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The Prince of Peace and the Nazi?


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Hello Everyone.

I know that this question probably is very common, but...i want to share with you my feelings.

Today, I saw a photo of Jimmy dressed up like a nazi in a concert of 1977.

I don't know why, but...I have never seen it before...and it really desplease me.

I always see Led Zeppelin like the Gods of hippy's ideology: the preacers of excesses, but also of messages like the communion with Mother Nature, the brotherhodd...PEACE...

Was not Robert "The Prince of Peace" that "embraced the Gloom and walk the night alone"?

Why do they do this?

To impress people? they didn't need these stratagems to astonish the pubblic...

Like satire?

O because they were in contempt of the horror of wich that uniform is risponsable?

They have never explained that thing?

What do you think of?

Where did the piper, with his message of peace and brotherhood, go?

P.S. scuse me for my bad english.

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Hello Everyone.

I know that this question probably is very common, but...i want to share with you my feelings.

Today, I saw a photo of Jimmy dressed up like a nazi in a concert of 1977.

I don't know why, but...I have never seen it before...and it really desplease me.

I always see Led Zeppelin like the Gods of hippy's ideology: the preacers of excesses, but also of messages like the communion with Mother Nature, the brotherhodd...PEACE...

Was not Robert "The Prince of Peace" that "embraced the Gloom and walk the night alone"?

Why do they do this?

To impress people? they didn't need these stratagems to astonish the pubblic...

Like satire?

O because they were in contempt of the horror of wich that uniform is risponsable?

They have never explained that thing?

What do you think of?

Where did the piper, with his message of peace and brotherhood, go?

P.S. scuse me for my bad english.

Perhaps the similarities with the Nazi's and the cult?

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yeah thats what i heard too. im 101.9% sure Jimmys not a Nazi

I really hope so... I hope that he wanted to debunk the movement...I hope that is not a game of a bored rockstar, because, for me, there's nothing to laugh about nazism.

I hope that is another provocative rebellion and criticism in classic LZ style...

I really hope so...I can't loose the regard in my Gods ;)

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I really hope so... I hope that he wanted to debunk the movement...I hope that is not a game of a bored rockstar, because, for me, there's nothing to laugh about nazism. I hope that is another provocative rebellion and criticism in classic LZ style...I really hope so...I can't loose the regard in my Gods

Once upon a time in America it was still possible for artists to shock, and he said that was his intent. Mick Jagger

explained it best during The Rolling Stones' Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame induction speech - "Jean Cocteau said that Americans are funny people. First you shock them, and then they put you in a museum."

In any event, if your expecting moral absolutism from any rock band your bound to be disappointed.

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I agree with you Priestess that it wasn't clever. There was a discussion about the so-called "stormtrooper" outfit some time ago, where different viewpoints on it were expressed. Click THIS LINK to see it and judge for yourself.

I posted there as well, but perhaps used a better turn of phrase elsewhere to describe my own view. I'm taking the quote out of context, but it's in reference to Led Zeppelin's tour of America in 1977 and how Jimmy looked then.

To me he simply doesn't look at all healthy. Some of his expressions look strangely out of character in this period, too (like in many of the Oakland pics), partly no doubt because his frame was practically reduced to a skeleton. I guess the stormtrooper outfit he famously wore at the April 10, 1977 gig in Chicago sums it up for me, because there always was a certain level of control of meaning about Jimmy and the band more generally, which made the whole thing quite intriguing and fascinating, down to smaller details even. The stormtrooper may have been rock and roll to some people, but to me it smacks of empty sensationalism - and hence, of things spiralling out of control. It didn't signify anything at all - it was just "Hey, is this outrageous or what?"
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Hello Everyone.

I know that this question probably is very common, but...i want to share with you my feelings.

Today, I saw a photo of Jimmy dressed up like a nazi in a concert of 1977.

I don't know why, but...I have never seen it before...and it really desplease me.

I always see Led Zeppelin like the Gods of hippy's ideology: the preacers of excesses, but also of messages like the communion with Mother Nature, the brotherhodd...PEACE...

Was not Robert "The Prince of Peace" that "embraced the Gloom and walk the night alone"?

Why do they do this?

To impress people? they didn't need these stratagems to astonish the pubblic...

Like satire?

O because they were in contempt of the horror of wich that uniform is risponsable?

They have never explained that thing?

What do you think of?

Where did the piper, with his message of peace and brotherhood, go?

P.S. scuse me for my bad english.

Princess,

I always thought it was part of the whole LZII motif. The Zepelin in the background, the WWII look that some of the bandmembers eschewed. I never thought it was offensive or clever; just costumes and showmanship. Could be I'm just too stupid to see it.

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I never thought it was offensive or clever

...nor original:

In May 1971, Mick Jagger married his first wife, Bianca, at a small, whitewashed chapel on a hillside above St Tropez. The British blues singer Terry Reid remembers having later gone to a room in the nearby Hotel Byblos where he and other Jagger guests could change before the reception.

"By and by we could hear a clanking noise growing ever louder," Reid told me. "It was coming down the corridor towards us. Clanking and rattling; very weird. All of a sudden it stopped right outside. The door swung open, and everyone did a double take.

"A man stood on the threshold. He was in full Nazi uniform. He seemed to be standing to attention, all SS tunic, with an Iron Cross or two dangling round his neck, and black jackboots. It was Keith."

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It riled up this gentleman so much,30de9c53c52F7FCc__gallery.jpgHe had to go chasing Jake And Elwood Blues while they were marauding the streets of Chicago a few years later.downarrow.gif2eok3zo.jpg

I hate Illinois Nazi's!!!! :D

http://www.entertonement.com/clips/xsjqbzpyqm--I-hate-Illinois-NazisDan-Aykroyd-John-Belushi-The-Blues-Brothers-Elwood-Blues-

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From CREEM magazine 1985, one of my personal favorite Page exchanges with an interviewer:

CREEM: Speaking of religion, I just want to ask you, why did you wear Nazi regalia on stage at one time? You had upset some people.

Jimmy Page: Good. How could I put this? I could have thrown this back really well, but I can't - not with you. Yeah, well I tell you, I'd rather have the whole backstage - instead of how it is now - draped like a Nazi flag, the Confederate flag, the Japanese flag, just so people get sort of shocked out of their inhibitions. Whereby, if they need to, most people don't have these prejudices. The past is the past, is the past, is the past. But it can shock people, and sometimes people really need to be disturbed.

CREEM: Didn't Mae West once say, "If people are shocked, then they need to be"?

Jimmy Page: You want to know something? When I was in art college, I came to one definate conclusion. Art had to shock - not just you either hate it or love it, that's that. That's art. Even the guy who collects the refuse down the road, and makes us form a statement on it. At least that is as important as some stupid idiot in a mink coat who wants to fill up a wall.

CREEM: It's got to affect people, or else it's not worth doing.

Jimmy Page: I've got to tell you, I was wearing that uniform, and I didn't wear the whole uniform, god no - I just wore the boots and jodphurs and the hat. Somebody thought it was a captain's uniform, an American girl. And she was no teenager.

Lol, I like the allusion to Lori Maddox at the end. The interviewer was Liz Derringer, Rick Derringer's wife so Page was a bit more relaxed throughout the whole interview, which as a whole is probably my favorite interview he has ever done.

I posted those quotes on the old Electric Magic board as well. In reference to Page's comment on the Japanese flag, someone posted a pic of Page onstage at the 2nd Oakland show in which Page was wearing the boots & jodphurs again with a jacket but without the hat in front of a rising sun backdrop. I don't have it but I'm sure someone does.

Edited by kaiser
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From CREEM magazine 1985, one of my personal favorite Page exchanges with an interviewer:

I agree WHOLEHEARTEDLY!!!

I've got to tell you, I was wearing that uniform, and I didn't wear the whole uniform, god no - I just wore the boots and jodphurs and the hat. Somebody thought it was a captain's uniform, an American girl. And she was no teenager.

:o I'm SHOCKED and DISTURBED!!!!!!!!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

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Lol, I like the allusion to Lori Maddox at the end. The interviewer was Liz Derringer, Rick Derringer's wife so Page was a bit more relaxed throughout the whole interview, which as a whole is probably my favorite interview he has ever done.

He could be alluding to almost any American girl, but it's more likely he's referring to Audrey Hamilton than Lori Maddox. I believe Audrey, from Texas, joined the tour when it began about a week prior in Dallas. She can be

seen in photographs on The Starship with them wearing the regalia (possibly on the flight from Oklahoma to Illinois as they stayed at the Ambassador East for all the Chicago shows). She was also photographed with Robert Plant near that same hotel.

He did wear the boots and pants in Oakland '77 (I've posted photos to the Photo Forum) but they had the Stonehenge stage backdrop with a sun, not the Japanese rising sun, which it wasn't.

Edited by SteveAJones
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He could be alluding to almost any American girl, but it's more likely he's referring to Audrey Hamilton than Lori Maddox. I believe Audrey, from Texas, joined the tour when it began about a week prior in Dallas. She can be

seen in photographs on The Starship with them wearing the regalia (possibly on the flight from Oklahoma to Illinois as they stayed at the Ambassador East for all the Chicago shows). She was also photographed with Robert Plant near that same hotel.

He did wear the boots and pants in Oakland '77 (I've posted photos to the Photo Forum) but they had the Stonehenge stage backdrop with a sun, not the Japanese rising sun, which it wasn't.

I figured he meant Audrey as far her/someone thinking he was wearing a Captain's uniform. The part where he said "And she was no teenager" came off as an allusion to Lori Maddox for myself in hindsight as "Hammer Of The Gods" was either just released or was about to be & Page's affair with her was being mentioned in the media for the first time. He could have been referring to anyone but the timing of the quote just seemed to be a reference to Maddox.

The flag isn't the Japanese flag but it did raise a question back on the old board if he was still somehow referencing it as sly inside joke for himself. Who knows? In the end it was just a flag with a sun on it at the show.

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  • 9 years later...
On ‎4‎/‎9‎/‎2019 at 11:49 PM, ghiaguy67 said:

Whoop de dooo come on people get real, I saw a couple of pictures where Harrison Ford dressed up like a Nazi in the Indiana Jones movies, or Clint Eastwood and many others where is the backlash from that????

https://thestudioexec.com/clint-eastwood-nazi/

https://thegentlemanblog.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/fighting-nazis-part-1-infiltration/

Most people make the distinction between an actor playing a role in a movie and a musician unnecessarily wearing Nazi regalia onstage.

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The stormtrooper 'look' was inspired by Charlotte Rampling as a slave of the Nazi's in the film  'The Night Porter'.  Page and Grant were apparently obsessed with her in that film and watched it over and over.   (and Jimmy's skeletal appearance on the 77 tour added to the 'look.)

 

audrey-hamilton-jimmy-page.jpg

blog-The-Night-Porter-Charlotte-Rampling.jpg

Edited by dave2007
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  • 4 weeks later...

David Bowie had a similar look during his "thin white Duke" era - I'd put it down to drugs, 100%, and not some kind of ingrained ideology. It seems a strange sartorial choice for Brits that had been so terrorized by Nazi Germany, but who knows what goes through a drug-addled brain? 

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Never understood the uproar over Jimmy's SS cap he wore for that one show. Its not like he was goose-stepping across the stage while pulling a Nazi salute in the middle of Sick Again or something. Jimmy was just being a Charlotte Rampling fanboy just as Bonzo had wore the Droog outfit on most of the US 75' tour. Also, Jimmy did not wear the SS hat for the whole show, only about 35 - 40 minutes then he ditched it for the white fedora and if memory serves (probably not), he switched to the white satin suit after Moby Dick.

 

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