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Led Zeppelin: Led to Gold (by Ritchie Yorke) New ebook


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Ritchie Yorke's historic first book on Led Zeppelin, released in 1976, is now available in a 4th revised edition ebook. His work & friendship has been been a big influence on me and his authoritative, insider perspective was second to none. 

His updated website now contains some of his past articles on Led Zeppelin, The Beatles and others. To purchase the new eBook: http://ritchieyorke.com/product/led-zeppelin-led-to-gold/

yorke_4threvised.thumb.jpg.fe0c1af7f1778

For now, the updated book will only be available as an ebook. (This is a limited 'Presentation Edition' shown in my above photo).

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Author Ritchie Yorke celebrated the release of the online ebook version of his Led Zeppelin biography by presenting a hard copy edition to singer Robert Plant in Toronto.

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photo: Led Zeppelin Webmaster Sam Rapallo, Robert Plant and author Ritchie Yorke)

[Toronto - September 16, 2015] Plant was performing with his band the Sensational Shape Shifters at the Molson Amphitheatre on Tuesday Sept. 15, the same day as Yorke's ebook was launched through his website, ritchieyorke.com.

It will also be available on other platforms in the near future.

Yorke, who was in Toronto to oversee the launching of his new book on John and Yoko Lennon's War Is Over If You Want It peace campaign. ``CHRIST YOU KNOW IT AIN'T EASY : JOHN AND YOKO'S BATTLE FOR PEACE.''  The ebook will be published on October 9, which would have been John Lennon's 75th birthday.

There has been four separate editions of Yorke's Led Zeppelin biography, and it has been published in several languages, including Japanese, German, English and Yiddish.

It was first released in 1976.  It had sold more than a quarter of a million copies internationally.

Yorke produced his book with the assistance and co-operation of manager Peter Grant and members of Led Zeppelin.  It was the first book about Led Zeppelin.

Yorke is credited with having been the first media person to publicly forecast the massive North American success of Led Zeppelin.  He had been sent an advance white-label copy of the band's first album by his friend and mentor, Jerry Wexler, executive vice president of Atlantic Records.

He responded very positively to the band's first album and subsequently introduced each of Zeppelin's Toronto appearances (including the Rock Pile, O'Keefe Centre and Maple Leaf Gardens).

Bass and keyboards player John Paul Jones recently described Yorke as Led Zeppelin's ``champion'' in its early days.

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Book Introduction
The first time I saw and heard Led Zeppelin, they were contained in a twelve inch package that turned up at my door in Toronto in late December 1968. The package had been sent to me by my dear friend and mentor, Jerry Wexler, the executive vice president of Atlantic Records.

It was a white jacketed advance pressing, which listed the name Led Zeppelin and nine tracks on an Atlantic label sticker affixed to the centre of the disc. The Zeppelin name and most of the song titles were new to me.

When I slipped the 12-incher onto the turntable, I had no idea what I would be listening to.

But I would never forget it.

The impact was instantaneous.  It would literally change my life.  As this album did for so many people.
What astounded me in those early days, however, was the lack of initial critical support in North America for the Zep onslaught.

At a time when far too many rock reviewers were failed musicians and assorted wannabees, appraisals of the first Zep album were jaundiced by biased outlooks, warped agendas and misguided thinking. Rolling Stone magazine (for which I had been Canadian editor for several issues) employed the same unsuccessful musician (John Mendelsohn of an undistinguished LA band called Christopher Milk) to review the first two Zeppelin albums.

Guess what?  He hated all of them. And pissed all over them in a pseudo-comical way that provided him with a critical reputation.  It was disgusting stuff by any definition for a series hard rock devotee. Hardly something on which to build a critic’s career. I was more than satisfied to be at the other end of this ridiculous-to-sublime delineation.

To me, Zeppelin’s strident and distinct grasp of the rock blues genre was something special to behold – a fitting fill-in of the vacuum created by the curdling of Cream and the abstract jazzy doodlings of the latter day Jimi Hendrix.
Rock music was wide open for the underpinning of a hard rock powerhouse and Led Zeppelin arrived at precisely the right time.

With timing being the crucial factor in any popular music aspiration, the entire equation was right on the button. And so it was no surprise – to me at least – that these four British virtuoso musicians and performers were able to broadcast their creative output to the world.

The trail took them from the legendary blues crossroads of the deep South through the mountainous terrain of Kashmir, from the foggy history of the Gallows Pole through the stomp of Heartbreaker, from the echoes of the Rain Song to the bombast of Dazed and Confused.

It would be a journey that would re-write the annals of rock history.  All achieved without the usual trappings and wrapping of popular success – the hit singles, support videos and wholesale media access.

Led Zeppelin climbed their stairway to heaven their own way without the artificial employment of marketing tricks.
With this band, what you saw was what you got, and what you heard was pure and uncompromised hard rock.
No wonder that this incredible quartet came to dominate the ‘70s like no other rock band.

And that when their chain was broken with the death of drummer John Bonzo Bonham, the survivors chose the option of calling it a day rather than dredge up an alternative watered down version of themselves.  It was black or white and there would be no grey.

The band’s closing announcement said it all: “We wish it to be known that the loss of our dear friend, and the deep sense of undivided harmony felt by ourselves and our manager, have led us to decide that we could not continue as we were” Led Zeppelin 4 December 1980.

Sometimes it feels like it was only yesterday, the imprint remains so vividly electric to me. An absolutely unforgettable night in September 1971, the closest I ever came to experiencing what it must have been like to be an actual performing member of the live Led Zeppelin, to feel that supreme thrill of standing on stage in the face of the awesome molten energy of 18,000 ecstatically elevated souls.
Over the years I had the substantial pleasure of standing out there and introducing all five Zeppelin concert performances in Toronto, but this particular gig was to be extraordinarily special.

For Toronto audiences, it would be the performing zenith of the band’s live career; the fiercely contested itineraries of future tours would for no particular reason preclude Toronto, one of the earliest North American markets to take the band to heart early in 1969.

Of course nobody was aware that night that this would be their final local appearance, but the capacity crowd did know they were soon to be on the receiving end of a very special event. Few, if any acts of the early 1970s delivered in concert the power or sparkle or potency – and resulting intense levels of audience enjoyment – that Led Zeppelin routinely mustered. Being the greatest live band in the world was their unwritten credo, and the punters revelled in an excess of expectations. They wouldn’t be disappointed.

Backstage you could hear the muffled swarm of 18,000 excited voices, and you could feel the growing expression of that sea of expectation. When tour manager Richard Cole asked me – at the last possible moment with band members already gathered behind the backstage curtain – if I’d ‘do the honours, me old mate, and introduce the lads’, I was both thrilled and terrified all at once. But there’d be no time to ponder the deep and meaningless.

The lights went down and there was a sudden hush. A hearty shove in the back from Richard Cole, the jerk of a jocular verbal insult from Bonzo Bonham, and I stumbled past the drum kit towards the front mike stand, illuminated by a pencil-thin white spotlight. Grasping the steel stand for reassurance, I gazed for an infinitely long second into the blackness of that ocean of anticipation. The surge of energy flowing from the audience towards the stage was mesmerising – words fail to capture the profound power of the force that confronted your reporter, as he groped for those magic statements that the mass of blackness wanted so desperately to hear.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest rock and roll band in the world, LED ZEPPELIN,’ finally gushed out past the croaking frog in my parched throat. The immediate roar from the blackness almost bowled me over as I retreated through a grinning Jimmy, Robert and John Paul and another shouted insult from Bonzo, as he plonked his rear end on the drum stool. I was still stunned hours later from that first-hand, unadulterated exposure to the incredible intensity of Led Zeppelin’s association with their audience.

Much has been churned out about how Led Zeppelin made the people feel, but not a lot has been written about how the people made the band members feel. I suspect I might have got a tiny taste of it that stunning evening in the venerable old hockey palace, the Toronto Gardens. It was eerily exhilarating, and not merely from an ego point of view; there was a unique awareness of something beyond the well-documented realms of rational reason, a connection perhaps with another level of consciousness.

For the players, it obviously must have represented an awesome buzz, likely something a tad too sacred to talk about. It was just a feeling. But what a bountiful artistic reward – the culmination of a lifetime of dreams and aspirations. A supremely special exchange of emotion and admiration, and something that took Led Zeppelin far beyond the course of their contemporaries – a relationship that set them apart from other music makers.
Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, the visionary German aeronautical inventor, dreamed up the novel idea for the Zeppelin airship in 1874. It took a quarter of a century for his unusual concept to gain official support, and even then its purpose was grossly distorted.

From all reports, the Count was a peaceful man who had nonaggressive intentions for his flying machine. Eventually he reluctantly watched his invention utilised as a weapon in World War I.

After a subsequent disastrous commercial flight accident, the Zeppelin airship fell from favour and for another 25 years, it was nothing but the butt of a bad joke. Stating that a new idea or concept would go over like a lead Zeppelin meant that it was invariably bound to tumble down in flames.

Only recently, with the intensifying of environmental awareness, have air traffic experts re-evaluated the Count’s proposals and begun to realise that his concept might be a far-from-laughable solution to one of mankind’s insidious pollution problems. Our skies,as yet, may be streaked by the cigar-like shapes of Zeppelin passenger aircraft.
The comparison between the Count and the unique rock band which united to send its ferocious, blues-based music into the stratosphere under the Zeppelin name 94 years later is a trifle murky, but there are similarities.

Formed in late 1968, Led Zeppelin’s historic battle for acceptance by the music establishment has been much shorter in duration, but it too has been overshadowed along the way by misunderstanding and misinterpretation.
Even though Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, Robert Plant and John Bonham originally banded together with undoubtedly sincere musical motives, the band was savaged all too frequently by uninformed observers, who accused them of manipulation of the music scene, of pandering to gross commerciality, of ripping off the masses – all allegations unworthy of comment.

But this cacophony of resentment at Led Zeppelin’s pervasive popularity took its toll on the lives of band members, and at one point they withdrew completely from all music industry activities, other than recording and live performances.
Near disasters at crammed concerts and anonymous threats of violence during later American tours more than once made them contemplate quitting altogether. But unlike many of their contemporaries, Led Zeppelin weren’t in the business merely to make money, and somehow they found the fortitude to withstand the often overpowering pressures of rock world domination for a dozen dynamic years, producing some of the finest, timeless moments that rock music can boast in its first four decades.

From the outset in late 1968 Led Zeppelin was accorded incredible popular support from all quarters. From London to Tokyo, from Copenhagen to Los Angeles, from Istanbul to Melbourne, from Singapore to Sao Paulo, praise poured in. The band consistently baffled observers and detractors alike by constantly coming up with surprises on each album and in every tour. This key element of never-ending change, evolving out of the individual and unified talents of four remarkably skilled musicians always open to chance and circumstance, lies behind Zeppelin’s enormous and unprecedented success.

Through the years, in between the unforgettable concert tours and albums and the inevitable swarm of rumours, Led Zeppelin has acquired an incredible mystique that was more intense than that of any other act in rock history, even including the Beatles, whose lives were daily grist for the tabloid mill. Led Zeppelin arose out of the late 1960s with all the raw potent power of the British blues boom, and they dominated the cutting edge of popular music through the 1970s and the early 1980s. For a dozen years, they were the frontrunners of the rock mainstream, constantly reinventing themselves and leading the field in a manner which was ultimately beyond imitation.

Their influence has lingered through the present time in the musical aspirations of countless bands, good and bad, all profoundly moved by the Zeppelin legacy. That Led Zeppelin have been able to deliver such notable achievements from within a group policy and philosophy of minimum artistic compromise is a stunning feat.

This was a band that steadfastly adhered to a policy of integrity. In the aftermath of the tragic accidental death of John Bonham in September 1980, the survivors’ decision to disband Led Zeppelin wouldn’t have come as any real surprise to the informed and compassionate enthusiast. John Bonham couldn’t have been replaced, as more so than any drummer of a typical group, his was the essential base on which each song’s structure was crafted. Whereas the almighty dollar would have dominated a decision to continue in most other camps, Led Zeppelin members wouldn’t entertain the possibility of seeking another drummer. The money didn’t matter – their integrity and their respect for what they had all created together were the deciding factors.

The emergence in recent times of John Bonham’s son, Jason, as a powerful drummer in his own right (and his two appearances with Page, Plant and Jones at Led Zeppelin reunions in the late 1980s) has given rise to widely reported prospects of a full-scale reunion tour involving gigantic guarantees. While remaining doubtful that money will be the final arbiter in any decision to undertake a reunion tour, I believe the lure of proving sustained relevance in the music scene of the 1990s will – more likely sooner than later – see the lads hit the road one more time. Jason Bonham obviously can’t be John Bonham, but he’s as close as we’re ever going to get to the master himself.

But, when push came to shove – or, as the odd cruel cynic inferred, profit outmuscled love – both John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham were passed over by Page and Plant for more contemporary company. Whether this rather astounding move was designed to deflect Zep cash-in reunion rumours or simply the fresh outlook of another day, there was some interesting irony to be found in the fact that, as the one member of Zeppelin who had consistently campaigned for the reasonable possibilities of a get-together, John Paul Jones was the only one left off the train when it finally shuddered forth from the previous 1980 terminus.

Only time will tell about the wisdom of such a move. At risk, of course, is the survivors’ enduring legacy as the greatest rock band of all time – any false moves and that perception could be tarnished. To gain, in the basest sense, are more capital rewards. It’s a bit of an artistic toss-up.

In the meantime, the Led Zeppelin musical legacy will live on, maturing and improving with each passing year, an outstanding testament to the brilliance of the four musicians who tore from their muse so many stirring anthems of the 1970s, such gems of style and often elegance, never lacking in soul and substance. The long-awaited 1990 release of the four-CD box set of quintessential Led Zeppelin, with its sharply focused clarity and the ingenuity of the new running order of familiar songs, underlines their artistic dominance of the hard rock genre, the unparalleled inventiveness and the inevitable risk-taking.

The risks they took are ours to enjoy in appreciating their art. It appears certain that it will be a long, long time before any rock act constructs a song to dethrone Stairway to Heaven from its pre-eminent status as the world’s most popular rock song.

The evolution of Led Zeppelin in itself is a classic story of the building of a stairway to nirvana heaven beyond the constraints of conventional rock music.

It has been an honour and a privilege to have observed at first hand – and at times participated in – the exciting evolution of Led Zeppelin’s illustrious career. The band’s contribution to our lives has been profoundly enriching and enlightening. They truly were the greatest rock and roll band in the world. And probably still are.

In closing, I can only hope that this book will be a door through which you will gain a keener and more acute perception of what this phenomenal, once-in-a-lifetime union of superb musical personalities was all about.

-Ritchie Yorke

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  • 1 year later...

"I don't know who these people are writing about, but it certainly isn't me."   - Van Morrison

Nobody's said much anything of this book to my knowledge so it's natural to be a little curious. I fairly recently read No Quarter: Three Three Lives of Jimmy Page  and a dozen people here said they suspected it was no good and then the 13th called it boring. I disagree, unless it is boring I think the author tried as hard as he could to present Jimmy Page thoroughly (600+ "pages" not "three" Lol! - sorry.) ... I can't say I felt intimately (truly) acquainted with anybody after reading it, I didn't really expect to, but it's the most complete and rational swipe at the life of Page - I'd bet - unless Yorke is more comprehensive. I also read the Mick Wall book but No Quarter was probably "far deeper" w/r/t various/numerous things like Page as Producer at Impulse records and also his studio days generally, not to mention how/why Beck and Page diverged paths the way they did.  IOW it maybe helped me understand how/why Beck and Page RELATED to one another as they did and told me point blank (for instance) that Beck believed Page had a superior roster of personnel all along in "Led Zeppelin as a unit," and that's true, and I enjoyed seeing it it in B&W "in a biographical context."  I've a feeling No Quarter is much like the Zeppelin '68-80 book just twice as thorough. About every Zep tune is "reviewed" and I can't say I vehemently disagree much with any of these that I recall. The time signatures on several tunes are (finally and correctly?) revealed in book form I'm aware of - though I've never looked at any lead sheets. The author probably got them from the lead sheets still no biggie to somebody like me whom is largely oblivious. I don't really NEED to know Jimmy Page's neuroses any better than my own but I did feel I'd come away appreciating (more thoroughly than after the Wall book) the "bigger picture" in a little bigger way. 

I'm also aware of the Zep life story in the words of themselves and those near them pub. circa 2013 but I'm a little skeptical based upon reviews and the factual matter of how it's presented. The mechanics of its construction I mean. Martin Power probably read it I'd guess and likely incorporated the highlights (pertinent quotes). All I'm saying is I'm neutral (ye hah) about Power's book except it's easier, better presented, more thorough, or almost as thorough ... and less tedious [maybe not as much "fun" or "funny" or whatnot as thankfully I have laughed hard a time or two] than this website. Myself included hopefully. Or not - er uh shucks. 3 sentences back and no yuks just shucks. Point taken.

I read the Yorke book RE: Van Morrison when it came out first (a few years after 1st published) and it seemed OK, but I'd have devoted more time to the "Caledonia Soul Music" outtake (for instance) beings it's the best outtake (I've ever heard in popular music) having listened closely to for example all the important outtakes of Bob Dylan up to/inc. "Idiot Wind" ... Maybe Neil Young or somebody has a better one but beings I listened to his important early boots I really doubt it especially since he tells the truth in claiming himself that he's a "B- version of Dylan"; remarkably both candid and true though I DO really like the early (live) boot of his song that's eerily reminiscent of Dylan's own outtake "Mamma You Been On my mind." Can't find the darn disc and sincerely regret it so can't name the song - rats. I just say Yorke book RE: Van Morrison may have come up short in terms of "reviewing" Van's music which is - IMHO and I could be wrong - a crying fucking shame beings the musical material was there to REALLY SHINE (the way Alicia Keys finally really "shines" at Live Aid with her head-cold-inflected take on "The Thing about Love" - can't understand it, but she sounds best gravelly-voiced and maybe somebody that talented needn't be so slick. Just too fuckin' cute and gooey for her own highly skilled sake. Too bad. It's a shame. I don't know since I can't follow much music after about 1975 with only a few exceptions. I just claim ignorance, though I'd be lying if I didn't sometimes want to say "who's foolin' who?" and "what is this shit, or at least why are they being paid for it?") All I'm saying is I'm not thoroughly 100% convinced Yorke gave everything could be given to fully appreciating Van and his "Caledonia Soul Orchestra" and/or "Soul Express" in terms of widely available concert boots and outtakes and studio LP's. "Virgo Clowns" is the centerpiece of Band And Street Choir  (album provisionally titled "Virgo's Fool") though Yorke hardly recognized it explicitly.

Last, I'm not sure I profited from his [RE??] "de-mystifying" Van's iconic self-image of "I'm the man [or THE Man] not the myth," (despite the fact "copycats and Bruce Springsteen ripped off my soul" type talk/songs conflating things)  and "I'm sick of being a Legend; I'm ready to be a Star" being a superb quote that Richie has attributed (actually adduced to Morrison's business manager and likely true or consistent with what else is known). Ironically, Van tends to have good reason for saying what he does even if it's only obliquely accurate.  Jesus Christ if one can't see why Morrison resents Springsteen (a hack by comparison if you ask me - you don't believe it don't waste  your breath I'm not even mildly intrigued Lol!) and somewhat respects Bob Seeger - is crystal clear why he felt that way.  But Yorke doesn't seem to clarify/explain this facet so well. In the end it's not mine to critique or criticize too much something I'm glad got written and maybe seems Underappreciated - so hat's off to Mr. Yorke for taking the time and probably not making the dividends deserved for his considerable efforts. May seem silly to say this but he sure did a better job with his Morrison book anybody else did (present company included Lol!) before it went out of print for at least a time.  So I guess I'm proud to own a copy and ask who else has a first issue (paperback) besides me? Damn glad to know ya!

So I'm still a little intrigued at this Zep Ritchie Yorke book since I think he gave a good effort at dicing and slicing Van Morrison, although Morrison's statement about "who these people are writing about" above is inevitably a poetic (and funny) way of stating the truth about "how these things are." Nobody has described it better (as usual?) than Van The Man.  There's a reality, about biography, that if one READS the Van interviews (and they're all collected at the Hayward website) you get a REMARKABLE insight to what's up. Or at least I did, when all was said and done, but that don't mean I didn't appreciate the Yorke book and I think Clinton Heylin attempted something similar to "in his words and those close to him" RE Van. In the final analysis, Van Morrison was a very blunt and candid interviewee, one of the VERY BEST for SURE in popular music, but mostly, generally, everybody likes to tell of only the gruff, taciturn Van Morrison; listen (only) to a number of the shows, and it's OBVIOUS (as those who knew him best will and have maintained) he had a great sense of humor both as a person and entertainer - just doesn't suffer fools WELL AT ALL and maybe drank too much now & again. Who didn't?

I WAS impressed to learn in the last few years how (his then wife) Janet Planet would drive by Dylan's residence in Woodstock only so Morrison could gaze wistfully from the car and DREAM of meeting Bob.  Morrison now essentially says he owns "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" after the fact - he did GOOD, in his way, very good actually, better than anybody with that cover: but who's HE writing about? Lol!  - Funny how we're all a little starstruck ... and I'm not real sure most folks here REALIZE how taken - smitten - Robert Plant was with Astral Weeks and for good reason. Anyhow, somebody will throw a bone hopefully.

It's REMARKABLE to listen to the best (later) Van boots and hear fans yelling, "We love you, Mr. Morrison!" And for even BETTER reasons. "Tell me what it is, tell me what it is, tell me what it is, Caledonia, S-O-U-L music."

PS: Apologies I've strayed so far from topic but this irks me. WHAT IF, what Van really said to his manager was, "I'm tired of earning like a Legend; I'd rather make out like a Star"; what then? I don't read that many interviews - not enough to have come across one involving an iconic [though surely they exist] totally upper echelon performer who just flat out says, as Van did recently, "I'm doing gigs because I need the money." And it's by no means his first statement to that effect - he's rarely held back from bluntly asserting that making records and performing is primarily a JOB, albeit a passionate one, a labor of love.  'Why Must I Always Explain" is his song (and eventual duet with Dylan) addresses all that. Despite that, per capita, there's no more rabid, devoted, dedicated cult-like following than his own fan base.  It's equal the enthusiasm of any other act, if not (always) in visible hysteria (or raw intensity), then certainly in terms of duration.  Remember that passionate devotion needn't always be openly obvious. First year, his debut record Astral Weeks  sold barely 15,000 (all vinyl back then) and 10,000 of those were in and around San Francisco. It would be FIVE YEARS before selling 100,000 units. He scrapped and clawed for income for nearly a decade in the recording industry, and apparently released about 5 "solo" LPs (or at least 3) before rising above an upper middle class income. The point is, it's so easy to see how language, hence history, hence reality gets twisted. But here's an instance of a certain "reality" coming (for me) from the obscure text Van Morrison: the Mystic's Music:

"John Tobler, an English journalist for Zig Zag magazine informed Van that he found Astral Weeks  'messianic.' Van responded, "I think it's all in your head."

... So look at two things, first the title of the book, implying Morrison was some sort of "mystic," and the implicate "messiah" stature some are so quick to infer. Now turn it around, and imagine the "mystique" surrounding, or, applied to Jimmy Page, literally, and imagine how Page might have responded (partly beings he's "Scorpio Rising" are we to believe?) in the interview. I mean, all I'm saying is how easily one can get wrapped up in something relatively ephemeral, something imaginary, and what Percy called "the illusion," about which he'd said after Bonzo's passing "was over." It bears repeating, beings I think it's the most succinct, and candid, and useful counterbalance to anybody's wishful thinking about any legitimate Zeppelin "enterprise" after Bonham: according to Plant, "The illusion was over." Performance art in popular music especially in late 60's and early 70's seemed to rely pretty heavily to something all in your head so to speak - to varying degrees for various people at various places in time.  Led Zeppelin seems to have insinuated itself as popular culture - somewhere between high culture and folk art - on a SCALE  perhaps never seen before or since. Yet that relied upon industry, and technology, and mass movement(s), to a very heavy degree. Page, whom I've the utmost respect for as a musician, an artist, seems to have exploited  that to a degree that depended on the "times and spaces" available to him, and fair to say Peter Grant was fairly instrumental in that as well? This isn't the place to elaborate, but there are indications Van Morrison and Jimmy Page COULD be taken to embody two opposite sides (and dissimilar tacts) of the same (exploitative or merely practical) Janus coin: the utility of infusing high (or at least higher) artistry into folk culture. The ground between, "popularity" and/or "illusion(s)" is something both men had to come to grips with as perhaps no two other performers would be compelled. Legitimate personalities, I mean, not FLAKES. I tend to admire both in their tremendous accommodation of that reality, even if Van was a bit (Lol!) more frank about the "terms and conditions" if only in public. Nevertheless, it's certainly true Page played well enough on Van & Them's "Baby Please Don't Go" for Morrison to be heard singing and Page playing every night Ready Steady Go came on British TV - as the show adopted it as their theme song. What a tangle history is. Cripes. Cripes sakes.

 

 

 

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Couple things I really regret 1) the PS above - 2)  ALSO the "legend/star" thing comes from the Johnny Rogan book and obviously I need to start taking some notes 'cause I'm thinkin' I got some things all F'd UP -

but se la vie - better just to say "popular artists are bound to be enigmatic or what's the use?"  and "Jimmy Page and Van Morrison are very much of the same high caliber and I can't quite see why that's not immediately obvious to just about anybody" Lol!  BTW, I get the sense they're both (early on anyhow) fairly "traditional" or "conservative" in relative terms which sometimes strikes me -- how in the heck they both tend to stumble into such beautiful melodies - both of them possessed of just absolutely impeccable sense of timing and rhythms. I've always been amazed at the "physicality" of drummers like Bonham and Carl Palmer but to layer melody over that is pretty mind boggling.

Then I read somewhere today that Yorke's  book  Into The Music RE: Van WAS "AUTHORIZED" ... anyhow anybody puts out songs with

Drinking that wine making time in the days gone by
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
Behind the ritual, making time in the days gone by

and includes that many bla blas ha GOT to have a sense of humor. 

God bless I truly am sorry I De-railed myself - and this (clearly good on the part of the Adm) topic  ... If anybody's acquainted with  Ritchie Yorke's historic first book on Led Zeppelin, released in 1976 now available in a 4th revised edition ebook  then one of these days they'll bail me out on this one Lol!

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