HEARTBREAKER SOLO: Spliced together from 10 tapes

[ddot]

All right check this out, I splice this stuff all the time. You can use ten reels of solos real easy, just roll tape and start doing thing. Then you go back and listen to all the solos and just take the best few parts and nick em together, totally a pagy thing to do, no big deal.

just because you have 10 tapes doesn't mean you take little bits from each performance, the song is spliced together already. I read somewhere probably here that page said" its important to always have the tape rolling when mixing because you never know what youll get." how i remember it.

Pete townsend did like 3500 splices baba oriely.

Then after you have the coolist most casual vibes pieced together, when you play live- you kinda just play like the record.

Thats how you get records to sound spontaniuos- because they are, but when your playing spontainous sometimes you get shitty stuff in there to because your taking risks.

hence you edit out the shit stuff and are left with the cool stuff.

Ill go back and listen and tell where the edits are, its usually obvious once you know what your looking for.

I have to admit however that I would have never have thought this when listening to heartbreaker as a child but now I know- thats how its done

Page invented a lot those techniques

[ddot]

yup just as I thought, 2:15 for sure and 2;21 most likely. Think like an editor-after a complete phrase- good time to get in

I mean just guessing, I hear all kinds of shit in those records- lots of times im wrong- no big deal.

think about it though, the first album went real good---the second album shaping up nicely. "just roll the tape ill do it in 3 passes---unlikely---he would have wanted to think long and hard about it and have lots of option you can be sure, but i wasnt there

[nirvana]

i don't know, really, does it matter how many takes it took to get a good, but not great, solo? Yes it would be cool if he did it in 3 or less takes

but Jimmy is such a perfectionist he probably pieced together the Heartbreaker solo and lost track on just how many "pieces" it took in the end.

1, 3, 10, 100 - it all blended together for him to get what he wanted. Which in the end was just a good solo and fit the song. Nothing earth-shaking.

Now, it would be a REAL revelation if we can find out how the hell he did the Achilles Last Stand Opus with a million over-dubs and is sooo

epic and grand as well as the rest of Presence in such a short time...IMO ALS is a much, much better guitar based song than STH will ever be.

ALS may be the best and most intense guitar based song ever pieced together! Just give a close listen - there's a lot going on in that song!

Forget the Heartbreaker non-sense...

[Ledbomb333]

There are numerous attempts at the Heartbreaker guitar solo takes as evidenced on the Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin II Classic Records 45rpm Treasured Version (Empress Valley Supreme Disc - EVSD-953), 1CD [2017] boot, with Page saying "I'll do another couple" at the beginning of the available tape, which has several cuts. Definitely a day when Jimmy lost the thread several times as he tuts to himself throughout the session.

[White Phone]

RIP-IT-UP nailed it way back in the beginning of this thread.  The Live In Peace solo from the Firm show at Hammersmith way back in 1984 is one of the most exciting solos he ever played.  He certainly didn’t splice that together.

Whatever he did in the studio with Zep worked in spades to say the least.  Personally I don’t worry about how he did it on whichever track.  Those records are spectacular and have stood the test of time beyond all belief.

Sometimes it’s better not to think too much about how the sausage gets made.

[Paganini]

That solo was done on the fly...no way was it spliced together...he had a beginning phrase and an idea of where he wanted to finish, and then a big splash of genius in the middle to pull it all together.

[Mikelangelo]

One would think that is less trouble doing multiple takes and choosing the best. Obviously with today's technology it's easy to splice the solos from bits and pieces. But still... I prefer doing a good take and using it, instead of putting a solo out of bits. Well, whatever makes it good, I guess!!! 😏

[Canadianzepper]

On 10/26/2011 at 9:46 AM, bluecongo said:

It's possible, and I have evidence to back this up.

 

1. First of all, and this will ruffle feathers here, but Jimmy lies. All the time. Take what he says about recordings, amps, etc, with a grain of salt, because he says what he WANTS you to believe.

 

2. Here is my evidence. Studio outtakes from the Outrider sessions surfaced some time ago, and there were three complete takes of Prison Blues. Jimmy made it VERY clear in interviews at the time that that song was "Live in the studio, one take". Lies, lies, lies. Prison Blues is a mega splice job of Jimmy taking the best bits from each take and piecing together what you hear on the album.

 

3. Another bit of evidence (and this one hurt me). Outtakes from mean Business by the Firm surfaced, and Jimmy's epic spine chilling solo from Live in Peace, again, cobbled together from numerous takes to make the fluid masterpiece that you hear on the CD.

 

Jimmy is truly brilliant at editing stuff together, just look at TSRTS sounddtrack. There is at least some possibility to this claim.

 

3.

There is some truth in general, to what you say.  I've always felt it was him not wanting others to know the magic potion he used in the studio which gave Zeppelin such a rich, ambient sound that added even more to their musicianship.  I think Page had always left out a few details, like a great stew recipe that everyone thinks then can make but they never figure out all the ingredients.  Regardless, I think about the timing of this and it would be hard to convince me he did this.  Zeppelin II they did mainly "on the road" as it were.  Different studios, even getting to test songs live, working them out, it was a very hectic time. 

You could make the argument that maybe some trickery was amiss if Heartbreaker were on Physical Graffiti, I just don't see this being their M.O at the time.  Peter Grant and Atlantic Records wanted to milk their success in rapid fashion and who can blame them, with so many bands coming and going.  Atlantic had paid them gobs of cash they needed to make some big returns.

My guess is this solo was done and Page thought, "well, this is a somewhat sloppy but raw, impossible-to-replicate solo".  He probably had a couple of other less impressionable ones and decided, "to hell with it, this one will do".  I think Eddie Van Halen was influenced by it, Steve Vai said it was basically the solo in rock that moved him most.  So, compared to the insanely clean solos he would lay down on tape, this one just had the proper amount of sludge of a band going 100 miles an hour.  I think it's great and would be exactly the kind of solo one might expect from him during this hectic period.  

It's ironic that I recall reading that Page had doubts about even releasing Zeppelin II, he was not happy with it at the time as a whole.  I think the song Living Loving Maid in particular was not really liked by the band.

Such an influential album that merged rock with heavy blues, it's impossible to gauge how influential it was and they weren't pleased with it.  These standards (much like Hendrix had) are the reason they made such timeless music.