[Patricia Ecker Page (RIP)]

https://www.facebook.com/jimmypage/photos/a.10150938033972612/10158727464467612/

 

[JPJ Commissioned by London International Festival of Early Music]

London International Festival of Early Music

Recorded interview with JPJ over Zoom with Gill Graham (@ 5pm today UK time)
www.lifem.org/pages/our-concerts

The world premiere of John Paul Jones's 'The Tudor Pull' will be streamed from the LIFEM website, www.lifem.org and Marquee TV www.marquee.tv,
TONIGHT from 7pm (UK time).

--

https://www.johnpauljones.com/jpj-interview-with-gill-graham-the-tudor-pull-premiere/

[The Guitar World/Jimmy Page Interview]

11 minutes ago, Lanza Rossi said:

Hey guys,

Sorry to bring up an old post but does anyone have any idea of the author of this interview? I would like to reference it for an assignment I have for my studies.

Thanks in advance to anyone that can help

Interview by Brad Tolinski

[Led Zeppelin or Related on YouTube]

 

[The triumph of the gentleman rockers: How Led Zeppelin IV was made (Classic Rock)]

The triumph of the gentleman rockers: How Led Zeppelin IV was made

By Jon Hotten (Classic Rock) 

In 1971, Led Zeppelin released their untitled fourth album and changed the face of rock forever. This is the story of the album known variously as Led Zeppelin IV, Runes, Four Symbols or simply Untitled.

(Image credit: Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images)

On a bitterly cold morning in January 1971, guitarist Jimmy Page, 26, singer Robert Plant, 22, bassist/ keyboardist John Paul Jones, 24, and drummer John Bonham, 22, arrived at Headley Grange, Hampshire, to find the Rolling Stones’ mobile studio already waiting for them in the driveway. 

With them was a young engineer by the name of Andy Johns, brother of Glyn, who had worked on the first Zeppelin album, piano player Ian Stewart, formerly piano player and jack-of-all-trades for the Rolling Stones, and known to all and sundry as Stu, along with a small road crew.

Plant and Page, in the grip of an intense and productive creative union, fell into that group of artists whose muse was susceptible to their surroundings. The damp, cool manor, with its bleak history, surrounded by the bare winter trees, affected them quickly. 

“Most of the mood for the fourth album was brought about in settings we had not been used to,” Plant later reflected. “We were living in this falling-down mansion in the country. It was incredible.” 

That opinion, though, was not universally held among the group: “It was cold and damp,” recalls Jones. “We all ran in when we arrived in a mad scramble to get the driest rooms. There was no pool table or pub. It was just so dull."

So it was that, 140 years after it was ransacked by several hundred mad rioters, Headley Grange took up its role in the making of the most famous and most imitated rock record in history. By the time the band began to think seriously about material for their fourth album, Led Zeppelin, it seemed, could do almost what they wanted. It didn’t matter what the critics said, Zep were now big enough to take the knocks. 

Manager Peter Grant was not given to taking chances, however, and in a typically farsighted move, he effectively took the band off the road during the latter half of 1970, in order to allow them the space they needed to come up with something fresh again. 

 

Full article here:  https://www.loudersound.com/features/the-triumph-of-the-gentleman-rockers-how-led-zeppelin-iv-was-made

[50 Years Later: The Surprising Memphis Roots of “Led Zeppelin III.”]

50 Years Later: The Surprising Memphis Roots of “Led Zeppelin III.”

An exclusive look at the important local connection behind the album that Jimmy Page himself called “the real beginning of the band.”

November 3, 2020  |  by Alex Greene | MemphisMagazine.com

 You could be excused for not thinking it a very momentous thing: two twentysomethings winding through the hills from southwestern Kentucky to Memphis sometime in 1966, hewing to a thread of highway from Land Between the Lakes to the banks of the Mississippi River, late at night, seemingly on a mission. Half a century later, the driver, who’d driven to Kentucky that afternoon, still recalls his passenger on the return trip.

“He loved Stax. He loved Memphis. He loved Sun Records,” says Terry Manning, the man behind the wheel that night. “Instead of taking the band’s bus, he wanted to sit and talk about some of this stuff, so he got in the car and we drove back from Murray, Kentucky, to Memphis, which is a fairly long drive. Certainly by English standards. I remember him being stunned, saying, ‘Aren’t we there yet?’ He said he thought they were neighboring states. Well, they are, but this isn’t England. Wait till you get to Texas, buddy.”

“People said we’d blown it not coming up with another album like the second one. But in some ways, the third album was the real beginning of the band.” — Jimmy Page

And yet that passenger, guitarist Jimmy Page, would be able to jet across America at will in a few short years, as his subsequent band leapt from success to success. Indeed, by 1970 he would regularly be flying back to Memphis to put the final touches on the album that would cinch his band’s worldwide triumph. This was the LP, mixed in Memphis, that would announce in its opening salvo, “We calmed the tides of war! We are your overlords!” Did he guess that 50 years later, in 2020, we’d still welcome our axe-wielding overlords with such fervor?

photograph courtesy atlantic / swan song by Chuck Boyd © Mythgem Ltd.

Led Zeppelin played to packed stadiums in August-September of 1970. It was their highest-grossing tour yet.

But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. For now, Page was a Yardbird with a little stolen time to talk music. Led Zeppelin was barely a gleam in his eye. Hitting the road after a Murray State University show, Page and Manning reached Memphis in the dead of night and wasted no time. “We got to Memphis at two or three in the morning, and I took him right over to Ardent Studios,” Manning says. “We hung out all night long there. I dragged out all my guitars and amps and we played and talked.” Little did either suspect that the impromptu visit would later bring Page back, packing sonic dynamite.

Manning was an engineer at Ardent Studios, then on National Street, across from a Big Star grocery, and after-hour sessions were par for the course there. He was also a musician, and the group Lawson & Four More, for whom he played keyboards, had done well enough to open for the Yardbirds on Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars. That’s where he first met Jimmy Page, already a hero of Manning’s. Beyond being the band’s second guitarist and/or bassist alongside Jeff Beck, Page was also one of the top session guitarists in London. So when the Yardbirds toured the U.S. again, Manning went to as many of their shows as he could.

He wasn’t the only Memphian at Murray State that night. A certain clique of Memphis players, including Manning and others at Ardent, had a fascination with the innovative rock music coming out of England. “Quite a few of us were Anglophiles,” says Manning, “and England had so many great groups coming out of nowhere with an exciting kind of music. I first went there in 1969. And then back several more times. I’ve always had a close relationship with the U.K.”

Expand

photograph courtesy terry manning.  Terry Manning at the Ardent mixing console, 1971.

But Page may have found Manning’s job at Ardent even more impressive, for that was a time when the little studio that could (started in a garage by electronics whiz kids John Fry and Fred Smith while in high school, then moving to National Street in 1966) began picking up spillover sessions from Stax. Manning himself had played marimba on Booker T. & the M.G.’s Soul Limbo while the group polished it up for release at Ardent. He was right in the middle of where all Swinging London wanted to be.

After that rogue road trip, as time went by, Page founded his own group, The New Yardbirds, with fellow studio musician John Paul Jones and relative unknowns Robert Plant and John Bonham. And he stayed in touch with Manning. The original Yardbirds played their last show in July 1968, and by the end of the year, The New Yardbirds had signed to Atlantic Records as Led Zeppelin, in a contract that allowed them considerable artistic freedom. Manning followed their progress closely.

“When we made Led Zeppelin III we achieved two things. We became the band who would never go away and a band who were never going to repeat themselves.” — Robert Plant

“We were really very good friends and in close touch,” recalls Manning. “Jimmy would send me cassette copies of the first two albums before they were even released. ‘Oh here’s what we’ve done, what do you think?’ And those albums showed great promise and showed they were amazing musicians. They had great songs, but they weren’t super diverse. And I think Jimmy really knew that the third album is so important to a band. I mean, there’s the first single, the first album, and then the second showing you could still do it, but the third has always been the real thing that turned on the question of, ‘Are we a group that will last a long time?’ So he really went in with the intent of doing something way beyond what they’d done before.”

Courtesy Atlantic / Swan Song

This was the album on which the creative control they’d demanded in their contract came to its fruition. The first two albums, both released in 1969, had created a reliable new formula, best realized in the epic, power-chord heavy blues of “Whole Lotta Love,” the hit single that helped propel Led Zeppelin II into platinum status. But as the band took a much-needed break from touring, it was time to think outside of the box.

Page and Plant retreated to a secluded Welsh cottage, Bron-Yr-Aur, the lack of electricity or running water taking their minds back to ages past. It was the first time the two had written songs together in earnest, and it was done largely on acoustic guitars. Later, after starting the recordings at Olympia Studios in London, they would further break with orthodoxy by setting up in a dilapidated mansion named Headley Grange, complete with mobile recording gear. There was just one problem: Having stretched out for the writing and recording process, Led Zeppelin had a U.S. tour booked, and no way to finish the mix in time.

photograph courtesy atlantic / swan song / © CARL DUNN

John Paul Jones, Robert Plant, and Jimmy Page on their U.S. tour, August 1970, as they delved ever deeper into multicultural folk music. Band members often flew to Memphis between shows for overdub and mixing sessions.

Enter Ardent Studios, again. As Manning recalls, “He’d been to Ardent. He knew the layout, he knew the studio, he knew it was professional. He knew I was a professional. He wasn’t just taking a chance. So he called up and said, ‘We haven’t finished our third album. We’ve started it, we’re partway through. We’ve got a U.S. tour booked. What are we gonna do? Would you help out?’ And of course I was very happy to help.”

Indeed, Ardent’s reputation had only grown in stature since Page’s first late-night visit. “Ardent was already getting quite a name as a state-of-the-art studio, that was up with the times, if not ahead of them,” says Manning. “So it was a great place for Jimmy to come. Now, John Fry did have to buy two things to accommodate that session. We needed a 16-track machine, because they were recording on 16-track. And we needed Dolby [noise reduction] for the mixing.”

Soon to become the industry standard for reducing tape hiss, Dolby was relatively new at the time. Yet it’s ironic that it played a role in Led Zeppelin III, when the first sounds of the first track are the random noises in the room. This is far from a sterile production. Manning is careful to distinguish between room noise and tape hiss: “That was intentional. It’s not just that we couldn’t get rid of the noise. We liked it. A little bit of it was tape noise, but a lot of it was room noise, and then we had a repeat going on it, so it kind of built itself up. And we liked that. It’s the very first thing you hear and you pick up your head and say, what is this? So that was like one of those little fanfares, the trumpets letting the king come through, sort of.”

Goldmine magazine, Page told him, “‘I like the sonic texture of everything. I like the feel that you’re really there.’ We really talked all that through.” Such an approach adds an extra punch to the opening track, “Immigrant Song,” its quiet, introductory room noises suddenly shattered by the band exploding first into a riff, then Plant’s banshee howl.

But it’s especially apparent in the songs featuring acoustic guitar, like “Friends.” Page’s love of the country blues was well-established by the third album, and “Friends” begins with room noises and strums that first evoke Mississippi Fred McDowell. Then, as the groove settles in, stranger harmonies appear, leading to an epic example of East-meets-West, grounded in Page’s love of Indian music.

As Page and Led Zeppelin continued their tour, Manning recalls, “He would fly in, and any other group member who was needed for an overdub would fly in, and always Peter Grant came. He was very much the manager and protective of his guys. I’d go to the airport and pick them up, and even if it was late at night when they got there, we’d go straight to work. And just work, work, work, until they had to go to the next show.”

photograph by terry manning. The control room at Ardent Studios in the late 1960s.

In those days, even a mixing session was somewhat of a performance. Unlike today, with automated consoles being common, or pans and volume levels being literally drawn across waveforms on computer screens, mixing was something you did in real time as the multi-tracks were fed onto the stereo master tape.

“Jimmy had his hands right on the console as well, and we planned out what we were going to do and who would turn what when, and things like that. Because everything is organic, it happens on the pass you do it on, and you can’t repeat it exactly. So it was all hands on deck there. I think once even Peter Grant, the manager, had to get in the middle and push a fader or something.”

One such mixing moment has stayed with Manning over the years. “‘Out on the Tiles’ has a very long fade-out, with tom rolls all the time,” he says. “Well, we didn’t have stereo drums, but we wanted to give a bit of stereo effect. So on tom rolls, just as [John Bonham] finished hitting the snare and was about to hit the toms, I would take the pan pot and jab it over toward the left, and then as he played the tom roll, I would roll it across to the right. Then just before the next snare came in, I would be sure to be right back in the center. But on one of the times, I missed it. And the snare still comes in over on the right quite a bit more than it should. Every time I hear that, I just laugh.”

Given the all-hands-on-deck approach, the sonic variety of Led Zeppelin III is doubly impressive, with material running the gamut of acoustic guitar-centered tracks evoking blues, Indian music, and Celtic folk, to hard-rocking stompers like “Celebration Day” or “Out on the Tiles.” The traditional “Gallows Pole,” building slowly to its final rave-up, covers all that ground in a single song. The sheer variety of it was intentional from the start. As Robert Plant told Record Collector magazine, “There was a dynamic about that period where we could go from reflective acoustic stuff to some heavy shit. When we made Led Zeppelin III we achieved two things. We became the band who would never go away and a band who were never going to repeat themselves.”

Though that album wasn’t one of the band’s best-sellers, it was nonetheless significant in their evolution. As Page told Goldmine, “People said we’d blown it not coming up with another album like the second one. But in some ways, the third album was the real beginning of the band.” Manning agrees: “I think he’s right to say that. The third album showed much more of what they could do.”

photograph by terry manning.Ardent Studios began in John Fry’s parents’ garage, then moved to National Street (above) in 1966.

But even after the mixing was done, there was one last step required: mastering. The tapes had to be readied to be pressed into vinyl. And Manning had a hand in that as well — literally. The mastering process included producing the lacquer template from which all record pressings would be stamped, and that offered one last chance for experimentation. Whereas typically only catalog numbers or the like were scratched into a master’s inner groove, one could get creative with it.

As Manning told Goldmine, “Working with Big Star, we had added some messages of our own on there. I mentioned this to Jimmy and said, ‘Anything you wanna write?’ and he said, ‘Ooh, yeah … .’ We’d been talking about the Aleister Crowley thing, so he said, ‘Give me a few minutes’, and he sat down and he thought and he scribbled some things out and he finally came up with ‘Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be the Whole of the Law’ and ‘So Mote It Be’ … .

“Once he’d figured out what he wanted to say, I took this little metal pencil-like thing and wrote them very carefully, because if you drop that thing you’ve ruined your master. You can’t touch the grooves, you have to lean over. Very difficult to do, that’s why they don’t really like you doing that. But we did it.”

photograph by chris king. Musician/engineer Terry Manning was Ardent's first employee.

There were a few steps left before the album was released to the world. As Manning wrote in an online forum, “I took the masters, carefully boxed in grouped sets, and drove them to Nashville, where Led Zeppelin were playing their next show. There I gave them to Peter Grant, who had them delivered by hand to the various pressing plants.”

Upon its release in October 1970, Led Zeppelin III held the number-one album slot for about a month, but by the next year had dropped below the top 40, unlike other perennial best-sellers by the band. And yet posterity has been kind to this statement of diversity and eclecticism from a group that could have easily stuck with its own formula. In 2014, it was remastered, and a special deluxe edition was released with outtakes and alternate mixes.

Manning, for one, is proud to have his name on it, though that almost didn’t happen. “One great thing Jimmy did, I will never forget,” he wrote online. “When the album covers came back from the printing plant, to be joined with the vinyl pressings, Jimmy found that they had left off the credit for me. So he had them all destroyed, and completely reprinted to include my credit! What a guy!”

As it turns out, some of the nicest people are “Satanists.” And given the stature that the album has attained since its release, whatever spiritual or aesthetic visions guided Page in its creation seem thoroughly justified. But for Manning, as it was going down around him, it was just another day at the office.

“It was such tense work,” he says. “I mean, we were just working, working, working. Because of their tour schedule, we couldn’t take it easy. So we worked as hard as we could. And when you’re doing that, you’re not thinking, ‘Oh, what will this be like later when I hear it?’ Or, ‘Is this historic?’ Or, ‘Am I enjoying this?’ or anything. You’re just working.”

 https://memphismagazine.com/features/longform/celebration-day/

[David Coverdale on Coverdale/Page album anniversary / possible release in 2023]

David Coverdale interview:

Have you any further news on the Coverdale Page album being reissued? 
Well, my time with Jimmy was amazing. We spoke a couple of weeks ago, in fact, I'm probably going to speak to him this weekend. I think we're probably going to be looking at an anniversary issue in '23. What would that be; 20th? THIRTY?! Fucking hell! As my wife would say; "how old ARE YOU?!" [Laughing].

Have you any idea what an anniversary edition might include?
Yeah, I think you're in for some nice surprises. Jimmy and I have been talking about it, and he's isolated out in the country, so we just have to make sure, because I'm not getting on a fucking plane, and I certainly don't expect him to! We'll have the original album remastered, and we've got a bunch of songs we didn't release, and I videoed most of the writing and recording scenario, and all the way to the shows in Osaka and stuff, so, there's a shit load of content, but one of the things I suggested to him, I said; "why don't you do a Jimmy Page mix on the record, and I'll do a David Coverdale mix, and let the fans just get Jimmy's perspective, and mine".

You seem to look back over that period very fondly.
It was a great relationship with Jimmy. The lawyers were furious; they thought they were going to make a bunch of money negotiating this and that, and Jimmy and I just met in New York, shook hands and said everything's 50/50. And we did that like Lennon / McCartney without the bitterness! [laughing].

https://www.eonmusic.co.uk/david-coverdale-whitesnake-eonmusic-interview-october-2020-part-1.html

 

[Led Zeppelin 50th Anniversary]

 

[John Paul Jones Interviewed on BBC Radio 4]

John Paul Jones was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 for the Today Programme about the premiere of his new classical work for London International Festival of Early Music on 5th November.

Here is an excerpt of the interview where he talks about “Thank You”. Those of you in the UK can listen again to the full interview here (2hr25 min in): https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000nvsg

[Available at Newstands (Nearly) Everywhere]

Total Guitar Nov. 2020

 

Guitar Player Dec. 2020

 

 

[Jimmy Page Interview (Rolling Stone)]

 Jimmy Page on His Vision for Led Zeppelin

For the release of a stunning new book, ‘Anthology,’ the guitarist and producer goes deep on several Zep classics, the excellence of John Bonham, and why he’s fascinated with hip-hop

By Kory Grow

Before Jimmy Page will entertain an interview, he has a question of his own: “Do you play the guitar?” The correct answer, of course, is yes. “That’s useful,” he says.

It’s early October when Page calls from the home just outside London where he and his girlfriend have been quarantining since March. “The place has a garden, and you don’t feel quite so under home arrest,” he says. “But we’ve been very, very, very cautious about who we see and who we don’t see, and it’s been just a handful of people in the last six, seven months.”

Page, now 76, has spent the Great Pause reorganizing his book and record collections, and he has started a new routine of picking up his guitar immediately after breakfast. “The minute I’d locked down, I knew I didn’t want to look back on my period and say, ‘Oh, I wish I’d done this or that,'” he says. “I wanted to make sure I did it all.” He has hinted in recent years at working on a new solo album, but during this interview, the musician, who has always enjoyed keeping people guessing, simply says he has been writing new music.

The guitarist reflected on his life a decade ago in broad terms in Jimmy Page by Jimmy Page, a large-scale autobiography in photos. Now Page is holding a magnifying glass to his accomplishments — from his session work with the Who, the Kinks, and the Rolling Stones to his time with the Yardbirds and, of course, his world-changing run in Led Zeppelin — with a new book, Jimmy Page: The Anthology. It emphasizes the music that inspired him, the guitars he used, the clothes he wore, and his memories of recording sessions. He includes photos of all the instruments he played on “Stairway to Heaven” and closeups of tour manifests. His cryptic Zoso symbol from Led Zeppelin’s fourth album appears everywhere. But most exciting are the detailed paragraphs reflecting on his thought processes at the time. It’s not a gritty tell-all revealing backstage lore about drugs and magick, but it is a rare entryway into the mind of one of rock’s great men of mystery.

 

Today, as Page pores over the book’s many photos and considers all the unexpected turns he has taken in his life of music, he beams with pride. He knows he changed the course of popular music several times, and he’s not afraid to say so. He speaks with surprising candor, often explaining how he came up with each innovation in long, thoughtful answers. “The book is quite a long haul, it’s a long read,” he says. “I hope that it would be interesting enough for people who are just interested in, say music, or guitars, or the group, or whatever. But it wouldn’t be totally baffling to somebody who wasn’t, say, like, you or me, a guitarist, that suddenly they would make sense of why there’s six strings or 12 strings or an Indian instrument in there. I hope it is educational in its way.”

You went deep into your archives for this book. What were some of the interesting things that you rediscovered?
There’s an illustration that I did, which is in pen and ink, of a skiffle group when I was in school. My point of access to playing the guitar was skiffle. It was a singing-along, campfire sort of thing, but nevertheless, that was my way in. And in a skiffle group they would have a tea-chest bass, which had a broom handle on it. So it’s got somebody playing the tea-chest bass, and then there’s the people playing guitar, sort of jumping up in the air, which you definitely didn’t do in skiffle, because skiffle was a bit more like folk music and folk audiences. I’m looking at this skiffle group with a rock & roll head, even though I didn’t really know too much about rock & roll really, apart from what I’d seen in photographs. So I thought that [illustration] was quite fun.

What else surprised you?
The session diaries. It’s interesting to see the very first days of when we go in the studio as Led Zeppelin, to start Led Zeppelin I. The times that we were, like, 10 at night, 11 at night. It’s the downtime of the studio. Because we weren’t the Led Zeppelin that we were even a year later, where we could call some shots of going in on the downtime of other people. But it’s interesting to see how efficiently it was done, and the whole journey once we hit. That was in September [1968], and we’ve got the album finished by October, within 30 hours of recording and mixing time. But it comes out in the first week of January over there in the States, and we’re playing in L.A. and then San Francisco in January.

The record was out and it was played on the underground radio stations, and it was traveling like wildfire across the States. We’re on the West Coast traveling towards the East, and all of the underground clubs that we’re playing are pretty much full because people have now heard the record. They’ve heard reports of this band that’s gone into San Francisco, literally decimated it, and they want to see what it is. And by the end of 1969, Led Zeppelin II was out. So you contend with a debut album with all those ideas on it, and then you’ve got that second album with the energy of the road on it, because a lot of it’s recorded while we’re actually touring. It was a really good way to launch a band.

There are some great photos of Led Zeppelin’s first performance, in a town near Copenhagen, when you were going by the New Yardbirds. What was it like to see images from that gig again?
I’m not sure that I remember that particular show, but we played a university or high school, and they showed us to a room where we could sleep, and I slept in the cupboard, because I wasn’t afraid of the dark. But I remember that particularly, as far as the first concerts.

We had the chance to play in Scandinavia in front of a live audience, [and we realized we were] a band with the sort of power that’s inescapable, with dynamics to really catch them out and sort of push them back with the energy of it. Something which you couldn’t not concentrate on or listen to because it just had so many characters to it, so many different shades and dynamics and points of interest. We were able to play the new material we were going to record. We could make it live and breathe and learn by that experience, playing to an audience and see the reactions. The reaction was phenomenal. That gave extra confidence for us to go into the studio, which was what we did, more or less after that — straight into [London’s] Olympic Studios.

Coming out of the Yardbirds, how did you come up with your vision for Led Zeppelin? How did you know that covering something like Joan Baez’s “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You” would work amid heavy blues?
One of the things, which is clear from looking at the book, is that I had eclectic tastes. I met Jeff Beck when we were about 11 or 12 — I mean it really is ridiculous how long we’ve known each other — and he said on many occasions that I had a really eclectic record collection, unlike anybody else that he had known. I had Indian music, Arabic music, classical music, avant-garde music, electronic music, and it was right across the board.

So, yeah, I started on the acoustic guitar, and I still had a love for acoustic playing and everything, really, that was done on six strings. So that could be folk music, it could be classical, or it could be blues. I could appreciate jazz; I couldn’t really necessarily play it, but more in my veins is what I heard of all that sort of riff music coming out of Chicago in the Fifties. And obviously I accessed rockabilly before listening to the blues. So I didn’t let any of these things go. I wanted to play all these different styles. When I had a chance to do an album with the Yardbirds, I was doing acoustic music as well as electric. So we were doing blues things like “Drinking Muddy Water,” and then we’d be doing avant-garde things like “Glimpses” or “White Summer.”

So, having played with the Yardbirds, having played on the whole underground circuit, I could work out what it was I wanted to do, when the band folded. I had quite a lot of the material already. The weirdest thing is I had “Tangerine” written, but I didn’t put that [out] until the third [Led Zeppelin] album. I really did have an idea of how these albums, if we were successful with the first, how they could come out. They’d each be different from the last.

But how did you put those concepts into practice?
When we got Led Zeppelin, when there was this wonderful rhythm section there, I got Robert [Plant] down to my house and we discussed the sort of stuff that I wanted to do. I played him some things. One of them being “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You,” because I’d already worked out what I wanted to do on the guitar. I said, “I know this sounds a bit abstract, but if you can sing that sort of melody, stick to that plaintive melody line Joan Baez is singing, you’ll see how it fits.” He does it, and he’s like, “Yeah, this is great.” It was just a joining of two minds. It was wonderful.

So by the time we went into the rehearsal, it really, really kicked, because now you’ve got four people all firing on all cylinders to the point where it’s one, two, three, four in, and from the very first bar is a life-changing experience for each and every one of us in that room. By the time we finished playing, we’re all looking at each other and smiling because we’d never played with any other musicians to arrive at that sort of chemistry. And that chemistry continued all the way through the band.

How is it that you had all of the Led Zeppelin albums mapped out conceptually?
After the first one was done, we were touring in the States. And I think we started recording the second album in April of ’69 with “Whole Lotta Love,” but I also had “What Is and What Should Never Be.” So what I’m presenting there is the riff-based song, and then something which is lighter, but I’m still employing the heavier dynamics of the drums for the power choruses [on “What Is”], if you like. But it’s the flip side of the coin from “Whole Lotta Love,” so that you’re already presenting the way that it’s going to go.

So how does that work on the third album? The two tracks that I actually present to Robert and John Bonham at the time were “Immigrant Song” and “Friends.” So there’s the hard, hypnotic riff thing with “Immigrant Song,” and John was playing the congas for “Friends” at the time. So that’s leaning towards the acoustic, established sound there. But again, when we went on the road, I was working on what ideas I was putting forward to do to the next album. That’s all there is to it.

You released box sets of the Zeppelin albums in recent years. Did you gain any new insights or new perspectives on Led Zeppelin from those?
No. Only how good it was in the first place.

Nothing surprised you?
This is a hard one to believe, but it’s true: When I had all these quarter-inch tapes, which were sort of reference tapes, I had all these different versions of things, such as different takes of when someone was doing overdubs. All I knew about each tape was the title and the date it was made. But I knew what was coming on each one. It was really weird. It was like a DNA imprint.

I didn’t get caught with something that I didn’t know, apart from the track of the John Paul Jones piano instrumental [“10 Ribs & All/Carrot Pod Pod”] on Presence. When I heard that, I remembered recording it, but I didn’t remember that I’d done so many overdubs on it because it was just done, mixed once, and that was back in 1975. But then again, I just found it reassuring that my memory recall was so precise.

Have you discovered any new recordings since completing the box-sets project?
I recently found a really early [personal demo] tape that had been missing for a long while, but it’s got the full orchestration of “Rain Song.” It goes all through to the very end, the same way that you know it, even with the bit in the middle where it goes a bit heavier, before it goes back to the light and caressing parts. It’s all in there, the Mellotron and everything. And it’s not played as well, like the John Paul Jones version, because I knew he could do a really good job on it. But it’s there, every part of it, every phrase is there, slightly different. And then you hear things that didn’t get used.

There’s a photo in the book of you with a sitar taken in 1962. The Beatles were still singing “Love Me Do” at that point. What pushed you toward Indian music and the avant-garde so early?
We had BBC World Radio and Radio Four over here. Every now and again, they would play music from around the world. That’s where I first heard [composer] Krzysztof Penderecki’s Ode to the Victims of Hiroshima, which is a serious avant-garde piece. Oh, my goodness gracious, I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing. So, in the same way I’d heard Indian music and I’d heard sitar, and I just thought it was so beautiful. I could appreciate the way Indian musicians bent their strings because of the way blues and rockabilly musicians bend guitar strings. It seemed to be so refined, but it still seemed to be really passionate, and it still was saying so much. The thing is, with Indian music, there was a structure to it, and there was a science to it. It was mathematical, as well. I just really thought, “Well, I can try and do this on the guitar, but I think you’d probably do yourself a favor to try and access an instrument that really is a sitar.” So, that’s what I did.

I had a chance to meet Ravi Shankar at a small concert hall in London. There was a lady that had a friend who knew him. And she said, “I can introduce him to you.” I remember distinctly that we were the youngest people in that room. He was very generous. He told me what the tuning was on the sitar, because I didn’t know. And then, I went back and got the thing in tune. And all of a sudden, it was singing to me. It was marvelous.

I don’t think people realize how many avant-garde techniques you brought to rock, between your interest in Indian music, playing a theremin, using the violin bow on a guitar.
Oh, they don’t. One of the things I brought into the equation, as a session musician, was the distortion box, the overdrive box. It was called a fuzz box at the time. I met [electrical engineer] Roger Mayer at a session, and he said, “Is there something in electronic music, with the guitar, that you could think of that would be a good asset to have?” And I said, “Yeah, absolutely.” I played him music with overdriven guitar, and I said, “That’s what it needs.” I think I had this tape recorder at the time; if you plugged the guitar straight into the mic socket, you could get this really, really distorted sound. You could play a note, and you could get infinite sustain on it.

He went away, and he came back with this thing. I was doing studio work at the time, and I had this thing [he made] in the back of my amplifier. It was quite small. Normally, session producers would say, “Have you got anything for this song?” And I’d just come up with riffs. This time, I said, “Let’s see if [the fuzz box] works.” So I put it in, and the faces of the other guitarists, who were seven years older than me, turned ashen white, because they thought, “Oh, my God. This little punk is really filling all the different roles of guitar playing, and now he’s got this thing.” Anyway. It got established immediately, and I was getting called up to do sessions. “Bring your own fuzz box,” et cetera.

Were you bringing your fuzz box to your sessions with the Who and the Kinks at the time?
Yes, I did. You can hear the fuzz box on the Kinks’ first album. I think on the B side of the Who’s “I Can’t Explain,” “Bald Headed Woman,” I think there’s a few phrases on the fuzz box that come out on that.

You once said that your idea of going into the Yardbirds was that you and Jeff Beck could replicate a big-band horn sound with your guitars.
Yes. We did that for the short time that we were all together doing it. It’s great fun. And then also I was being able to play the bow while he was playing that sort of stuff. It was like, “Wow. This is great. This is great.” But then I tried to do it all on my own [laughs].

Jeff Beck once told me the Sunday-night jam sessions that you and he would do were important, because you learned who played what on Elvis Presley’s and Gene Vincent’s records. Was it a similar epiphany for you?
The very first time I met Jeff, I said, “What’s your version of [Little Walter’s] ‘My Babe’?” to see how he played it. And I said, “Yeah, well, I’ve been doing it like this.” He just had an instant rapport with me. He had a homemade guitar at the time, and I’m sure he’d be very proud to say that. We were just two kids. We’d heard rock & roll. We’d heard these guitarists, and there was no turning back. Even at that age, in our teens, that’s it. We’re committed.

As each release came, with the Gene Vincent stuff, it was really challenging to even attempt to play it. But once you had a solid-body guitar, as opposed to a cello body, it became more doable. Nevertheless, you were fueled to do the best you could, and it’s quite right. I mean, one of the records that stopped you in your tracks was [1956’s] Johnny Burnette and the Rock n’ Roll Trio. The musical glue of that record is just absolutely phenomenal, and the guitar playing was so abstract to anything else that I’d ever heard.

It’s interesting that you guys were listening to the depth of sound and breaking out who did what. Did that inform how you produced records later?
You could hear the ambiance of the room, and go, “Oh, that’s so and so.” On Little Richard, you could hear what was done or how you thought it was done. When I became a studio musician, then I really had a chance to do a self-imposed apprenticeship, because I could learn how things were done in recording. I could see how producers went about it. I could see how the musical arrangers went about it. That was fine for me, because they’d say, “Make up your own path.” Brilliant. I don’t mind that. And then, when I got a rapport with the engineers, then I could say, “I’ve got [a record] I’d like you to hear. How do you think it’s done? I’ve got my idea about how it’s done.” It was all a learning curve. I knew how to make the whole thing work economically for everybody, because I had this discipline.

Did paying attention to the ambiance of the room on the records you listened to inspire what you did with producing John Bonham’s drums?
Well, it’s harder to do with drums. I played with the best drummers in the world of studio musicians. They had the cream of the crop. I got to see how they would put these really good drummers, who had really wonderful acoustic sounds to their drums, into these isolated booths. So now you couldn’t see them apart from through plexiglass. You couldn’t hear them because they were trying to mute down all the instruments. And you’d hear the playback, and the drummer would look so disappointed because he was playing his heart out, but the drums sounded just like anything in a packing case. All of these harmonics in the drums were being sucked into all the muting, the sound baffles, and things. So it was losing the whole thing of an acoustic instrument.

I learned that really quickly. And when I heard John Bonham, I knew instinctively what to do. It was to mic him from above, so you could get all these harmonics coming off of his drums, because he knew how to tune his drums. Actually, his drums were tuned to the keys of our tracks. But that’s how it was to have distance, making depth with the microphones.

You can really hear the effect of the room on his drums on a song like “When the Levee Breaks.”
When we were recording at Headley [Grange, a stone house where Led Zeppelin cut their fourth album], we started off recording in the living room there, and then a second drum kit appears. We don’t see it, but it’s been set up in the great hall there. And when John Bonham starts playing it, the reverberation in this hallway, which is where the stairway goes up, like three floors, and it’s a wooden staircase, tiled floor, the reflective surfaces are magnificent. So the whole kit is literally sort of singing in this huge void. I heard the drums there and I knew exactly what we should do. We did “When the Levee Breaks,” which was something that we’d done in the studio called “If It Keeps on Raining,” and it doesn’t sound anything like that. But I just knew, and I could hear in my head what we were going to do there, what the drum sounds were with this reverberation in there. And then I did the overdubs, that were done immediately.

Once we did the run-through of the bass, guide voice, and the guitar, I went straight about putting on the backwards guitar on it. I went straight about getting Robert Plant to do the harmonica parts, because I wanted to do a backwards harmonica part with like a straightforward echo. But I knew what it was straight away, and everything was done so quickly. So I just sort of instinctively knew it from hearing the drums being set up and John just practicing on the drums.

It’s definitely evocative.
Yeah. I could hear it. I could visualize what it was. It’s not like that all the time, or else I really would be in a different league, but it is what it is.

If I’m playing guitar, which is what I’ve been doing in the lockdown, I play things which I know that I know. And then before I know where I am, I’m improvising. And then before too much time the improvising has turned into something else, which is something I haven’t played before. In other words, I’ve written something new. So it’s all part of being an unschooled musician, having learnt yourself. And I suppose you pick up these sort of habits, some good, some bad. You have your own way of going about it, whereas another musician, who’s schooled, he’d probably say play scales all day long.

On the subject of John Bonham, are you able to explain for someone who’s not a drummer why he was so important and so irreplaceable?
Well, the first track of the first album is “Good Times, Bad Times,” and that’s no accident. The reason why it’s on there is because it’s actually quite a short piece of music, but it sums up so much in so many ideas, all in one go. It’s just an explosion that hits you. But one of the key factors of it, apart from the riff, is the actual drumming, because what he does on the drums during that track just changes people’s attitude to drums overnight. That’s all there is to it.

One of the other things that he could do was a roll on the bass drum with one foot and one pedal. It wasn’t two bass drums; it was one foot. You might hear people say, “Oh, I can do that.” But the thing is, you see how long they can do it for, and they’ll soon pack up. They might do it just for a little bit, but he could do it for ages. His technique was just out of this world, but he had the imagination to go with it as well.

So, yes, John Bonham could get a lot of volume out of his drums, not by forehand smashes, but just because he knew how to tune the drums in such a way that they would project. He would have a natural balance to everything he was playing. And then he’d give a bass-drum accent that you’d feel it go into your stomach. His technique was just amazing. He was such fun to play with. But the other thing was that he loved Led Zeppelin. He really loved the band, and he used to play the music at home. So we had a lot of fun, and a lot of fun improvising onstage.

I’ve read that after you did In Through the Out Door, you and Bonham wanted to make a heavier Led Zeppelin album. What was your vision for that?
Well, yeah, we were already doing stuff in 1980. We did a tour of Europe. I think the way to put it is like this: Presence was a guitar album. After that record, John Paul Jones had acquired a “Dream Machine,” a Yamaha [synthesizer]. Stevie Wonder also had one. So it had given him a lot of inspiration. He suddenly actually wrote whole numbers, which he hadn’t done before, and I thought the way to go with this is to feature John Paul Jones on the keyboard. He’d written some stuff with Robert. I thought, “Well, that’s great.” Obviously, at that time, I thought I knew how this album [In Through the Out Door] is shaping up, but the next album is going to be a departure from the keyboard album.

After the sessions for In Through the Out Door, John Bonham and I were discussing how we wanted to do a sort of more riff-based entity, and harder and trickier. And then, of course, I know what sort of drums he liked to play. He liked to play, like, really hard; he liked to play stuff that people heard it, they’d go, “Wow, what’s that?” I like to do that as well with the guitar parts. We had a bit of an idea of what we might do, but basically, it was not going to be a keyboard album. There would be keyboards on it maybe, but it was going to go more into another vein. It would be different to anything that had been there before. We didn’t get a chance to do that, obviously, because we lost John.

What is it that has attracted you to writing heavy music?
Do you mean the sort of intensity of it or the passion of it?

Yeah.
I guess a lot of that comes from all the music that has been quite pivotal in one way or the other to me hearing it, or accessing something at some point of time and it making a difference, and the way that it affected me when I heard it. So then when you get the full scale of that with something like classical music, or when you’ve got so many layers and textures of it, or you’ve got something like, let’s see, Muddy Waters and “Long Distance Call,” and you’ve got Muddy Waters playing slide, and let’s say Dick Crawford on bass, and you’ve got Little Walter on electric harmonica coming through an amplifier, and you hear this spine-chilling music, all of that has an effect.

There’s a photo in the book of all the guitars that you used on “Stairway to Heaven.” Did you go into that thinking, “I’m going to write this piece that uses all these different instruments”?
Yeah, insomuch as I wrote it on the Harmony [acoustic] guitar, and I worked out how the thing was going to run for the parts that were going to be the vocal. And then I had the bit which I called “the fanfare,” which is where the 12-strings really sing out before it goes into the solo. And I had all the chords for the solo, and the solo chords were going to be the end section.

I had all of that on the acoustics, and I ran through it with the rest of the band, and then we went to record it. Just as soon as we had the whole run of the track, then I started laying on the 12-string. So I think I put the Vox 12-string on it first, and I wanted to use one 12-string on the left and one on the right, so there would be just a slight sound difference between the Vox 12-string, and the Fender 12-string. Of course, they all come together for what I call the fanfare before the guitar solo.

And then there is a solo that’s put on it, and basically that is the whole of the run for the thing. It’s mainly the acoustic, and the two 12-strings are driving it all the way through, and then there’s the solo.

How did you figure out what to do with it live?
Obviously, “Stairway” has got to be done live, because it’s quite an epic, and we haven’t done anything like that, and nor has anybody else done anything quite like that. So I thought, “How’s the way that I’m going to approach it? Six-string acoustic, 12-string? I know, I’ll get a double-neck for a 12-string and 6-string.” And I got onto Gibson, and they sent over the double-neck, which I’ve still got that, and I still play that one.

So, in actual fact, the song dictated the guitar. I couldn’t have done it on anything else. Now you see a double-neck and you think, “Oh, it’s Jimmy Page. I know. Or is it someone else?” But it probably is Jimmy Page if it’s a red one.

The Zoso sigil from the fourth album is all throughout the book in so many different ways. What does it mean to you now?
Basically, how I arrived at it is when we did the fourth album … [Pauses]. Sorry, you’re Rolling Stone, but we’d had so much bad press from people who couldn’t understand the fact that you’d do Led Zeppelin II, following it with Led Zeppelin III, which is an album with lots of acoustic guitars. Well, actually acoustic guitars were on the first album, second album, and the third albums, but they couldn’t understand that a band wanted to be so radical, to change what they were doing. Not only that, but to be onstage and then improvise like the way that we did. They couldn’t get their heads around it, nor did they want to. So by the time the fourth album came around, we wanted to put it out with no information on it whatsoever, because people was saying we were this, we were that, we were a hype, it was a con. Well, yeah, OK. Let’s see any other hype or con come out with music of this sort of caliber. Well, they can’t.

Let’s see how they wrestle with “Black Dog,” “Levee Breaks,” “Battle of Evermore,” and “Stairway to Heaven,” to name but a few. And we’ll put no information on the album whatsoever. And it’ll just go out. There’ll be no information. But then there was an idea of how craftsman of days gone by had their own stamp, sort of like a trademark, but a pictorial stamp, so you’d know it was that person. So it went from that idea of one sort of sigil, one idea, to the best idea, which was that everybody came up with their own sigil or their own symbol. So everybody did.

So I accessed my symbol or my sigil, and that is what it is. And [the record label] put it first. Then people thought, “Oh, actually, the album’s called whatever that symbol might interpret if you were to use it phonetically.” So that wasn’t the intention, but it doesn’t matter if it did, and it doesn’t matter if it didn’t. What it means to me now is that that I made a good choice [in selecting it]. It’s sort of instantly recognizable, and it’s lasted a long while, since whenever it is 16th century or whenever it was originally around, to 1971 and beyond. [Pauses] I hope that answer is as evasive as you hoped it would be.

Yes, it was. There are some great photos of your outfits in the book. I’m looking at the dragon suit, and I’m impressed by how it’s in such pristine condition.
Well, what is extraordinary about that is that I lent that suit to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and I got it back and I was shocked. It looked as though it was just manufactured. There was no marks on it where the [guitar] strap had been on the shoulder. And I thought this really is a magical garment. I mean, it really is. The poppy suit is a little more beaten up than that, but it’s in extraordinary condition.

After Led Zeppelin, you recorded with some members of Yes for a group dubbed XYZ, as in Ex-Yes and Zep. Since those XYZ recordings have never come out, how did those sound?
If you know the precision of Yes, you know how technically brilliant they were. And so I was in there with Chris Squire, the extraordinary bass player, and Alan White, the drummer, and they had suggested that we go it together. Why not do that? It was the first thing that I did after we’d lost John Bonham, and I thought, “Well, if there’s ever anything like trying to jump in the deep end, this is it.” Because these guys are so good. And I mean, I’d heard the guitar playing Steve Howe would do and I thought, “Well, let’s see how it works.”

So I went in there, and we did some of the songs that they’d already worked on, and then I came up with my guitar parts for these things, and that was really interesting. And Chris was singing on them. I thought, “I’ve really had to concentrate,” because it’s things in different time signatures. I mean it was a serious workout. But it was great. It was brilliant. And then I said, “I’ve got one,” and I played them what actually becomes “Fortune Hunter” with the Firm.

And then I saw that actually they had trouble. I thought, “Oh, I see. OK. Well, they’ve really worked on what they’ve got here, which is probably all they do [with] all the Yes stuff. But it’s not just improvising.”

“Fortune Hunter” was good. I’m not that familiar with Yes music, to know whether some of the things that we played got actually used in the Yes material. Because I can say to you, “Well, yes, there was the one that became ‘Fortune Hunter,’ but it was a totally different sort of onset when it was done with Chris. And it’s more like a guitar instrumental with Chris and I.”

Will those XYZ recordings ever come out?
Unfortunately, we’ve lost Chris now. It was something that I always hoped to do, as some sort of project, to get hold of him and Alan. It’s not even worth talking about, because it’s all speculation. I haven’t had a chance to really listen to the stuff and see just exactly what we do have, and what we don’t have. I don’t have any mixdowns of it. If I did, I’m not quite sure where they are now.

In the Eighties, Bonham’s drumming became one of the foundational sounds in hip-hop. You later collaborated with Puff Daddy on a track that used music from “Kashmir.” Why is hip-hop significant to you?
You’re a product of your musical environment. I’m someone who learned the acoustic guitar and a few campfire or skiffle songs, and then bit by bit learned how to play the electric guitar and developed my own style. I wanted to investigate, like Sir Richard Burton [the 19-century British explorer], trying to find the source of the Nile. So it’s your environment. Without talking about the samples of our music, you could tell with hip-hop that they were sort of educated in so many areas, the stuff that they listened to, and they knew how to combine it and make it into another art form. Well, that’s great. Because I mean, that’s basically what happens with Led Zeppelin.

Hip-hop fascinated me, the whole culture of what it was and breakdancing and all this whole thing coming from the street. I thought it was great. It was really good and some brave stuff.

And I tell you, when Puff Daddy, as he was at the time, got in contact and said that he wanted to do this thing, I thought, “Wow. Yeah, yeah. We’ve been sampled enough. Why not do it for real?” So I thought it was great. And it was an epic thing that he did. He put two orchestras on it, for heaven’s sake [laughs]. We never had that sort of luxury. And when I did Saturday Night Live with him, it was phenomenal. He did a couple of run-throughs and then the take, and he was different on each one. He was somebody who was improvising, and I admired his work.

Did it make you hear “Kashmir” in a different way?
Well, yeah. The whole riff of “Kashmir” is like a round, and then you’ve got this cascading stuff, like you hear the brass parts on the final record. It’s just like “Whole Lotta Love.” Have you seen any of these mash-ups that’ve been on the internet, with the James Brown one and there’s Black Sabbath, and there’s this and there’s that, Snoop Doggy Dogg? There’s all these various versions with “Whole Lotta Love” because it’s a great riff.

There’s some super-clever stuff, but what it is for me, it’s like, “Great. If people think that riff is so inspiring that they want to do this with James Brown, for heaven’s sake, thank you very much. Count me in.” [Laughs]. And I’ve had great fun with seeing all these things, and what it is, is something like “Whole Lotta Love,” people sort of love that riff, and when they play [it], it brings a smile to their face, and that’s great. That’s why I play music. That’s why I want to create music.

Has all of that changed how you view your legacy?
I wanted to create music to make something that would change people’s lives and get them happy for some time. That’s what it’s all about. And if you’ve managed to do something where you’ve just learned a couple of chords to start with, and you’ve managed to turn it into your profession, and you’re being so serious about it that you’ve been able to make inroads with it, whether it was as a studio musician or with the Yardbirds or Led Zeppelin, and you’ve managed to make music that’s made a difference to people, being able to pass on the baton to young people of all I learned from James Burton and the Rock and Roll Trio, and Albert King, Freddie King, and B.B. King, and Muddy Waters, and Robert Johnson, and this melting pot, that, to me, is the lifetime achievement. You’ve made a difference. So, that’s really cool.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/jimmy-page-anthology-interview-bonham-led-zeppelin-1074825/

[JPJ Commissioned by London International Festival of Early Music]

John Paul Jones Commissioned by London International Festival of Early Music

The London International Festival of Early Music (LIFEM) has just announced the world premiere performance of ‘The Tudor Pull’, a newly commissioned work by John, written for acclaimed viol consort Fretwork.

The world premiere of the newly composed piece will be broadcast at 7.00pm on Thursday 5th November from the LIFEM website, www.lifem.org

This isn’t the first time that John’s music has been performed at LIFEM, his hauntingly beautiful Amores Pasados, settings of three Spanish poems were performed by tenor John Potter at the 2018 festival, but this new work breaks new ground for an annual event that is a unique celebration of past musical genius and contemporary talent. Commenting on his new work Jones said:

‘I’ve been an admirer of Fretwork for some time, and was thrilled at the commission to write a piece for them to premiere at the London International Festival of Early Music.

The Tudor Pull is inspired by a colourful pageant that takes place on the River Thames in full Tudor costume. Every year a flotilla of small traditional rowing boats follow the Queen’s Rowbarge, Gloriana, from Hampton Court to the Tower of London, and there to take part in a ceremony to present an ancient artefact, the ‘Stela’, to the Governor of the Tower.

I wanted to invoke the excitement of the event, as well as have a sense of the ever-changing moods and pace of the river.’ 

 

https://www.johnpauljones.com/jpj-commissioned-by-london-international-festival-of-early-music/

 

[Jimmy Page Interview: Esquire (Oct. 2020)]

Jimmy Page Is Still Practicing

The legendary Led Zeppelin guitarist has nothing left to prove. But when he picks up his instrument, the ideas keep on coming.

Oct 20, 2020

“I don’t do face calls and all of that,” says Jimmy Page. “Because I’m a creature of habit, I usually end up holding the phone to my ear as opposed to looking at the image.”

Fair enough. So a regular call it is from a chatty and affable Page, 76, who is currently riding out the pandemic at his home in Southeast England. The occasion is the release of the new photo collection Jimmy Page: The Anthology, which gathers hundreds of images spanning the career of this guitar colossus, from his days as an in-demand session musician up to his recent oversight of reissues of the Led Zeppelin catalogue and his participation in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Play it Loud” instrument exhibit. The twist is that the book (which was first published earlier this year as a very pricey signed limited edition) focuses on items from his personal archive—studio notes, stage costumes and, of course, gaggles of guitars and piles of musical gear.

The Anthology is something of a companion to his 2014 book Jimmy Page by Jimmy Page. “The first book was the autobiography in photographs,” he says. “That’s something I always wanted to do, because I don’t know anyone else who has done something like that. But this one is the detail behind the detail, so you get close up and personal with things, even quite invasive with the guitars—if they’d seen a photograph of the dragon suit, now they’re going to be able to see it in really close detail.”

Mostly, The Anthology illustrates the tale of a boy whose family moved into a house where the previous owners had left a guitar, an accident that set him on a lifelong quest. “The guitar made an intervention into my life, that’s the way I see it,” he says. “And then I became totally obsessed—the guitar just became another limb, like it was grafted on.”

Along the way, Page’s text covers moments like acquiring a sitar in 1962, years before George Harrison discovered Indian music, or playing sessions with Nico and checking out the Velvet Underground in a New York nightclub (“They were incredible,” he says, “I could never work out why people weren’t going to see them”).

Other parts of the story, like the vision for and recording of Led Zeppelin’s earth-shaking first album, are broken down step by step. “It was all moving so fast,” he says of that record’s creation. “You wouldn’t be able to catch your breath at the pace this stuff was being done at. It wasn’t being done in a hurry, it was just on a mission.”

It’s been years since we got new music from Page; most of his efforts in the 21st Century have focused on maintaining and burnishing Led Zeppelin’s legacy. But when you’ve seen and done the things he has, you have to wonder what there is left to prove.

“When I look back on it,” says Jimmy Page, “it feels something like a charmed life.”

Esquire: How are you holding up through quarantine? What’s a typical day for Jimmy Page?

Jimmy Page: I locked down in February. It was rumored that the over-70s were going to be locked down, so I was being pretty cautious anyway and really keeping my distance. I’m very fortunate that I have a place in the country as opposed to my main place, which is in London, so I went out there and basically been locked down ever since.

Initially, it gave the opportunity to deal with the things that you were always complaining about because you didn’t have enough time! It was good to be able to sort out my books in the library and actually do some reading—I’m pretty bad about getting books and then not reading them. So it was a good opportunity to catch up with that, and to properly visit my record collection and get that into order.

My routine was, after I had breakfast, I started playing the guitar, because I had so much administrative work to do that I wasn’t playing as much as I wanted to. Then more recently, the emails started flying around again and you get back into the admin stuff, but I haven’t stopped playing the guitar.

Are you playing towards any particular end?

Basically, if I play the guitar, I usually come up with new stuff anyway. I’ve always done that, going back to being a session musician. Playing around on some theme, or something from the past, I’ll come up with something that I didn’t have before. It’s not “Oh, my God, stop the world,” but it means that flair for spontaneity hasn’t left me—and I’m touching wood, because it would be a sad day if it ever does.

So I was doing things like checking out exactly how I played certain things on the records, because over the years, they would mutate a bit, so I thought, let’s see exactly what it was. But one thing I didn’t ever do was to play scales. When I did guitar magazine interviews, they always looked at me in amazement because I didn’t practice scales. I guess I had so much other stuff that I actually wanted to play and practice. This comes with being an unschooled musician; I’ve got my own ways of doing things.

Why did you start keeping all of this ephemera, especially from the early years, that we see in the book? Did you have a sense that this stuff could turn out to be important?

It’s interesting, isn’t it? Somebody asked, are you a hoarder? No, but the point is that I knew at the time that what I was involved in was really a phenomenon—since hitting in the ‘50s, when rock and roll kicked off—and I gave my life to that, I knew that’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t think I was going to be successful at it, I’ve got to say, but I just knew that’s what I wanted to be part of.

So all of these things happened, like being a studio musician and having these diaries where you would you log in the sessions that you had coming up. Bit by bit, I collected those sort of things. When I moved houses, I had two suitcases full and I didn’t want this stuff to be mislaid, so I left it with my parents. But I did carry on collecting things, in an archive sort of way—being the producer of Led Zeppelin, I had all the acetates and test pressings, some of the clothes that I wore as a studio musician, or even a drawing that I did on the back of a music book.

When you think back on sessions, do you think of them in terms of the gear and the set-up? Is that what defines, say, recording “Stairway to Heaven” for you?

I thought for the book, it would be interesting to pick one or two songs from each album and show the equipment that was used as best I could. So the classic one is that you’ve got the Harmony guitar—the first four albums were all written on that guitar, and “Stairway” was played on that guitar. Then the first overdubs were on electric 12-strings, one a Vox and one a Fender. So the set-up for the photograph is the guitar it was written on, and on each side is the 12-string that make up all the texture. But then the big thing about it was, how am I going to do this live? And that’s when I came across the idea of doing it on the double neck because I could pull off the 6-string work and the 12-string work on one guitar.

So what the photograph portrays is that these are the instruments that were literally used on “Stairway,” and then this was the guitar that needed to be acquired in order to play the song live. It gives people an inside view, where they maybe read about this stuff in the past, I wanted to be really authoritative with what I was doing.

Last month was the fortieth anniversary of John Bonham’s passing. What thoughts did that bring up?

I could go on for hours and hours talking about John Bonham. But on that first album, the very first track is “Good Times Bad Times.” And I think I can safely say that the drum pattern on that song changed drumming overnight. He brought an attitude to the drums that hadn’t existed before, and he developed so many techniques along the way that nobody had even thought of.

It was just wonderful working with him. I just loved it. You’d have these long improvisations like on “Dazed and Confused”—the thing started getting longer and longer, it got like a classical piece, in movements—and it was all guitar-led, but we were so in sync with each other that you could try all this stuff. I’d give him the nod and he would know something was coming and it was almost like ESP—not only with him, all the band, but that was the key character I was working with.

It’s such a tragic loss, just for the music he would have been making all those years. Who knows what he would have done? I hope I would have done it with him along the way.

The last Zeppelin project that was announced was a documentary for the band’s fiftieth anniversary. What’s going on with that?

Well, I did all my parts for it. I can’t give you any of the secrets away. I’m not sure but I think that it’s got slowed up relative to the Covid virus. So I can’t give you the exact date, but I’m sure it will get finished.

But it does hit, the way the virus has changed everything. On the previous book, there were all these marvelous things I was able to do. I did a Q&A at the Ace Hotel in LA with Chris Cornell, all these interesting events, different ways to do book signings. I always like to think of things that are different to what others are doing.

Well, we all need to think about doing things differently now.

Yes, we have, haven’t we? I better keep practicing the guitar. Maybe I might even be able to play it live outside.

Have you thought about doing any kind of virtual performances or events?

Well, one of the reasons why I enjoyed being in groups when I was young was the camaraderie, the ambience of the concert and the audience—though I must admit that in the early days, there wasn’t that many that came along. But it was that whole thing of playing with other musicians and having that musical conversation. I’m not the sort of person where, “We’re doing this record out in LA, let’s send the file to Jimmy Page and he’ll put his guitar on there.” I don’t do that. So I couldn’t really see me doing something on the screen, on Zoom or one of those. But it’s hard to say, because in another six months I might be craving doing it on Zoom.

Does it make you think that when things come back, you’d be more eager to play?

I’m not thinking about going back out there. I’m working on quite a lot of stuff at the moment. I’m always working on projects, and more often than not, on projects that have multiple installments, like my website or the Led Zeppelin re-releases. So that’s the sort of level that I go into things, it’s not just some sort of yes, no, sign off without really knowing what it is. I get right in there—and that’s a good way to summarize the book, I get right in there with every sort of detail. So who knows what the next thing will be, but I can guarantee I’ll have put a lot of work into it.

 

By Alan Light

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a34417764/jimmy-page-2020-interview/

 

[Visiting Bron-Yr-Aur]

3 hours ago, reids said:

I hope Jimmy, JPJ & Robert go back there and record video for the documentary listed on the other thread (if they haven’t already).

R😎

First photo is at JPJ's house and the color one is something I made about 20 years ago, as part of a Bron-y-Aur animation for the homepage. 
Only JP and RP were actually at Bron-YR-Aur, not the whole band.

[Jimmy's tone on Celebration Day (the song)]

If I remember correctly, JPJ said it was a Danelectro bass on his lap, using a slide.

[Them Crooked Vultures - Royal Albert Hall Live Stream (2010) for Teenage Cancer Trust]

 

[Available at Newstands (Nearly) Everywhere]

Shindig - issue #105

 

[Limited Edition Reissue Of “Immigrant Song” Japanese 7” Single (Press Release)]

[Oct. 8] Available to pre-order now: a limited edition, 7" vinyl replica of the Japanese version of the album’s only single: “Immigrant Song” b/w the non-album track “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do".  Only 19,700 copies available - pre-order here: https://Rhino.lnk.to/ImmigrantSong

More info at ledzeppelin.com

 

[Led Zeppelin or Related on YouTube]

Sandie Shaw in 1969 became the first musician to cover Led Zeppelin - Your Time Is Gonna Come:

[Limited Edition Reissue Of “Immigrant Song” Japanese 7” Single (Press Release)]

Update: 1/14/21: With great regret, Warner Music must inform Led Zeppelin fans that the “Immigrant Song / Hey, Hey, What Can I Do” 7” single has been cancelled. We sincerely apologise for any disappointment or inconvenience this may have caused.

Refunds will be available at point of purchase.

______________________________________________________________

 

Limited Edition Reissue Of “Immigrant Song” Japanese 7” Single

Available For Pre-Order This Thursday

[Oct. 8 update: PRE-ORDER IS NOW AVAILABLE!]

Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Bonham and John Paul Jones released Led Zeppelin III 50 years ago today in the U.S., on October 5, 1970, with the U.K. and other countries following a few weeks later. The band’s third album in less than two years, it would top the charts in several countries – including the U.S. and the U.K. – on its way to selling more than 13 million copies worldwide. Beyond its overwhelming commercial success, the album also represented a turning point musically for Led Zeppelin as the group expanded its hard-hitting sound to embrace a wider range of styles on acoustic-based songs like “That’s The Way,” “Tangerine,” and “Bron-Y-Aur-Stomp.”

In celebration of the record’s 50th anniversary, the band will reissue the Japanese version of the album’s only single – “Immigrant Song” b/w the non-album track “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do” – on 7” vinyl. Limited to 19,700 copies, it comes in a sleeve that replicates the original artwork. The single will be released on January 15, 2021 and can be pre-ordered at www.ledzeppelin.com starting this Thursday at 3PM BST/10AM EST.

“Immigrant Song” was a Top 20 hit in the U.S. and has gone on to become one of the band’s most popular and enduring songs, currently ranking as their second most-streamed track worldwide. It’s also had an enduring impact on pop culture thanks to several memorable appearances in blockbuster motion pictures such as School Of Rock and, most recently, in Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok.

“Immigrant Song” and its lyrical references to Norse mythology were inspired by the band’s concert in Reykjavik, Iceland on June 22, 1970. Six days later, the song made its live debut in England at the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music. That fall, it would appear as the lead-off track on Led Zeppelin III.

Following the whirlwind success of the band’s first two albums and near constant touring, there was an initial rehearsal with Plant and Bonham where Page presented “Immigrant Song,” “Friends,” and what became “Out On The Tiles.”  Page and Plant then took to the now famous Bron-Yr-Aur cottage in Wales in 1970 to have a musical sabbatical. The remote 18th-century cottage – which lacked electricity and running water - became home to “That’s The Way.”  

Page and Plant later convened with Bonham and Jones for rehearsals before recording began in earnest that May with engineer Andy Johns. The band recorded the album in several locations, including London’s Olympic Studios and Island Studios.  Following the recording sessions, Page, who produced the album, took the mixed master tapes to Ardent Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, to make the cut for vinyl. Fueled by classic tracks such as “Since I’ve Been Loving You,, “Out On The Tiles,” and “Celebration Day,” Led Zeppelin III has been certified 6x platinum in the U.S. alone while also achieving multi-platinum status in many other countries.

Beyond the music, the album is noteworthy for another reason; it’s innovative artwork. When it was originally released on vinyl, Led Zeppelin III came packaged in a gatefold sleeve, conceived by Page and designed by multi-media artist Zacron (aka Richard Drew), whom Page had met in the early 1960s when Drew was attending Kingston College of Art. For his design, Zacron created a surreal collection of images (planes, birds and butterflies) surrounding several cutout holes. Behind the cover, he placed a rotating disc (volvelle or wheel chart) that featured more images, including photos of all four band members. When the disc was turned by hand, different images would appear in the openings to create an interactive visual experience.

Led Zeppelin III

Side 1
1.    Immigrant Song
2.    Friends
3.    Celebration Day
4.    Since I’ve Been Loving You
5.    Out On The Tiles

Side 2
1.    Gallows Pole
2.    Tangerine
3.    That’s The Way
4.    Bron-Y-Aur Stomp
5.    Hats Off To (Roy) Harper

###

 

https://www.ledzeppelin.com/news/limited-edition-reissue-immigrant-song-japanese-7-single-1273441

 

 

[Jimmy opened Rebuilt Harrow Harbour 1979]

[Robert Plant: Digging Deep: Subterranea]

Robert Plant Talks ‘Digging Deep’ Solo Anthology, His ‘Golden God’ Moment, Missing John Bonham

With a new compilation out now, the singer reflects on how he changed course after Led Zeppelin, his “post–trip-hop” phase, and more

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/robert-plant-interview-digging-deep-led-zeppelin-john-bonham-1068391/

 

 

[Them Crooked Vultures - Royal Albert Hall Live Stream (2010) for Teenage Cancer Trust]

Tune in Friday the 16th of October for a rare stream of
Them Crooked Vultures
performance at
Royal Albert Hall
in 2010 as part of #TeenageCancerGigs
Teenage Cancer Trust

Subscribe on YT now for a reminder: https://www.youtube.com/TCTUnseen
To view the full lineup of events or find ways to donate, visit: http://teenagecancertrust.org/unseen

https://www.johnpauljones.com/them-crooked-vultures-royal-albert-hall-live-stream-for-teenage-cancer-trust/

[Remembering John Bonham.]

"Nights With Alice Cooper"
40 YEARS ON: LED ZEPPELIN’S JOHN BONHAM REMEMBERED

https://nightswithalicecooper.com/2020/09/25/40-years-on-led-zeppelins-john-bonham-remembered/

 

 

[Remembering John Bonham.]