...and that they called it 'no quarter'. I think that was what pissed him off the most.

In 1975/76 the income tax rate in the UK for earnings over £20,000 was 83%. Basically this means that for every £1 they earned (over £20,000) they got to keep 17p. (Tax on earnings up to £20,000 would have left them with a tax bill of around £13,000. So - earn £20,000 and take home £7,000). As an example, let's pretend that they earned £250,000 in one year - a lot of money in 1975, but not inconceivable for them at the time: First £20,000 you get to keep about £7000 (actually a little more, but I'm keeping it simple). That leaves £230,000 to pay 83% tax on - a tax bill of £190,900. That left them with £39,100, plus the £7000 kept before the higher rate: A total of $46,100 they get to keep.... well actually it would be less than this too, because I've not allowed for National Insurance contributions (which , despite being called 'contributions' are actually compulsory). That's a total payment to the taxman of £203,900 from earnings of £250,000. I honestly don't think Grant 'forced' them to go into tax exile - I'm sure he would have just given them the best advice, which would have been 'get out of dodge or the taxman takes pretty much everything you've earned'. Their earnings and the taxman forced them into tax exile. You don't have to be a genius to look at those figures and think that they probably thought for themselves: 'why do I have to give 4/5ths of what I earned to the taxman. What can I do to avoid this?'.

Or it could just as 'obviously' been about his love for Wales. He was brought up near Birmingham and Wales is directly West from there, he often spent family holidays in Wales and still owns property there, and he often, to this day, talks about the mythology and history - the story of Owain Glyndwr for example. When the Page/Plant project happened, that's pretty much the first place they went to. A great deal of Led Zep III was written there. The point being... you simply can't say 'obviously' when interpreting a lyric (or prose) that's intentionally vague, because there's nothing obvious about it. The other thing with Plant is, if you actually asked him what the lyrics 'mean', and compared notes with other people you'd find that he'd probably give ten different answers to ten different people.

Totally. Depends on the sort of music you're into generally. If you're into Nirvana, The Pixies, The Breeders, Low, PJ Harvey etc. - the more 'grungey' end of the scale then you'll be hard pressed not to have heard of him.

Whatever happens in this case the lawyers will still have to be paid - they're usually the only real winners when this sort of litigation comes up. Some good may come of the whole situation if the case is thrown out though. It could start to close the door on the sort of spurious crap that the Thicke ruling opened up - possibly one of the most damaging rulings in music copyright history. Gotta see the bright side somehow!

Even a really good remaster won't help WIC - it just needs to be remixed. It sounds to me like they got far too bogged down in the (frankly awesome sounding) acoustic space at Abbey Road to the point that everything, especially the drums, sounds like it was recorded at the end of a hallway. It just leaves the whole thing sounding distant and cluttered at the same time. You can hear the genesis of the 'swampy' sound that has pervaded just about every single Robert Plant record since this, but sadly most of WIC ended up muddy, with the exception of the really sparse songs like 'Heart in your hand' which allows the acoustic space to work with the song, rather than against it. Loud music whilst driving through Wales is always awesome.

The most eye-opening thing that Albini has to say about the WIC sessions is the sheer amount of time they took to record an album that in places still sounds like a demo.

^ this... There's a thing called a phase reverse button on most mixing desk channels. If you play back a sound, and also play a phase reversed version of the sound back at the same time, the two versions of the sound cancel one another out so you end up hearing nothing at all... If you do the same thing but also delay one sound very slightly from the other you can get some quite odd metallic sounding effects (for the nerds out there it creates a form of comb-filtering), as only bits of the sound cancel. Not really practical as a effect pedal or a live effect because it severely cuts the volume of the guitar, but it can be a cool sounding studio tweak.

For the studio recording Jones is definitely using a wooden Treble recorder (sometimes called an Alto recorder, especially in the US). There's a couple of interviews out there where he says something along the lines of 'I had a recorder lying about....', plus I play the recorder - it's a very distinctive and instantly recognizable sound, easily distinguishable from flutes & Penny/Irish whistles. Here's an example of the sound of a Treble Recorder: And an Irish Low Whistle as a comparison: The Recorder has a purer and less breathy sound, whilst the Whistle has a reedier sound, with much more breathiness to it. For the early live performances he used the Hammond organ, but soon changed over to the stock 'flute' sound (the same sound used on The Beatles' "Strawberry Fields") on the Mellotron all the way until 1979, when he used the Yamaha GX1 (1979) and then a Fairlight CMI (1980).

Definitely some Page-esque B-bender action going on in there.

You can clearly see the B-bender button behind the bridge. There can't be many cherry-red les-pauls in the world with a Parsons-White B-bender.

A punter is someone who places a bet, or a customer from the point of view of someone trying to sell something. A bar owner who hasn't got many customers in might say 'not many punters in tonight'. A band playing to a rowdy audience might say that 'the punters are restless!'. I think Robert was probably calling himself a punter as he was an audience member (ticket buyer) at a Firm gig.

Just this song - he's got his pick in his mouth for most of it.

Doug Boyle. http://dougboylemusic.com/ Check out the live version from Atlantic 40:

Addiction does terrible things to people. Jimmy still seems to be in deep denial about quite how much his addictions have affected his life. I can understand him not wishing to discuss it, especially as he has teenage kids who he wants to project the best image to, but denying that it crucified him creatively when there is so much easily accessible evidence to the contrary is a little mystifying.

He stopped drinking, by his own admission in about 2000, and I reckon the O2 was his first sober gig in a very long time. I think he was 'managing' his alcoholism towards the end of the Page/Plant run, but I have a sneaky suspicion that his inability to cut the (excessive) booze out was one of the factors that led to the end of that collaboration (amongst other things...). Wasn't there a story of Plant punching Jimmy out for being drunk before a gig at some point during the P/P years?

This probably means that one or more tracks was recorded to tape too hot, resulting in distortion (much like RP's vocals on the Bombay sessions 'friends'). Whilst you can get away with that (just) for bass & guitars and barely for vocals, distorted drums can't really be made to sound good outside of industrial music... Distortion is not something you can remove from a recorded sound, even with clever digital processing.

Page has stated categorically that RAH 1970 was the first multi-tracked show... Everything prior that has been released has been from master or 1st gen recordings - 1/4" stereo or mono. If you use the search function you'll see this subject, along with the question of available film footage, has been covered more than comprehensively.

^ this. He's just stopping the strings from ringing.

Not unless somebody has access to the multitrack recordings, which is the only reason why we have the isolated bass (and everything else) from Ramble On.

It's 'Ah, be my baby Darlene...'

During the Outrider tour Page played Midnight Moonlight (DADGAD) back to back with IMTOD. He needed two guitars to save having to re-tune. The 'old' Dano with the swoosh pick-guard was used for MM and the 'new' Dano with the kidney-bean shaped pick-guard was used for IMTOD. There's a couple of video clips from the tour where he mentions using different versions of the same guitar. I think some of the tuning problems with the Dano after the Badass had been fitted were down to Page's handling of the guitar. He wasn't exactly on top form in 1980 and the Dano needs a lighter touch (especially left hand) than he seemed to be giving it. The bloody thing sounded awful at the Atlantic 40th concert, but when I heard him play it in '88 it seemed to be fine.

Actually he had the bridge changed to a badass all-in-one with adjustable saddles, but not until the 80's - that metal plate with a bit of wood glued to it was still in use at Knebworth. Edit: Just found out the badass bridge was added after Knebworth but before the 1980 Europe Tour. http://www.led-zeppelin.org/studio-and-live-gear/999

I agree. It's odd that despite all the interviews he's given for guitar mags etc. it's never once come up. The only other thing I'd point at is the physicality of that double neck - those tuning buttons are damned close to one another between the 12 string and the 6 string. Changing the strings must be a bit of a bugger without scuffing your knuckles (you can't fit a string winder in that gap), let alone doing anything other than fine tuning. The newer versions seem to have changed the offset/angle of the necks so there's a (little) bit more space to get your fingers in there.

Not that I'm aware of.... But for further evidence of my thinking I'd also point you at 'In My Time Of Dying' and 'Kashmir', which were both performed on the same guitar (until the Outrider tour). Kashmir was always DADGAD The Studio version of IMTOD was and open A (EAEAC#E), but live it was in open G - DGDGBD. Again, only two strings to re-tune, rather than 5 - I'd put money on it being the same reason. Add to that the fact that tuning the Danelectro could be a bit hit and miss, because of the crappy bridge.