactly. In most cases, they’d give you a part which was written down, and sometimes it was good, but usually you’d only play it as it was written if you wanted to be really nasty. Often, the part would be really bad, and you knew that you could do so much better if only you had the chance – you know, things that flowed and sounded better, and had more life in them. It all depended how willing the musical director was; if he accepted your suggestions, you obviously had a freer hand, but if he wanted every part to be his invention, you had to follow his instructions.
Who were you listening to and learning from? People like James Burton and Scotty Moore?
That’s right – I’ve always listened to them, and The Everly Brothers had a good steel player (on things like Lucille and I’m Not Angry) called Johnny Day. I asked the Everlys who that was, because everyone was saying it was Chet Atkins and I didn’t think it was. But I was interested in any of those guitarists who were bending strings, all the earthier ones.
What about the new wave of British acoustic guitarists who were starting up in late ’64, early ’65, like Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, did you pick up on them at all?
I went to see Bert Jansch at Les Cousins, just as his second LP was released (June 1965) and he was great, fantastic, he really was. If he was only still working as a solo player now…
What about Davy Graham? Bert and John looked on him as a teacher, and held him above them in stature.
He wasn’t for me; I always thought that Bert was the one with the touch; he was always far more adventurous and complicated in his technique, although Davy Graham, let’s be fair, was the innovator of those raga things and he was really good at those. But you listen to things like Alice’s Wonderland and Finches from the first Jansch LP, they’re so complex and full of weird timings, and Davy Graham never did anything like that. So, yes, Bert Jansch really impressed me very greatly. His first album particularly is just great from beginning to end.
I thought that you and Davy Graham were matey in those days, and were involved in a kind of parallel development of Indian and Moroccan tunings?
No, I was friendly with Jon Mark, who in turn was a good friend of Davy Graham’s, who I’ve never met.
What I was angling at, was this contention over the sitar. A lot of people take the credit for introducing it to Western pop music, but I feel that you were probably the first person to investigate its possibilities.
Davy Graham never had a sitar, but he must take credit for working out those guitar tunings he used on his raga pieces – they had a somewhat similar tuning to the sitar, though I don’t know whether it was intentional or not. I know that he’d been to Morocco and played with musicians over there, but I don’t know if he ever got actively interested in Indian music.
Jon Mark and I got involved in Indian music, and I had a sitar sent over from India before any other people in pop, certainly before George Harrison, for instance. I’d been to see Ravi Shankar, years before he became fashionable, because the audience was nearly all adults – there were only about two young people there.
I’ve often read about you having a sitar, but I can’t recall you ever using it on record.
I never did, because I knew what would happen when someone eventually did, and I wasn’t wrong. To use an instrument which has been developed over thousands of years as a quick gimmick, well…
You’re right about the gimmick value. I remember Donovan saying he was going to retire for six months and learn the sitar, and I remember the way The Byrds paraded one at the press conference for Eight Miles High.
Yes, but that was a great record. I personally wasn’t too happy with the way George Harrison used it on Revolver, though everyone else seemed to think it was incredible as far as sitar playing went. It wasn’t, but later on, when he did Within You, Without You, I think that’s unsurpassed to this day. So, he really did good things for Eastern music, and was the one who woke people up to it on mass-media level, but it was people like Davy Graham who were into it long before anyone else.
Here’s a rumour, a Jimmy Page myth, that you can confirm or dispel: you are reputed to have followed Albert Lee around with a tape recorder when he was in The Nightsounds, so that you could copy his riffs.
I admit that I used to record one or two people – like Cyril Davies and Little Walter and John Lee Hooker – but that was to listen to rather than copy. No, Albert Lee’s in a class of his own – country guitar – and I was never into that style.
That single you made on Fontana, She Just Satisfies – why just the one?
I wasn’t allowed to make a second one; but that single was a joke and should anyone hear it now and have a good laugh, the only justification I can offer is that I played all the instruments myself, except the drums (Mint copies of the single go for £600 in 2008. – Ed). The other side was instrumental, featuring harmonica, because I got all interested in that around that time.
Hence the Little Walter taping?
Oh no, that was just to listen to – to put in my personal archives, which have quite a lot of interesting stuff – Johnny Kidd, Cliff Bennett, all sorts of people.
Can you tell us about that Blues Anthology which came out on Immediate (two double albums in December 1969, a repackage of earlier single-album releases), and which has just been re-released yet again in the States?
That was really a tragedy for me. I got involved with Immediate, producing various things, including John Mayall’s (I’m Your) Witchdoctor, Telephone Blues and a couple of others around late 1965. Eric and I got friendly, and he came down and we did some recording at home, and Immediate found out that I had tapes of it and said they belonged to them, because I was employed by them. I argued that they couldn’t put them out, because they were just variations on blues structures, and in the end we dubbed some other instruments over some of them and they came out – with liner notes attributed to me (on earlier copies) though I didn’t have anything to do with writing them. I didn’t get a penny out of it, anyway.
WelI, that’s amazing, because they were released three of four times. So the tapes you recorded at home were overdubbed – who was playing the other parts?
Stu from the Stones (roadie) was on piano, Mick Jagger did some harp, Bill Wyman played bass and Charlie Watts was on drums.
There are also tracks on there by The All Stars, featuring you and Beck and Nicky Hopkins, all credited as your compositions.
Yes – they were tapes Immediate had in their possession from a long time before. It was, in fact, the Cyril Davies All Stars without their guitarist, and they were just tracks we’d done for fun after the real session was over. It was just a case of Immediate hustling together whatever they could to fill out the albums, and I’m really embarrassed about the whole thing, because everyone thought I’d instigated it, and I hadn’t at all. As it was, nobody got paid for any of it.
You joined The Yardbirds on bass, replacing Paul Samwell-Smith in July 1966 – can you tell us how that came about?
Yes. Paul Samwell-Smith said “I’m leaving.” It was a great night, because it was at one of those silly ball things – either Oxford or Cambridge, I can’t remember which – but everyone was dressed up in dinner jackets, and Keith Relf (The Yardbirds singer) got totally drunk and was rolling round the stage, grappling with the mic, blowing his harmonica in all the wrong places and just singing nonsense words… but it was great, just fantastically suitable for the occasion. But Samwell- Smith was always after musical precision and adherence to strictly rehearsed neatness, and it was more than he could take. It was the last straw, he’d just had enough and decided to quit.
Were you there then? Did you used to go to gigs with them before you actually joined?
Yes, I used to go to all the gigs with them because I was really into what they were doing. So he jacked it in, and told the others that they’d do the same if they had any sense, but they had two gigs following closely and felt they had to do them, and it was a case of me helping them out of a spot. I offered to play bass, though I’d never played one in my life before. I knew their act and what they were doing and learned enough to get through, and then they suggested that I stay on. So I did.
We know that you turned down an offer to join The Yardbirds in January ’65, when Clapton left, but you were also rumoured to be joining as an extra lead guitar earlier in ‘66.
Jeff (Beck, who replaced Clapton) often used to say “I wish you could join, and we could play together.” I agreed that it would be good, but I never took it seriously because there was this thing about five Yardbirds, and to bring in a sixth would have destroyed that. So my joining was never a real consideration until Samwell-Smith left and I took over on bass. The idea was that Chris Dreja, who was the rhythm guitarist, should learn bass and when he became proficient enough, we’d switch roles and The Yardbirds would then have two lead guitarists. That eventually manifested itself on The Stones’ Ike & Tina Turner Tour (which opened on 23 September 1966). A lot of people think I never played lead alongside Jeff, but in fact we played together for several months.
So after about a couple of months, Chris Dreja was able to get around enough on bass?
Yes… but wait a minute, I think the switch was necessitated earlier than planned because of one of Jeff’s collapses. We had to play this gig in San Francisco, at The Carousel I believe, and Jeff couldn’t make it, so I took over lead that night and Chris played bass. It was really nerve- wracking because this was at the height of The Yardbirds reputation and I wasn’t exactly ready to roar off on lead guitar, but it went off alright and after that, we stayed that way – so when Jeff recovered, it was two lead guitars from that point on.
I read somewhere that you and Beck practised Freddie King solos note for note so that you could play in unison on certain numbers.
It wasn’t just Freddie King, we rehearsed hard on all sorts of things, especially introduction riffs to things like Over Under Sideways Down, which we were doing in harmonies and we had sections worked out where we’d play rehearsed phrases together. It was the sort of thing that people like Wishbone Ash and Quiver have perfected, that dual lead guitar idea, Of course, that was all very well in theory and at rehearsal, but on stage, Beck would often go off into something else.
Did it really develop into a scowling, glaring battle, with you and Beck at opposite sides of the stage?
No, it was never a case of trying to blow each other off, because I was trying to get it working, so you had this stereo effect on the guitars. There was no point in doing battle, that would’ve just led to a useless sound.
When you left session work to play live, did you have to pay special attention to the visual aspects, like learning to leap around instead of just standing still and playing?
To tell the truth. I didn’t even think about it. When I’d been in Neil Christian & The Crusaders, I’d had to do things like arc over backwards until my head touched the stage – you know, those silly things that groups used to do – but The Yardbirds were never into choreography or anything like that… it was just a case of acting naturally, I suppose.
Looking at release dates and listening to records and so on, I’ve concluded that the only tracks that you and Beck played on together were Happenings 10 Years’ Time Ago and Psycho Daisies (both released on a Columbia single, DB 8024, October ’66).
I think that’s right. I played bass on Psycho Daisies, and there’s a bit of a story attached to Happenings…. We were in the studio waiting for Beck to turn up, and Relfy had this little bit recorded on a tape recorder, the sort of riff pattern for the song. Well. I worked on the riff and the structure of it, and we’d got it all ready by the time Beck eventually showed up. He just put some guitar on top of it and that was it, but I think it turned out well. There’s also a double lead on Stroll On (presumably the one recorded on the Blow Up soundtrack, though Page was on bass in the film, as I recall).
After Beck was kicked out at the end of ‘66, you carried on for about a year and a half, but only released four more singles and that terrible album called Little Games (Released 8/67 in US, but never put out here). When you consider how immeasurably better the first Zeppelin album, a year later, was in terms of sound, performance, thought, arrangement and so on, it makes you wonder how Little Games could’ve been so skimpy and tatty.
Well, on half the tracks we didn’t even hear the playbacks, they were first takes. That’s how it used to be done; we would spend time on singles, but Mickie Most (the producer) thought that LPs were nothing – just something to stick out after a single.
Those last few singles didn’t seem at all Yardbirdy, especially Ha Ha Said the Clown and Ten Little Indians (neither of which were released here, mercifully). Were they, in fact, ReIf plus session men whom Most had got together to do the track while you were out touring?
No, it was us alright, but both of those tracks were a bit of a con-job. It happened like this: Mickie Most would say “Why don’t we try to do Ha Ha Said the Clown (which had been a hit for Manfred Mann) but in a Yardbirds style?” and we’d say “don’t be silly”. But he’d say “Come on, let’s try it – it’d be an interesting experiment if it doesn’t work, we’ll scrap it”. Of course, no sooner was it recorded than out it went, despite the fact that it was terrible, and then to cap it all, we fell for exactly the same line on Nilsson’s Ten Little Indians, but at least we managed to get one interesting effect on that one. That was the sort of thing that led to a lack of confidence within the group and its eventual split.
I know people with copies of that LP The Yardbirds With Jimmy Page Live At The Anderson Theatre, which was put out in Sept ‘71 (on US Epic), but withdrawn almost immediately because you slapped an injunction on it.
If you’ve heard that, you’ll know why it was stopped. Those sort of things are always happening in the record business. What happened was, Epic said to us (in late ‘67) “can we do a live LP?”, and they sent down the head of their light music department to do it. The agreement was that if it was good, they’d release it, but if not, they’d just file it away. Of course, it was terrible; the bloke had done things like hang just one mic over the drums so none of the bass drum came out, and he’d miked up a monitor cabinet on my guitar instead of the real one, through which I played all the fuzz and sustain notes, so all that was lost. We knew it was just a joke when he did it. He assured us it would be alright; “it’s amazing what can be done electronically,” he said, and then when we went to listen to the master tape, there were all the bullfight cheers dubbed on it every time there was a solo, and it was just awful, so they had to shelve it. They must’ve dragged it out of the vaults a few years later when someone realised they had some unreleased Jimmy Page stuff, and out it came. It was just too ridiculous, but it circulated and sold a few copies before we put the injunction on it.
It’s worth a lot of bread now.
I wish it wasn’t. I wish people would accept it for what it is, a pathetic load of crap. We did some studio work with the same guy a little later (their last single Goodnight Sweet Josephine/Think About It, released here on Columbia DB 8368 in January ‘68), but that was desperation, I suppose, because we were so anxious to get something done, if only to prove to ourselves that we could still do it.
The Yardbirds finally fell apart in July ’68 after a last gig at Luton College of Technology. Relf and McCarty wanted to pack it in, right?
Yes, over the months before the break, Relf, particularly, and McCarty had been talking about starting up a new scene. To counteract the sort of stuff I was listening to, they were into very light things like Simon & Garfunkel, The Turtles and people like that, and they wrote some songs in that vein, which they wanted to go off and record. I was in favour of us keeping the group together and tried to persuade them to stay and record their songs as The Yardbirds, because I knew we had the potential to pull it off. But they just wouldn’t have any of it. Keith was really the instigator, I think, and he said this very weird and interesting thing that I’ll always remember: “the magic left for me when Eric left”. Now, I’ve always thought that The Yardbirds’ best stuff came from the Beck era, when they did all that incredible experimental stuff – but anyway, they decided to go.
So you and Chris Dreja looked for some musicians so you could continue the group as The New Yardbirds?
Well, I didn’t want the group to break up, and I thought there was a chance that if we made it clear we were going to carry on, maybe Keith and Jim would change their minds and come back, but they went off and made their own record, produced by Paul Samwell-Smith. I can’t recall their name at the moment. (I think it may have been Together, who made a single on Columbia in late ‘68.)
The New Yardbirds was to have been you, Dreja, Terry Reid and a drummer called Paul Francis. Is that right?
Almost, but I can’t remember anything about Paul Francis. He must’ve been someone who Chris had in mind. Yes, it was going to be Terry Reid, because I’d seen what a good singer he was when we toured with him (on that same Stones/Ike & Tina tour); he was in Peter Jay & The New Jay Walkers then, but by the time I got to him, he’d just been signed to a solo deal with Mickie Most, and he’d got a trio together but he recommended this bloke called Robert Plant.
The drummer I had in mind was BJ Wilson (from Procol Harum) but I don’t think we ever actually approached him, because when I went up to see Robert, who I immediately knew was the one for the job, he suggested I go and check out his friend John Bonham. When I saw what a thrasher Bonzo was, I knew he’d be incredible. He was into exactly the same sort of stuff as I was.
By September ’68, Chris Dreja had gone off to America to become a photographer. That’s presumably when John Paul Jones arrived?
Yes. He got wind that I was forming a new group and phoned to see if it was true. Then he asked if he could join and I said “Great – you’re in.” Chris had always been interested in photography, he’d taken some really good pictures, and it had always been a toss-up whether he’d leave The Yardbirds to do photography full time. I think he got a chance to go to New York to work with Irving Penn, and that’s what he did, went through an apprenticeship thing. He’s back here now, I think, doing quite well. (He took the back cover shot on the first Zeppelin album.)
Plant and Bonham had been in the Band Of Joy, but John Paul Jones had been a session musician, doing a lot of stuff for Mickie Most (arranging Donovan tracks for instance). Is that how you knew him?
Yes, I knew him through sessions. He even did that cello arrangement on Little Games.
So you went out as The New Yardbirds and did a tour of Scandinavia.
Yes, but we dropped that name because we felt it was working under false pretences.
So, in October 1968, you became Led Zeppelin and started work on the first album. One last Yardbird question; there was a rumour that The Yardbirds were going to reform for one Roundhouse gig in summer ’70. Was there any truth in that?
Yes. Giorgio Gomelsky (the original Yardbirds manager) wanted us to do it; he was going to make a film and a record of the performance and, for my part, I said I’d do it if it was done chronologically; a set with Eric on lead, a set with Jeff, then a set with Jeff and me, and finally a set with me, because it obviously wouldn’t work with all of us on stage at once. I don’t know why it never happened. All I can assume is that somebody wouldn’t agree to it. I don’t know.
Can you recall how you auditioned Robert Plant (who had been suggested as a possible singer).
I went up to see him sing; he was in a group called Obstweedle or Hobbstweedle, something like that, who were playing at a teachers’ training college outside of Birmingham to an audience of about 12 people… you know, a typical student set-up, where drinking is the prime consideration and the group is only of secondary importance. He was airtight though, singing really well, though it was stuff that I didn’t like all that much. Everybody will probably crucify me for this, but he was a Moby Grape fanatic and they were doing all those kind of numbers, semi-obscure West Coast stuff, which, as I say, I was never really keen on, because I’d seen all these groups when I was touring with The Yardbirds and, being a guitar player, I was primarily interested in other guitarists. Some grabbed me while others didn’t.
Anyway, Robert was fantastic and having heard him that night, and having listened to a demo he had given me (of songs he’d recorded with his previous group, Band Of Joy), I realised that without a doubt, his voice had an exceptional and very distinctive quality.
It was an amazingly fortunate choice as it turned out, wasn’t it? To find a singer of his class stumbling around the Midlands playing to pitifully small crowds.
What amazed me more than anything else, especially after the first LP was finished, was that nothing significant had happened to him before, despite his having been through so many different systems of management and so many groups. You’d have thought he’d have been noticed at least, especially when they tried to exploit the Birmingham group scene as the successor to the Liverpool thing, but no. Our first meeting, under those conditions, was obviously a bit odd, but I asked him if he wanted to come down and spend a few days talking things over, listening to records, discussing sounds and ideas and what-not, and to see what he thought. So that’s what happened, and it worked out very well.
By that time, the musical policy of the group had been determined and presumably, to begin with, he adapted to that?
Yes, he suppressed his personal tastes to a degree, I suppose, but he liked the stuff we were doing just as much. I don’t really know how fanatical he was about the West Coast groups – you’d have to ask him – but I do know he was very keen on Moby Grape and even more so on Buffalo Springfield.
All you needed now was a name…
Keith Moon came up with Led Zeppelin sometime during our Yardbirds/The New Yardbirds spell, and that seemed to fit the bill. We’d been through all sorts of names, like Mad Dogs, for instance, but eventually it came down to the fact that the name was not really as important as whether or not the music was going to be accepted… I mean, we could have called ourselves The Vegetables or The Potatoes. Though at the same time, you have to live with the name you choose.
When the group signed to Atlantic, did you have to buy your way out of your old Yardbirds contract with Epic?
No, because I’d never signed any contracts with them… they didn’t want me at the time. Mind you, as soon as the deal with Atlantic was announced, they started saying things like “Hey, you can’t record him, he’s signed to us,” but when we asked them to prove it, all they came up with was red faces and shuffling embarrassment.
Let’s get on to the albums. The first one (Led Zeppelin: recorded October ’68, released February ’69) was allegedly recorded in 30 hours. Can that be true and, if so, how?
Yes, it only took 30 recording hours, because we knew exactly what we were going to do before we went into the studio.
But you’d only been together as a unit for about two months – if that!
That’s right, we’d been together for three weeks, or maybe five, but we’d done a tour of Scandinavia and we’d rehearsed all the numbers before embarking on that, and they were already starting to stretch on stage, which was a sign that we were beginning to feel comfortable with certain songs. I suppose it was the fact that we were confident and prepared which made things flow smoothly in the studio and, as it happened, we recorded them almost exactly as we’d been doing them live. Only Babe I’m Gonna Leave You was altered, as far as I can remember.
Did it take 30 hours because you were rushed, or was it that you were satisfied after that time?
It was a bit of each really; partly a case of “Let’s get the job done and not mess about having a party in there,” and partly getting things as we wanted. It wasn’t a first-take effort; we went on until we were happy with each number, but, like I said, we didn’t have to worry about working on arrangements because we knew the stuff already… and it came out very easily.
Compared with your previous album (Little Games by the Yardbirds), Led Zeppelin was immeasurably better, particularly the depth of sound and production. You produced that having had only limited experience. Was-it a question of observation of other producers over a long period of time?
Well, I’d done the Mayall single when I was a staff producer for Immediate, and that had given me a limited technical knowledge, but on that first Zeppelin album, we had Glyn Johns as engineer and he did a great job on the sound, which is the most important aspect of production really. The most annoying thing that can happen is going into the studio, playing well and sounding great, and then going into the control room to listen to the playback, only to find that the recorded sound is flat and bears no relation to what was happening in the studio. Now, Glyn Johns is, and always has been, an ace engineer; things like sound don’t hang him up because he’s both confident and competent, and so we were able to tie things up fairly quickly.
Where did you dig up Babe I’m Gonna Leave You (a different source from Quicksilver Messenger Service)?
I got it from the Joan Baez version, and I used to do it in the days of sitting in the darkness, playing my six-string behind Marianne Faithfull. I was told that it’s a traditional song – I hope it is.
Why is How Many More Times, which includes The Hunter and all sorts of other bits and pieces, credited as being three minutes long when in fact it’s over eight minutes?
I don’t know – maybe it’s a misprint.
At a time when other groups were introducing and exploring varied themes, all the songs on that album (except Black Mountain Side) were sexual… was that a deliberate policy? Like, Robert attracts the chicks with his personality and the lyrics, and the blokes are attracted by your guitar virtuosity?
You’re making it sound as though the group was programmed into a certain format. It wasn’t, of course. I mean, ever since the guitar became a vogue instrument, the male part of the audience has tended to be fascinated by and involved with the guitarist in the band. Like, the chicks used to go mad over Ricky Nelson, but the blokes were watching James Burton. When you’re forming a band, you don’t sit back and think how certain aspects can be exploited. Apart from anything else, we didn’t have time for such considerations. Things just fell into place and off we went.
The second album was recorded in fits and starts over a long period of touring, whereas you went to a secluded part of Wales to prepare for the third, is that right?
Sort of. We’d been working solidly right from the inception of the group, and we thought it was time to have a holiday, or at least some time off the road. So, Robert suggested going to this cottage that he’d been to with his folks when he was much younger… he was going on about what a beautiful place it was. I was pretty keen to go too, because l’d never spent any time in Wales and I wanted to. So off we went. We took our guitars along, of course, but it wasn’t a question of “Let’s go and knock off a few songs in the country,” it was “Let’s go and have a good time”. A couple of our roadies came along too, and we spent the evenings around log fires, with pokers being plunged into cider and that sort of thing, and as the nights wore on, the guitars came out and numbers were written. So, though it wasn’t planned as a working holiday, some songs did come out of it and were subsequently recorded on the third album.
There’s some great stuff on that. I think Tangerine is my favourite.
Well, funnily enough, that wasn’t written at Bron- Y-Aur. I wrote that years earlier, after an old emotional upheaval, and I just changed a few of the lyrics. I first tried recording that when I was in The Yardbirds.
Is there a wealth of unreleased stuff by The Yardbirds then?
Not a wealth, but there is some… I don’t know where. Tangerine was never actually finished, we just did the backing track for that, but we recorded My Baby, which Janis Joplin did. We did a good version of that, and we did quite a few riffy rock things which sounded alright. There is another track, Spanish Blood, which was Jim McCarty doing his Roger Moore impersonation – like a story told over a Spanish guitar backing. That was really good actually, like one of those old story singles that used to get into the charts a few years back, but this was a romantic thing rather than the usual shoot-out Western theme. Most of these tracks were cut in the CBS studio in New York, but it was very near to the end of the group and they were never really completed.
Getting back to Zeppelin 3, where did you unearth the traditional song Gallows Pole (which used to be a folk club standard around 1965, with everyone from Bert Jansch to Spider John Koerner doing it)?
That was on an old Folkways LP by Fred Gerlach, a 12-string player, who I think was the first white man to pick up on the instrument, having been influenced by Leadbelly .There are certainly heavy Leadbelly overtones on the record, and, as far as I know, the album wasn’t well received. Gerlach got despondent and retired to Venice in California, where he kept out of the public eye. He must have kept playing though because he’s just recorded a new LP on Takoma, which is very good. Anyway, I used his version as a basis, but the arrangement we use is totally different, of course.
There’s an inscription on the inner circle of the pressing… it says ‘what thou wilt’. Was that a message from you to your critics, or a comment by the guy who made the master pressing?
That sprang from me. I suppose you could say that it was instructed, but under a strict cloak of secrecy. The story behind it is too long to go into, but it was intended as an esoteric little touch, and it was hoped that nobody would see it. Nobody did except you, which just goes to show how unobservant most people are and how observant you are. One other person, to my knowledge, saw it, because Robert came up to me one day and said that someone had written to Atlantic about a strange inscription on the record. You see, I was the only one in the group who knew about it. (There’s another on Side Two… have a look)
Swiftly leaping onto the fourth, I think that album is important in a number of ways, principally for Robert Plant’s writing, which seems to hit a peak.
I think his first important lyric is on the second LP, you see. I never felt at all confident about my lyrics and I was hoping he could do all that side of the writing, which is what’s happening now. Thank You is the song I’m thinking about. I think that was the starting point from which his writing of things like Stairway To Heaven developed; that and the chorus of What Is And What Should Never Be, which was the start of a serious lyric writer coming out.
Is Rock & Roll as spontaneous as it sounds?
Yes. Bonzo played that drum thing, just messing around while we were working on another song, and I joined in on a riff, and though it only lasted about quarter of a minute, we listened to the playback and heard the basis of a whole song, which we then got together, took about 15 minutes. Things like that often happen – in fact, there are two or three spontaneously written things on the next album…. usually they’re only riff numbers, but they’re still loaded up with initial excitement and communication.
Yet other songs are obviously developed in a very painstaking way – like Stairway to Heaven, say. How was that written? Lyrics first, I would imagine from the metre.
It was just the opposite, the music came first. I’d written it over a long period; the intro fell into place in Bron-Y-Aur, in the cottage, and other parts came together piece by piece. When we came to record it at Headley Grange, we were so inspired by how the song could come out, with the building passages and all the possibilities, that Robert came out with the lyrics just like that. I’d say that he produced 40 per cent of the lyrics almost immediately. We all threw in ideas, like Bonzo not coming in until the song was under way – to create a change of gear, so to speak – and the song and arrangement just came together. There was no uphill struggle on that one at all.
How did that no name/no title sleeve come about’?
Well, the third LP got a real hammering from the press, and I got really brought down by it because I thought it was good. I thought that Friends really had something, and that, track by track, it was a good LP. But the press didn’t like it, and they were also going on about the enigma that had blown up around us. Now, we might have made it relatively quickly, but I don’t think we ever over-played our hand in the press or anything, and yet we really got knocked, and we became very dispirited. As a result, we left off for almost a year and when we came to make another album we felt not only that it would make or break us, but that we had to prove something to ourselves. So we purposely underplayed the group and gave no information whatsoever, which most people thought was certain professional suicide. But the LP came out and sold very well. Stairway to Heaven certainly hit a lot of people where they hadn’t expected it and lots of reviews said things like “I haven’t liked them up to now, but I’d like to revise my opinion,” that sort of thing.
From your own experience you must realise that most “rock critics” haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about.
Well, I begin to wonder. On our last American tour, this guy came up and got talking to me; he said he was from Rock, which is quite an eminent, respected magazine in the States, isn’t it? He asked me things like “Does Plant still gyrate about on stage?” and I said “Well, if it’s a fast number, he does move about, yes, but it depends what we’re playing”. This conversation went on at that sort of level until, bit by bit, from the sort of questions he was asking, it became evident that he didn’t really know what he was on about.
So I asked him exactly when he’d last seen the band. “Quite a while ago now,” he mumbled, and when I questioned him a bit more it transpired that the only time he’d seen us was in Supershow, which was a film made a couple of months after we’d formed. It featured people like Roland Kirk and Steve Stills and Buddy Miles, and we were well down the list of artists, doing just two numbers at a time, I recall, when Robert had laryngitis – so it hardly did us justice – and that was all this bloke had seen. So here was a respected critic, who had done reviews of our albums, and he didn’t know the first thing about us. Didn’t even know that we played acoustic numbers on stage. I’d been nice to him all the way along, but at that point I really let him have it.
You punched the creep’s teeth down his throat?
No, I just told him that I thought it was a cheek for him to do reviews of the band if he was basing his misconceptions on that film clip. But that’s the sort of thing we used to get. The public was always 100% behind us, but we had few allies in the press.
So many big rock stars seem extremely vulnerable to press opinion, and yet most critics have lamentably little knowledge of their subject – but I’ve seen Hendrix’s death, the break up of Cream amid all sorts of things attributed directly to the printed word.
Yes, but the thing is, these reviewers are so authoritative. We know they might be twits, but the readers may well believe them because of the eloquent, authoritative way they write. It’s so easy to criticise someone’s music, but when you think how much thought and care and time it’s taken, why not look for the good points at least? I mean, if it’s not your taste in music, then leave it well alone and let someone else do the reviews. For instance, when you ask me my opinion of certain groups, I’ll tell you, but I don’t want anybody to be influenced or jaded by what I say, because someone else may hold the exactly opposite view which is obviously just as valid.
To stay on the vulnerability/frailty of the rock star theme, it seems to me that you are unusually stable in your profession, as if you discovered how to sidestep the pressures. You’ve quit the ostentatious guitarist-in-the-public-eye thing and retreated, to prolong active life, as it were.
Well, I’ve been through all that and I have at times felt and been completely shattered by it all. It’s not so much a question of retreating or hiding away, as being able to come over the top of it, which is not an easy thing to do. I suppose there a moment of realisation when the whole thing falls into perspective and you see everything as it really is. I got really despondent and shattered by all the bad press – not because we couldn’t take criticism, because we can – but the prolonged, deliberate snide press comments wore me down until I was becoming very unnerved, especially when I knew I was doing the best I could.
So, is press the only real pressure?
Oh no. You can develop a tremendous insecurity if your management isn’t totally reliable. I know that money is a dirty word in this business, but the fact remains that if you have any measure of record success, you’re going to have royalties coming in. Now, I’m sure you know of groups who have been working for years and years and end up with nothing because they’ve been screwed all the way down the line… I mean, that sort of thing is heartbreaking. We’re very lucky in that respect because we’ve got Peter Grant who is like a fifth member of the group; he comes on every single gig we do, which is something very few managers would ever consider doing.
What about this constant living out of a suitcase… surely that can grind you down after a while? For instance, what about that Yardbirds tour you did – which was something like two gigs a night for a month?
Right. At the time it didn’t seem as bad as it actually was, because being in a group you expected that sort of thing, but I couldn’t do it now. It was on the Dick Clark Caravan Of Stars, and it consisted of living in a bus for a month, travelling from town to town, gig to gig. It got to the point where there were so many people on the bus that you couldn’t use the toilet; you either had to wait ‘til you got to the gig or else hope that the bus would stop at some convenient place along the way. We were sharing this bus with Sam The Sham & The Pharoahs, Gary Lewis & The Playboys, and all sorts of people. It was so crowded that we often had to sleep on the luggage rack, depending on whether or not Gary Lewis and his crew travelled by plane, as they sometimes did. We’d get to the gig and pile out, and Brian Hyland, who opened the show, more or less went straight out of the bus onto the stage. There was no time to change or wash or anything like that. And, if it was a double gig, playing two halls in the same city, the bus would do a sort of shuttle service. Like, we’d come off stage, get on the bus which had just returned from taking Brian Hyland and whizz off to the other gig. It’s just ludicrous to remember how bad it was.
So you don’t get exploited like that any more?
I think when you boil it down, the real pressure comes when you’re doing the best you can and people are just writing it off as crap. That really affected me at one point, and I know of other people who’ve probably been affected to a greater extent, but I came to the conclusion that it doesn’t pay to be too sensitive.
To change the subject completely, whose records do you listen to when you’re just lying around at home?
I like Fairport Convention; I just got that double album, even though I had most of the tracks already. That’s a group I’ve always liked, especially Liege & Lief, which for me was the best LP of 1969. I love those songs with stories, you see, and that LP is full of them. That’s one of the reasons I like Jack Orion by Bert Jansch – I still listen to his albums all the time. I’m very fond of the early Sun records (true enough; he’d just invested in a pile of Sun singles that very morning).
I don’t know, I listen to all sorts of things, like those BBC radio archives programmes that they sometimes have; I always try to listen to those because they invariably have something of interest. They recently had a man who’d travelled through India with a tape recorder, and he’d recorded a bagpipe band, which was fascinating. That kind of unschooled folk music always interests me. But I can listen to something like that and then put on a Warren Smith record straight afterwards.
Can I ask you about certain bands, like you mentioned Buffalo Springfield in connection with Robert’s pre-Zep manias – don’t you like their stuff?
I must admit that their music was very good, but I saw them a number of times and they always struck me as being the perfectly balanced/rehearsed group – sort of like The Hollies, where whenever you saw them the harmonies and balance and performance would always be perfect. They were like that; very cut and dried, and samey every night. They were obviously very good, even though they didn’t strike me on an emotional level, like Spirit did, for instance.
I saw Spirit a couple of times and thought they were very good… and Kaleidoscope; they’re my favourite band of all time – my ideal band – absolutely brilliant. I saw them one time and they played all the numbers off Beacon From Mars, all that Moroccan stuff, changing instruments and having a whale of a time, they were. They had such good roots and such a grip on their music. That bloke Sol (Soloman Feldthouse) was a real traveller… the sort of bloke you’d meet on the road out in the East somewhere, and you knew there was no phoneyness in him because it showed in his music. One night I saw them playing the Avalon Ballroom, and he was doing a flamenco thing, which was so authentic – easily as good as you’d expect from a top concert guitarist. Then this line of flamenco dancers suddenly emerged from the wings and danced across the stage… just too much. It sounds a bit corny, just explaining it you like this, but it certainly wasn’t, because the spirit and enthusiasm was so great.
And their best albums were never released here! Which other American bands impressed you on stage?
I thought NRBQ were good. They had a nice light-hearted attitude, but the music underneath was very solid too. They had a countryish guitarist who was very tasty indeed, but he did a religious thing and left the group.
And their albums didn’t sell at all, Woolworths’ deletion racks are full of them. One final reversion to that fourth album before we go: I don’t think anybody ever managed to discover the relevance of those symbols that comprise the title. Do you want to tell us about those those Icelandic runes, or whatever they were?
They’re not Icelandic – that was just a red-herring type rumour – and only the middle two are actually runes. What happened was that we all chose a symbol and the four together became the title of the record. Robert’s is his own design: the feather, a symbol on which all sorts of philosophies have been based, and which has a very interesting heritage… Like, for instance, it represented courage to the Red Indian tribes. John Paul Jones’ symbol, the second from the left, came from a book about runes, and was said to represent a person who was both confident and competent because it was difficult to draw it accurately… and John Bonham’s came from the same book – he just picked that one out (the three circles).
My symbol was one which I designed myself, but a lot of people mistook it for a word, ‘Zoso’, and some people in the States still refer to the record as ‘Zoso’, which is a pity, because it wasn’t supposed to be a word at all, but something entirely different, and with a different meaning altogether. Basically, the whole title thing was just another ruse to throw the media into chaos and we all had a good laugh when the record went into the charts and they had to reproduce the symbols instead of a conventional title. Atlantic supplied all the papers with the appropriate sized block, but they didn’t like it at all, because it set a precedent. So that album set two precedents; firstly the title, and secondly, the sleeve bore no wording at all – not even the number or the name of the printer.
Jimmy Page photographed by Eddie Kramer at Olympic Studios, London, 1967.
Even though Page was in the Yardbirds, he was still the hot young session player on the London scene in '67 prior to the formation of Led Zeppelin. On this particular session we were recording the solo for "Hurdy Gurdy Man" which became a huge hit for Donovan.
—Eddie Kramer | Source: San Francisco Art Exchange
