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New Jimmy Page Biography Released


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10 hours ago, The Old Hermit said:

I find it ironic that whilst Peter Grant stated years later, and with the benefit of clear-headed hindsight, that Bindon being employed by the band for the infamous '77 tour was the biggest mistake he made as Zeppelin's manager, it was Grant himself who brought him onboard; Bindon was an associate of Richard Cole, often went drinking with him at The World's End pub across the road from Swan Song, and that's how he entered Zeppelin's orbit.  Grant found Bindon amusing to be around, more so after his divorce proceedings started when he needed cheering up, and thus when the '77 tour was beginning, the manager turned up in America with Bindon in tow as security detail... much to the surprise and bemusement of many in the band and organization.

If there is ever to be a film made about Led Zeppelin, they should focus on the '77 tour, 'cause that traveling insane asylum was a story unto itself...

 

Bindon was a very affable guy and was quite fun to be around, that is until you either got in his way, pissed him off, or became inconvenient. Imagine Joe Pesci's character in Goodfells for a point of reference. Most sociopaths are actually quite pleasant and fun to be around.

A book or movie centering on the 77' tour would be great and of course never be made for obvious reasons. Everyone except for Jones would come off looking like a complete wanker and then the ending would be heartbreaking. Talk about your cautionary tale. 

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Really It has all been out there   I am a huge fan of Plants's recent solo work and don't think the Thunder Gods will return and yeah the 50th anniversary so far has been enigmatic... but these sensationalist stories and "definitive " biographies are a bad rehash of 70's innuendo and exaggeration.....enough. We get it Jimmy Page is just perched to be the Antichrist any day now and assimilate us all....(total sarcasm) Back to music... I still love the Diaments but the latest remasters are growing on me...

Edited by ksgemini
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12 hours ago, Brigante said:

Exactly. When you consider the masses of research materials that someone like our man, Steve A. Jones, has got at his disposal, I bet he doesn't know whether to laugh or cry when dismally inaccurate bilge like this gets published professionally! There really is no excuse for such glaring errors at this point. Hey, Salewicz, there's this thing called 'the internet', see, and...ah, forget it...

Hang on a second, forgive me if I’ve got this wrong but wasn’t it you who just said Barrington Colby never existed? 

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2 hours ago, babysquid said:

Hang on a second, forgive me if I’ve got this wrong but wasn’t it you who just said Barrington Colby never existed? 

I think Brigante was quoting the second extract he posted.

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3 hours ago, babysquid said:

Hang on a second, forgive me if I’ve got this wrong but wasn’t it you who just said Barrington Colby never existed? 

Nah, mate, that was Salewicz - I just quoted him to show the level of inaccuracy in his book.

 

1 hour ago, 76229 said:

I think Brigante was quoting the second extract he posted.

Yes, indeedy. The quotation marks are easy to miss in this font, but I'm too much of an auld git to start using " " instead of ' ' at this time of life... ; )

Edited by Brigante
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On 8/7/2018 at 6:34 AM, IpMan said:

If I were the Crowley / Thelema nut that Page was supposed to be I would have moved into the damn place, then tried to buy Cefalu (Crowley's Sicilian commune) as well and taken up mountaineering. Page never did any of that, he never even visited Cefalu as far as I know and that place is the holy grail for Crowley enthusiasts, not Boleskine.

Jimmy never spent much time at Boleskine House because it was too remote, relatively speaking. He did visit the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu, in fact that's where he was the day of the Plant's (with Scarlet) auto accident in Rhodes. Scarlet was with them while he ventured to Sicily to see it. His connection to Crowley and the occult is probably overblown, but it was certainly an abiding interest of his throughout the 1970s and beyond. 

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1 hour ago, SteveAJones said:

Jimmy never spent much time at Boleskine House because it was too remote, relatively speaking. He did visit the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu, in fact that's where he was the day of the Plant's (with Scarlet) auto accident in Rhodes. Scarlet was with them while he ventured to Sicily to see it. His connection to Crowley and the occult is probably overblown, but it was certainly an abiding interest of his throughout the 1970s and beyond. 

The man probably has the biggest Crowley collection in the world. It is not overblown he was/is obsessed with the man.

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2 hours ago, TheStairwayRemainsTheSame said:

The man probably has the biggest Crowley collection in the world. It is not overblown he was/is obsessed with the man.

It became overblown when his interest in Crowley and the occult was used to explain every single tragedy the group experienced after 1975. 

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2 hours ago, TheStairwayRemainsTheSame said:

The man probably has the biggest Crowley collection in the world. It is not overblown he was/is obsessed with the man.

Let me put this into perspective. A person can be the biggest Marilyn Monroe fan, have all the memorabilia, old dresses, wigs, etc. Have every book written on the woman. This does not automatically mean he is fucking her corpse.

Same with anything else. A person can have a deep interest and do extensive research into something yet leave it at that, they are not automatically putting research into practice.

I love religion, politics, philosophy, etc and have studied all of these subjects intensively and received degrees as well. However I follow no particular religion, philosophy, or individual political system nor do I or would I advocate for such. You could ask me just about any question regarding religions, mainstream, obscure, ancient, or occultic and I will likely know about the subject and be able to discourse at length but again it does not mean I am a follower of Zoroaster or worship Koshari.

This is where people tend to lose their shit as I have had this happen to me personally. When I was in 3rd grade I went to a parochial school due to the Chicago public schools being on strike for most of 1976. This is also when I became fascinated with religion and the occult and began reading everything I could about such people as Crowley, Blavatsky, Parsons, Dr. Dee, etc. My teacher found a copy of The Golden Bough, accused me of being a satanist, and literally beat me over the head with the book. I was simply reading and interested in something other than Christianity as being taught thus I was labeled as evil and a devil worshiper.

Jimmy was about as much as a true practicing occultist as I was a practicing Druid. 

 

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13 minutes ago, SteveAJones said:

It became overblown when his interest in Crowley and the occult was used to explain every single tragedy the group experienced after 1975. 

But Steve, don't you understand? If you dare read a book about Crowley or the occult that means you made a pact with the devil, signed your name in blood, and were the exclusive reason and cause for every random, tragic event which occurs within your orbit plus is also the cause of your drug use because, SATAN. C'mon...everyone knows that.

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45 minutes ago, SteveAJones said:

It became overblown when his interest in Crowley and the occult was used to explain every single tragedy the group experienced after 1975. 

Didn't Bonzo allegedly once say to a journalist that "if Jimmy would just stop all that fookin' magick shit, none of this would be happening"...? 

I remember reading that somewhere, whether or not it's an apocryphal story.

He did once ask Jimmy (either on the '75 or '77 tours) "what do you do, hang upside down in the wardrobe all day?" with regards Page's perenially nocturnal activities 😁... and that particular story was true.

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22 hours ago, IpMan said:

Bindon was a very affable guy and was quite fun to be around, that is until you either got in his way, pissed him off, or became inconvenient. Imagine Joe Pesci's character in Goodfells for a point of reference. Most sociopaths are actually quite pleasant and fun to be around.

A book or movie centering on the 77' tour would be great and of course never be made for obvious reasons. Everyone except for Jones would come off looking like a complete wanker and then the ending would be heartbreaking. Talk about your cautionary tale. 

John Bindon pops up in several movies, including "Get Carter" (the Michael Caine original) and "Barry Lyndon". When I first saw those movies as a kid, I had no idea who John Bindon was, but after 1977 whenever I watch those and other movies where his name appears in the credits, I suppress a giggle.

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2 hours ago, IpMan said:

But Steve, don't you understand? If you dare read a book about Crowley or the occult that means you made a pact with the devil, signed your name in blood, and were the exclusive reason and cause for every random, tragic event which occurs within your orbit plus is also the cause of your drug use because, SATAN. C'mon...everyone knows that.

Yeah, I know. I mean I'd gone to Boleskine House a couple of times, not so much for the Crowley connection, whom I never found particularly interesting, as for the Page connection. I remember a family member found a copy of Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon in my home and went off on some rant about moral turpitude. What can I say, I find that book fascinating and it's not even particularly related to the occult, aside from the fact it was written by Kenneth Anger.

2 hours ago, The Old Hermit said:

He did once ask Jimmy (either on the '75 or '77 tours) "what do you do, hang upside down in the wardrobe all day?" with regards Page's perenially nocturnal activities 😁... and that particular story was true.

Robert Plant explained it best in an interview with Chris Tetley in 1988 when he said (paraphrasing): "If someone tells the Baltimore Herald that they saw Jimmy hanging upside down in his hotel room like a bat, well they may have been exaggerating you know? What Jimmy Page does in private is of no particular concern to anyone else".  

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16 hours ago, Brigante said:

Nah, mate, that was Salewicz - I just quoted him to show the level of inaccuracy in his book.

 

Yes, indeedy. The quotation marks are easy to miss in this font, but I'm too much of an auld git to start using " " instead of ' ' at this time of life... ; )

Ah! I see it now. Yep my bad, I got you wrong

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10 hours ago, SteveAJones said:

 I remember a family member found a copy of Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon in my home and went off on some rant about moral turpitude. What can I say, I find that book fascinating and it's not even particularly related to the occult, aside from the fact it was written by Kenneth Anger.

 

I absolutely love that book, one of my favorites. Old Hollywood made modern day Hollywood look like kindergarten. One of my favorite stories was the William Desmond Taylor murder. I imagine what it would have been like in Hollywood from 1914 - 1933, just a completely amazing time. Reminds me of the music industry from 65'-77' but even crazier. The shit Gloria Swanson and Tallulah Bankhead were up to...well, the mud shark incident was tame by comparison.

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7 hours ago, babysquid said:

Ah! I see it now. Yep my bad, I got you wrong

No worries, babysquid!

5 hours ago, IpMan said:

Old Hollywood made modern day Hollywood look like kindergarten... The shit Gloria Swanson and Tallulah Bankhead were up to...well, the mud shark incident was tame by comparison.

Ah, Louise Brooks...sigh...

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20 hours ago, IpMan said:

Let me put this into perspective. A person can be the biggest Marilyn Monroe fan, have all the memorabilia, old dresses, wigs, etc. Have every book written on the woman. This does not automatically mean he is fucking her corpse.

Same with anything else. A person can have a deep interest and do extensive research into something yet leave it at that, they are not automatically putting research into practice.

I love religion, politics, philosophy, etc and have studied all of these subjects intensively and received degrees as well. However I follow no particular religion, philosophy, or individual political system nor do I or would I advocate for such. You could ask me just about any question regarding religions, mainstream, obscure, ancient, or occultic and I will likely know about the subject and be able to discourse at length but again it does not mean I am a follower of Zoroaster or worship Koshari.

This is where people tend to lose their shit as I have had this happen to me personally. When I was in 3rd grade I went to a parochial school due to the Chicago public schools being on strike for most of 1976. This is also when I became fascinated with religion and the occult and began reading everything I could about such people as Crowley, Blavatsky, Parsons, Dr. Dee, etc. My teacher found a copy of The Golden Bough, accused me of being a satanist, and literally beat me over the head with the book. I was simply reading and interested in something other than Christianity as being taught thus I was labeled as evil and a devil worshiper.

Jimmy was about as much as a true practicing occultist as I was a practicing Druid. 

 

My wife has a fairly extensive occult book collection the Golden Bough being one of them (she's a lot smarter than me is my wife, don't know what she sees in me). Over the years she has had a few mental issues. About twenty years ago somebody told her that her book collection was evil. At the time she was going through a really dark episode so she took this "evil" comment seriously and burnt her occult collection.(hundreds of £/$ worth) Over the years she rebuilt her library and now has quite a large collection. Though earlier this year she had a bit of a relapse and slightly trimmed her Crowley shelf throwing some quite expensive books in the bin/trash AC's habiography being one of them. Anyway, her interest in the occult came about because of her catholic convent education where the nuns that taught her were much like your teacher.

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3 hours ago, JTM said:

My wife has a fairly extensive occult book collection the Golden Bough being one of them (she's a lot smarter than me is my wife, don't know what she sees in me). Over the years she has had a few mental issues. About twenty years ago somebody told her that her book collection was evil. At the time she was going through a really dark episode so she took this "evil" comment seriously and burnt her occult collection.(hundreds of £/$ worth) Over the years she rebuilt her library and now has quite a large collection. Though earlier this year she had a bit of a relapse and slightly trimmed her Crowley shelf throwing some quite expensive books in the bin/trash AC's habiography being one of them. Anyway, her interest in the occult came about because of her catholic convent education where the nuns that taught her were much like your teacher.

My thoughts go out to you and your wife JTM, it is typically the most brilliant among us who are touched by the flame (depression, anxiety, etc.).

No book is evil, only people. What makes a book evil is quite simply when the ideas or concepts contained within the book are against or even slightly different then that of the status quo. 

I have a nice copy of Mein Kampf and if any book could be considered evil it would be that one, yet Hitler has yet to rise from the dead, the stars still shine in the sky, and the zombie apocalypse has yet to happen. Mein Kampf is nor ever was evil, The Greater Key of Solomon is not evil, the Necronomicon is not evil. The evil only comes about when ideas which cause harm are put into practice by people. Or, when the people decide to deny, hurt, or kill those deemed as different or aberrant from society.

Crowley abstaining for six months and then jerking off during the climax (ha, get it) of a three day magikal working all over his Scarlet Woman hurt no one, nor was Pazuzu or Cthulu brought into our world from a parallel dimension to wreak havoc. The only thing those ancient grimoires did give a few people a hobby and a few more a serious case of death by hanging or burning at the stake.

One last parting thought. If Crowley was so damn brilliant, why did he die penniless living in some ghetto flat addicted to morphine? Some genius. At least L. Ron Hubbard died richer than Midas and had a sweet boat too. BTW, Hubbard was the co-leader, along with Jack Parsons, of the California branch of Thelema O.T.O. He broke away from Crowley in 1946 taking Parson's wife with him and then came up with Dianetics and later Scientology from the ashes of Thelemic Philosophy, among other philosophies and mythologies.

Edited by IpMan
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Excerpt from 'The Durable Led Zeppelin: A Conversation with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant', Cameron Crowe, Rolling Stone, 13 March 1975.

You live in Aleister Crowley’s home. [Crowley was a poet and magician at the turn of the century and was notorious for his Black Magic rites–Ed.]
Page: Yes, it was owned by Aleister Crowley. But there were two or three owners before Crowley moved into it. It was also a church that was burned to the ground with the congregation in it. And that’s the site of the house. Strange things have happened in that house that had nothing to do with Crowley. The bad vibes were already there. A man was beheaded there and sometimes you can hear his head rolling down. I haven’t actually heard it, but a friend of mine, who is extremely straight and doesn’t know anything about anything like that at all, heard it. He thought it was the cats bungling about. I wasn’t there at the time, but he told the help, “Why don’t you let the cats out at night? They make a terrible racket, rolling about in the halls.” And they said, “The cats are locked in a room every night.” Then they told him the story of the house. So that sort of thing was there before Crowley got there. Of course, after Crowley there have been suicides, people carted off to mental hospitals …

And you have no contact with any of the spirits?
Page: I didn’t say that. I just said I didn’t hear the head roll.

What’s your attraction to the place?
Page: The unknown. I’m attracted by the unknown, but I take precautions. I don’t go walking into things blind.

Do you feel safe in the house?
Page: Yeah. Well, all my houses are isolated. Many is the time I just stay home alone. I spend a lot of time near water. Crowley’s house is in Loch Ness, Scotland. I have another house in Sussex, where I spend most of my time. It’s quite near London. It’s moated and terraces off into lakes. I mean, I could tell you things, but it might give people ideas. A few things have happened that would freak some people out, but I was surprised actually at how composed I was. I don’t really want to go on about my personal beliefs or my involvement in magic. I’m not trying to do a Harrison or a Townshend. I’m not interested in turning anybody on to anybody that I’m turned on to … if people want to find things, they find them themselves. I’m a firm believer in that.

 

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Pete Townsend was an adherent of the teachings of Meher Baba, the Indian mystic, in the late '60s/early '70s. Townsend's first solo album, "Who Came First" (1972) was influenced by Baba. "Bargain" and "Baba O'Reilly" from the "Who's Next" album also allude to Meher Baba. During Townsend's infatuation with Meher Baba, he often openly talked about his interest in Baba's teachings in the press, as seen in this 1970 interview in Rolling Stone magazine: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/in-love-with-meher-baba-by-pete-townshend-237859/

This is what Jimmy Page was referring to in terms of what Townsend was trying to "turn people onto".

 

Edited by mysticman560
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On 8/8/2018 at 3:10 AM, Ross62 said:

The secrets of Led Zeppelin IV: from ecology to the occult

By Chris Salewicz a day ago Classic Rock  

The sleeve artwork of Led Zeppelin's fourth album, dissected by Jimmy Page biographer Chris Salewicz

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Led Zeppelin IV
 

Based on interviews with Jimmy Page, the rest of Led Zeppelin, old girlfriends, tour managers, session musicians and more, Jimmy Page: The Definitive Biography by long-time Led Zeppelin aficionado Salewicz offers a fascinating insight into the life of one of rock's most important - and mysterious - musicians.

In this extract, Salewicz  delves into the myths and legends surrounding the cover art of Led Zeppelin's classic fourth album. 

missing-image.svg

Visiting a second-hand shop in Reading, on the way to Headley Grange with Jimmy Page, Robert Plant unearthed a nineteenth-century painting of a rustic character bent low by the burden he carried on his back. This figure, Jimmy would immediately have noted, bore a distinct resemblance to ‘Old George’ Pickingill, who it was believed had first instructed Aleister Crowley in the occult arts. 

Is this story true? Or was the image of this fellow created specifically for the album? Furthermore, although this rustic figure is considerably older, there is a distinct resemblance to the character in the tarot card the Ten of Wands. The Ten of Wands can be interpreted as the need to rise to responsibilities and pressure, which Jimmy Page certainly felt work on this new album was realising. 

Whatever its provenance, this was the central image that featured on the front sleeve of Led Zeppelin’s fourth album, affixed to a decaying house wall and overlooked by a Birmingham tower block; almost unnoticed is a poster for Oxfam that reads: ‘Someone dies from hunger everyday.’ Were Led Zeppelin – or more likely Jimmy Page, who was heavily involved with the design of each LP sleeve – professing to be carrying the weight of the eco world on their back? That seemed the most clear reading, confirmed by the guitarist in an interview with Dave Schulps of Trouser Press in 1977: ‘It represented the change in the balance which was going on. There was the old countryman and the blocks of flats being knocked down. It was just a way of saying that we should look after the earth, not rape and pillage it.’

Led Zeppelin IV - Oxfam Poster

Circled (bottom left): The Oxfam Poster on the rear of Led Zeppelin IV

‘The cover was supposed to be something that was for other people to savour rather than for me to actually spell everything out, which would make the whole thing rather disappointing on that level of your own personal adventure into the music,’ he told James Jackson in The Times in January 2010, indicating how broad the levels of creative thought were that overhung every area of Led Zeppelin, the personal suzerainty of Jimmy Page. 

Each member of Led Zeppelin was represented on the sleeve by a sigil, a rune-like symbol, a clear reflection of Page’s occult interests, and also of Robert Plant, even if the latter’s were less obsessive: the singer’s fondness for the Viking oracle method of runes had been solidified on the group’s trip to Iceland. 

Led Zeppelin's Four Symbols

 

These were not archetypal symbols. But devised by each individual in the band. Both John Paul Jones and John Bonham took their sigils from Rudoph Koch’s The Book of Signs. Jones’s image was appropriately of an individual who possessed both confidence and competence. Bonham’s three interlocking rings represented the man, woman and child – of his marriage, presumably; twisted upside down, much to the delight of the rest of the band, Bonham’s image became the logo of Ballantine beer, his Midlands local brew. Robert Plant devised his own symbolic image, a feather within a circle, an icon that spoke very much of Native Americans but which the singer claimed was sourced from the ancient Mu civilisation. 

But what of Jimmy Page’s rune? The sigil that became known as Zoso, by which Led Zeppelin IV was sometimes termed before Jimmy himself adopted it as a kind of sobriquet? (He even named his own photographic autobiography, published much later, Zoso.) As might be expected from the ever precise and measured Jimmy Page, the origins of Zoso were considerably more arcane.

In recent years it has become known that the world’s most prolific collector of paintings by Austin Osman Spare, sometimes described as Britain’s greatest unknown artist, is Jimmy Page. The work he has collected includes Spare’s 1907 Portrait of the Artist. It should not surprise you to learn that Spare was not only a visionary artist, but also a philosopher and occult musician; he was the inspiration for what is now known as chaos magic. One of Spare’s specialities were his sidereal paintings, as though you were looking at a cinema screen from the side. Looking at Spare’s paintings, you may receive similar impressions as you would when listening to the music of Led Zeppelin: images from the far, far past coupled with those from a distant science-fiction future – what you imagine and what you see are equally valid and interrelated. 

Austin Osman Spare - Portrait of the Artist

Austin Osman Spare - Portrait of the Artist

Spare was a Clerkenwell policeman’s son who became a teenage painting prodigy, celebrated in exhibitions while still at the Royal College of Art. Turned off by the commercial art world, he rebelled, downgrading himself and selling his work at what were nothing more than inebriated evenings masquerading as exhibition openings in South London pubs. Always taken with notions of mysticism and other worlds, Spare – like his mentor for a brief time, Aleister Crowley – claimed to have had direct experience of the existence of extra-terrestrial intelligence. (Around the time of the recording of Led Zeppelin IV, Spare was championed by Kenneth Grant, a protégé of Crowley, in the popular Man, Myth and Magic encyclopaedia partwork, which commenced publication in 1970.) 

Among the several methods through which Spare communicated his art were his use of sigils, influenced by Egyptian hieroglyphics. He would elaborate these sigils by condensing letters of the alphabet into what have been described as ‘diagrammatic glyphs of desire, which were to be integrated in postural practices’ – yoga, in other words. These sigils would thereby become ‘monograms of thought, for the government of energy’. Spare was endeavouring to rediscover the evangelical concept of the ‘word’ as a magical complex image. ‘Spare’s “sentient symbols” and his “alphabet of desire” situate this mediatory magic in a libidinal framework of Tantric – which is to say cosmological – proportions.’ 

 
 

Also a writer, in his grimoire The Book of Pleasure Spare spoke of the Zos Kia Cultus, a philosophy of magic he developed that focuses on one’s individual universe and the influence of the magician’s will on it; a way of thinking – influenced by Aleister Crowley – that was very familiar to Jimmy Page. 

 

And Zos, of course, is only one letter away from Zoso. For his part Jimmy Page has often maintained that Zoso was intended purely as a representative of Saturn, the ruling planet of his Capricorn sun sign, the ruler of hard work, adamantine will and strength, and necessary strengthening restriction. 

 

The influence of Austin Osman Spare on Jimmy Page’s choice of rune – or sigil – seems rather clear. 

 

The occult elements of the sleeve were only followed through on the central gatefold image. A painting that was a re-working of the Hermit, the ninth card of the major arcana in the Rider Waite tarot pack, which represents Prudence. The staff the Hermit bears is a symbol of his authority. In its archetypal sense the Hermit, a reclusive, solitary figure, shines the light of a lamp on matters, and desires to give solitary time for thought to himself, whilst simultaneously not permitting others to stand in his way. 

The Hermit

The Hermit, from the Rider Waite tarot pack.

The Hermit represents a character who has acquired or is seeking to acquire wisdom in order to better guide others using his lantern. Very much as you might imagine Jimmy Page may have perceived himself at that time. As an image it evidently appealed to him: in the 1976 Led Zeppelin film The Song Remains the Same, he would chose such a character as a representation of himself. (Interestingly, here Jimmy Page appeared to be crossing party lines: Aleister Crowley himself allegedly disapproved of the Rider-Waite tarot pack, and set about having his own set devised, the Thoth deck; Waite had been a member of the Golden Dawn at the same time as Crowley and was considered a direct rival by Page’s spiritual mentor.)  

It is worth bearing in mind that, as we see things coming to pass in the life of Jimmy Page, the Hermit, despite its positive and success-inspiring energies, is warning against the isolation that could be harmful to him at certain times: it is very important that he always endeavours to achieve the right balance. The Hermit invites us to discover wisdom and the progress that comes with study; the card also indicates that the Hermit is a person of integrity, but that he is scared to trust in others and completely express what he is feeling – very much as Jimmy Page was, polite to the point of sometimes being a little boring. The painting of the Hermit on the inner sleeve was by a supposed friend of Jimmy Page’s called Barrington Coleby. There is no record whatsoever of any such person, and there were those who believed the real painter was none other than Jimmy Page himself. 

All the same, there was something very appealing and romantic about the notion of Jimmy Page as a rock ’n’ roll recluse, dabbling with potions and spells in his high tower.

Jimmy Page: The Definitive Biography by Chis Salewicz is out now

Jimmy Page: The Definitive Biography

This article.... holy s%t

Old George’ Pickingill

Gardiner / Villente

Crowley / Spare

Page

Art college, Pre Raphaelites, Vision focus patience then Aura

Led Zeppelin.

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4 hours ago, mysticman560 said:

Pete Townsend was an adherent of the teachings of Meher Baba, the Indian mystic, in the late '60s/early '70s. Townsend's first solo album, "Who Came First" (1972) was influenced by Baba. "Bargain" and "Baba O'Reilly" from the "Who's Next" album also allude to Meher Baba. During Townsend's infatuation with Meher Baba, he often openly talked about his interest in Baba's teachings in the press, as seen in this 1970 interview in Rolling Stone magazine: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/in-love-with-meher-baba-by-pete-townshend-237859/

This is what Jimmy Page was referring to in terms of what Townsend was trying to "turn people onto".

 

I had no idea. Thanks for that.

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49 minutes ago, SteveAJones said:

Yeah, Townshend was pushing Mehar Baba, Harrison was pushing Hare Krishna.

Goddamn the Pusher.

I'm on the fence about this book. On the one hand, I have liked some of Chris Salewicz articles from the past. His NME/Creem interview with Jimmy Page around the time of Knebworth 1979 is one of the rare interviews of that period where Jimmy actually says something new and meaningful.

But I don't need another rehashing of old drug and groupie tales.

I'll wait until the book comes out before I make my decision.

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