What a twat indeed. LP are a much easier guitar to play than a Tele but personally I prefer the Tele and I loved the tone on the first album. I wish Page would have kept the Tele for stage use and switched between it and the LP depending on the song. WLL is a good example of the raunchy crunch of the LP but something like SIBLY would have sounded much better on the Tele IMO. The Dragon was my favorite Page guitar.

Smells like a payoff to me, old Robbie probably greased a few palms to lubricate the wheels of progress. Its always about the money. Fucking disaster.

LTTE of course and Rotterdam 80'. Anniversary for both.

Funny you should bring that up because I always felt Page & Howe, though very different players, could be very similar in a live setting. If you hear Howe's solos on Yessongs, compared to the 80's shredders, Howe makes quite a few mistakes. He too is an exiting player who is not afraid to go off in new directions (though no where near the improvisationist Page was) to add emotion and colour to his playing, even to the detriment of accuracy. At the height of his ability Page, Howe, and Blackmore were pretty equal in regard to technique though I would have to give the edge (in technique) to Blackmore, but the again Page & Howe were much more exciting players than Blackmore was. Give & take I guess but if Page stuck with the XYZ project and they got a new singer, I think he would have pulled it off quite well by 85' if he was sober. TBH, Squire being quite the strong personality would have most likely given Page a forceful ultimatum in regard to substance abuse had the project developed.

Hmm, not sure if the boots support your position there. Some of Page's fines playing was on the 75' US tour, the whole month of March in particular blows away anything he had done live prior. I would agree from 77' - 83' Page was pretty bad about 50% of the time which is, well, pretty bad if you were one of the unlucky 50%. However outside of the Atlantic 40th show his playing was pretty damn good 84' on, especially during the 94' Japanese tour and the 98' Page / Plant Tour. In fact I would wager Page did some of his best playing of his whole career during the 98' - 2000 timeframe. He may have slowed down a bit, but what he lacked in shredding he more than made up for in technique and emotion which for me, emotion is the key.

Yes indeed, I don't think anyone on this thread has trashed Bakers talent, quite the contrary. I believe everyone here recognizes Baker as one of the greatest drummers of all time, the problem is he is also a complete dick. The fact Baker chooses to trash other musicians shows how truly insecure he is especially when it comes to his drumming. Therein lay the irony, everyone knows Baker is one of the best, however I don't believe Baker feels this way about himself and that is truly sad. He is one of those poor bastards who has a vision of perfection, unfortunately that state is unattainable and combined with a "I must be the best" attitude has him pulling an endless goal he can never reach akin to Sisyphus and his boulder. You know, I really pity this poor man, he is a victim of his own impossible standards.

I wonder if Baker could read music in general or just for the drums? Two completely different things. When I learned to read & understand musical theory, I learned on the trumpet. The notes, tempo, meter, time, accents, etc. were what you would expect of sheet music you see in the movies and takes time to lear and learn properly. Sheet music for drums is very, very easy by comparison. There are no "notes" per se in drums, just what drum to hit, how to hit that drum, time, accent. I like to compare the two like this: Learning to read true sheet music for non-percussion instruments is like learning chess; learning to read sheet music for percussion is like checkers. Anyway, just curious if he knew how to read both. Anyway, Baker is still a grumpy old asshole, one of the most naturally gifted drummers ever but a complete and total asshole to the core.

Happy Birthday Paul...don't forget to watch Shadows & The Unholy Three. Lon at his best.

^ BLASPHEMY!!! Just kidding, could not resist.

Good job Andy, I know you deserve it and worked very hard for it. My hat's off not to Roy Harper, but to you Andy!!!

Hendrix drug use has been insanely blown out of proportion. Sure he did drugs, but about the typical usage of the time. If Hendrix tried to do 1/10th of the dope Page was shooting on a daily basis from 77' - 82' Hendrix would have been dead long before Sept 1970. FWIW, the jury is still very much out on Hendrix's death with many people thinking he was murdered. No one, and I mean no one can ingest more than two gallons of wine and that is the volume of wine they found in this body, not including quite a bit more which he aspirated during his transport in the ambulance. I also play guitar and have been doing so for over 30 years. Hendrix played and practiced constantly, he always had that damn guitar with him wherever he went. He was sloppy for the same reasons Page was sloppy, emotion trumped technique and experimentation and pushing his own boundaries live took precedent as well over technique. Now Page 77 - 82, that drugs baby, for as much booze & smack Page was doing in those years it is a bloody miracle he was able to play as well as he did. Hell, the man almost died on stage April 9th, 1977 in Chicago (according to Richard Cole). Food poisoning my foot.

That is the weird part, whenever I saw Page in the 80's in The Firm or solo he always played beautifully, very well. However for the Atlantic 40th he really sucked balls, just crappy, yet when I saw him in Phoenix for Outrider either just before or just after the 40th he was again brilliant. Just my opinion but I feel, during the 80's, when he was on his own he could cope better and did not get as wasted pre-show. I think during the Atlantic 40th in particular he was really feeling the nerves and just got too damn drunk pre-show. I really believe it is as simple as that. Page suffers from horrible stage fright, plus with the added pressure of a Zep reunion and he just cannot handle it sober, at least not in the 80's. I don't agree with your assessment of Porl Thompson as a "back-up" guitarist, he was a second guitarists which allowed P&P to perform songs they could not with only one guitarist. I was at both the 95' & 98' tours and as a guitarist I had my eye on Jimmy & Porl the whole time. Unless Porl is magic or Jimmy was miming to a backing track, Porl cannot play a solo around the 12th - 15th frets while playing rhythm on the third fret. Jim played great at both the 95' & 98' shows though I preferred the 98' show because Jimmy's playing was, IMO, the best playing he ever did live, period. Jimmy 98' - 2000' was the best live Jimmy, this was, for me, Jimmy's peak, where technical proficiency met emotional projection and created absolute musical brilliance.

Not sure I agree with his skills eroding and not recovering until the late 80's. I have seen YouTube videos of his ARMS performances in the US (The Albert Hall gig was horrible) and they were pretty damn good. I saw him in 1985 for The Firm and he was amazing, easily at 1975 level playing if not better. The only era where I feel Page was hit or miss as a guitarist was 77 - 83, after that he recovered very nicely indeed.

The Skidmarks, that way if people did not like the gig I could always say, "hey dummy, it's all in the name."

I would sure shop for a chevy with that honey...

I would say passionate as high strung suggests lack of control. Guess you are not a big fan of either passion or hyperbole...I am a big Louis Black fan so maybe that explains some of my posts. Sometime I will exaggerate a point to show the absurdity of the situation. If my passion and humor alarmed you, well, I am what I am. This is what happens when all your in-laws are Italian!

Touche' Jimmy

Great blog George, you make an excellent witness for the defense and the point is very approachable and understandable for non-musicians.

I prefer heavier all around, .12 Elixir on my acoustics and either Ernie Ball .11 for the LP or .10 for the Fenders. I prefer heavier strings for the above reasons and developed my finger strength through a Randy Rhodes finger exercise which works wonders. When practicing, take about 10-20 min each session to use all four fingers of the fretting hand to hammer-on / pull off the full range of the neck, each string. I tell you this, when you can easily do this on all strings, all frets, you will have no problem doing deep bends and subtle vibrato even a step or more above on any string with a set of .11 plus you get the better tone and sustain of the heavier strings.

I have two shows from this tour, Vienna & Frankfurt and both are great shows. Frankfurt in particular is fantastic and Jimmy's playing is near perfect in most of the songs. If they could have played at this level (Frankfurt) consistently on the NA tour dates, the 80'-81' shows would have been awesome. Sadly, and most likely, that would not have been the case, and Jimmy probably would have OD'd ala The Ox mid-tour if Bonham would not have beat him to it. Anyway, I liked this tour and their approach in general, though they needed to just the setlist. The songs were fine but the order of Rain Song, Hot Dog, All My Love was a dumb choice.

True that, after all Barry White & Jim Morrison come to mind. Morrison in his prime was / is considered the epitome of male sexuality in music. Not even Robert had that raw masculine allure of Morrison in his prime, so yes Disco, when it comes to the ladies, the baritones rule. I have to say I like Coverdale and admire his professionalism. Even though he has this "persona" he took great care to protect his voice, which Robert never did. The man quit smoking young, was not a party animal on the road, and even stayed away from weed and excess liquor during tours (according to him at least). I think Coverdale is one of those insecure guys who goes all histrionic and obnoxious as a mask, but in the end he was a great singer and very professional as a musician, though I agree he is a horrible lyricist. I wonder if the reason CP only did a Japanese tour was because Coverdale was a bit like Paul Rogers on the road and Jimmy did not have anyone to party with...Poor Jimmy.

The only boot I have from the 80' tour is Vienna and except for the shitty All My Love, the rest of the concert is excellent and inspired. I have been trying to score a Frankfurt, Zurich, or Berlin. If anyone has these please lend a brother a hand and PM me.

Senza offesa ma il prossimo post solo post in Italiano e quelli non conosce possono correre attraverso software di conversione. Il tuo post non ha senso. No offense but next post just post in Italian and those not fluent can run through conversion software. Your post made no sense.

Funny you should say. When the movie came out and I saw the poster (I was 9 at the time) I thought it looked stupid, really, really bad so I did not go see it. I was too busy seeing Slap Shot, The Hills Have Eyes, The Deep, Exorcist (The Heretic) - shitty movie, Sorcerer, and Annie Hall. There were so many great movies that year, me and my brother would go every weekend and see two or three ($1 to get in the matinee) and Star Wars just looked like B-movie shite. So, Star Wars had been out for about two months and when I went to the movies I would notice this growing line to see this Star Wars and all my friends were saying how great it was. I finally gave in and saw it about three months after it's initial release and truly enjoyed it. I really liked the movie though there were much better movies that year, it scored a good 7 out of 10 for me. Now when Empire was released and I saw that I was overjoyed with the result. This has always been, IMO the best Star Wars movie...dark and serious, however Yoda really pissed me off. I was a big fan of Kung Fu (series) and Yoda was less Master Po and more overall pain in the ass. Anyway, I always thought Empire was the best of the three. Even though I hate most JJ Abrams movies (completely fucked up the Star Trek re-boot), I do have high hopes for this. The fact is Lucas fucked up the prequels so badly even a JJ shaky cam, blowing shit up, fuck the plot (Plot...who needs that) approach cannot be any worse. The fact that Lucas stopped making movies for adults and started making Star Wars movies into 2+ hours of stupid product marketing commercials for kids was enough for me. I realized he jumped the shark when he abandoned the whole Chewbacca - Wookie home world plot line for ROTJ, and instead pulled the Ewoks out of his ass. I HATE Ewoks and the whole juvenile approach, just stupid. If Lucas would have stuck to the original outlines for all nine movies (this was done in 1979 ish) he did with Gary Kurtz, the Star Wars Cycle would have been the greatest series of movies of all time.

Are you the strong black man? Oh, wait, that's Steve...my bad.