Interviews with Jimmy Page,2014.

[PlanetPage]

...Deborah, thank you for yet another fascinating journey with Jimmy always mysterious and timeless passion and longings for music,

I always cherish his passion for music, his love of this Universe, each and every time I read his interviews...Music is his spiritual journey...

[ANONYMOUS]

That Newsweek interview revealed a few new things. Thanks, Deb!

A brief hijacking here but somewhat on topic. Jimmy has expressed surprise in this recent series of interviews at having retained his hearing and his memory. Caught this brief article in my Sunday morning reading round-up and thought it interesting.

http://www.spring.org.uk/2014/11/musics-amazing-effect-on-long-term-memory-and-mental-abilities-in-general.php

[GeorgeC]

Something about seeing enigmatic rock legend JP on the Ellen DeGeneres show seems like an offense against nature.

http://georgecaseblog.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/everything-still-turns-to-gold/

[JTM]

The latest edition of UNCUT magazine (Take 212 Jan 2015) features a Q&A with Jimmy Page. When asked about Robert Plant's offer of doing something acoustic JP Replied.

"That's coming from a soundbite that is inaccurate. He would have no intention of doing it whatsoever. So I'm not getting into it. People keep giving me these quotes. I don't follow what he says.....all I know is, it's speaking in volumes that we just did that one show. He can say what he wants. He can say "Jimmy this, Jimmy that"....I don't care, I've got acoustic songs.

Don't you think I've got some new material for what I'm going to do? It's just spin, It's spin, and it's not on. The Robert Plant questions are hard for me to answer because I've had enough of all this stuff, to be honest. Robert says this, Robert says that. I just don't want to be presenting soundbites so that it's like some kind of ping pong match. I've had enough, I don't need it. The only reality is we did one concert. No matter how you dress it up, look at the situation. That's it.

[Patrycja]

^ Uugh Jimmy needs to stop squawking like an injured bird already. It's unbecoming. Move on.

[Elixir]

JTM, thank you for posting that for those of us who don't have the magazine. I enjoyed the "I don't care... don't you think I have some new material?" Time to put up or shut up...

[Disco Duck]

^ Uugh Jimmy needs to stop squawking like an injured bird already. It's unbecoming. Move on.

Actually all the involved parties would do well to heed the old adage, "Never apologize or explain."

[Strider]

In today's Los Angeles Times:

Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page on playing live and Los Angeles

BY JOHN CORRIGAN

December 1, 2014, 5:00 a.m.

Our story on Jimmy Page’s recent swing through Los Angeles resonated with many readers, who wanted to hear more from the legendary guitarist and founder of Led Zeppelin. Here’s more with Page on a few topics that did not make it into the original story.

How did you get started in music?

I wanted to emulate music from America – young punks playing rock ’n’ roll, is what it was. I read part of Keith Richards’ autobiography, and it was totally parallel with me, learning from American records. It was the same with Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck . . . we were weaned on rockabilly and moved to the blues, people like Big Boy Arthur Crudup and Sleepy John Estes.

You often overdubbed several guitars on each Led Zeppelin track, yet live you didn’t use a second guitarist. Do you ever regret that?

No. There’s the studio recordings and the live shows, and the live shows were so different. If a number was in the set, it was going to get beaten up, and made to mutate because we were working it over every night. We weren’t a band going on stage doing every song note-for-note perfect, that was far from it. The nucleus of everything was always as a four-piece. If you go out with a second guitarist, people think that you are taking it easy. And I never took it easy. I never would, and I never will.

Do you wish there were more live recordings of Led Zeppelin?

In the day of having live recordings, you needed to have a big truck. But now even that wouldn’t be good enough. You would need the concert footage as well as the audio. We did document things along the way, but not the way you could do now.

Led Zeppelin spent a lot of time in Los Angeles. Was it a favorite city?

I would say New York, Chicago, Memphis and Los Angeles were my favorites. I first came here in 1965 when I was a studio musician. [Record producer] Bert Berns brought me out. He invited me to stay at his place. I met Jackie DeShannon, I saw the Byrds play at Ciro's, which I think is now the Comedy Store. It was a magical time to be here. It was really happening. We played "Stairway to Heaven" [with Led Zeppelin] at the Forum before it had been released. It got a standing ovation here, and I’ll always remember that, because it’s tricky to hear new material from bands. The Forum was always special.

After the Yardbirds broke up, you could have gone out as a solo artist, like Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. The musicians you chose for Led Zeppelin -- Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham -- were relatively unknown.

They were not relatively unknown – they were not known at all. No one knew who they were. When the Yardbirds folded, I heard the news here in L.A. I wanted to get a band together in which everyone was phenomenal. The first album was a guitar tour de force – that is what it was supposed to be – but I didn’t want to do that at the expense of the other musicians. I wanted it to be a band. It was a band.

Twitter: @jtcorrigan

[Strider]

This is the earlier L.A. Times article from November 20 referred to in the above article...sorry I didn't post it until now.

Jimmy Page finds there's still whole lotta love for Led Zeppelin

BY JOHN CORRIGAN

November 20, 2014, 6:00 a.m.

There's a pre-concert vibe outside the Ace Hotel theater in downtown Los Angeles, people spilling off the sidewalk into the street as they wait for the doors to open. Once inside, they jam the bar and try to be heard above the din.

It's a rock 'n' roll crowd, except there's no band on the card tonight. The draw: a 70-year-old Englishman talking about his new collection of photographs.

Jimmy Page, mastermind of Led Zeppelin, is on a book tour.

Trim as ever, he gets a standing ovation when he comes on stage, elegant in black with his silver hair neatly fixed in a short ponytail. Over the next 90 minutes, the audience hangs on every word as Chris Cornell, the frontman for Zeppelin-evoking Seattle band Soundgarden, projects images from the guitarist's new photo-autobiography, "Jimmy Page by Jimmy Page" (Genesis Publications), on an overhead screen and asks the guitarist for the stories behind the pictures.

There's Page as a choirboy, Page as a session guitarist, Page prowling the world's concert stages with Led Zeppelin, the dominant band of the 1970s and the No. 2 bestselling group of all time after the Beatles. If hard rock had a logo, Page would have a strong claim to be its icon with his mane of black hair, his rail-thin frame and his road-beaten Gibson Les Paul hanging almost to his knees.

Still, Led Zeppelin disbanded 34 years ago after the death of drummer John Bonham, and there has been just a handful of partial reunions since. How then to account for the 1,400 people at the Ace, who have paid $100 or $150 simply to hear its former guitarist talk?

Or how to account for Led Zeppelin cracking the Billboard Top 10 four times — this year — with rereleases of its first four albums, remastered by Page and augmented with alternate takes and mixes?

For the answers, start with the songs.

"The music is memorable. It's hook heavy. Unlike so many other bands, these songs stand the test of time," says Bill Sagan, who runs Wolfgang's Vault, an online retailer of rock memorabilia.

Sagan isn't a rock critic (many of whom never cared much for Zeppelin anyway), but as a merchant, he knows something about the band's wide and enduring appeal. In the male-dominated world of hard rock, about 40% of the Led Zep T-shirts he sells are for women. He sells a lot of smaller men's sizes too, suggesting that teens and young adults are the buyers.

T-shirts are worn to make a statement, he said, and young people looking to project an outlaw image get that with Led Zeppelin.

"When you think of hedonism, you think of Led Zeppelin," Sagan said. "They had this edge."

The band's road antics are, indeed, the stuff of legend. The 1985 bestseller "Hammer of the Gods" by Stephen Davis is a saga of trashed hotel rooms, groupies and controlled substances. Although much of the book has been disputed by band members and others, it no doubt contributed to the group's notoriety.

There are few glimpses of that in Page's book, aside from one image of him chugging from a bottle of Jack Daniels backstage at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis in 1975.

"Maybe the photographers couldn't keep up the pace," Page says with a smile, sitting down to talk one morning last week.

Page said a book of photos appealed to him more than written memoirs, the route taken by Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, Neil Young and others.

"If there were autobiographies of my contemporaries, I would always have a look to see what photographs were in there," he said. "I'd go straight to the photos. And I think a lot of people are like that. I have been approached to do a written book, and I like the idea, but it's probably something to release posthumously," he said, his voice turning serious for a moment. "I want to be able to say everything. Everything."

Until then, there is the photo book. To support it, Page has done appearances in Paris, London, Tokyo and New York, where artist Jeff Koons interviewed him at the 92nd Street Y.

His book is 512 pages of sweets for Zeppelin fans. The 1970s glory days are there, as is Page playing "Whole Lotta Love" at the 2008 Summer Olympics closing ceremony in Beijing.

Los Angeles is also well represented. There's a young Page playing the Casino ballroom on Catalina with the Yardbirds in 1966, and epic scenes at Inglewood's Forum. (Cornell showed one at the Ace event. "You can see it's full," Page pointed out, to hearty applause.)

"We had lots of friends here, and there were lots of other musicians here," Page said earlier in the day. "And there are good music shops for instruments. There's a guitar shop here called McCabe's [in Santa Monica]. I went to McCabe's at the time I came over here the first time in '65."

It's hard to talk about Page without talking about guitars. Rolling Stone ranks him No. 3 on its list of greatest players, after Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. Yet it was his skill as a songwriter and producer that seals his place in rock history, said Brad Tolinski, editor of Guitar World magazine and author of "Light & Shade," a collection of interviews with Page.

"He really is the architect of modern music," Tolinski said. "His bit of genius wasn't just as a guitarist — it was how he recorded John Bonham's drums, and where he put John Bonham in the mix.

"If you go back to the '60s, and listen to where the drums and bass were in the mix, they were sub[servient] to the vocals," he said. "Jimmy pushed the drums way up front, with the guitar and the vocals. What do you hear now on the radio? Why do you think hip-hop sampled Zeppelin early on? It was a profound shift in popular recording."

So, what about a reunion? Page quickly dismissed reports last week (since discredited) that the band had been offered $800 million to reunite by Virgin Atlantic founder Richard Branson. "I never saw a contract," he said.

Led Zeppelin hasn't played since a one-off 2007 tribute concert for music executive Ahmet Ertegün in London, and singer Robert Plant, after winning multiple Grammys for an album with singer Alison Krauss in 2009, is touring with new songs and a new band.

"We're talking seven years later, and there hasn't been any sort of will, if you like, to do that," Page said of a reunion.

The band's reissued albums, being released by Warner Music's Atlantic label, will have to do for now. But why does Page see a need to hear subtly different versions of the same, decades-old songs?

"It presents more information to people about what was going on at the time of the recordings," Page said. "I was in the studio more often than the others because I was producing the band, so I had far more points of reference that were needed to make this project seriously play. For the recording history of Led Zeppelin, it was my thing to do. For the fans, it gives them more information."

Some of the alternate takes are stripped-down versions reminiscent of how the band played live, without backing musicians to play the extra guitars and other instruments added in the studio. He pointed to a new cut of the blues number "Since I've Been Loving You."

"What you hear is just the four of us going at it," he said. "It's fantastic, the energy. It will make your hair stand on end. This is the whole point of having these things out."

Asked to name his favorite Zeppelin songs, Page demurs. He cites "Achilles Last Stand" as a "guitar epic" and says "Tea for One" features some of his best playing as a lead guitarist.

But favorites? Some songs were more successful than others, he concedes, but that doesn't make them favorites.

"The Led Zeppelin legacy is that everything that was recorded was recorded for a purpose," he said. "All of the songs are very different to each other, and that's undisputed. The motivation behind each track, and the memories behind each track, and the reasoning, and the atmosphere, are very different."

Still, with his book and reissue project now mostly finished, Page says he's ready to focus once again on making music.

"I've had quite a lot of material under my belt that I haven't recorded, because I wanted to be really sure that I could really put the blinkers on and really focus on it," he said. "I think I'll come back here next year doing my own [music]. I'd be showcasing things from the past, which people know me more, and also I've got new music that I'm really, really keen to present. And there would be some surprises."

At the end of his L.A. swing, Page was feted with a dinner at the Sunset Marquis hotel in West Hollywood. Ringo Starr was there, along with four of the biggest names in rock guitar — Kirk Hammett of Metallica, ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, Joe Walsh of the Eagles and Joe Perry of Aerosmith.

"The best thing I can say is thanks — thanks for being a ... genius," Perry said. "He raised the bar on our kind of guitar playing, and our kind of rock 'n' roll, and I don't think anyone's touched him."

Twitter: @jtcorrigan

[Ddladner]

I am loving all of the interviews! Not sure if this one (full length) has been posted, from UK book tour, Jimmy Page with Michael Hann from the Guardian. Great interview.

[Ross62]

Led Zep legend Jimmy Page has chronicled his colourful life from choirboy to rock god in one of the year's most powerful music books. With some very revealing omissions...

'I’m not going to condone drug-taking, because I’ve seen people get in a terrible mess', said Jimmy Page

He is one of rock ’n’ roll’s great survivors – a man whose band became as famous for making mayhem as it was for its music.

So it’s astonishing to hear Jimmy Page say he couldn’t compete with the youth of today.

‘I don’t think people were drinking back then in the volume that they drink now,’ says the Led Zeppelin guitarist, who helped make Jack Daniel’s the swig of choice for rock rebels.

‘Young people now are able to consume far more alcohol than I ever did.

'I am sure they would give Oliver Reed a run for his money.

'People [in his day] didn’t go around vomiting all over the place.’

It is an extraordinary comment, given that Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham died after a binge-drinking session, and that the band were renowned party animals.

Page lived the life of a rock god – enjoying the adulation of huge stadium crowds and all-night after-parties, with free-flowing booze, drugs and hordes of groupies.

He once described life on the road as like ‘a stag do that never ends’.

Today, as we talk over tea at a hotel close to London’s Royal Albert Hall, he does not want to reminisce about his wilder years.

He looks fit and well in his skinny jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt, with a black silk scarf tied loosely at his throat.

His long white hair, thinning on top, is gathered in a ponytail.

Now 70, and living a healthier lifestyle, he wants to talk about a book of photographs that documents his life in images that he chose himself.

After the schoolboy with the quiff, practising with his mates, comes Page the master session player and axe man for the Yardbirds.

Then comes Led Zeppelin, from their earliest rehearsals to the huge stadium gigs of the Seventies and all the way to their reunion gig at the O2 in 2007.

Jimmy Page lived the life of a rock god – enjoying the adulation of huge stadium crowds and all-night after-parties, with free-flowing booze, drugs and hordes of groupies

The last part of the book features Page the elder statesman of rock, closing the 2008 Beijing Olympics and playing with young admirers like Jack White and U2’s The Edge.

Page was the definitive rock guitarist. He fused blues with folk, experimental music and loud, hard rock to create a sound that nobody has matched since.

He made it seem so effortless because, like the trumpet of Miles Davis, his guitar becomes an extension of his body in what he describes as an almost ‘trance-like connection’.

He still speaks in the precise accent of the Surrey stockbroker belt where he was born in 1944.

Far from the pouting, preening egotist he has always looked on stage in his prime, Page is attentive and charming, but he becomes evasive when I try to draw him on what is missing from the book.

Sure, the rock ’n’ roll is there in spades, but the excess for which Led Zeppelin were equally famous is almost completely absent.

They threw televisions out of hotel windows and rode motorbikes up and down corridors.

There were fights, tantrums, girls – if it was satirised in Spinal Tap then Led Zep did it first, at least according to the lurid tales told by their road manager Richard Cole in the book Hammer Of The Gods.

They were the loudest, flashest, brashest band in the world, flying across America in a private plane called The Starship.

Led Zeppelin made nine studio albums and sold 300 million records, becoming the second-best-selling rock band after The Beatles

None of that appears in the book, though we see Page growing mysteriously thinner through the Seventies.

‘There’s a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and I refer to it as homeopathic remedy,’ he protests in justification.

‘But you have to understand that Led Zeppelin were doing three-hour shows, night after night across America. It was very physical. I lost weight. My trouser sizes started to get smaller. Simple as that.’

But wasn’t he also taking heroin and cocaine at the time?

‘What?’ he says. ‘No. Seriously. I’m not going to condone drug-taking, because I’ve seen people get in a terrible mess and I’ve lost a lot of friends through that, across the way. Tragic losses. So I won’t condone it.’

End of subject. I press on. Would the music have been different without the drugs, then?

‘You really can’t tell. But my focus was really clear. You had to remember everything: you didn’t have computers.

'You had all this information – everybody’s parts that they played – and you had to memorise it all.

Otherwise we couldn’t have done an album like Presence in three weeks. We did the parts, I overlaid the guitars, then I was doing the mixing. That’s extraordinary.’

He seems irritated to be asked about his younger self, as he wants to be remembered for the music. But there is another subject that is also absent from the book, and it’s even trickier: sex.

Jimmy Page was the definitive rock guitarist. He fused blues with folk, experimental music and loud, hard rock to create a sound that nobody has matched since

Page has been married twice and fathered four children, but he was also famously once wheeled naked and covered in whipped cream by John Bonham into a room full of young women, according to the same road manager.

Now that his friend and fellow rock star Roy Harper has been accused of historic sex offences against one young woman (he has pleaded not guilty), and police are putting the spotlight on the behaviour of Seventies entertainers, is Page worried?

‘With due respect, I don’t want to comment on it,’ he says.

‘It was a lifestyle in the Seventies. There’s a lot of water under the bridge for everyone who survived that era. End of story.’

His desire to only concentrate on the music now is understandable because Page was the musical visionary who recruited Robert Plant to sing, John Paul Jones to play bass and John Bonham to be the drummer in his new band in 1968.

‘Everything fell into place, like fate decreed it. The whole process from having no band at all to rehearsing, recording, playing live and cracking America was only five months. We could work up new material and put it in the live shows, which you can’t do now. It would be on YouTube, wouldn’t it?’

Led Zeppelin made nine studio albums and sold 300 million records, becoming the second-best-selling rock band after The Beatles.

Their end came abruptly in 1980, when John Bonham was found dead on the sofa at Jimmy Page’s home in Windsor, after choking on his own vomit after 40 shots of vodka.

It was a tragic finale but Led Zeppelin achieved everything Page had wanted. ‘More than I wanted to achieve,’ he says. ‘Because we managed to stay together for such a length of time – and I managed to stay alive, too.’

From choirboy to rock god: Page was taught to play guitar at school by his friend Rod Wyatt, '‘If there is a Zeppelin event I invite him along. I know I owe him thanks’, said Jimmy

You can still walk into any guitar shop in the land and hear someone trying to pick out his intro from Stairway To Heaven. What does he think when he hears that? ‘Well, they usually stop if I walk in, don’t they?’

He laughs, but everyone has to start to learn the guitar somewhere, and imitating his riff has been the starting point for many.

His reveals his own musical origins in the book with a photograph of the 12-year-old Page as a choirboy at a church in Epsom, Surrey, taken by Mr Coffin the choirmaster, who must have looked on with pride as young James became famous, then dismay as he developed a public fascination with black magic.

Page even bought a home on the shores of Loch Ness that had belonged to occultist Aleister Crowley, who he described as a ‘troubled genius’.

Page still has an interest in the occult but he won’t explain his personal symbol, known as Zoso, which appears on the front of the book.

He never reveals what he means by it though he does believe his life has been guided by a mystical force.

‘It’s like an intervention. It’s most peculiar,’ he says of the moment his family moved into a new home and he found his first guitar.

‘It was just sort of there in the reception room, just like a sculptural object.’

He was taught to play guitar at school by his friend Rod Wyatt, who appears in photos with Page from the late Fifties; Page with a Brylcreemed quiff.

Wyatt didn’t have to worry about getting tickets for the Led Zep reunion concert in 2007, unlike the other 20 million people who applied, as Page says: ‘If there is a Zeppelin event I invite him along. I know I owe him thanks.’

But will there ever be another gig? Page is willing but Robert Plant is not and the pair of them have fallen out publicly over the last few months about the reunion. Page clearly thinks this is a shame:

‘He’s just playing games and I’m fed up with it, to be honest with you. I don’t sing, so I can’t do much about it. It just looks so unlikely, doesn’t it?’

But with an estimated £75 million in the bank, Page is focused on securing his legacy.

All the Led Zep albums have been remastered and are being reissued, most recently Led Zeppelin IV and Houses Of The Holy.

Then there is the book, which closes with a black-and-white image to mirror the first.

The choirboy has become a snow-haired rocker cradling a Gibson guitar, with a caption that says: ‘It might get louder…’

‘Jimmy Page’, the official autobiography by Jimmy Page, is released by Genesis Publications.

[Elixir]

http://issuu.com/magazines-for-you/docs/gq_usa_-_december_2014_2cd45245935c7d

There's an interview with JP beginning on 258 of this GQ issue.

The most interesting moment is his comment on In Through the Out Door in response to a question about how he was too strung out to perform his usual duties in studio. He says that,"If JPJ and RP had done what you're implying, wouldn't they be listed as producers on the album? So let's just forget all that."

[ANONYMOUS]

Forget a new publicist, he needs a new consigliere.

In all these interviews of late, I'm reminded of Don Vito Corleone's reprimand to Sonny after the disastrous meeting with Sollozo, the Turk.

it starts at 3:37 but show some respect to your Don and watch the whole thing.

[Trey]

http://www.gq.com/moty/2014/jimmy-page-men-of-the-year?currentPage=1

I'm interested in what you guys think of his interview with GQ released today? Typical Jimmy but I found him quite annoying here. I mean why be so difficult?! I totally respect his decision to keep his private life private -that's up to him but it's the way he answers that is kind of annoying! Is he trying to appear clever and mysterious? What are his motives for answering the questions in a kind of riddle?!

The interviewer was actually asking good questions up until the end when he then blew it with the stupid Coverdale question.

This is my opinion but I think Page is a troubled person behind it all. I think he immerses himself in the music so he won't have to deal with personal problems and he's been doing it his whole life. He gets so testy when the interviewer asks him even the most light personal question. The interviewer is trying to get a full picture of Page as any good interviewer does. he wants to know the man behind the guitar. The interviewer even goes so far to allude to celebrities such Elvis who were exuded a personal warmth, were open with his fans and that he didn't just talk about the music. He's basically reassuring Page that it's ok to be more open about you are, your interests other than music and that people will like you for it more.

Why is he so guarded these days and afraid to admit even that he had a heroin and drinking problem?!

Any rock star today who did drugs, drink in the 60s and 70s always admit it and gladly say they've moved on but Page won't even admit that he did it years ago at one point!

[Elixir]

http://www.gq.com/moty/2014/jimmy-page-men-of-the-year?currentPage=1

I'm interested in what you guys think of his interview with GQ released today?

I don't know why he bothers to do press at all with anything but music geek magazines if he is so thoroughly opposed to answering questions that are not strictly about the music. (I'm sure someone is going to tell me that the record company or book publishing company forces him to, in which case -- see third paragraph.)

In fact, in this case, some of the questions asked were indeed completely relevant to the music. One could discern from listening to the music and looking at the liner notes of In Through the Out Door that JP was not as involved with that album as he was with the others. The hermit fantasy sequence was spliced into a trademark Page musical performance. How is that not related to the music? And I'd argue that he isn't "all about the music" anyway, but that's another point.

I think that if you're going to consent to do interviews with outlets that will ask about something other than the alternate mix of Stairway to Heaven, whether you really want to be doing them or not, you have an obligation to treat the interviewer with respect. It's almost like doing an interview with Playboy and getting aggrieved when they ask you about sex. I can only conclude that JP does not see it this way. I can see how it would be difficult as a public figure to be asked the same drugs/sex questions again and again. But it seems much more difficult not to have a sense of humor about it.

Some people might think that Klosterman didn't treat JP with respect by asking those questions (again, not sure which questions were really all that uncalled for) and therefore JP owes him nothing. I'd argue that journalists have an obligation to -- respectfully -- ask questions that try to get the interviewee to reveal something that he hadn't before, to ask the questions on the minds of the fans of the interviewee, and to ask questions that will produce a compelling piece of work for their target audience. It's part of the profession.

So: I agree with you, Trey.

[ANONYMOUS]

Yes, it's just about the music and ....

the symbols, the costumes, the lasers, the bow-casting, the photos, the book of photographs, the scarves, and the coffee cups.

[Trey]

I don't know why he bothers to do press at all with anything but music geek magazines if he is so thoroughly opposed to answering questions that are not strictly about the music. (I'm sure someone is going to tell me that the record company or book publishing company forces him to, in which case -- see third paragraph.)

In fact, in this case, some of the questions asked were indeed completely relevant to the music. One could discern from listening to the music and looking at the liner notes of In Through the Out Door that JP was not as involved with that album as he was with the others. The hermit fantasy sequence was spliced into a trademark Page musical performance. How is that not related to the music? And I'd argue that he isn't "all about the music" anyway, but that's another point.

I think that if you're going to consent to do interviews with outlets that will ask about something other than the alternate mix of Stairway to Heaven, whether you really want to be doing them or not, you have an obligation to treat the interviewer with respect. It's almost like doing an interview with Playboy and getting aggrieved when they ask you about sex. I can only conclude that JP does not see it this way. I can see how it would be difficult as a public figure to be asked the same drugs/sex questions again and again. But it seems much more difficult not to have a sense of humor about it.

Some people might think that Klosterman didn't treat JP with respect by asking those questions (again, not sure which questions were really all that uncalled for) and therefore JP owes him nothing. I'd argue that journalists have an obligation to -- respectfully -- ask questions that try to get the interviewee to reveal something that he hadn't before, to ask the questions on the minds of the fans of the interviewee, and to ask questions that will produce a compelling piece of work for their target audience. It's part of the profession.

So: I agree with you, Trey.

That's exactly it. I felt too that he answered with a lack of respect at times when everyone knows that an interviewers job is to prod to reveal the interesting aspects of the person and to reveal all sides of them not just as a musician. This is what makes a compelling interview as you say. JP oddly lacks a sense of humor on this ocassion! I feel he makes this fundamental mistake. The musicans' personality, moods, life experiences all informs his/her playing and it's interesting to hear about it. Jimmy can choose not too but if he does it's more endearing and likeable in my opinion. For example it was always fascinating to hear Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis talk about their childhood, struggling experiences and how they channeled it into their music. There was a vulnerability and warmth that made you connect. Jimmy doesn't go there at all in recent years (and if he did in the past it was the odd passing comment about how things were difficult when Bonham died etc..)

and it can leave him appearing cold and distant. Again it's my opinion.

"And I'd argue that he isn't "all about the music" anyway, but that's another point." Can you elaborate on this thanks? Interesting to hear you're view.

[Elixir]

That's exactly it. I felt too that he answered with a lack of respect at times when everyone knows that an interviewers job is to prod to reveal the interesting aspects of the person and to reveal all sides of them not just as a musician. This is what makes a compelling interview as you say. JP oddly lacks a sense of humor on this ocassion! I feel he makes this fundamental mistake. The musicans' personality, moods, life experiences all informs his/her playing and it's interesting to hear about it. Jimmy can choose not too but if he does it's more endearing and likeable in my opinion. For example it was always fascinating to hear Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis talk about their childhood, struggling experiences and how they channeled it into their music. There was a vulnerability and warmth that made you connect. Jimmy doesn't go there at all in recent years (and if he did in the past it was the odd passing comment about how things were difficult when Bonham died etc..)

and it can leave him appearing cold and distant. Again it's my opinion.

"And I'd argue that he isn't "all about the music" anyway, but that's another point." Can you elaborate on this thanks? Interesting to hear you're view.

Essentially what Anonymous alluded to above with her post: he just promoted some expensive scarf line, he's modeled for John Varvartos, he has polo shirts and mugs available for purchase on his website, he has a symbol, he's purposefully portrayed himself as interested in mysticism thus creating a certain image for himself/band... this all goes beyond the musical notes on the page. You don't publish a photo of yourself in front of Crowley's house in your book if, on some level, you don't want people to take note of it. And so on.

And, on a similar note, what you just wrote is also relevant: the line between what is about only the music and what is not is very thin. I can certainly understand not wanting to talk about, I don't know, your ex-wives, but is asking a question about the Hermit sequence -- from a concert film -- really so out of line that it warrants a testy response?

[Trey]

Essentially what Anonymous alluded to above with her post: he just promoted some expensive scarf line, he's modeled for John Varvartos, he has polo shirts and mugs available for purchase on his website, he has a symbol, he's purposefully portrayed himself as interested in mysticism thus creating a certain image for himself/band... this all goes beyond the musical notes on the page. You don't publish a photo of yourself in front of Crowley's house in your book if, on some level, you don't want people to take note of it. And so on.

And, on a similar note, what you just wrote is also relevant: the line between what is about only the music and what is not is very thin. I can certainly understand not wanting to talk about, I don't know, your ex-wives, but is asking a question about the Hermit sequence -- from a concert film -- really so out of line that it warrants a testy response?

Sorry I didn't see Anonymous post. I totally agree. I suspect the "I'm all about the music" is just a cover for the fact he refuses to talk about anything personal.

[SuperDave]

Too bad Jimmy takes this stuff too personal as it was so long ago. Perhaps, just time to put it behind him and just answer these things a bit. It is his business and his choice to do so or not. Wish he could be like Robert at times and just throw some humor and sarcasm into these things. It just seems that Jimmy feels he is being personally attacked and can't handle that well at times. Just my view of the situation!

[Patrycja]

^^ Yeah, I agree with SD et al. Somewhere between the deplorable interview with those two DJ twats in Florida (was it?), and the GQ interview lies a funny, witty, slightly more revealing and truthful answer or two.

As it reads,Jimmy's answers come across at times as defensive and humourless, like there's some stuff he doesn't want to face. If he's promoting the hell out of his book, though, anything in it is fair game to ask about, and it's not even like the questions are THAT controversial. Anything relating to music composition, recording, and touring is fair game, too. Drugs happened to be part of the process and while Jimmy now says he doesn't condone doing them, he has also said that they helped him during a frenetic recording pace (plus we've heard the playing quality live so there's no fig leafing that). All fair game. Off limits is anything about his children, etc. Anything unrelated directly to music, basically. But if he's plugging something, he can't have it both ways. He doesn't have to answer, I suppose, but he shouldn't really be surprised that such questions are being posed, respectfully and within the context of what he is selling at that.

Guys like Robert Downey Jr., who has had a very public battle with drugs, are taking a wiser approach, I think. Jimmy's a totally different personality, so there's that, but a bit of humour and honesty can assuage the hungry hounds. That's the game.

[Bayougal65]

http://www.gq.com/moty/2014/jimmy-page-men-of-the-year?currentPage=1

I'm interested in what you guys think of his interview with GQ released today?

Chuck Klosterman is not just any

"journalist/interviewer".

In order to get answers to tough questions a skilled interviewer's approach is usually rather humble and unassuming, a person who puts his interviewee at ease, I can hardly see CK doing this with Jimmy Page.

Over the years having read essays, books and articles written by Mr. Klosterman, he comes across as painting himself an "expert" on EVERYTHING from today's racism to 1970's Saturday morning cartoons.

Don't get me wrong, he IS clever, but he is also that guy who thinks he is the smartest man in the room, no matter the room, or who else is in it.

I can't imagine him not wanting to impress Mr. Page with copious amounts of his own knowledge of LZ history.

Who knows what tone the unprinted conversation took, but when it comes to CK, I can only imagine.

[woz70]

Why is he so guarded these days and afraid to admit even that he had a heroin and drinking problem?!

Any rock star today who did drugs, drink in the 60s and 70s always admit it and gladly say they've moved on but Page won't even admit that he did it years ago at one point!

Possibly it's because drugs & alcohol have cost him just about every significant relationship he's had in some form or another and he's living in a state of considerable denial? (Whilst he says he won't condone the use of drugs, he certainly hasn't ever really admitted that it caused him any damage or was a mistake in any shape or form, which is interesting in itself - just about everyone else who had similar problems in that period has admitted that they wished they'd never gone down that route. The first step and addict usually takes to recovery is admitting that they have a problem. It seems to me that Jimmy has somehow managed to bypass this stage).

His drug use and it's consequences deeply compromised his working & personal relationship with Plant during the latter stages of Zep, and since.

It deeply compromised his playing (and, arguably, his creativity) - at least one reason why nothing live post '75 has been officially released - and his health.

His split with Charlotte Martin was at the most desperate stage of his addictions ('82-'83) - surely not a coincidence.

I don't think it's just because of his young kids that he finally kicked the booze in about 2000-ish - it certainly didn't seem to bother him that much with his first two kids. I think Robert Plant probably made it pretty clear that Jimmy's continuing alcoholism (and possibly more) was a big sticking point in their continued working relationship (along with playing a mostly Zep set in huge stadiums, which he'd clearly had enough of), so he finally cleaned himself up totally in the grim hope that he could re-kindle that again. And now (supposition) he's a little bitter because he feels that despite the perceived sacrifices he's made, Robert still won't come back and let him relive the best times in his life. Little wonder Robert doesn't want to get on the merry-go-round again.

[ScarletMacaw]

Speaking in very general terms, it seems that people who have experianced a hefty dose of emotional traumas (whether real or perceived) in their lives are reluctant to discuss their personal lives because doing so may give them a sense of being vunerable. Talking about it also makes them have to.think about those issues that they would rather forget. Talking and obsessing over technical subjects is a great way to have an emotion-free conversation.

Yes. People don't like to talk about things they have deep regrets about. It's easier for people to talk about their past drug use or other bad habits if they believe they emerged relatively unscathed and went on to better things. Obviously there is something there that Jimmy has deep regrets about. What exactly this is, is hard to know.

[Chicago]

Why the hell would Page ever repent or confess publicly about any supposed prior behavior? How did his personal actions affect any of you? Jimmy's never been a big mouth like Robert Plant, Peter Townsend or Keith Richards. Guys that talk too much. Dont expect Page to be open to drug questions anymore than Plant being queried about a Zep reunion.