2.1 The Golden God :
Robert Plant
2.2 The
Sorceror's Apprentice : Jimmy Page
2.3 The Omnipresent Force : John
Paul Jones
2.4 The
Engine Room : John
Bonham
----------------------------------------------------------------------
o Robert Anthony Plant was born on August 20, 1948 in West
Bromwich,
Staffordshire, England.
o Before Led Zeppelin, Plant's previous
bands included The Crawling
Kingsnake Blues Band, Black Snake Moan, The Delta
Blues Band, and
The Band of Joy. The first and last of these also featured
John
Bonham. The name for the first band, The Crawling Kingsnakes, is
most likely derived from a John Lee Hooker song of the same name.
Plant's
appreciation of Robert Johnson is well documented and the
source of the name
for the third band is not hard to work out.
o When he met Page, Plant was
singing in a band called Hobbstweedle.
o "Thank You" is written for
his first wife Maureen who he met at a
Georgie Fame concert and later
married her, having three children,
Karac, Carmen and Logan.
o Robert and
Maureen were married on November 9, 1968 in London.
The reception was the
band's first show billed as Led Zeppelin at
the Roundhouse, Chalk Farm.
o
Plant released a single as a solo artist containing "Our
Song"/
"Laughing Crying Laughing" which was followed up by
"Long Time
Coming"/"I've Got A Secret." Both flopped on
the charts.
o Robert Plant did not receive any songwriting credits on
"Led
Zeppelin" as he was still under contract to CBS at the
time.
o Plant's symbol on the fourth album uses the feather of Ma'at,
the
Egyptian goddess of justice and fairness, and is the emblem of
a
writer. In the past Plant has said that it comes from the ancient
Mu
civilisation.
o When "Stairway to Heaven" was played live Plant
made a habit of
adding the line "Does anyone still remember
laughter?" to it.
On one date on the 1977 tour Plant changed this to,
"Does anybody
remember... forests?"
o Plant's son Karac died
suddenly from a stomach infection during a
Led Zeppelin tour of the USA, at
New Orleans on July 26, 1977.
The song "I Believe" from Plant's
"Fate Of Nations" album tries to
deal with the tragedy.
o
Robert's second son Logan Romero was born on January 27, 1979.
o Plant's bass
player in his current solo band, Charlie Jones is
married to Plant's daughter
Carmen.
o Plant played the flute during his 1988 tour.
o A suggested
reason for the non-inclusion of lyrics to "Manic
Nirvana" are the
numerous and potentially embarassing Zeppelin
references.
o "Ship of
Fools" from "Now and Zen" is seen by some as a metaphor
for
how Plant saw his relationship with Page at the time.
o Several songs Plant
has released during his solo career contain
lyrical references to Led
Zeppelin :
- "Easily Lead" : At the 3:43 point in the song Plant
invokes a
family call of "I've been lonely, lonely, lonely..." He
then
follows that up with his much repeated "Little girl, little
girl,
little girl..." mannerism at the 4:01 mark, and then at
4:06
utilises the "Shake for me girl..." motif from "The Lemon
Song".
- "Tall Cool One" : This song contains some samples
from Led
Zeppelin that Jimmy was apparently not thrilled about. Towards
the end of the song Plant wails "Hey baby, hey baby, goin' down,
goin' down..." in time honoured fashion a la "Black Dog" and
"When
The Levee Breaks".
- "White Clean And Neat" - As
the song fades out Plant can be
clearly heard to wail, 'Baby, baby, since
I've been loving you...'
- "Big Love" : Towards the end of the song
Plant raps '..One time
I saw Las Vegas, I stopped in a Motel, I stopped in
the same room
as Jimmy Page, They just finished remodelling it from the '75
tour
but I've got my free air miles..."
- "Your Ma Said You
Cried In Your Sleep Last Night" : This
contains an entire verse from
"Black Dog", 'Hey, hey, mama...'
- "Liars Dance" : A song
about a song, in this case "Stairway to
Heaven," and Plant's
intense dislike of it. `...leave it to the
lady there who's sure, she won't
back again, I know she won't be
back agin, I'm sure she won't be back
again.'
- "Calling To You" : Right at the end of the song Plant
evocatively exclaims, 'Oh Jimmy!' This is preceeded by the phrase
`Fading
away, just fading away' which is repeated three times.
What this means in
relation to the call to Jimmy is unclear.
- "Memory Song (Hello
Hello)" : Released at around the same time
as the
"Coverdale/Page" album this song may be Plant having a go
at Jimmy
over his involvement with Coverdale in that project,
which itself is
interpreted by some people as Jimmy getting back
at Robert for refusing a
reunion.
- "Promised Land" : The harmonica sounds very much like
the one
on "When The Levee Breaks", while other parts of the song
have a
similar rhythm to "Hey Hey What Can I Do." The dissonance
sounds
reminiscent of "She Said" from "Manic Nirvana."
Plant also
borrows some lyrics from "When The Levee Breaks."
-
"The Greatest Gift" : Right at the very end of the song,
some
recorders, or a similar sounding instrument, can be heard to
play
what sounds like an excerpt from "Stairway To Heaven."
-
"Great Spirit" : Plant borrows some lyrics from "Celebration
Day" and "The Song Remains The Same."
o A pink 1959
Chrysler Imperial Crown convertible once owned by
Plant and with the motto
"50s Rock'n'Roll For Ever" painted above
the number plate now
forms part of the Yorkshire Car Collection
and was exhibited in a 1991
"Cars of the Stars" show at
Birmingham.
o Rumours linking Plant
to Canadian singer Alannah Myles
romantically, proved to be true, and there
is a suspicion the
song "29 Palms" is written about her. Alannah
opened for Plant
on his "Manic Nirvana" tour and some time later
had a baby, the
father of which is reputedly Plant. Plant reinforced the
idea
that the song may be about Myles when he said it was "...my
ideal-
love-affair-gone-wrong song." 29 Palms is an actual place, an
army base and community out in the middle of the California
desert.
Plant may have played a concert there during his "Manic
Nirvana"
tour.
o Roy Harper's song "Evening Star" was written for Plant's
daughter
Carmen on the occasion of her wedding to Charlie Jones.
o Plant
sold his rights to the Led Zeppelin material in the early
1980's, although he
still maintains 1/3 creative control, but he
doesn't get any royalties from
the sales of Led Zeppelin albums,
hence his comment when being interviewed by
Letterman about
Zeppelin being more rewarding for Jimmy these days. Robert
has
used this control to veto the 20th anniversary single of
"Stairway to Heaven" and the use of any Zeppelin material in
the
film "Dazed and Confused."
o The song "Watching
You" from the "Manic Nirvana" album was used by
the NBC tv
network in the USA when advertising "Dateline NBC."
o Plant allowed
"Tall Cool One", complete with Zeppelin samples, to
be used for a
Coke Classic commercial in the USA, a move he now
regrets. This gives him the
dubious honour of being the only
member of Zeppelin to have sold off part of
their legacy.
o The producer of "Now and Zen" and "Shaken 'n'
Stirred", Tim
Palmer, also works with Tin Machine.
o Legend has it
that Plant was inspired to start singing after he
heard Bobby Parker's
version of "Blues Get Off My Shoulder."
o The drummer on
"Shaken N Stirred," Richie Hayward, also played
with Little
Feat.
o Plant's guitarist on his initial solo outings, Robbie Blunt,
had
his most recent involvement with Plant at a jam at a Los Angeles
show
on June 14, 1988. The crowd were somewhat miffed with Plant,
as he had made
it sound like he was being joined by Page, only to
turn out that it was
Blunt. Blunt also played on the first album
by Edie Brickell and the New
Bohemians which was coincidentally
recorded in the same studio as Plant's
"Principle of Moments"
album which Blunt played on.
o Plant made
a guest appearance with the band Rockpile on the track
"Little
Sister" on the "Concert For Kampuchea" charity album.
The
track is also on two other albums, "Rockpile Live In
Concert
1979", and "I Hear You Rockin'", both by
Rockpile.
o During the Zeppelin years Plant only ever played harmonica
and
tambourine onstage. However he did take a few solos on his two
most
recent tours. He also played bass during the abortive 1986
studio reunion, as
well as playing guitar on his duet of "Down By
The Seaside" with
Tori Amos on the "Encomium" Zeppelin tribute
album which reportedly
led to Jimmy making him promise never to
play guitar in the studio again!
However, in 1966 when Robert got
some publicity for his "You Better
Run" single, one article
mentioned that Robert was a skilled
multi-instrumentalist, playing
guitar amongst other things. In a 1977
interview, Plant said that
he played guitar on four Zeppelin songs, one of
which is probably
"Boogie With Stu", and interestingly, another may
well be "Down By
The Seaside".
o Plant's favourite song from his
"Now And Zen" album is "White,
Clean And Neat." Another
of Plant's solo favourites is "In The
Mood" from "The
Principle Of Moments."
o The sample at the beginning of "Tie Dye On
The Highway" is from
the original Woodstock.
o The song "If I
Were A Carpenter," originally by Tim Hardin, and
one that Plant covers
on "Fate Of Nations" was a song he used to
perform with John
Bonham in the Band of Joy. Another cover was
by Bob Seger on the album
"Smokin' O.P.s." In an interesting
coincidence, in the liner notes
for a collection of Hardin's
VERVE recordings is the following
anecdote.
"He [Hardin] hated it [the military] when he was in. He was
stationed at Okinawa, San Diego and Twentynine Palms,
California."
The coincidence being of course, that the same Plant
album
features the track "29 Palms".
o In recent interviews
Plant says he has been listening to music
from Julian Cope and Blind Melon,
amongst others, in recent times.
Plant's daughter Carmen is also a Blind
Melon fan and reportedly
asked Plant why he doesn't make songs like theirs
anymore.
o "Calling To You" sounds reminiscent of Metallica's
"Wherever I May
Roam."
o There is a very intriguing sample in
the song "Nirvana" from
"Manic Nirvana" which can be
heard at around the 3:10 point in the
song. It goes as follows, "Can you
hear the thunder? Can you
hear the thunder? My love, cascading towards you in
a torrent
of... don't go, listen, listen. Let me try my song and
dance..."
There is also a sound like a saxophone in the background.
Where
this comes from is unknown, although as Plant got "Your Ma
Said
You Cried In Your Sleep Last Night" from his jukebox, it may
well
be there too. But given Plant's interest in pop trivia it may
well be
from some very obscure source.
o When Plant played live on PBS at the time of
"Fate Of Nations" he
wore a t-shirt commemorating a deceased
Egyptian singer called
Abdel-Halim Hafez. The words "HAFEZ" and
"HAWEL TEFTEKERNY" are
on the shirt. The latter words are the title
of one of Hafez's
songs, "Try To Remember Me."
o During Plant's
1993 appearance on the Letterman show, the CBS
orchestra played "Black
Dog" and "Misty Mountain Hop."
o Plant features on the
soundtrack to "Porky's Revenge" from 1985.
The catalogue number for
the soundtrack is Columbia JS 2275 (US)/
CBS 70265 (UK). His back band,
listed as the "Crawling King
Snakes" is an all-star unit that
probably featured Dave Edmunds.
The song they contributed to the soundtrack
is "Philadelphia
Baby".
o Plant's song "Messin' With The
Mekon" takes it title from a
fictional character in the comic "Dan
Dare" which appeared in the
British boys magazine _Eagle_ during the
life of the magazine
between 1950 and 1970, when it merged with _Lion_. The
Mekon was
the head of the alien race, the Treens, who inhabited the
northern
half of the planet Venus. The capital of their territory
was
Mekonta. Unlike the rest of the treens which were vaguely
humanoid,
the Mekon was of much smaller build with a bulbous head,
and hovered around
on a small platform. The Mekon as Lord of the
Treens was possessed of
infinite wisdom and intelligence. The
Treens incidentally, were green. One of
the more well-known Dan
Dare stories saw him travel to Venus to try and get
the assistance
of the civilisations there to help the earth which was
suffering a
major food shortage. Venus is, according to the story, split
in
half by a flame belt along it's circumference, the northern
half
inhabited by the hostile and imperialist Treens, while the south
was
inhabited by the pacifist race, the Therons. In the interests
of not spoling
the story, no more details will be provided.
Compared to the comics of today
such as "Sandman", those in
_Eagle_ such as "Dan Dare"
have aged gracefully, and are still an
enjoyable read. A great source of
material from "Eagle" is the
book:
Morris, Marcus (Editor), The
Best Of Eagle, Michael Joseph
Limited, London, 1977.
Given that Plant was
born in the late 1940's he probably read this
particular boys magazine while
he was growing up, as it was very
popular at the time.
o The book, Plant,
R., Journey Into Light, Cassell, London, 1972,
was not written by Robert
Plant, but Ruth Plant, and is about is
about forty years communication with a
brother in the after life.
Another author listed is yet another R. Plant,
Ralph Plant.
o The "Fate Of Nations" tour had a bit of an Indian
flavour to it
with concerts opening with the song "Dil Cheez Kya
Hai" by Indian
singer Asha Bhosle from the film "Umrao Jaan"
being played just
before Plant took to the stage. Also, one of the tour
t-shirts
had an image of the goddess Lakshmi sitting in a lotus flower
with
Plant posturing beneath it. Plant was also seen wearing a
t-shirt
with a picture of the arab world's best known singer Om Kalsoum
on
the front of it during some shows.
o The video accompanying Plant's
song "I Believe" from his "Fate Of
Nations" album
features a lot of poetry, that has been likened by
one list member to that in
the video game "Final Fantasy II" -
although given what Plant wrote
"I Believe" about, this is
unlikely to be a source.
o The song
"Tall Cool One" uses a riff borrowed from "Train Kept
A-
Rollin'". Considering the tongue in cheek nature of the song,
its
resemblance is probably intentional.
o The first line of the song
"White, Clean And Neat" from Plant's
"Now And Zen" album
opens with the lyrics, `13th day of August
'54, I was 5 years old, depending
where you're counting from..."
There has been some discussion on the
list regarding the
reccurrence of some numbers regarding Zeppelin, in this
case 54
being the number of tracks on the 1990 box set "Led
Zeppelin".
The age Plant gives is correct for that date, but the
relevance
of that particular date remains a mystery. It may just be a
date
Plant conjured up as one fit the lyrics.
o Plant's current residence
is somewhat uncertain, he maintains a
farm in Wales, quite likely Jennings
Farm, but also has a
residence in England. The latter caused him some trouble
a few
years back when he wanted to install some new windows as the
local
authorities deemed it to have some heritage value.
o While Page has
claimed several classical composers, such as
Penderecki, as influences, Plant
has only recently admitted some
admiration for Gustav Mahler.
o Robert's
divorce from Maureen was a quiet and amicable parting
which occurred in
1983.
o The concert program from Plant's "Manic Nirvana" tour
contained an
excerpt from Robert Palmer's book "Deep Blues" pages
59 and 60,
which deals with the murky legends regarding the mystical
and
occult roots common in blues lore. Robert Johnson is the subject
of
many of these legends, the most common of which being, he sold
his soul to
the devil by playing at a crossroads at midnight, and
thereby acquired his
remarkable skills. The excerpt from the book
states the stories are rooted in
voodoo lore from the African
Yoruba religion. The black man at the crossroads
is Legba, a
trickster figure. Slave legends also portray the devil as
a
trickster figure, but their vision of the devil is quite different
from
the traditional christian one. The stories about Johnson and
the devil
persist to this day, and were probably a result of the
overly religious black
communities of the time and the awe in
which storytellers with the talent of
Johnson were held.
o Robert puts in an appearance on the soundtrack to
"Wayne's World
2" playing "Louie Louie" with his band.
The lyrics are slightly
varied from the original though, and apparently the
chords are
wrong.
o Plant's most prominent pre-Zeppelin band, The Band Of
Joy,
recorded several songs prior to their breakup. The most
notable,
"Adriatic Sea View", was made available by Diane
Bettle-Lovett of
the _Nirvana_ fanzine on an audio cassette some years ago.
The
tape was compiled to benefit several Wolverhampton charities.
The
cassette was entitled "In The Forest".
o Robert appeared on
the _Today_ show on December 20, 1993.
o There is a book available about
Plant, featuring rare photos of
him at home, and others of him live in
concert, during and after
Zeppelin, entitled "Thru The
Mirror".
o "Albion", a place mentioned several times in lyrics
by Plant, is
the ancient name for Britain. The name has been largely
forgotten
and is now used only in a romantic sense when conjuring up
images
of the Britain of old. Albion was the chapter of British
history
before the country was invaded by successive waves of
Romans,
Vikings and Saxons. The last part of England to retain this
aura
is the Welsh border area around Herefordshire and Shropshire.
With
many ancient and medieval ruins, graves and assorted
surviving phsyical
evidence this may well have served as the
inspiration for some of Plant's
lyrics. This is very likely
since he was born and raised not that far from
there.
o Plant got the lyrics "Blues falling down like hail" from
the
Robert Johnson song "Hellhound On My Trail".
o Robert's 1993
appearance on the Spanish tv show "En Vivo" must
surely rank as one
of his oddest tv appearances. For the
interview Robert and his band of the
time were interviewed through
two interpreters. When asked why he doesn't
play "Stairway To
Heaven" any more, Plant replies "I forgot
the words!" By this
time, guitarist Kevin Scott MacMichael had dozed off
and the next
question was to drummer Michael Lee, who was asked why Plant
hired
him. Lee replied to this by saying it was because he had
great
eyebrows. The Plant band performed a horrendous, only partially
live
version of "29 Palms", after which Plant thought they had
finished
only for the overdubbed start of "If I Were A Carpenter"
to be
played. Plant who had sat down, had to leap to his feet to
get back in sync
with the song and managed to forget the opening
lyrics. The rest of the band
was caught similarly unawares, with
Dunnery and Johnstone caught guitar-less
while the song was
starting. The least chaotic aspect of the show was the
airing of
the "I Believe" video just after the interview and before
a
commerical break, which was followed by the semi-live performance.
Of
the instruments, all but the guitars were live, which were the
only
instruments mimed for some reason.
o Plant made an appearance on the show
"Center Stage" in 1993,
playing "What Is And What Should Never
Be", "Thank You", "If I
Were A Carpenter",
"Going To California", "Whole Lotta Love",
"29
Palms", "Tall Cool One", and "Ramble On".
This was with his
"Fate Of Nations" era band. Robert even played
guitar on an
untitled blues tune similar to "Look Over Yonder's
Wall". On the
tv broadcast he did not play on any other songs, and his
playing
on that particular number was reportedly fairly dodgy.
o The
"Hiawatha Express" bootleg includes a recording of Plant
teaching
his five yeard old daughter at the time, Carmen, her
ABC's. This canbe heard
on the bootleg just before the "In My
Time Of Dying"
rehearsals.
o Plant is renowned for messing up lyrics when peforming live,
even
the ones he had written. He trims down the verses of his song
"Ship Of Fools" when he plays that live, and has been known
to
repeat verses from "What Is And What Should Never Be". But,
the
song he seems to have had the most trouble with in recent years
is
"Kashmir", and, in both cases, at high profile events. At
Live
Aid he came in with the coda too early, Jimmy still had 8
measures
left in his solo. At the Atlantic 40th Anniversary shindig,
he
repeated an entire verse of "Kashmir", only realising after he
had
started it the second time, he sang, "Oh father of the four
winds,
fill my sails... again!" He also managed to miss nearly
every
verse entry when they played "Misty Mountain Hop" at the
Atlantic
gig as well.
o Plant was scheduled to perform at the Alexis
Korner Memorial
Concert at Buxton Opera House on April 17, according to
the
February 1994 issue of _Q_. Also listed as performers, were
Paul
Jones, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts.
o Robert is one of the guest
artists on the Martin Allcock compiled
"Fairport Songbook" Fairport
Convention live 2CD set.
o A photo of Alannah Myles appeared in the February
10, 1994, issue
of the _Victoria_Times-Colonist_ paper where she is a wearing
a
"Robert Was Here" belt buckle.
o It is occasionally claimed
that a demo version of "Sixes And
Sevens", from Plant's
"Shaken 'n Stirred" album, exists of
Zeppelin experimenting with
the tune. This is not the case, as
it is taken from a tape of demos for the
Plant album, of around
thirty minutes duration, containing this and other
songs from the
album in demo form. The Zeppelin bootleg that is the source
of
this misunderstanding is called "Round & Round" and features
the
Chicago, July 6 1973 soundcheck, widely mislabelled as the one
from
Minneapolis in 1975. What happened was that the company
that made the cd
took off a few of the songs that were played at
the soundcheck, such as
"Hungry For Love" and "Reeling And
Rockin", and put the
demo of "Sixes And Sevens" on there, for
reasons best known only
to them. This same mistake was also made
on the "Uncensored"
bootleg, where the demo was said to have
originated from a 1975 soundcheck,
the soundcheck of which they
were referring to was 1973 anyway. The song was
not demoed
until the early 1980s.
o Plant was nominated for a Grammy Award
in 1993 for his vocals on
"Calling To You", from the "Fate Of
Nations" album, in the Hard
Rock Performance category. The other
nominations were, "Plush"
by Stone Temple Pilots, "Cherub
Rock" by Smashing Pumpkins,
"Leave It Alone" by Living
Colour, and "Highway To Hell" by AC/DC.
o A rumour started by Diane
Bettle-Lovett, formerly the owner of the
"Nirvana" fanzine, was
that the guitarist listed as featuring on
Plant's "29 Palms"
single, Rainier Ptcaek, was in fact a pseudonym
for Plant himself, both
having the same intials. This is untrue,
as Ptacek, is a real person, a
blues guitarist from Tucson,
Arizona in fact. He has a deal with Demon
records, and
apparently, Plant heard him, liked what he heard, and asked him
to
join him in the studio.
o A short interview with Plant is included in
the second part of the
two part documentary on Atlantic records "Hip To
The Tip: The
Independent Years". Plant is filmed in a darkened room
wearing a
pair of sunglasses and with a single light shining on him,
giving
him a rather cliche'd appearance. Around this a clip of
"Whole
Lotta Love" from "The Song Remains The Same" is
played.
o The lyrics to the song "Tall Cool One" may be a bit more
clever
than they appear on the surface. It appears to draw
some
comparisons with the animal kingdom. At one point Plant is trying
to
reconcile a woman's doubts about him by saying his animalistic
desires are
tempered by the fact that he is also in love with her,
`Lighten up baby I'm
in love with you'. The line about `With my
one hand loose I am to satisfy'
could be compared to the way cats
and other animals of that persuasion hold
their prey in position
with one hand while using the other to tear it open.
However, in
this case Plant is obviously not intending to tear the object
of
his desires to shreds. Cats can often appear to have bloodshot
eyes,
while humans get them from not sleeping much, which might
explain the line
about `Bloodshot eyes'.
o A particularly interesting interpretation of the
Plant song
"Calling To You" posted to the list claimed that the cry
of `Oh
Jimmy!' is meant in anything but a conciliatory sense.
And
examination of the lyrics at various parts of the song support
this
assertion. The lyrics are hard to make out in places
however, so this is open
to question.
(2:38) Greed call call, greed call, When ya gonna stop? You
stole the keys to the gates of the castle of love.
(3:48) Greed call
call, What ya gonna say? Standing in the
shadows as the words kept fading
away.
(4:09) Greed called ? (sounds like Jimmy?), What, you
won't
stop?
You stole the keys to the gates of the castle of
love.
(4:34) Greed called called, What you won't say.
(4:38) Standing in
the shadows of our work and's fading away,
Just fading away, Just fading
away. Oh, Just fading
away (repeated several times)
(5:40) Ooohhhh
Jimmy!
Could the lyrics of this song share thematical influences with
the
"Anti-Stairway" song "Liar's Dance" on Plant's
earlier "Manic
Nirvana" album? If this is the case, the castle of
love might
represent the Zeppelin sound and mystique. In which case, it
follows that Plant feels that Jimmy is degrading himself in
letting greed
get the better of his musical intentions and was
wasting his musical
heritage. This view is supported by some
rather derogatory comments Plant
made on Letterman about what he
thought of Jimmy's motives. However, it all
seems like high
hypocrisy from someone who sold "Tall Cool One" to
Coca Cola for
use in one of their commericals.
o The Wolf's head logo
Robert adopted during his solo career,
notably on the "Now And
Zen", "Manic Nirvana" and "Fate Of
Nations" albums
is a likeness of the logo of his favourite
football club, the English third
division side Wolverhampton
Wanderers. The symbol appears on the front cover
and on the
cd of "Now And Zen", which also features Jimmy's ZoSo
logo which
indicates which tracks he played on. In the case of
"Manic
Nirvana" it appears on the cd again, on the rear cover,
and
throughout the cd booklet. It only appears only once on "Fate
Of
Nations", on the front of a cap which is being worn backwards by
a
boy watching the traffic in one of the pictures in the cd
booklet.
o A
performance by Robert Plant at New York's Bottom Line was set to
be released
by Razor & Tie Music as "In Their Own Words: Volume
1", with
other artists to follow. However, his performance does
not appear on volume
one.
o An interview with Plant was conducted in early 1994 for MTV's
"24
Hours In A Day Of Rock And Roll". Plant, on tour at the
time,
mentioned his next destination was New Orleans where he
"would
talk to transvestites, because they were friends of John
Paul
Jones!" Plant also claimed the reason he does what he does
is
because he is "socially incapable of dealing with real
life"
o A vague resemblance in style between Plant's version of "If
I Were
A Carpenter" and The Kink's "Celluloid Heroes" has been
noted.
o In mid-1968 Plant recorded a song with English blues
legend
Alexis Korner, "Operator", which can be found on Korner's
"Bootleg
Him" double album (Rak SRAK 514). The album was originally
issued
in 1971 and re-released in 1986.
o Plant was one of the performers
at the Freddie Mercury Tribute
Concert, and during the performance of the
Queen song "Innuendo"
he slipped in a few lines from
"Kashmir", "O father of the four
winds fill my sails"
etc. Plant also performs "Thank You/Crazy
Little Thing Called Love"
on the video.
o Plant contributed a harmonica solo to his former-guitarist
Francis
Dunnery's first solo album, "Fearless". That
particular
contribution can be found on the track "The King Of The
Blues."
o Director Richard Linklater went to the extreme length of
sending
a video tape of him personally pleading to Plant to let
him
include the song "Rock And Roll" in his movie "Dazed
And
Confused". The film is about a group of teenagers in the
1970s
and what they get up to on the last day of school. The film
featured
a lot of classic seventies songs such as Aerosmith's
"Sweet
Emotion". Both Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones approved the
inclusion of
the song, but Plant, for reasons best known to
himself, refused to allow it
to be used. This meant it couldn't
be used, as agreement from all three
surviving members of Zeppelin
was required. There is no Zeppelin content in
the film anyway,
and Linklater was of the opinion that Plant's
"people" rather than
him were behind the refusal, actually
expressing his doubts that
his pleas ever got to Plant himself.
o A
picture of Plant appears in the book _Eight_Days_A_Week_, which is
a
photographic history of rock. Plant is shown whilst singing, and
is wearing a
t-shirt emblazoned with the name of a group called
"Bobby And The
Brains".
o Plant appeared on BBC's "Tops Of The Pops" in 1993,
performing "29
Palms". He did so completely live, not lip synched
as most other
performers do on the show.
o Robert's voice was artificially
lowered in pitch by studio means
on his early solo recordings in order to
make him sound more like
a `crooner'.
o The following Plant anecdote
appeared in the June 1993 issue of
_Boston_ magazine.
"Susan Anton,
Mo Vaughn, and Taylor Dayne have all stopped
in at Joe's American Bar &
Grill in the last few months,
but waitress Beth Turchan doesn't get excited
anymore. Not
after her blunder with Robert Plant, the legendary voice of
Led Zeppelin.
Turchan's trouble started, she says, when another
waiter sang a line from "Simply Irresistible" in honor of
Plant. "No, that's a Robert Palmer song," Turchan told him,
but her coworker's crooning must have kept ringing in her
ears.
When
Plant, who had refused autograph hounds all night,
was leaving, Turchan
extended her hand and said, "Mr.
Palmer, may I have your
autograph?" 'I'm not Robert Palmer,
love," replied Plant,
"but would you like an autograph?"
He gave her one, and even used
his own name."
o Plant did an acoustic set for Italian radio in May
1993, which
comprised an interview, with several interviewers and
Plant
replying in English, and acoustic performances by Plant,
Dunnery,
and MacMichael of songs such as "Going To California",
"You Shook
Me", "Living Loving Maid", a surprising
choice, and, "29 Palms".
o In another 1994 radio appearance, Plant
hosted a BBC show in May
where he played excerpts from "Fate Of
Nations" and selections of
his choice, incorporating a variety of world
music, and a new
acoustic rendering of "Whole Lotta Love (You Need
Love)", with
the "(You Need Love)" added to appease a legal
finding against
Led Zeppelin.
o Robert played a concert for charity at a
Kidderminster supermarket
in 1988, covering a variety of songs by Sting,
Bryan Adams, and
the covering "Rock And Roll" with the backing
band.
o Plant put in an appearance at Woodinville Stock 94, minus Page
who
was rumoured to be joining him, and played what was reportedly
an
excellent set.
o There is an interview disc from the "Manic
Nirvana" era available
where Plant admits his voice was somewhat
"dormant" between 1981
and the "Now And Zen" era.
o
Plant was very much into the hippie ethos during the Zeppelin
days, as
evidenced by by his apparel at the early concert at Bath
and through his love
for Californian music.
o In, or around 1982, Plant performed at a benefit
concert for the
family of a guitarist in Worcester who had died recently, at
the
Stourport Civic Hall in front of around 200 people. Plant's
initial
appearance for the evening was with a band called The Big
Town Playboys,
with Jason Bonham on drums. This set was mainly
comprised of old standards
such as Billy "The Kid", and Emerson's
"Red Hot". After
their set, the Big Town Playboys were followed
by a variety of local bands
until, around 12:30, Plant re-emerged
onstage with Robbie Blunt and Jason
Bonham. After a few rhythm
and blues standards, Plant made the surprise
announcement to the
crowd that, "An old mate of mine was in town today
so he's dropped
in to play". To the astonishment of those present Jimmy
Page then
appeared onstage. They jammed out a few more rhythm and
blues
standards, then moved on to to "Black Dog" and "Rock And
Roll" to
conclude the evening. This all took place before a crowd of
about
200. This sort of cameo appearance by Plant was not uncommon in
the
Worcester area at the time, and he popped up frequently to jam
with local
bands in Stourport.
o "The Movie Show" on SBS in Australia in
mid-1994 showed a brief
excerpt from a black and white Australian art-type
film going to
the Venice Film Festival, accompanied by "Greatest
Gift" from
Plant's "Fate Of Nations" album.
o _Q_
magazine's 1993 awards ceremony saw an award go to singer/
songwriter Tori
Amos, and there was at least one picture of her
and Robert Plant together at
the ceremony.
o An English magazine claimed in 1994 that Plant had had a
facelift
by showing picture of him at the 1990 Knebworth show and
several
years later. This is obviously not true, you only need to
see
Plant being interviewed on television to see that he has plenty
of
facial wrinkles.
o Both Page and Plant were backstage at the Fairport
Convention
Annual Reunion at Cropredy on Friday, August 12th, 1994, and
were
scheduled to play on Saturday night, but didn't for reasons that
were
described as "problems with the Performing Rights Society".
Rumour
has it that this was because Plant had run off with Roy
Harper's wife, the
one prior to the one who ran off with Nigel
Kennedy the violinist who
appeared on the Plant song "Calling To
You". Harper and Plant were
apparently not getting on that well
since Kennedy's appearance on "Fate
Of Nations", but Plant's
behaviour seems to make a mockery of gestures
from Harper such as
writing the song "Evening Star" for Plant's
daughter Carmen.
o During the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, Plant gave an
interview to MTV's Kurt Loder, and said that he was completing an
album
that was very much in the vein of the Seattle grunge sound,
and that the
album would be available around October 1992. What
happened to this album and
material is unclear, as "Fate Of
Nations" could hardly be
described as being grunge. On the topic
of grunge, Plant has gone on the
record praising Soundgarden a
few times in recent years.
o Richard Cole's,
erm, interpretation, of where Plant got the, much
overused by the media,
nickname Percy is that the band were
sitting around watching a gardening
show on tv, the host of which
was called Percy, and who took great delight in
growing his plants
to perfection. However, it has also been claimed the
nickname
sprung from Plant's campy onstage behaviour and effeminate type
of
mannerisms in the early days of the band. Another possible source
of
the nickname was The Kink's rock-opera, later made into a film
starring Hwyel
Bennet, called "Percy". The film was named after
the main character
whose preoccupation in life was his libido and
inordinately large genitals.
On the other hand, Percy may have
just been a one-time joke that has been
cliche'd by the media, and
not really a regularly used nickname at all. More
recently, Plant
has been referred to as Planty by his ex-guitarist and
friend
Francis Dunnery.
o The nature of relations between Plant and Paul
McCartney would
appear to at least be cordial, if the photo of him, his son
Logan,
and Paul and Linda McCartney backstage at Knewbworth in 1990 is
any
indication. Going back further, Plant joined McCartney
onstage during one of
the latter's concerts in 1979. That
particular jam session took place at the
29/12/79 concert at the
Hammersmith Odeon by Wings for a Kampuchea benefit
show. Also
onstage with Plant were Jones and Bonham, while Page had
attended
a Wings gig on December 2 in Brighton, and Plant and Bonham
had
popped up at a Wings show on December 12 in Birmingham. Jones
was
later to appear on McCartney's "Give My Regards To
Broadstreet".
o On at least one of his 1990 dates Plant and his band
played a
portion of "Give Peace A Chance" and the Beatles song
"Things We
Said Today" just before he played "Living Loving
Maid (She's Just
A Woman)".
o In the video for "Hurting
Kind" Plant's plays a white `Flying V'
style guitar, and rather
sparingly too.
o At the end of the credits on his "Mumbo Jumbo"
video it lists
Plant as the Executive Producer, and then at the bottom of
the
screen, "If you can't take a joke...!" appears.
o Storm
Thorgerson, the guru behind the renowned sleeve designers
Hipgnosis, and
long-time Pink Floyd associate, was the director
for the video for Plant's
songs "Big Log" and "In The Mood".
o Plant's "Heaven
Knows" video was filmed in Morocco.
o Plant contributed the track
"If It's Really Got To Be This Way"
to "Adios Amigo", a
tribute album for Arthur Alexander, who was
an early influence on Plant's
singing. The album is on the Razor
& Tie label. Arthur Alexander was one
of the first soul artists,
his combination of blues, country and '50s rhythm
and blues was
instrumental in laying the foundation for later artists such
as
Otis Redding and James Carr. Early in their careers both the
Beatles
and the Rolling Stones covered his songs, "Anna", and
"You
Better Move On" respectively. The following quote from
Paul
McCartney is taken from the liner notes from Alexander's
last
release, "Lonely Just Like Me", on Elektra.
"If the
Beatles ever wanted a sound it was R&B. That's what
we used to listen to,
what we used to like, and what we
wanted to be like. Black, that was
basically it. Arthur
Alexander."
Another of his better known songs
is "Every Day I Have To Cry".
His career was anything but
consistent however, as he was ripped
off with a disturbing regularity, and
suffered the rigours of
long term drug abuse and a downturn in his career
that lasted for
several decades. He was poised to make a comeback in the
early
1990s with a performance for the "In Their Words" series at
The
Bottom Line in 1991, which was followed by a new album in 1992.
In a
cruel blow Arthur Alexander died at just 53 only a short
time after the
album, "Lonely Just Like Me" was released to rave
reviews. His
performance for the aforementioned series can be
found on "In Their
Words Volume One", also on the Razor & Tie
label.
o The song
"Oompah (Watery Bint)" is a b-side recorded during the
"Now
And Zen" period, appearing on the "Hurting Kind" cd
single,
and features a series of amazing screams from Plant towards
the
end.
o There were rumours doing the rounds in 1988 that Plant was
in
some sort of relationship with Joan Jett, who was opening for him
at
the time on the "Now And Zen" tour.
o Various explanations have
been offered for the changes that have
taken place in Plant's voice.
- Up
to the mid-1970s Plant had very bad teeth, but he later had
them corrected,
which may cause a change in how his voice sounds.
- Cocaine snorting can
result in a deviated septum, which leads to
a constantly running nose,
although this can be corrected by
surgery, which has the effect of making a
voice more nasal.
- Plant was known to smoke pot in the early days of the
band. In
small quantities, some singers claim that it improves such
things
as lung capacity and gives a nice crisp, clear sound. This leads
to
the rather tenuous theory that after Plant became less frequent
in his use of
pot,in the late 1970s, his voice changed.
- Plant and the rest of the band
smoked cigarettes, and these
alone have well-documented effects upon the
throat and lungs to
name but a few things.
- More likely is that Plant
permanently damaged his voice by
pushing it too far, too often, and scarring
his vocal chords.
- Certain types of surgery, such as cosmetic surgery, can
have
varying effects on the voice, not that it is proven that Plant
has
ever had any.
o The song "Calling To You" is in a phrygian
mode.
o "The Honeydrippers: Live At The Bluenote Derby in 1981"
released
by Box Top Records in 1984 is nothing to do with Plant's band
of
the same name, as in 1981 their formation was still a few years
away.
Plant's Hondeydrippers band is rumoured to have featured
Paul Schaeffer, who
is nowadays in charge of the CBS Orchestra on
"Late Night With David
Letterman". Plant did however do gigs
dating back to 1981 with bands
called "The Skinnydippers" and
The Honeydrippers".
o At the
time of the "Unledded" special with Jimmy Page, Plant was
said to
be dating Indian singer Najma Akhtar, who sang with him
on "The Battle
Of Evermore".
o The girl in Plant's "Hurting Kind" video is
rumoured to be his
daughter.
o Robert Plant was spotted on October 29,
1994 around 4.00pm at
Avebury, near Bath, Bristol. Avebury has similar
attractions to
Stonehenge for tourists.
o Plant has often asserted his
admiration for Sonny Boy Williamson
II, and how he believes he is a great
model for how musicians
should be when they get older. Whether this amounted
to the
rumour that Plant stole one his harmonicas is unlikely though.
o
Alannah Myles' most recent album makes a few pointed references
to Plant,
such as in the liner notes a notation, "those who you
recognize between
the lines", as well as song lyrics beginning
with "Heaven
knows...".
o Zeppelin's former publicist, B.P. Fallon, in his book about
the
1994 U2 Zoo TV Tour reports that Plant's favourite U2 song
is
"Salome~", and that he actually quite likes Bono, and in a
phone
call to Fallon compared him to Ral Donner, an English Elvis
copier
who Elvis stole "The Girl Of My Best Friend From", and
as Plant is
said to practically worship Ral Donner, that is high
praise indeed.
o
Plant once suggested that Zeppelin gigs should conclude with a
cover of The
Incredible String Band's "Hedgehog Song", but was
chastised by
Bonham.
o According to a 1988 interview, Plant had an operation on
his
throat around 1973/74 that rendered him unable to sing or talk
for
weeks. One particularly inane rumour I heard recently was
that this operation
was undertaken by Hindu religious leaders
in
India.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
o James Patrick Page was born on January 9, 1944, in Heston,
Middlesex,
England.
o When Jimmy appeared on the "Huw Wheldon Show" in 1956,
after
playing a brief excerpt from "Mama Don't Wanna Play No Skiffle
No More," he said he wanted to become a biotechnologist and
work
with germs.
o Jimmy's first job was as a lab assistant, giving him
something in
common with Henry Rollins, whose tales of rat and animal
problems
can be found on his "Talking From The Box" spoken word
double cd.
o Page's early inspiration to play guitar came from the Elvis
Presley song "Let's Play House."
o Jimmy stopped playing guitar
for two years while he went to art
school.
o Jimmy Page has known Jeff
Beck since he was 11.
o When questioned about which songs he did play on as a
session
player, especially ones where some controversy as to what
his
exact role is has arisen, Jimmy usually pleads ignorance and
points
out that it is hard to remember exactly what he did given
the huge amount of
sessions he was playing at the time.
o Jimmy was a session guitarist for
three years, playing on
literally hundreds of recordings of an incredibly
diverse nature
playing anything from a few licks to a solo. Various
estimates
have him playing on anything from 50% to 90% of the records
that
were recorded in England between 1963 and 1965.
o Page was the
favoured session guitarist of producer Shel Talmy,
and ended up doing
session work on songs for The Who and The Kinks
as a direct result of
this.
o As a session player, Page's involvement with Herman's Hermits has
been a source of much controversy, possibly due to a wrangle
between
Page and the producer. One rumour has it that he played
on all their early
hits, although a more likely scenario is that
he played on several of them.
In the case of Herman's Hermits,
the backing tracks for their songs were
usually cut while Peter
Noone and the rest of the band were on tour.
o The
Who song "I Can't Explain" features Jimmy in a minor role.
Although
there is a story that Jimmy played the main rhythm part
while Peter Townshend
played the solo.
o Page supplied the rhythm guitar for The Kink's "You
Really Got Me"
and "All Day And All Of The Night", which has
not really been
contested by Dave Davies. What he has contested however is
that
Page played the solos in these songs, which he almost certainly
didn't, they don't sound very Page-like at all. However, Page may
well
have played the main riffs in both these songs which prompted
Elliot Easton
to claim in _Guitar_World_ that if he did play the
riff in "You Really
Got Me" then he invented heavy metal there and
then. Page claims he
contributed "bits of feedback" to The Kinks
song "I Need
You" which appeared on one of their early albums.
Further fuel for the
debate comes from Ray Davies autobiography
_X-Ray_, where he says that Page
was present but he didn't do the
solo.
"When we went upstairs to hear
the playback in the tiny
control room, we found it crowded with onlookers
and assorted
musicians. Among them was Jimmy Page, who cringed as it
came
to Dave's guitar solo. Perhaps Page was put out about not
being asked
to play on the track, and we were slightly
embarassed by the amount of
jealousy shown by the eminent
guitarist. Perhaps he thought Dave's solo was
inferior to
anything he could have played, but Dave not only invented
a
sound, but also had every right to play whatever solo he felt
fitted the
track."
However, the released track is the third take of the song and
while Dave Davies features on the first and third takes, Page
may be on
the second. Ray Davies also says that Page played the
tambourine on the
Kink's first record, attempting to minimalise
Page's contribution. However,
the song both Page and Davies agree
features Page is "I'm A Lover Not A
Fighter" which Jimmy plays 12
string guitar on. A few other tracks on
that particular album
also feature Jimmy playing rhythm guitar, but he denies
ever
having tambourine on any Kinks record.
o Page has long been rumoured
to feature on songs by Van Morrison's
Them such as "Baby Please Dont
Go", "Here Comes The Night",
"Gloria", and
"Mystic Eyes". The exact details are unclear, and
while the first
two are likely, he may have played bass on "Baby
Please Don't Go",
there is some doubt about "Gloria", but his
fiery style is very
evident on "Mystic Eyes". He probably also
played on the b-sides
of all these songs. However, as with The
Kinks, by saying he played on these
songs does not automatically
mean he played lead guitar on them. But as
"Gloria" was the
b-side of "Baby Please Don't Go" he
probably played on at least
one of those two songs.
o Page may have played
on several songs by Donovan such as "Sunshine
Superman" although
the long held belief that Jimmy played on
"Hurdy Gurdy Man" has
been questioned recently, with the
contention that it is in fact Allan
Holdsworth, and not Page.
Jones on the other hand, who most certainly did
work on the track
says it was Alan Parker. Donovan in a radio interview in
1988 on
KCRW in Santa Monica, said that it was Holdsworth not Page,
as
they tried to get Page but he was unavailable, and tried out a
new
young guy, Holdsworth, instead. An answer to this perplexing
question
that could be seen as definitive came from Allan's wife
Claire, when she was
asked this by a member of the Allan
Holdsworth mailing list. The response she
gave was (included
without permission), "Allan is bemused by the number
of people,
including Donovan, who have said that he played on that song
-
because he didn't!! He thinks it might have been Ollie Halsell
but he is
dead now so I guess we can't ask him." Page, who denies
playing on it
claimed in a 1977 interview that it was Alan Parker.
To confuse matters
further, in the liner notes for Donovan's
"Trouabdour" box set it
claims Page played on the track.
o A bootleg 2 cd set called "James
Patrick Page: Session Man"
features many of Page's notable early
performances as a session
man with bands such as The First Gear, Dave Berry
& The Cruisers,
and Lulu And The Luvvers. A portion of these probably
also
feature John Paul Jones who was the leading session bass player
and
arranger at the time. However, these album aren't really
bootlegs. The record
label, AIP, sidestepped any possible legal
problems by licensing the album
through a third party, the "Jimmy
Page Fan Club." Greg Shaw,
President of Bomp/AIP records had
this to say on the matter in the May 12,
1995 "Special Independent
Label Issue" of _Goldmine_.
"I
wasn't constrained by the traditional way of doing things:
going through
legal departments and making sure every
contract is 100 percent firm. Most of
the best reissues are
done by going directly to the artist, maybe
circumventing
people who are the legitimate owners. I wasn't too
sure
about the legality of the _Pebbles_ [a reissue compilation]
so I
worked with these Australian guys and had them issued
there, but after a
couple of years it appeared there wasn't
going to be a problem. So I started
the AIP label."
o Page's favourite guitar solo is said to be the one
from "Reeling
Away The Years" by Steely Dan. The guitarist
responsible is
Elliot Randall. This detail comes from a postcard circulated
by
Metal Leg advertising a show featuring Elliot Randall in a band
called
Chain O'Fools, on February 5, 1994, 10.30pm, at Le Bar Bat,
311 W. 57th St.,
New York City. The quote on the postcard reads,
"My favorite guitar solo
of all time was Elliot Randall's on
Reelin' in The Years".
o For
information relating to Jimmy's symbol please refer to the
FAQL for a
detailed explanation. The most recent theory that
seeks to explain it has it
that it that it symbolizes a near-
death or Tantric sex experience to unify
the worlds of the
living and the dead, and thus to reveal the secrets of the
universe. A few points are worth clarifying.
- It is not a word that can
be prounounced "Zoso".
- The symbol was designed by Jimmy, and the
only person he has
revealed its meaning to was Plant, long ago, and he has
since
forgotten. Nigel Eaton, hurdy gurdy player on the Page &
Plant
world tour was reported in _Q_ as having asked about it and
been
greeted with a deathly silence.
- It is also unlikely to symbolize Cerebus,
the guardian hound at
the gates of hell.
- It is not a stylisied
"666".
- The closest thing to an explanation from the man himself
came on
his November 1994 appearance on _Denton_ with Plant. At the end
of
their interview a member of the studio audience yelled
"What's your
symbol mean Jimmy?" After some confusion as to
what was being yelled,
understanding dawned on Plant's face and
he replied "Frying
tonight". Page did not elaborate further.
- It most likely has absoluely
nothing to do with Curious George
The Monkey, known as Zoso, a character in
English children's
books.
- It doesn't have anything to do with the
pyramid of Zoser in
Egypt.
o The "Wall of Sound" phenomenen
that is attributed to Page as some
sort of invention can be traced back to
Phil Spector in the days
before multi-track recorders. John Coltrane was
attributed as
having a wall of sound too, but this was a reference to his
playing and arranging style and not his production techniques.
o An
amusing story relating to the guitarist from Jethro Tull is
that Page was
passing through the studio when the guitarist was
recording the solo for
"Aqualung" and recognizing a prior
acquaintance waved to him,
nearly distracting the guitarist enough
to break his concentration and ruin
the solo.
o Page was not a fan of Jethro Tull's live performance, labelling
them as "Jethro Dull."
o Carlos Santana in the notes for
"Viva Santana," hails Jimmy Page's
studio and compositional genius,
`He really is the Stravinsky of
the Les Paul.'
o Like Paul McCartney,
Page admits to having no real grasp of
reading sheet music, although he can
puzzle it out given time.
When he began his session career he had to be
taught the basics by
fellow session man, "Big" Jim Sullivan. But
even then Page found
it difficult and time consuming to work out what he was
supposed
to be playing. Tony Meehan once recalled,
"He came down and
I knew right away that he was faking it.
He couldn't read the music I'd
written for him. But he was
doing well enough on his own - I switched him
from lead to
rhythm guitar and all went well. The session was at IPC
Studios in 1962, and I'm positive the song we did,
"Diamonds",
was the first number one record that Jimmy had
ever played on."
Even today Jimmy admits he is not that great at reading music,
although
he says he is better at writing it down.
o In October 1982, Page received a
12-month conditional discharge
for drug related offences.
o Jimmy donated
the Yamaha acoustic guitar he used on the 1975 world
tour as a prize in a
local radio contest in 1982. On the guitar
he wrote, "This guitar was
stolen from Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin
(Officially of course)."
o
Jimmy owns Aleister Crowley's former residence Boleskine House,
and at one
stage opened a shop called Equinox, with a front door
facing an alley
adjoining a shopping center, which sold various
items of Crowley
paraphenalia.
o Jimmy Page performs the guitar solos on two tracks from
Plant's
"Now And Zen" album, "Heaven Knows" and
"Tall Cool One." In each
case, in the cd booklet Jimmy's ZoSo
symbol is used to indicate
which songs he played on. The Zeppelin samples
were added to
"Tall Cool One", which annoyed Jimmy immensely.
o
The Rolling Stones album "Dirty Work" features Jimmy on "One Hit
(To The Body), and according to the "Rolling Stones Complete
Studio
Recording Sessions" also on "Back to Zero." Page is
credited
in the liner notes as having played on the album, but
apparently the reason
the songs he plays on are not identified is
for contractural reasons. Page
does not play the solo on either
track. On "One Hit (To The Body)"
Page plays a modified Fender
Telecaster with a GeneParson/Clarence White
B-String Bender, which
he also used on the ARMS tour, with the Firm and on
the "Outrider"
tour.
o The soundtrack to the film "Death
Wish II" features Page
experimenting with a Roland Guitar
Synthesizer.
o Contrary to Plant, Page loathes the tacky imitation of Dread
Zeppelin.
o The theme song to the tv show "The Wonder Years"
features Page.
o Page recently identified one of his influences as the
contemporary
classical composer, Krzysztof Penderecki (1933-), particularly
his
use of dissonance for dramatic effect. Some further details on
this
composer reveal how his influence may have been felt by Page,
"It is a
remarkable aspect of Penderecki's career that he has
been able to, and almost
from the first, to write music of
wide and direct appeal which makes use of
advanced vocal and
instrumental effects and places no long-term reliance on
tonality. His success may be ascribed in part to his
treatment of
momentous subject matter, whether religious or
secular: tearing conflicts,
drama, mourning and victory are
his strong points. ... In his vocal writing
for example,
prayerful psalmody appears alongside singing, speaking,
shouting and impressions of uproar."
o Page entered into an
agreement with Kenneth Anger to supply the
soundtrack for Anger's film
"Lucifer Rising", which had some
Crowlean content. Page even let
Anger use the cellar of Boleskine
House for filming. But in the end Page
only delivered twenty
three minutes of material, which Anger thought was
useless. Anger
went public with his displeasure in 1976 slamming Page as an
addict and a pretentious dabbler in the occult, something that
must have
annoyed Page as he always seemed to take his studies
quite seriously. Anger
himself is deeply involved in such
matters, he likes to call himself a
satanist although probably in
much the same way as Aleister Crowley did. The
music eventually
came from Bobby Beausoleil, a member of the Manson family.
The
Page material was released on a soundtrack album of uncertain
legitimacy on the label Boleskine House Records, BHR 666, 1987.
The
pressings were very limited edition, and were done on blue
vinyl at 45 rpm,
although other coloured vinyl is rumoured to
exist, and the final recordings
may not be entirely Page content
alone. The music itself consists of a lot of
theramin driven
material. Interestingly, director Anger, who was a
friend
of Anita Pallenberg, wanted to cast Mick Jagger and Keith
Richards
in the film, with Mick in the role of Lucifer. In the end,
Anger
cast Marianne Faithfull along with Chris Jagger, brother of
Mick,
although he lasted only a day on the set before being sacked.
The
story behind this particular film is related in Marianne
Faithfull's
autobiography, _Faithfull_.
o The raging guitar track for Joe Cocker's cover
of "With A Little
Help From My Friends" is Page.
o Page is
featured on two tracks on Stephen Stills' solo album
"Right By
You."
o Page made the album "Whatever Happened to Jugula" with
Roy Harper.
o Page's technique is by his own admission `sloppy,' something he
finds amusing considering he took lessons from John McLaughlin,
reputedly one of the `cleanest' guitarists ever.
o At a concert in
Chicago in 1977 Page experienced stomach cramps
and the show was called off
after "Ten Years Gone."
o Some information on one of Page's toys,
the theremin:
"This is the first device to use alternative means of
interaction to produce music. It was invented by Leo
Theremin, a Russian
living in England, in the 1930's, and
was made popular in the 1960's by Sun
Ra. The instrument
produces sine-wave sounds by the beat frequencies between
a
reference RF oscillator and an oscillator tuned by the change
in
capacitance between an antenna and the performer's hands,
arms or body
caused by movement. The closer you came to the
antenna, the higher the
capacitance and higher the pitch.
Later versions of the instrument have
volume control from a
second antenna. The Theramin is used at the beginning
of the
Beach Boys' song "Good Vibrations". Bob Moog, of
synthesizer
fame, built these as a way to make money while in
college."
o Singer Chris Farlowe who contributed vocals to Page's
"Outrider"
album had been involved with Page previously, when Page
as a
session player had played on Farlowe's 1966 album "14 Things To
Think About" and on the single "Out Of Time/Baby Make It
Soon."
In a long and varied career Farlowe also performed with Atomic
Rooster ("Made in England", (1972), and "Nice &
Greasy", (1973),
Colosseum ("Daughter of Time", (1970),
"Colosseum Live", (1971)),
and under his own name ("Chris
Farlowe Band Live", (1975)).
Farlowe also did a lot of covers of
Rolling Stones material during
the 1960's.
o Jimmy gets a mention in the
`Inspiration and Coolness' section of
the liner notes for Bob Rock's most
recent album. Coincidentally,
the third produer of
"Coverdale/Page" Mike Fraser engineered
Rock's album. Rock, a
Canadian producer and musician is also
known for his work with bands like
Motley Crue ("Dr Feelgood"),
Metallica, The Cult, and Bon
Jovi.
o According to MTV, a man in Palm Springs, California, recently
built a swimming pool in the shape of Jimmy's double neck Gibson
guitar.
The pool is over 59 feet long, 23 feet wide, and cost
over $87,000 to build.
The pool is even accurate to the extent of
including the knobs on the guitar
which double as underwater bar
stools. Only in America.
o Over the years
Page has jammed with, amongst others, Aerosmith,
Bon Jovi, Jaco Pastorius,
and Mason Ruffner.
o Jimmy has a guest spot on Norton Buffalo's album
"Draw Blues,"
which also features Jeff Beck, Buddy Guy, and Dan
Ackroyd. There
is some speculation that it was Buffalo who blows the whistle
during "Fool In The Rain." A possible highlight of the "Draw
Blues" album, judge for yourself, is a harp `duel' between Beck,
Guy, and Ackroyd. The album is available on Japanese import, and
features
a cover of Cole Porter's "Being The Beguine" with Jeff
Beck
playing blues sitar.
o Joe Walsh gives Jimmy a mention in the liner notes for
his early
seventies album "So What?" The link between Jimmy and Joe
is that
Joe gave Jimmy a 1959 Gibson Les Paul guitar, which is Page's
second string guitar. It has been modified in several areas by
Page's
recording studio maintenance engineer, Steve Hoyland. The
guitar has a
custom bridge that raises the strings in the
following manner:
_ _
_ -
- _
This makes it possible when playing the guitar with a violin bow
to
play individual strings, not just the top and bottom 'E'
strings. Orchestral
stringed instruments are constructed in this
way. Another reason Page is
credited on that album is that he
played on the original take of
"Country Fair", although that
version didn't make it onto the
album.
o In a 1977 interview with _Guitar_Player_, Jimmy recalled how the
idea was suggested to him.
"The first time I recorded with it was
with the Yardbirds.
But the idea was put to me by a classical string player
when
I was doing studio work. One of us tried to bow the guitar,
then we
tried it between us, and it worked. At that point I
was just bowing it, but
the other effects I've obviously come
up with on my own using wah-wah and
echo. You have to put
rosin on the bow, and the rosin sticks to the strings
and
makes it vibrate."
Dave Lewis further hones this by revealing
that the son of the
session violinist who suggested it to Page was the actor
David
McCallum of "Man From U.N.C.L.E." fame.
o Page favours
Herco Flex 75 picks.
o Page was at one time involved with well-known groupie
and tell-all
author Pamela Des Barres. Des Barres's book "I'm With The
Band"
linked the two, and Des Barres was interviewed for Stephen
Davis'
"Hammer Of The Gods" where she contributed the following
slightly
erroneous and suspect observation, "I believe that Jimmy was
very
into black magic and probably did a lot of rituals, candles,
bat's
blood, the whole thing. I believe he did that stuff." After
Page, Pamela married musician and actor Michael Des Barres,
although
they have long since split.
o Page married in 1988, and now has a son, James
Patrick Page Jr.
Page's daughter Scarlett is in her mid twenties. Information
on
who it is that Page married are sketchy, which is probably the way
he
wants it, and we're happy to leave it at that.
o Jeff Beck was supposed to
play "Stairway To Heaven" with Jimmy on
the ARMS video but is
strangely absent and Jimmy can be seen to
look up at Andy Fairweather Low
after the song and ask "Where's
Jeff?"
o Chris Squire who was
with Page in XYZ has said that one of the
songs XYZ did turned up on one of
the Firm albums.
o The `Jimmy' mentioned in the Rolling Stones song,
"You Can't
Always Get What You Want", `...I was standin' in line
with Mr.
Jimmy... So I sung my song to Mr. Jimmy...', is not a
reference
to Jimmy Page. Jimmy does feature though in the credits for the
Stones album "Metamorphisis" although it is unclear which
tracks
he played on. Jimmy may have been involved in the early days of
the Rolling Stones during his days a session player and producer,
no-one
can say for sure. He has played on an album with Ron Wood
and Paul Rodgers,
and Bill Wyman was present on the ARMS tour, so
there is ample evidence the
bands got on reasonably well, although
Keith Richards has said he thinks
Plant is a bit of an egomaniac.
The reference to Page on the back cover of
"Metamorphisis" reads:
"This new elpee is for your home
rack
with songs and stars to take you back
Some old, some new, some gone,
some due
From days when people wrote for the fun of it
And played for the
hell of it
With pictures taken when all was smart
and just another piece
of art,
From sessions gone by, when friends dropped in
to play or stay or
grin and drink
No one kept a list to say
Who played like this or clapped
that way
The toads of parking lots weren't around to state
Pay up or
you've got no sound
So thank you Jimmy Page, John McLaughlin....
...John
Paul Jones..."
Two tracks on "Metamorphisis" that seem the
most likely candidates
for Page's involvement are "Heart Of Stone"
and "Memo From
Turner". Keith Richards has admitted that the guitar
part on the
released version of "Heart Of Stone" was copied
straight from
Jimmy's demo tape. Additional 1964 demos are avilable on
other
Stones bootlegs, including the recently released
"Metamorphisis"
pirate.
o The guitar Page played at the
Knebworth 1990 jam with Plant's
band was one of his Les Pauls equipped with
a Gene Parson/Clarence
White B-String Bender, evident from the small item
that looks like
a knob behind the bridge. This cherry red guitar is the one
Page
is holding on the May 1993 cover of "Guitar World." It was
his
main guitar on the "Outrider" tour. This 1970's Les Paul is
a
goldtop that was repsrayed cherry red, and was used on the
"Unledded" special.
o Jimmy's main guitars with the Firm were
his 1959 Fender Telecaster
with the B-Bender, and his sixties Lake Placid
blue Fender
Stratocaster.
o In 1963 Jimmy played as session guitarist on
a song with Brian
Auger and Sonny Boy Williamson, "Don't Send Me No
Flowers" which
is available on the Marmalade label.
o In the future
the former singer of Pink Floyd, now a solo artist,
Roger Waters is due to
record an album with Jimmy Page, if his
trend of recording with ex-Yardbirds
guitarists continues. Eric
Clapton features on Roger's first album "The
Pros And Cons of
Hitchiking", and Jeff Beck features on "Amused To
Death."
o Jim Sullivan, who appears with Page on "No Introduction
Necessary", along with Page dominated the session player scene
in
London during the 1960's. Sullivan was known as "Big Jim" while
Page was nicknamed "Little Jimmy."
o One of Richard Cole's more
interesting recollections is that when
he heard one of the band had died he
assumed it was Page, probably
due to Page's drug problems, his malnutrition,
heavy drinking, and
physical exhaustion.
o Page has pointed out in
interviews that he was surprised that
Zeppelin were not accused of copying
Howlin' Wolf, as that is who
he thought he was borrowing from.
o One of
Jimmy's houses is Tower House in London.
o From a live Paul McCartney album
from the 1970's comes a song
called "Rock Show", the opening
lyrics of which are, "Who's that
man walkin' 'cross the stage? Looks
like the one they call Jimmy
Page...".
o Rumour has it that one
Zeppelin song includes Page being sick and
coughing constantly in the
background, although which song this is
has never been established, if it
happened at all.
o An album called "The White Album" by Phish
features a song called
"A Letter To Jimmy Page." Phish have also
been known to cover
"Good Times Bad Times" and other Zeppelin songs
as encores.
o On tour it is likely Jimmy has several bows, as there have
been
instances where road crew complained of having no idea of where
to
get a bow restrung in the city the band had just arrived in.
o Redd
Kross have a song called "Jimmy's Fantasy", the first line of
which
is 'Climb the mountain with your fingertips.'
o Contrary to popular myth, it
is not Page that was playing with
Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison at The
Scene, 301 West 46th St, on
March 6, 1968, in New York. Page in an interview
with "Guitar
World" in 1993, revealed he had never played with
Hendrix. The
guitarist in question is Johnny Winter, and not Jimmy Page.
The
reason for the uncertainty is that Winter plays a small excerpt
from
Page's "White Summer". Page never actually played with
Hendrix,
contrary to what is claimed in David Hendersen's "Excuse
Me While I
Kiss The Sky", that Page and Hendrix jammed during the
time of the Jimi
Hendrix Experience in the autumn of 1968. Page
has said that the only time
he ever got to meet Hendrix was in a
bar, and that Hendrix was completely
gone and there was no point
in trying to talk to him, let alone jam.
o As
well as being the bass player in The Firm and Blue Murder, Tony
Franklin has
also played with Roy Harper.
o Page attributes his string-bending style to
Elvis Presley's
guitarist and Cliff Gallup.
o Jimmy helped out on the
ARMS tour, which was a benefit organised
for former bass player for the
Faces, Ronnie Lane, who was
diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Lane's
treatment was a
prohibitively expensive experimental snake venom treatement,
which
was at the time not available to other sufferers. Some of the
participants were Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Bill
Wyman,
Kenny Jones, Andy Fairweather Low, and Jimmy Page. The
benefit concert was
held in London, and a highlight was to be the
appearance of Jimmy Page, being
his first notable public
appearance in a long time. The previous year Page
had been
charged with drug related offences, and he did not look in the
best of health, very thin and pale, and didn't play all that well.
The
London shows were on September 20 and 21 1983 at the Royal
Albert Hall. Page
performed amonst other things "Who's To Blame"
(with Winwood on
vocals), "Prelude" (The Chopin prelude he used
for "Death
Wish 2"), and an instrumental version of "Stairway To
Heaven." The finale was "Layla" with Beck, Page and Clapton
jamming, and "Goodnight Irene" with Ronnie Lane on vocals. The
show then moved to the USA for dates in Dallas, Los Angeles, San
Francisco and New York's Madison Square Garden. Paul Rodgers of
Bad
Company replaced Winwood, and Joe Cocker turned up at some of
the shows.
Page's playing improved steadily throughout the tour,
with multiple dates
played at each venue. Page even spoke
onstage, something he rarely ever did
with Zeppelin, the exception
being during the 1980 tour. A bow segment was
added, and Page
began playing a song he and Paul Rodgers were working on
called
"Bird On A Wing" (A descdendant of the unfinished Zeppelin
song
"Swan Song") which went on to become "Midnight
Moonlight" during
The Firm years. The instrumental version of
"Stairway To Heaven"
also featured Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton
joining Page for a jam at
the end.
o The debut album by a band called
Cartoone credits Jimmy as the
producer, and he is quite likely to have also
played on it. The
album was recorded in 1969, and according to "A
Celebration" Page
is featured as a guest artist on unspecified tracks,
and he seems
to recall playing acoustic rhythm guitar on the album in a
couple
of places. Interestingly, the beginning of the song "Ice
Cream
Dreams" is very reminiscent of "Stairway To Heaven". On
the
subject of this album, in _Proximity_#10_ the following
appeared.
"Another Atlantic release shortly following _Led
Zeppelin_,
the only redeeming feature of this album is the fact that
Jimmy
Page's name appears on the jacket. His guitar playing
is nowhere in evidence
and the music is uniformly awful.
Page claimed in an interview once that he
thinks he strummed
an acoustic guitar on a few of the tracks, and for that
he
receives equal billing with the band members on the jacket as
'guest
artiste'."
o When playing "Heartbreaker" live, Page liked to
segue into two
unusual covers midway through the song. The first of these
was
"Bouree", which is essentially Jethro Tull's popularised
version
of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Lute Suite No. 5". The other
was
Simon and Garfunkel's "59th Street Bridge Song" or
"Feelin'
Groovy" as it is sometimes called. Page did this a lot on
the
early tours, 1970 and 1971, less in the middle years, but again
on
the 1980 encores.
o In recent times Page is said to reside in Berkshire,
adjacent to
his home studio. Jimmy does not currently live in Aleister
Crowley's old home, Boleskine House, although he apparently still
owns
it.
o Page and Jones get a "thank you" credit on the "Rock Aid
Armenia"
remake single of "Smoke On The Water" which featured
amongst
others, Ritchie Blackmore, David Gilmour, Tony Iommi, Alex
Lifeson, Brian May, Bryan Adams, Bruce Dickinson, Ian Gillan,
Paul
Rodgers, Chris Squire, Keith Emerson, Geoff Downess, Roger
Taylor,
and Geoff Beauchamp.
o The Yardbirds song "Glimpses"
feature some of Page early, and very
psychedelic attempts to utilitise his
bowing technique.
o Jimmy has his own star on the "Rock Walk" at
the entrance to the
Guitar Center on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. The inlay
in the
footpath has imprints of Page's hands and his signature.
Fellow
guitar legend Edward van Halen was present at the unveiling and
was reported as saying the following in _Rolling_Stone_, "Led
Zeppelin is universally considered to be one of the heaviest bands
of all
time, and yet 90% of their music was acoustic. I think
that's great!" A
photo of Page at the ceremony appeared in the
February 1994 issue of
_Q_.
o From early in Jimmy's career is a song he cut with Sonny Boy
Williamson II, "I See A Man Downstairs".
o In interviews Page
has stated he prefers AAD to DDD purely for
"feel".
o Page's
relationship with Lori Maddox is frequently brought up by
people such as
Richard Cole and Stephen Davis in their quest to
find dirt on the band. The
exact nature of the relationship
remains slightly unknown, but if it what
they claim it is, it
could well be judged illegal as she was 14 when they
first started
going out together.
o While playing "Take Me For A
Little While" during a Coverdale/Page
show in Japan, Jimmy succummbed to
the urge to throw in some licks
from "Stairway To Heaven", the
chords of which are the same.
o Jimmy's 1965 solo single, "She Just
Satisfies/Keep Moving" was
released on cd in 1991. The song is very
derivative of the Kinks
song "Revenge" Kinks, which was co-written
by Larry Page, manager
of the Kinks, of whose recordings, Jimmy appears on
several as a
session player, probably including "Revenge". This cd
single is
part 1 of a set of 12 Fontana collectable single reissues.
The
single is also part of a boxed set of similar vintage and
rarity
recordings.
o During the April 28, 1977 show at Cleveland, Page's
"White Summer/
Black Mountainside" very clearly contains a snippet
of what was to
become the Firm song "Midnight Moonlight". The
bootleg of this
show, the night after the more common "Destroyer"
bootleg, is
available on a cd by the Japanese company Smilin' Ears.
o The
second part of the "Sha la la la" harmonies in "Fool In The
Rain" could well be Page.
o "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You",
"Ten Years Gone" and "Since I've Been
Loving You" all
illustrate Page's "light and shade" musical
philosophy.
o In
early 1994 _Guitar_For_The_Practising_Musician_ voted Page
"Getting
Better All The Time".
"It's hard to see how Page - the acknowledged
master of
creating guitar-driven songs - could get much better, but
he
did. Despite what you think of Coverdale/Page, listen to
"Absolution Blues" and "Whisper A Prayer for the Dying"
to
hear what a master sounds like when he puts his mind to it.
The riff
in "Whisper" is as truly menacing as anything Page
has ever
done."
o At the April 21, 1977 show at the L.A. Forum, misfortune befell
Jimmy, when, early in the show, apparently after "Sick Again",
his
pants fell down! After starting the show in his white suit, he
was
forced to change into his black suit to avoid a repetition of
this
unfortunate incident.
o Page in the Zeppelin days had a habit of recycling
riffs, or
making slight changes to them and turning them into new songs.
The guitar at the start of "Rock And Roll" sounds very similar
to
the one in "Boogie With Stu", played at a different speed. These
are typical of Page's fixation with a position in A, which he uses
a lot.
For example, "Hots On For Nowhere" uses the same thing, in
E later
in A, and the riff from that, in A, is used again in
"Walter's
Walk". This is also strongly reminiscent of the guitar
in "Custard
Pie".
o The professionally shot footage from the August 11, 1979
Knebworth
show is officially unreleased and two possible explanations for
its recent appearance are, that it was among the material stolen
from
Jimmy's house at the time of "Outrider", or that it was
secretly
dubbed when Jimmy released the footage for use at the
Atlantic Records 40th
Anniversary, where the footage was shown
during band changeovers. Also
stolen from Jimmy's house at the
same time were the extensive demos he had
put together for his
upcoming "Outrider" album. Originally
intended to be a double
album, it eventually emerged as a single album
thanks to the theft
of so much material. The burglary took place in 1987 at
Jimmy's
house where his home studio, The Sol, is located, in Cookham,
Berkshire.
o Another unfortunate concert incident occurred when Jimmy
jumped on
stage with then musical ally David Coverdale for a jam session
with Poison. This occurred at a show at either Reno or Las Vegas.
The
unfortunate incident involved Page falling into one of the
onstage pits,
destroying one of Poison guitarist C.C. Deville's
prized Ibanez guitars, and
having to be helped out of the pit by a
roadie. David Coverdale's
contribution was to appear not to know
the words to several Zeppelin covers
they did.
o There is a Japanese release called "Jimmy Page Studio Works
1964-68" which collects together 27 tracks from that period that
he
played on.
o In an article in _Musician_ dating back to the
"Outrider" days,
Jimmy and the interviewer discuss songs that rip
off "Kashmir".
While not mentioned during the interview, in a side
bar, Robert
Plant's "Heaven Knows" is mentioned. Page played the
solo on
this track.
o The Firm that appears on the Dr. Demento compilation
is not The
Firm that Page was involved in, not unless his Firm sampled old
Star Trek dialogue that is. There is even a note on the
compilation that
says "No connection with Jimmy Page's band".
The song was,
apparently, called "Star Trekkin'" and featured
lyrics such as the
following, `There's Klingons on the starboard
bow, Starboard bow, starboard
bow, There's Klingons on the
starboard bow, Scrape 'em off, Jim!"
o
Page appears on an album by a band called Box Of Frogs made up of
ex-members
of the Yardbirds. The core members of the group were
Jim McCarty, Chris Dreja
and Paul Samwell-Smith. The lead
guitarists varied, with some appearances by
Jeff Beck on the
first album, and Page on the second. A 1986 album saw the
involvement of Rory Gallagher, but not Page. Page's involvement
only
came about in the first place after some well-publicised
whining that he had
not been invited to contribute to the first
album. The track featuring Page
on the 1986 album is "Asylum".
o And, should the question of what
happened to former Yardbirds
vocalist Keith Relf, who only had one lung, be
raised, the
following is a brief summary. After the Yardbirds split, Relf
formed a new band in 1969, which lasted only one year by the name
of
Renaissance. The band also featured Jim McCarty, and Jane
Relf. After that,
Relf's career was sporadic at best, until he
died tragically at the age of
just 33 in May 1976, after being
electrocuted in his Hounslow home.
Renaissance however, kept
on going, and its later incarnations minus Relf
have received
much critical acclaim.
o The version of "White
Summer" on the "James Patrick Page - Session
Man Volume 2"
bootleg is credited to The New Yardbirds live at the
Marquee Club 18/10/68.
This is almost certainly incorrect. This
is more likely to be from the
27/6/69 performance at the London
Playhouse Theatre, broadcast by the BBC.
This version appears on
the recent box sets, and the bootleg of the
performance is quite
common, and mostly known as "White
Summer".
o The mystery surrounding a Page guitar instrumental entitled
"Swan
Song" has long intrigued Zeppelin fans. The piece is a
further
evolution of the exotic tunings that produced "White
Summer/Black
Mountainside". It in fact, was performed live, in small
excerpts,
as part of this number on several occasions, particularly on the
last two Zeppelin tours. It was then adapted to become "Bird On
The
Wing" during the ARMS tour, and finally got an official airing
as part
of the Firm song "Midnight Moonglight". By this stage,
however, it
was a big progression from the earlier versions. It
shares it's tuning with
"Kashmir" too. This version of the story
is endorsed by former
journalist and Zep associate Cameron Crowe.
Dave Lewis however, speculates
that "Swan Song" may have been an
early version of "Ten Years
Gone". Furthemore, in the collectors
column in the magazine
"Electric Magic", details were provided
about a bootleg of
"Swan Song". The details provided were, that
it runs roughly an
hour or so in length and is broken up into
twelve sections. Some of the
sections contain bass, mellotron,
overdubbed guitar parts, and synthesizers,
signs that it was
toyed with by the band, or at least someone else, on
various
occasions. The magazine described the piece as a musical diary
from about 1976 to 1980. The source for this, if it is available,
could
possibly be the tapes that were stolen from Jimmy's house in
the mid 1980's.
No other source seems likely, as Jimmy would
not release music of this rough
and unfinished nature to the
public. Legend has it that the band was working
on the song
during the "Houses Of The Holy" sessions, but stopped
recording
when someone yelled out "Swan Song!", which then became
the
working title for the album, and then the name of their record
label.
o According to Page, Richard Cole was not privy to 90% of the
things
he wrote about in his sleaze expedition "Led Zeppelin
Uncensored".
o "Dazed And Confused" was dropped from the
setlist of the 1975 US
tour for the first two weeks because Jimmy sprained
his finger by
catching it in a fence. It was replaced with "How Many
More
Times".
o The Rolling Stones song "Through The Lonely
Nights" which appeared
as a b-side on the single of "It's Only
Rock'n'Roll (But I Like
It)", is rumoured to feature Jimmy Page on
guitar. The track was
a leftover from the "Goats Head Soup"
sessions in late 1972 and
early 1973.
o According to a Peter Grant
interview aried on April 21, 1994 on
Q-107 Toronto, Jimmy bought Boleskine
House, Aleister Crowley's
former residence around 1967.
o The May 1994
issue of _Q_ magazine featured a competition where
readers had to guess the
names of guitarists from pictures of
their guitars. Jimmy was featured with
the red Gibson double-neck
in picture 20 with the hint "'60s session
man."
o During one of the 1980 performances of "Since I've Been
Loving
You" Jimmy sounds rather wasted, as evidenced by his rather
bizarre behaviour and introduction and comments about his glasses,
and
multiple "Good evening"'s.
o Legend has it that Page recorded all
the guitar overdubs for
"Presence" in one night, including those
on "Achilles Last Stand",
an intensely harmonically complex
song.
o The 1967 Michaelangelo Antonioni directed film "Blow Up"
features
a performance by the Yardbird's of "Stroll On", which is
actually "Train Kept A-Rollin'" with alternate lyrics. The actual
performance takes place in a club, roughly sixty minutes into
the film,
when the photographer main character is searching for
someone and stumbles
into a club in his search for her. The
people in the club look rather wasted
and most are basically
motionless as the Yardbirds are playing. The
performance is
mimed, and Jimmy is miming his guitar parts on a yellow 1958
Fender Stratocaster given to him by Jeff Beck, which later that
year was
repainted in psychedelic colours. The main action during
the scene takes
place when one of Beck's amps strats to play up.
Despite some adjustments by
singer Keith Relf and Beck it
continues to crackle. Beck then thumps it a
few times with the
cheap looking hollow-bodied guitar he is playing at the
time. A
sound technician scampers onstage and tries to correct the
problem
but Beck seems not to care and thumps the guitar against the amp
a
few more times, then takes it off and proceeds to destroy it by
jumping
on it and breaking off the fretboard. He tosses the
fretboard into the
crowd, and the main character grabs it and runs
out of the club frantically,
only to discard it on the pavement
when he gets outside. Beck can be seen
putting on another guitar
right near the end of the clip. The crowd is
awoken out of their
apathy by Beck's actions and the retrieval of the
fretboard by the
main character is preceeded by some raucous behaviour by the
crowd. Jimmy is decked out in hip clothing, including a very cool
lapel
badge for the performance and has a suitably trendy haircut
and extensive
sideburns. The original soundtrack album to the
movie was released in March
1967 (MGM SE 4447) and "Stroll On" can
be found on that. There is
some debate as to what instrument
Jimmy plays on what was one of the very
few Yardbirds tracks to
feature both him and Jeff Beck. Conventional wisdom
may suggest
the second guitar part, but some will have us believe he played
bass on that particular song instead of the Yardbirds's regular
bass
player Chris Dreja. The reason Beck actually destroyed the
guitar makes an
interesting anecdote. Antonioni had originally
wanted The Who for the scene,
and at the time Pete Townshend had
made a name for himself by breaking
guitars onstage. However, it
turned out that Antonioni couldn't afford The
Who so he hired the
Yardbirds instead, and asked Beck to smash his guitar in
keeping
with his original idea for the scene. Beck is not known for
destroying instruments, and his reaction to this suggestion was
not
recorded. In 1995, Antonioni received an Oscar for a his
cinematic
achievements, during the presentation of which, a brief
clip from "Blow
Up" was shown, the tennis scene.
o Page did some recordings around 1969
with American slide guitarist
John Fahey at Olympic Studios.
o The
question of which Yardbird's songs featured both Page and Beck
was addressed
by page in a 1977 interview in _Guitar_Player_. The
portions in square
brackets were listed in the original article as
sources for the
material.
"`Happenings Time Years Time Ago' [The Yardbirds' Greatest
Hits], `Stroll On' [Blow Up], `The Train Kept A-Rollin''
[Having A
Rave-Up With The Yardbirds], and `Psycho Daisies'
[available only on the B
side of the English single release
of `Happenings Ten Years Time Ago,' and
an obscure bottleg
titled _More_Golden_Eggs_ (Trademark of Quality,
TMQ-61003)],
`Bolero' [Truth], and a few other things. None of them were
with the Yardbirds, but earlier on just some studio things,
unreleased
songs: `Louie Louie' and things like that; really
good though, really
great."
Beck and Page are also both featured on the "Great
Shakes" U.S.
radio commercial, while the "Roger The Enginner"
album which has
both "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" and
"Psycho Daises" on it has
recently been re-released.
o Another
guitarist who uses a Gibson double-neck guitar is Slash,
the guitarist from
Guns 'n' Roses, although his is a blue, navy
blue colour. His most notable
use of it was on the version of
"Knockin' On Heaven's Door" that
the band played at the Freddie
Mercury Tribute Concert that was subsequently
released as a
single. Carlos Santana is apparently another who owns one
of
these guitars, while one, possibly a replica, hangs in The Hard
Rock
Cafe in New York.
o Succubus Music Inc. is the name of Jimmy's publishing
company,
used since "Outrider". The name is taken from that of a
demon,
one in the form of a woman who seeks to have carnal
intercourse
with men. An incubus is the direct opposite of this. If
anyone
meets one of these, please direct her to the compiler of
this
document for a stern talking to.
o A picture of Jimmy appears in the
book _Eight_Days_A_Week_, which
is a photographic history of rock. Jimmy is
decked out in a
cowboy outfit for the photo, with a hat which looks several
sizes
too small.
o Jimmy didn't attend the Gibson Guitars 100th
Anniversary Show at
Wembley Stadium in 1994.
o A bootleg of outtakes from
the "Outrider" album lists three tracks
originating from the Sol
Studio in February 1987, "Judas Touch",
"Muddy Water
Blues" and a cover of "Train Kept A-Rollin'". Paul
Rodgers
later released a song called "Muddy Water Blues" with
Jason Bonham
on drums.
o The following extract regarding Page is taken from Jim
Miller's
_The_Rolling_Stone_Illustrated_History_of_Rock_n_Roll_, p.
457.
"...Page, in contrast to Cream's trio of superstars, grasped
the importance of crafting a cohesive ensemble. Taking his
cues from old
Chess and Sun recordings, he used reverb and
echo to mold the band into a
unit, always accenting the
bottom (bass and drums), always aiming at the
biggest
possible sound. As a result, the best of Led Zeppelin's
records
still sound powerful, whereas Cream tracks like
"White Room" sound
pale and disjointed."
o Page was clearly not used to miming for videos
when he made the
video that accompanied The Firm's "Satisfaction
Guaranteed".
Jimmy himself admitted this, claiming he can never remember
what
he was supposed to be playing, making the miming difficult.
o The
February 1994 issue of _Guitar_World_ reported that Page was
featured in the
book _Gibson_-_100_Years_Of_An_American_Icon_.
The book features more than
500 photographs of Gibson guitars
through the years in the hands of artists
such as Robert Johnson,
Les Paul, Duane Allman, B.B. King, Slash, and
Page.
o Page introduced "Black Dog" on every night of the 1980
tour, and
his erratic introductions indicate his fried and drug-affected
state of mind at the time.
o Jimmy is responsible for the "Little
drops of rain" backing vocals
during the bridge in "Thank
You". Page may also be the one doing
the "Ahhhh-uh-huh" parts
near the end of "Gallows Pole". When the
band played live Jimmy
infrequently did background vocals, most
notably on "Whole Lotta
Love", and with a somewhat inconsistent
quality. Back in the studio, the
"All right, all right" backing
vocals in "Candy Store
Rock" sound as if they might be Page.
Other songs with Page on back
vocals include "Your Time Is Gonna
Come", "Communication
Breakdown", "Whole Lotta Love", "Living
Loving Maid
(She's Just A Woman)", and possibly "Good Times Bad
Times" and
"Baby Come On Home".
o Page made an uncredited appearance on an
album by the Dubliners in
the early to mid 1960s.
o Page has only ever
been recorded once singing lead vocals, and
that was on his 1965 solo single
"She Just Satisfies", on which
he also plays most of the
instruments, including harmonica. The
b-side, a song called "Keep
Moving" which was co-written with
Barry Mason is arguably a better
song. The vocals on "She Just
Satisifes", also written with Mason,
do actually sound quite a
lot like Keith Relf, as does the harmonica,
although most sources
claim that it was in fact Page singing. The song is
available on
the Yardbird's bootleg "More Golden Eggs".
o In
August 1998, Page joined Aerosmith onstage on at the Donington
Monsters of
rock festival for a couple of songs, then two days
later he jammed with them
again at the Marquee Club in London, in
a five song set which included
"Immigrant Song". One of the tunes
they jammed on at Donington was
"Train Kept A-Rollin'", and just
before the solo, Steven Tyler,
Aerosmith's lead singer, yells
"Stroll on, Jimmy!" in reference to
Page's participation in the
Yardbird's cover of "Train Kept
A-Rollin'" with alternate lyrics,
"Stroll On", from the
Antonioni film "Blow Up". Aerosmith are
noted Yardbirds fans and
used to cover "Shapes Of Things" during
their shows.
o The first
single Page ever played on, as opposed to the first hit
single he ever played
on, was a session for Englebert Humperdinck.
John Paul Jones claims to have
played on most of Englebert's
sessions, so he may well be on the track too.
This question is
used occasionally in radio competitons.
o The first hit
single Page played on was "Diamonds" by Jet Harris
and Tony
Meehan.
o Page's daughter Scarlett attended the 1994 Led Zeppelin
Convention
organised by Dave Lewis.
o Jimmy has reportedly said he wanted
his new band in 1968 to be
something along the lines of Pentangle. That was
until he heard
Bonham play, which changed his mind completely. Pentangle were
a
1960's English group who played similar material to Fairport
Convention,
but in a more traditional style. Several very well-
known musicians have come
out of the band, including several major
influences on Page, Bert Jansch and
John Renbourn. Another to
rise to fame in Pentangle was upright bassist Danny
Thompson, who
has recently been playing with Richard Thompson, former
Fairport
Convention member, and Indigo Girls.
o One of Page's classmates
at Art College was Sandy Denny, who later
on became a singer for Fairport
Convention and contributed vocals
to "The Battle Of Evermore".
o
Former Fairport Convention member Dave Mattacks plays on
Page's
"Deathwish II" soundtrack.
o The deleted, and withdrawn
thanks to Page, Yardbird's album "Live
Yardbirds With Jimmy Page"
has turned up again on a cd called
"Yardbirds Rare Concerts
1965-68".
o An interview cd with Page is available where he discusses
the
trials and tribulations of making "The Song Remains The
Same".
However, the sound quality is poor and the interview content
is
not that interesting.
o Throughout his solo career, Page has written
music that has
complimented his vocalists, all of which have been much
less
versatile than Plant, and inhibited Jimmy in this way. For
example,
the material he wrote with The Firm, such as
"Satisfaction
Guaranteed" would not have worked with David
Coverdale, nor would
"Whisper A Prayer For The Dying", from the
Coverdale/Page album,
have worked with Paul Rodgers. Neither
of these two could cover the terrain
that Plant does which goes
a long way to explaing why Jimmy's hasn't written
songs like
"D'yer Mak'er", "The Rain Song" or "Babe
I'm Gonna Leave You"
during his solo career. The plethora of vocalists
on "Outrider",
three in fact, John Miles, Chris Farlowe, and Plant,
may have
contributed to the unfocussed nature of the album. Robert
Plant's
involvement was minimal anyway, Page gave him the song and
asked
him to write some lyrics for it.
o At one of the Knebworth 1979
shows Page broke a string during
"Over The Hills And Far Away".
Plant mutters something like "He
broke a string?" while Jimmy tries
to continue, then gives up,
strums a G chord and smiles at the crowd.
o At
a concert in 1970 Jimmy played a special solo as a tribute to
Jimi Hendrix,
soon after the death of the latter.
o The following is one of the many, and
in this case incorrect,
interpretations of what Jimmy's symbol from the
fourth album
means. The first step pyramid in Egypt was created in the
third
dynasty, under the rule of the Pharoah Zoser. The pyramid's name
is
attributed to him in the same way most of the pyramids in Egypt
are known.
The architect of this particular pyramid was a man
called Imhotep. All
pyramids were considered to have an intensely
spiritual nature, as the burial
place of kings. The early step
pyramids were considered to be stairways to
heaven for the spirit
of the pharoah. Hence it follows, well it doesn't
actually, but
never mind, that the centrepiece of the fourth album is the
song
"Stairway To Heaven" and if Jimmy's synbol was a word, which
it
isn't, it would be close to Zoser. Unfortunately, this is the
flaw in
this theory, the symbol can't be pronounced as word. But
as Jimmy isn't
telling us exactly what his symbol means, no-one
can say for sure what it
means. However, there may be some sort
of Egyptian content in its meaning, as
Jimmy is known to have
visited Egypt and been interested in the pyramids,
plus Aleister
Crowley was the conduit for what he considered to be some of
the
most significant knowledge he ever had access to while in Cairo
from
his guardian angel Aiswass. It was there that he wrote "The
Book Of
Law" from the dictation of that particular angel.
o Another theory on
the infamous "ZoSo" symbol is that it is in
fact, nothing more
than a smiling face with eyes, a nose and a
mouth. This is said to tie in
with the supposed deep and
meaningless ideology of the band, in that it looks
complicated
and mysterious, but probably means nothing.
o A few excerpts
from the book _On_Tour_With_Led_Zeppelin_ make for
amusing reading. In 1978
in _NME_ Nick Kent reported that Page
had suddenly and for no apparent reason
flown to Cairo, possibly
because he saw UFOs on his tv screen. The following
extract is
from a 1978 interview.
"Another current favourite is the
one about Pagey enjoying a
spot of television viewing, suddenly seeing UFOs
on the
screen, grabbing his toothbrush and tearing off to Cairo,
presumably for a rendezvous with little green men."
Page's response
to this is fairly predictable.
"That's because somebody didn't really
read what I'd said,
and they were just being bloody stupid."
The
rumour was aired again in an interview the following year
with some more
detail.
"We talk about Egypt for a minute or two. Page's trip to
Cairo had, indeed, been the subject of some quite splendid
rumours. On
the first leg, I think it was, of that last
ill-fated Led Zeppelin US tour,
it was said that one night
he'd been watching TV when the screen became
filled with
flashing lines. Immediately, so the tale went, he cancelled
the next dates and flew off to Egypt."
All this makes for just one
more bizarre rumour to add to the
collection. The time this is supposed to
have taken place is in
May 1977. Dave Lewis lists Page's visit to Cairo as
being for
a mid-tour break.
o Jimmy's reunion with Robert Plant at the
1994 Alexis Korner
benefit concert was not the first time he had performed
at an
Alexis Korner show. He also performed at a show on 6/5/84 along
with
Ruby Turner, Jack Bruce, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Charlie Watts,
John Paul
Jones, Ian Stewart, accompanied by a horn section. The
show was broadcast by
Radio Trent and it is from that telecast
that the bootleg "Jimmy Page
And Friends", from the show at the
Nottingham Palais, comes from. The
concert is also on 2 albums
of the 10 album set "Strange Tales From The
Road".
o Page has only played with Beck a handful of times on record,
but
more frequently live. When Paul Samwell-Smith quit the Yardbirds,
Page
replaced him on bass, and then swapped with rhythm guitarist
Chris Dreja,
playing dual lead guitar with Jeff Beck. He also
appears, along with John
Paul Jones, on the Page composed track,
although Beck disputes this,
"Beck's Bolero" on Beck's "Truth"
album. More recently
Page played with Beck at the induction of
the Yardbirds into the Rock 'n
Roll Hall Of Fame. Only a handful
of Yardbirds recordings feature both Beck
and Page, "Stroll On",
"Happenings Ten Years Time Ago",
"Psycho-Daisies", "Beck's
Bolero" (from Truth), and
"Great Shakes America", a jingle that
was released on "Little
Games Sessions And More". On the
Honeydrippers and Box of Frogs albums
they appear on different
tracks.
o Page, Clapton and Beck all played
together on the ARMS benefit,
including jamming on Clapton's
"Layla". Page by himself played
"Prelude", "Who's To
Blame", "City Sirens", and "Stairway To
Heaven"
before joining Beck and Clapton for "Layla", "Tulsa
Time",
and "Goodnight Irene". The three also played on the
four date
ARMS tour of the USA. Page added a composition he was working
on
at the time with Paul Rodgers, later to become "Midnight
Moonlight", and had Clapton and Beck join him for the solo
in
"Stairway To Heaven".
o Page jammed with Clapton at Guildford
Hall on May 24, 1983,
during a Clapton concert there, which wasn't
bootlegged.
o In a curious move, Page had Durban LaVerde overdub all of
Tony
Franklin's bass parts on "Outrider".
o One of the most
unusual theories on the meaning of Page's "ZoSo"
symbol is that it
was taken from the name for Curious George The
Monkey, a famous character in
Eglish children's books who was
known as Zoso. The adventures of George stem
from his name, his
innate curiosity, although when he got into unfortunate
situations
he was always saved by a Ranger. What the connection might be
with Jimmy Page though is unclear, and as "ZoSo" is not
actually
a word, this theory can also be consigned to the ever-growing
pile
of discredited ideas.
o The source of Page's red and blue ZoSo
sweater is unknown, it may
well have been a gift from a fan, but judging from
the pictures of
him in it, it looks a fraction too small.
o Page didn't
play on any of the recordings Clapton made with John
Mayall's Bluesbreakers,
but he did produce both songs on their
first single, "Telephone
Blues"/"I'm Your Witchdoctor". At the
same session
"Double Crossing Time" was also recorded, and Page is
reasonably
certain that this was the version that ended up on the
classic
"Beano" album, even though he is not credited on the album
sleeve.
He was credited on the single though. The Mayall and
Clapton Bluesbreakers
recordings are now the stuff of legend,
with Jimmy crediting Clapton as being
the first to marry the Les
Paul guitar with the Marshall amplifier to create
the "fat" sound
that has become a rock trademark. Jimmy's
contribution to the
proceedings is the echo-laden production which brings out
the best
in Mayall's falsetto vocals and Clapton's guitar. Jimmy
did
however, reportedly, play bass on some Immediate recordings of
the
period. Richie Yorke's biography also claims that Page produced
the
Bluesbreakers song "On Top Of The World", although this is
somewhat
uncertain.
o The cd "The Early Eric Clapton Collection" features
seven tracks
on which Page and Clapton are listed as having played together
in the "Immediate All-Stars". All seven of these songs are
instrumentals and according to the liner notes all of the songs
recorded
by this combination were instrumental. These are the
frequently copied and
redistributed Page/Clapton jams that were
released by the Immediate label
much to the chagrin of Page and
particularly Clapton. Also featured on the
cd are three
Bluesbreakers tracks, including the two produced by Page for
their first single, and "On Top Of The World", as well as some
Yardbirds era material.
o On the track "Tulsa Time" on the ARMS
concert video during the
Clapton/Beck/Page jam, the very country sounding
solos were
inadvertently blemished by Andy Fairweather-Low backing
onto
Page's volume pedal.
o Two more cd's featuring early Page material
are "British Blues
Heroes", the first of which is based on Jeff
Beck and features
Jimmy on a couple of tracks. The second is based on Clapton
and
features 3 or 4 tracks with Page.
o The early Page Immediate outtake
"Miles Road" is named after the
location of Jimmy's parent's
house.
o "Miles Road", "Freight Loader",
"Choker", "Draggin' My Tail",
"West Coast
Idea", "Tribute To Elmore" and "Snake Drive" were
all
recorded on a two-track reel-to-reel deck in Eric Clapton's
mother's
house in the drawing room, in London. The jams took
place in the period when
Clapton was between stints with the
Yardbirds and Mayall's Bluesbreakers.
These were later released
by Immediate Records, who Page was working for at
the time, who
claimed that they had the rights to anything Jimmy had
recorded,
and asked him to tidy them up a bit for release. Clapton,
now
along with Page a "marketable name" was furious about this,
and
felt that was Page was responsible. Page claims that he had to
hand
over the tapes or he would be sued by Immediate, since they
decided that the
tapes were their rightful property. Clapton,
however, didn't buy this story,
despite Page also being upset that
the jams were released too, and this
virtually destroyed their
close friendship. The relationship was not really
healed until
their appearances together on the 1983 ARMS benefit shows.
o
The rest of the personnel involved in the many Page/Clapton jams
that have
surfaced, may include luminaries such as Mick Jagger
playing harmonica on one
or more tracks.
o Page is featured in the book "Koenige des
Griffbretts" a German
publication about guitar heroes, also featuring
Duane Allman and
Albert Lee. The section on Jimmy is nearly 50 pages long
and
looks at his pre-Zeppelin session work in some depth. It
is
unfortunate that there is no English translation available.
o Page has
recorded a large amount of material with Roy Harper over
the years. He
features on all the tracks on Harper's "Whatever
Happened To
Jugula?", the song "Same Old Rock" on the
"Stormcock"
album, and a handful of the song on the live
"Flashes From The
Archives Of Oblivion" album. Page plays both
acoustic and
electric on the latter. The "Lifemask" album also
features Page
on some tracks, including the 20 minute epic "The Lord's
Prayer".
Some other notable musicians that have appeared with
Harper
include John Paul Jones, Bill Bruford, David Gilmour, Keith
Moon,
Kate Bush and Tony Franklin amongst others.
o The chair used by Page
for "White Summer/Black Mountain Side" on
the Coverdale/Page tour
looks very similar to one he used when
touring with Zeppelin.
o Page is
one of the people thanked on Adrian VanDenberg's album,
imaginatively
entitled, "VanDenberg".
o Inevitably, over the years Page's
dexterity has diminshed somewhat
and the "fluttery" style and
flexibility his left hand used to
have seems to have deteriorated. The
broken finger which Page
suffered in 1975, may be troubling him, as he may be
suffering
arthritis from lingering damage caused by that mishap, which
was
probably accentuated by him keeping playing on that tour.
Another possible
source of trouble for Page may be hinted at by
his admission that he didn't
play guitar for nearly a year after
Bonham died. While this may be an
exaggeration, a prolonged
absence from playing, and then playing again
regularly might have
increased the likelihood of getting arthritis in his
previously
broken finger.
o Jimmy has two children, Scarlett from a
relationship during the
1970s, and a son James from his marriage during the
1980s which
ended around 1994/95 and in _People_ was said to be leading to
a
a custody battle between Jimmy and his ex-wife for custody of
James. A
story doing the rounds at the time "Outrider" when
Jimmy was
happily married has been told by Jon Miles. Jimmy was
late for a rehearsal,
and upon ringing him up at home Jimmy's wife
said in her Louisiana accent
that "Jimmy cain't come to the phone
right now, he chaingin' the baby's
nappy".
o It was widely reported around the time of "Unledded"
that one of
the tasks Page had assigned to his publicist was to break in
any
new shoes he might acquire. Additionally, those working for Page
and
Plant were assigned all sorts of menial tasks such as going
out and buying
cds for them.
o Page joined the Yardbirds in controversial circumstances.
Going
backstage after a particularly anarchic gig, he found
bassplayer
Paul Samwell-Smith on the verge of leaving and suggesting
that
singer Keith Relf depart with him. In the end Relf stayed,
but
Samwell-Smith, an original member, left. Page, at the time
feeling his
creativity was blunted by session work, offered his
services to the band. So,
in July 1966, more than month after
Samwell-Smith quit in May 1996, Page
joined the Yardbirds on the
second offer. He turned down an offer to join the
band when Eric
Clapton left, feeling it would be unfriendly to Eric, so
he
suggested Jeff Beck. Page spent a week acclimatising himself to
the
bass before joining. However his position on bass seemed
uncertain as he
admitted that he and Beck had trialled a dual-
guitar lineup in the studio in
late 1966. Page was officially on
bass when the band recorded "Stroll
On", however the second guitar
part does not sound like Dreja, unless he
had drastically improved
overnight, so there remains some uncertainty as to
what Page did
in fact play on that track. The reason for the relabelling
of
"Train Kept A-Rollin'" was that the publisher demanded more
money
from director Michaelangelo Antonioni than he thought it was
worth,
so Relf rewrote the lyrics. By the end of 1966, Beck's
increasing
unreliability led to Page's move to lead guitar and
Dreja's relocation to
bass.
o The ARMS concert video which features Page has been released
by
M.I.A. under the alternative title "Rock Legends Part II".
The
video is exactly the same as the ARMS concert video, except
the
packaging of course. The interview is the same, where each of
the
three guitarists say who they enjoy playing with the most at
the
concert.
Jeff Beck : "Jimmy!"
Jimmy Page :
"Jeff!"
Eric Clapton : "Jimmy and Jeff!"
o According
to notorious groupie, and recently tell-all author Pam
DesBarres, Page's
daughter Scarlett was at one point going to join
a convent. This revelation
appeared in her book "I'm With The
Band". Scarlett has been more
recently spotted at Yale, and is
now reportedly a photographer in London. The
gossip column in
_Q_ magazine reported that she was at the
"Unledded" tapings as
a photographer.
o The encore of The Firm's
"Mean Business" tour was "You've Lost
That Loving
Feeling". An unusual choice.
o The first couple of chords of The Firm's
"Midnight Moonlight" bear
a vague resemblance to "Wonderful
One" from "Unledded".
o The ARMS video captures a moment of
inspired playing from Page,
where in one move he changes from the 12 string
to the 6 string
on his double-neck guitar, switches pickups, switches the
active
neck, and adjusts both volumes in one fluid process.
o Chorused
and multi-tracked guitars were primarily an invention of
Jimmy Page.
o
Jimmy's main guitar is a 1958 Les Paul Standard, in a flame-top
finish. The
guitar has no serial number, and various changes have
been made to it over
the years. The back pickup cover is chrome
instead of nickel, and it has gold
Grover tuning heads, and a
white selector cap in place of the original
parts.
o Jimmy's 1959 Les Paul Standard, also a flame-top finish, was a
gift from Joe Walsh. Its neck has been shaved to give it a
similar
profile to his 1958 Les Paul. Further modifications have
been made beneath
the lower edge of the scratchplate, where two
spring loaded buttons have been
installed. One is for setting
the pickups to serial or parallel, while the
other is for
alternating between ordinary and phased guitar sound. The
regular
pots have been discarded in favour of two push/pulls that
provide
coil tapping on either pickups, and the feature of offering
all
four coils in parallel. These modifications were undertaken by
Page's
guitar technician, Steve Hoyland.
o Page's Sixties Danelectro was assembled
from the parts of two
different Danelectros, and also features a retro-fitted
Badass
bridge. This guitar is made from masonite, of all things, and
has
concentric volume volume/tone controls.
o Page's legendary doubleneck is
really not that unusual. It is
quite cumbersome though, featuring a 6 and a
12 string neck. The
guitar differs from the standard SG in that it is
obviously wider
and has a better sustain. Each neck has a volume and tone
control
knob, but there is only one pickup selector, which is used
with
both necks. The guitar also has a selector switch for having one
or
both necks active on the guitar's circuit. To produce some
sympathetic
resonances Page usually had both necks active.
o All of Page's electric
guitars are strung with light gauge Ernie
Ball Super Slinky Strings.
o
Page made a very brief appearance on the documentary "The History
Of
Rock 'n Roll By The People Who Made It", which was screen in
Australia
on November 3, 1995. Page's appearance, all of five
seconds in the guitar
hero section where he was shown saying,
"It's amazing what you can do
with six strings," or words to that
effect, was accompanied with some
dramatic footage of his violin
bow solo from "The Song Remains The
Same."
o This list is by no means comprehensive, but is a listing of
some
of the people who Page either player sessions for, or appeared
on
their albums, at various stages of his career from session man
to
established star. Herman's Hermits and Donovan are not included
because
Page has claimed, with some evidence to support him, that
he didn't play on
any of the records of either of these artists.
The long running debate over
whether Page plays on Donovan's
"Hurdy Gurdy Man" can be settled,
as Page says he was in the USA
at the time and it was Alan Parker, the
guitarist with Blue Mink,
that did the session. In the case of Herman's
Hermits it is less
clear cut. Mutterings of legal action may have made Page
rather
secretive and there is a chance he did play on their
records.
Brenda Lee, Sonny Boy Williamson, Brian Poole And The
Tremeloes,
Dave Berry, Everly Brothers, The Pretty Things,
Tom Jones, Lulu And The
Luvvers, The Kinks, John Mayall,
John Williams, Them, Twice As Much, Chris
Farlowe, The
Who, Crispian St. Peters, The Yardbirds, Jeff Beck, P.J.
Proby, Cartoone, Family Dogg, Joe Cocker, Al Stewart,
Screaming Lord
Sutch, Roy Harper, Maggie Bell, Dave Barry,
Jet Harris And Tony Meehan,
Robert Plant, Steve Stills, The
Firm, Willie And The Poor Boys, John Paul
Jones, The Rolling
Stones, Box Of Frogs, Mannish Boys And Davey Jones,
Carter
Lewis And The Southerners, Neil Christian And The Crusaders,
The
Redcaps, Mickie Most, The Brooks, Mickey Finn And The
Pills, Neil Christian,
The First Gear, Billy Fury, Wayne
Gibson And The Dynamic Sound, The
Sneekers, The Primitives,
Pat Wayne And The Beachcombers, The Lancastrians,
The
Zephyrs, Judi Smith, The Outsiders, Nico, The Masterminds,
Bobby
Graham, The Fifth Avenue, Glyn Johns, Gregory Phillips,
Jimmy Tarbuck, Twice
As Much, Les Fleurs De Lys, Mickey Finn
And The Blue Men, Jackie DeShannon,
The Dubliners, Paul Anka,
Petula Clark, Cliff Richard, Johnny Hallyday, Burt
Bacharch,
Chris Ravel And The Ravers, Dave Berry And The Cruisers,
Mickie
Most And The Gear, The Pickwicks, The Blue Rondos, The
Talisman, Mickie Most
And The Most Brothers, The Untamed,
Scott McKay Quintet, Sean Buckley And
The Breadcrumbs,
Philamore Lincoln, Val Doonican, The Authentics, Brian
Howard
And The Silhouettes, Led Zeppelin.
o At age 17, Jimmy occasionally
jammed with British blues legend
Cyril Davies. It was at one of these jams
that producer Mike
Leander offered Jimmy some session work.
o Jimmy was
not the first person to use a violin bow with a guitar,
that honour goes to
Eddie Phillips of Creation, one of the bands
managed by Shel Talmy, whom Page
worked for.
o During their 1966/67 tour The Yardbirds played and jammed
with
local bands in the areas they passed through. One such artist
was
Fort Worth local-legend Scotty McKay, a musician with a career
that
stretched back to the 1950s. McKay and his band impressed
The Yardbirds so
much that Jim McCarty later produced a single
with him, "I Can't Make
Your Way", with The Yardbirds, and sold
it to EMI, although whether this
features Page is unknown. McKay
also recorded a version of "The Train
Kept A-Rollin'", and mailed
it to Page, who overdubbed a jaw-dropping
solo and returned it.
This single is incredibly obscure, mainly because it
was only
pressed locally.
o Some further info on the B-String Bender,
invented by Gene Parsons
and Clarence White, that Page used throughout his
career with
Zeppelin and right up to the current day. The information is
from
_The_Guitar_Handbook_.
"Also known as a "pull-string', this
is a mechanical system
of levers and springs which allows you to raise the
pitch of
the top E or B strings, according to type. It simulates
some
pedal-steel guitar techniques. The rods and springs are
fitted into
a cavity in the guitar body, and a pivoting arm
is connected to the string
at the bridge. A second arm is
attached to the strap button, so that pushing
down on the
guitar at this point raises the pitch by a tone. Palm
pedals
such as those made by Bigsby also allow you to raise one or
two
notes without affecting others, whereas a tremolo arm
alters the pitch of
all six strings."
Page recently used this during "Thank You"
for the "Unledded"
special.
o The "No Introduction
Necessary" album, recently re-released on cd
as "Jimmy Page &
Albert Lee", also features John Paul Jones on
bass. Page and Lee do not
apparently both play on any one song,
and the ones Page played on are
uncertain. The rest of the band
is Clem Cattini, drums, Nicky Hopkins, piano,
Chris Hughes, sax,
and Jim Sullivan, guitar.
o The material Page recorded
with blues legend Sonny Boy Williamson
has been frequently bootleged over the
years. The other personnel
on the album were, Brain Auger, keyboards, Joe
Harriott, sax, Alan
Skidmore, sax, Mickey Waller, drums, and Sonny Boy
Williamson II
on vocals.
o The triple-necked guiar Jimmy used on
"Unledded" was made by
Ovation, but where their triple necks
usually go, mandolin, 6
string, then 12 string, Jimmy's goes, mandolin, 12
string, then 6
string.
o Page was the producer when Clapton was recording
"I'm Your
Witchdoctor", and the somewhat older engineer, who was
used to
recording big bands and orchestras and was bewildered by
Clapton's
use of distortion and feedback made the famous comment that
"This
guy is unrecordable!" Page had to convince him that he'd
take
full responsiblity for the session to put his mind at ease.
o The
original Led Zeppelin, the idea for which was formed at the
session for
"Beck's Bolero" was Page on acoustic guitar, Beck
on lead guitar,
Keith Moon, then unhappy with The Who, on drums,
and not John Paul Jones, on
bass, but Jon Entwistle, as suggested
by Moon. Stevie Winwood was the
suggested vocalist but after they
found out that he was unavilable, still
heavily comitted to
Traffic, they tried getting in touch with Steve
Marriott. A
message came back from his camp that said, "How would you
like to
play guitar with broken fingers? You will be if you don't stay
away from Stevie". After that the idea pretty much died, until
Page
put together his own version of the band. It was at this
time that the
famous naming incident with Keith Moon occurred.
o Page worked out how to
play pedal-steel guitar specially for
"Your Time Is Gonna
Come".
o When Keith Richards went to see Zeppelin play he remarked to
Page
that, "You ought to get another guitarist; you're rapidly
becoming
known as the most overworked guitarist in the business."
o
In 1975, Page got together with Keith Richards and Rick Grech and
recorded a
song called "Scarlet".
o At June 1984 tribute concert for bluesman
Alexis Korner, a band of
Jimmy Page, Jack Bruce, Charlie Watts, Ian Stewart,
Paul Young and
Ruby Turner, performed as The Alexis Light Orchestra.
The
performance was broadcast on Radio Trent.
o Original Rolling Stone the
late Brian Jones recorded a soundtrack
for the film "A Degree Of
Murder" which featured his then
girlfriend Anita Pallenberg. Amongst the
people who played on
the album were Jimmy Page and Nicky Hopkins, both
recruited to the
project by Glyn Johns.
o According to Rolling Stones
biographer Phillip Norman, Page was
one of the candidates considered to
replace Mick Taylor when he
left the band.
o Page says his motivation to
visit Morocco came from the
encouragement of William Burroughs, who he did an
interview with
discussing the hypnotic power of rock and how it related to
Arabic
music in _Crawdaddy_
magazine.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
o John Baldwin was born on January 3, 1946, in Sidcup, Kent,
England.
o
John's first experience of playing music was playing the organ in
a church
choir as a child. He reprised his talents on the organ
for the song
"Your Time Is Gonna Come" on the debut album.
o John Paul Jones
released a solo single entitled "Baja" produced by
Rolling Stones
producer Andrew Loog Oldham. The flipside entitled
"A Foggy Day In
Vietnam" does not feature Jones and is thought to
instead feature
several members of the Rolling Stones.
o Jones is responsible for the string
arrangements on the Rolling
Stones song "She's A Rainbow" from the
album "Their Satanic
Majesties Request." "2000 Light Years
From Home", from the same
album, also has a string section so it seems
likely that Jones
did that arrangement for that as well.
o Jones composed
a piece called "Maastricht Time", which was
performed by the
Mondrian Quarter at the New Zealand Music
Festival in 1993.
o Jones and
the band found touring with Jethro Tull a rather
tiresome experience, Jones
calling Tull's Ian Anderson "...a pain
in the ass." Page labelled
their live performance as "Jethro Dull"
and Bonham suggested Tull
should make an album called "Bore 'Em At
The Forum."
o Jones
wrote an opera "The Happy Prince" in 1992, with some help
from Manu
Katche and Red Byrd.
o Amonsgt the bewildering variety of things Jonesy has
worked on
since Zep split up is Macondo, a composition he wrote for
steel
drummer Ricardo Gallandro Maconda.
o At one point in the 1970's
Jones approached Peter Grant about
leaving the band as he was sick of Page
and Plant getting all the
attention. It dawned on him that perhaps he didn't
necessarily
want all the baggage that went with that and he continued with
the
band.
o The variety of instruments Jones played in the studio and on
the
road is staggering. Clavinet, mellotron, bass, organ, keyboards,
triple necked guitar with one six string guitar, a twelve string
and a
mandolin as well as pedals in combination with this, bass
and keyboards. The
triple necked guitar was used on "Ten Years
Gone". Jones also sang
backing vocals live, notably on "The
Battle Of Evermore."
o
Jones once described a rendition of "Kashmir" the band did where
he
claimed they got completely lost in the song. The point where
it all started
to go awry was where the song changes and he was
responsible for giving the
onstage cues. They were saved by
Bonzo who launched into a drum solo, and the
band picked up again
when he finished the solo and played the song out.
The
performance was at Zurich in 1980 and appears on the
bootleg
"Silver Coated Rails" complete with some explanation from
Plant
to prospective bootleggers that Jonesy had messed up during
the
song.
o In early concerts the loudness of Jones amps was
partially
designed to cover up when Plant forgot the words, something he
has
been known to do on occasion.
o A John Paul Jones gets a credit for
involvement in the music for
the film "Splash" although it is hard
to say whether it is the JPJ
from Led Zeppelin or someone else with the same
name.
o Jones recorded a soundtrack album for the film "Scream for
Help"
which also features Page on the songs "Spaghetti
Junction" and
"Crackback".
o Jones involvement in the Peter
Gabriel album "Us" was apparently
much more exentsive than was
eventually released. He is listed
as having contributed to "Fourteen
Black Paintings", and some more
of his work may appear on "Plus
From Us", an album of extra
material from the people who contributed to
Gabriel's "Us" album.
o Jonesy made a guest appearance playing bass
on the Butthole
Surfers album "Independent Worm Saloon." Ironic
considering the
band has a song called "Hairway To Steven." Jones
not only
produced this album, but also played some bass on it as well.
o
The only time Jones has jammed with either of the remaining
Zeppelin members
outside the various reunions was on Plant's first
solo tour, on December 4,
1983 at Colston Hall in Bristol. Jones
apparently made some negative comments
about the experience to
Page afterwards. Of course, Jimmy appeared on two
tracks on
Jones' soundtrack to the film "Scream For Help." But
apart from
these two things, the reunions and the choice of songs for
the
1990 box set he has had little to do with his former
bandmates.
Although more recently he jammed with them again at the
induction
of Led Zeppelin into the rock'n'roll hall of fame.
o Jones
produced Raging Slab's "Dynamite Monster Boogie
Concert"
album.
o For some time now Jones has been rumoured to be
working very
slowly on a solo album.
o Jones appears to have a very
offbeat sense of humour, frequently
giving very bizarre answers to questions
during interviews. One
interesting case is where Jonesy jokingly proclaimed
in _Rolling_
_Stone_ that Bob Dylan's songwriting was slacking because he
had
found Jesus. Months later Dylan announced that for real and
released
"Slow Train Coming."
o Keith Emerson was the lucky recipient of a
gift from Jones once,
Jones giving him his GX-1 synthesizer. Emerson later
related how
it had packed up and died him, rendered totally useless. It
was
used though, such as for the Emerson Lake and Palmer
song
"Fanfare For The Common Man."
o On several Zeppelin songs
Jones uses a mellotron, which was
basically the first sampler. They're
primitive by today's
standards and required extreme amounts of skill and
patience to
get anything useful from. The most interesting feature of
the
mellotron was it's use of samples, which were recorded on
tape,
causing a huge amount of problems to do with rewinding,
durability,
speed variations, the fragility of the unit, and a
susceptibility to endless
technical problems, meaning it was handy
to have a technician around to fix
it all the time. Apart from
Zeppelin, the Moody Blues also used a mellotron,
notably on their
song "Knights In White Satin." Despite all it's
shortcomings, the
mellotron did have a very good string sound, which is why
it is
still used occasionally, and emulated, such as on the U2
song
"One."
o Jones appears on the album "No Introduction
Necessary" along with
Jimmy Page, Nicky Hopkins, the pianist for the
Rolling Stones
during some of their tours in the mid-seventies, Clem Catinni,
the
leading session drummer during the 1960s, Chris Hughes, who
produced
and played on Plant's "Fate Of Nations", Keith de Groot,
Albert
Lee, and Jim Sullivan.
o Jones's symbol has been seen on the cover of a book
about the
Rosicrucians, a religious cult in the middle ages which was
of
some interest to Aleister Crowley and his fellow members of
the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, such as Westcott.
o In the early
stages of the band's career, Jones would appear to be
the only group member
fluent in reading and writing sheet music.
He would also have needed this
skill to do his previous string
arrangements, such as on the Yardbirds song
"Little Games".
o One of the most obvious edits in "The Song
Remains The Same" film
is in "Whole Lotta Love" where Jones's
shirt changes, clearly
showing he didn't wear the same shirt at each concert.
Not to
mention the section at the end where he takes off his bass twice.
o
On February 20, 1994, BBC 1 aired an hour or so of Zeppelin
related material
recorded during BBC sessions. This included an
interview with Jones which
went something like this.
Interviewer : So John Paul Jones, you are the
keyboardist
with Led Zeppelin and you also do some
arranging?
Jones :
No.
Interviewer : OK, so you are the main composer and arranger
with Led
Zeppelin?
Jones : No.
Interviewer : Well, what are you then?
Jones :
I'm a bass player and arranger.
Interviewer : Damn, perhaps we should start
this interview
again.
This is apparently indicative of Jones wacky sense
of humour. A
similar type of interview was conducted in the short
lived
_Keyboard_Player_ magazine.
o Jones made an appearance with Lenny
Kravitz, playing bass at the
1994 MTV awards. The reason for his appearance
was that Lenny's
regular bass player had quit shortly beforehand and, Lenny,
very
roughly paraphrased, thought that "Why not get the person who
you
were trying to copy?"
o The reason for Jones's change of surname
from Baldwin, is unclear,
nor is a vague date known for when he did
this.
o Jones did the string arrangements for the songs
"Drive",
"Everybody Hurts", and
"Nightswimming", on R.E.M.'s "Automatic For
The People"
album.
o Jonesy was responsible for the string arrangements on
Cinderella's
"Heartbreak Station" album, for "Winds Of
Change" and the title
track.
o A project of Jones's that has recieved
several awards was his
original soundtrack for the adult animation "The
Secret Adventures
Of Tom Thumb". The animation is about an hour long and
belongs in
the horror genre.
o Less certain is Jones's involvement on an
ancient Christmas single
called "The Man From Nazareth" which
supposedly features Jones
doing the commentary. A short exceprt from this
appeared on BBC's
"Tops Of The Pops" in a worst pop songs segment
titled "TV Hell".
o In 1994 John Paul Jones teamed up with Diamanda
Galas, playing
bass on her album "The Sporting Life" and co-writing
some of the
material. The pair toured later in the year as well. A video
was
made for the single "Do You Take This Man" which featues
Jones
playing a six string bass. Galas's previous work centred around
the
theme of AIDS and subsequent deaths from it, after her brother
and some of
her friends succumbed to the disease. The album with
Jones is available on
the Mute label and features him playing
bass, and keyboards, as well as
producing it. Interestingly,
there are no guitars on the album whatsoever.
The drummer was
Pete Thomas, from Elvis Costello's Attractions. Galas
described
it as "A collection of homicidal love songs". One of
Jonesy's
comments was "With a voice like Diamanda's, a guitar would
simply
be a cosmetic device". Diamanda has a rather frightening 3
octave
range to her voice which she uses to full effect on the album.
An
amusing picture of Galas and Jones in a car, with JPJ driving,
appeared
in a 1994 issue of _Musician_. Some of Galas's previous
albums were titled
"Litanies Of Satan" and "Saint Of The Pit",
while one of
her songs from "Litanies Of Satan" was called "Wild
Women With
Steak Knives (The Homicidal Love Song For Solo
Scream)".
o In 1994
_Rolling_Stone_ reported that Jones was doing some work
with Michael Penn.
Jones' role in this case being that of
producer, although this material has
yet to surface.
o 1994 was a busy year for Jones, he was also involved with
playing
and producing a live album from Heart, which was recored in
Seattle at The Backstage club, a 500 seat venue, over five nights.
Jones
played mandolin on most of the tracks, but on a few he
played piano and at
different times, bass, one of which was "What
Is And What Should Never
Be".
o In the summer of 1993 a DJ on a Boston radio station told
an
amusing, and supposedly true story, about Jones' visit to a music
shop
in New York City while there on a promotional tour recently.
Jones reportedly
walked into the shop and was inspecting some of
the older equipment at the
rear of the shop when a young store
salesperson approached him, and not
recognising him, asked if he
could be of assistance. Upon noticing that Jones
was interested
in older equipment he said, "Yeah this stuff is dated,
but it's
great, bands like the Stones and Led Zeppelin used this stuff
all
the time". According to the story, Jones left the store
laughing
his head off.
o John Renbourn was amongst the several people who
contributed to
Jones's "Scream For Help" soundtrack. Jones later
ended up
producing Renbourn's 1987 album "The Three Kingdoms".
o
On Zeppelin's final tour Jones used a Yamaha GX-1 synthesizer, as
well as on
"In Through The Out Door", an instrument the size of
an upright
piano, that is notoriously unreliable.
o Jonesy's main bass is a 1962 Fender
Jazz. This bass was used from
his days with Jet Harris & Tony Meehan
right up until the mid
1970s. He also used a Fender fretless upright bass for
playing
songs like "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" live for a time. He also
used a
standard fretless bass, non-upright, bass. In 1976 he got some
new
basses from Rick Baker, which are Alembic copies, and are
frequently
mis-identified as such. One was an 8 string, which was
used on "Nobody's
Fault But Mine" and "Achilles Last Stand", while
the other was
a standard four string. These were deployed on the
1977 and 1980 tours, and
with a lot less rounder tone than his
jazz bass, on earlier material such as
"Black Dog" he had a much
increased presence. 8 string basses are
not very common, a noted
user being Pearl Jam's Jeff Ament, who also has a
twelve string
bass, with three groups of four strings. At Live Aid Jones used
a
1952 Fender Telecaster bass, while he returned to the old jazz
bass for
the Atlantic 40th Anniversary Reunion, Jason Bonham's
wedding, and the MTV
Awards performance with Lenny Kravitz.
Jones most notable other guitar is the
triple necked monster he
had custom built with pedals for performances of
"Ten Years Gone"
on the 1977 and 1979 tours. The guitar has piezo
pickups which
were still farily new at the time and were very trebly, which
can
be heard on various bootlegs.
o Jones uses Hecro Grey bass picks.
o
Among the keyboards he has used over the years are a Hammond C3
Organ, a
Hohner Clavinet, a Fender Rhodes, a Mellotron 216, and a
Mellotron 400, a
Yamaha GX1 Organ and a Yamaha GP 70B electric
grand piano.
o At the time
it was claimed that John Paul Jones was ill when he
was absent from the
sessions in November 1973. However, it later
transpired that Jones was
seriously considering quitting the group
to take up a position as choirmaster
at Winchester Cathedral.
Peter Grant strongly urged Jones to stay with the
group and to
give him some time to sort out his affairs Jones took a break
for
a few weeks. The uncertainty regarding his future is supposed to
have
come about because Jones was overwrought from the incessant
tours the group
embarked upon. Jones later decided not to quit
and resumed with the band at
Headley Grange in early 1974.
o Jonesy composed the theme music to the award
winning BBC serial
Odysseus.
o In 1986 Jones wrote an organ piece fpr
Christopher Bowers-
Broadbent.
o Jones contributed an instrumental to the
Opal label's Music For
Films compilation in 1989.
o This is a list, by no
means comprehensive, of artists and groups
that John Paul Jones has worked
with from his early session days
right up until the present time.
Jeff
Beck, Madeline Bell, Dave Berry, Donovan, Downliner's
Sect, Family Dogg,
Diamanda Galas, Graham Gouldman, Roy
Harper, Herman's Hermits, Jobriah, John
Paul Jones, Ben E.
King, Lulu And The Luvvers, Paul McCartney And Wings,
The
Mission, Andrew Loog Oldham Orchestra, P.J. Proby, The
Rolling
Stones, Del Shannon, Dusty Springfield, Rod Stewart,
The Mighty Avengers,
Billy Nicholls And The Mockingbirds,
The Yardbirds, Marc Bolan, Greenbeats,
High Society,
Manchester Mob, Tony Meehan, The Mindbenders, Paul And
Barry
Ryan, Marianne Faithfull, Burt Bacharach, Etta James, Tom
Jones,
Engelbert Humperdinck, Kathy Kirby, The Walker
Brothers, The Everly
Brothers, Champion Jack Dupree, Led
Zeppelin, Heart, The Lovemongers.
o
Jones put in some stage appearance in early 1991 with Red Byrd.
o Jones was
behind the movie soundtrack for the 1993 film "Risk".
o Jonesy's
symbol from the fourth album was taken from a book of
runes and symbolises a
person with confidence and competence. It
shares the common characterisitc
with Bonham's symbol of having
trisected ovals, termed "yonics",
which are in opposite aspects
on the two symbols, indicating that the two
symbols reflect two
very different people.
o In 1982, Jones taught
Electronic Composition at Dartingnton
College of Arts, Devon.
o Jones
appears on Paul McCartney's "Give My Regards To Broad
Street",
playing bass on the track "Ballroom Dancing".
o Jones composed a
trombone piece for Jim Fulkerson, for the
Huddersfield Contemporary Music
Festival in 1984. The piece
was titled "Showdown".
o 1990 was a
busy year for Jones. He did the string arrangements
on Cinderella's
"Heartbreak Station", produced La Sura Dels Baus's
"Noun"
album, produced an album for his daughter Jacinda, set up
a 32 track digital
electronic studio near Bath, and a was
commissioned to come up with a one
hour duration multimedia show,
Memory Palace, for Art Futura at the Seville
Expo in 1992.
o Jones composed and produced a multimedia show for a Mercedes
Benz
launch in 1991, as well as scoring a computer animation piece
for
Rebecca Allen, of Aimatica
Spain.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
o John Henry Bonham was born on May 31, 1948 in Redditch,
Worcestershire,
England.
o Bonzo married Pat at 17, whom he met a dance. They had two
children, Jason and Zoe.
o Bonham's explosive power and endurance may
well have come from his
days as a hod carrier on building sites.
o At one
stage Bonzo owned 21 cars.
o A notorious episode involving John Bonham was
when he walked into
the Rainbow in Los Angeles and ordered 20 Black
Russians, drank
them all quickly in succession and left.
o Another
incident saw Bonzo ride a Harley Davidson motorcycle
through the lobby of
the Hyatt House Hotel in Los Angeles.
o The hot rod John Bonham drives in
"The Song Remains The Same" was
originally imported by Jeff Beck in
1969 before being sold to
Bonham. It is a "Blown Model T" with a
500bhp Chevy Engine, 1932
Ford dropped beam, 1942 Ford front drums, 1962
Chevy rear axle,
Convair steering boxes and a Holeshot torque converter. The
car
was nicknamed "The Boston Strangler."
o Jimmy has said that
Bonzo was the reason the band had to buy
bigger amps.
o When tempers
flared in the band it was not unheard of for Robert
and Bonzo to dig up old
arguments from their Band of Joy days,
such as who had paid for what in
1968.
o Bonzo's symbol from the fourth album, the three linked circles
came from the same book of runes that Jonesy's came from, and is
meant
to symbolise the man-wife-child trilogy. Bonham's symbol
has a common
elements with Jones's, trisected ovals, or "yonics",
which are in
opposite aspect in their symbols, reflecting that
they symbolise two very
different people. Plant has pointed
out that it also looks like the emblem
for Ballantine beer.
Another source says that Bonham picked the symbol at
random,
simply because he liked it, and it reminded him of drumheads. A
DJ in Britain, Danny Baker, came up with the interesting theory
that
Bonham was sitting in the pub with his customary glass of the
amber fluid and
plonked it down on his beer mat a couple of times
and noticed what a nice
little symbol the marks formed. Jason
Bonham has said, on the same DJ's show
that the symbol is the
man-wife-child trilogy rune. The German company Krupp
AG also
has a symbol with three interlocking circles, although it is the
opposite way up to Bonham's. A German band called the Krupps has
used
this symbol and pictures of zeppelins for album art. Another
reasonably
plausible thought, is that the symbol looks a bit like
a drum kit when seen
from in front, with bass kickers, or above
with toms and cymbals slightly
overlapping.
o The drumbeat from "When The Levee Breaks" is the
most frequently
used sample in dance music, notably featuring in the hit song
"Relax" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. At one time the remaining
band members took legal action against The Beastie Boys for their
use of
this drum sample. The Beastie Boys use several Zep samples
on their album
"Paul's Boutique".
o John Bonham, band manager Peter Grant, tour
manager Richard Cole
and security man John Bindon were charged with battery
after an
incident following a show at the Oakland Coliseum on July 23,
1977 involving the staff of promoter Bill Graham. The source of
the
incident was a member of Graham's entourage refusing to give
a carved wooden
plaque with "Led Zeppelin" written on it that was
hanging outside
the dressing room door to Grant's son Warren.
Not only did the guard refuse
the request, but he also slapped
Grant's son, which turned out to be a
somewhat ill-advised idea.
According to notorious liar, crack addict and
alcholic Tour
Manager Richard Cole, he stood in front of the door to a
trailer
while Grant and Bindon beat the man up. However, before this,
Bonzo who had actually witnessed the incident, kicked the security
guard
in the groin before going onstage assuming that was the end
of it. It wasn't
and the performance was delayed while Graham
threatened severe legal action
and vowed never to promote a
Zeppelin show again. Other reports claim Bonham
beat up three of
Graham's other security men, and that the plaque had been
requested by his son Jason. However, if this was the case
Bonham,
notoriously protective of his son, would probably not have gone
onstage so readily, so the story with Warren Grant at the centre
of it
sounds more likely. A civil suit for 2 million pounds for
punitive damages
was filed against the group. The charges against
Bonham, Grant, Cole and
Bindon were heard in California, on
February 16, 1978, all of them escaped
with suspended prison
sentences and fines. The security guard in question,
came out of
the whole incident the worst, as he needed hospital treatment
after the show for his injuries. To make matters worse, the band
had to
play another show in Oakland the following night. Page
reportedly sat down
for the entire performance. Back at the hotel
after the show the four
involved were arrested, and were released
within two hours on $250 bail
each. Cole claims that before the
arrest it was necessary to rid the band's
rooms of drugs and any
other illegal substances. Things only got worse, as
the following
weekend Karac Plant died. However, relations between the band
members and Graham appeared to have improved by the time of Live
Aid and
the Atlantic 40th Anniversary show.
o Dave Lewis in _A_Celebration_ rates
Bonzo's top 10 performances
as,
1) Moby Dick 2) Whole Lotta Love 3) Poor
Tom 4) Rock And Roll 5) When The Levee Breaks 6) D'yer Mak'er
7) In My Time
Of Dying
8) No Quarter (Live)
9) Achilles Last Stand
10) Hots On For
Nowhere
o Bonham's funeral was held in Rushock, Worcestershire.
o Bozo's
drumming is characterised by a tendency to play slightly
behind the beat
rather than in front of it. This gave Page a
solid base from which to expand
his riffs, while Plant seems to
find a huge beat very inspiring, whether it
is energy or volume
providing that power.
o Bonham's symbol has also been
observed on the side flap of a one
pound container of Challenge Butter.
o
A 1982 issue of US _Playboy_ featured the following tribute to
Bonham, when
he was inducted into their rock'n'roll Hall Of Fame.
"John
"Bonzo" Bonham was part of a well equipped army
that scaled the
face of rock and roll until, for a few years,
there was nothing left but
rock - power rock, heavy metal,
lude and lascivious rock. For 12 years,
Bonham's drumming
for Led Zeppelin managed to avoid setting the critics on
fire. They called him heavy handed, leaden. That did not
deter the
listeners who supported Bonzo from the beginning.
Led Zep's founder,
guitarist Jimmy Page, described
encountering Bonham for the first time:
"I couldn't believe
how he was living his music. When he gets into a
trip, the
audience goes with him." He was inventive and
unpredictable,
raw and basic. It was as though he recognized no rules, no
conventions. Sometimes he'd drum with his hands, which
prompted one
manufacturer to claim its drums were as tough
as Bonham. Perhaps the same
insistent push to the limit that
characterized his work crushed him in his
private life. On
September 25, 1981, as American fans lined up to buy
tickets
to Led Zeppelin's first tour since 1977, Bonzo, exhausted
from
touring and drink, died in his sleep, yet another
casualty of rock and roll
life. Since then, the tour has
been cancelled and the band has called it
quits, a rather
heartfelt testimonial to Bonham's talent. We'll miss the
incredible timekeeper who could solo for 30 minutes and
leave his
audience screaming for more. He spawned hundreds
of imitators, but no one in
the world plays drums the way he
did."
o Bonzo's symbol has been
sighted on a church steeple in Italy.
o Bonham claimed that Zeppelin came
away from the Earl's Court shows
in 1975 with nothing more than a few hundred
quid each to show for
their efforts.
o The drummer on Donovan's
"Hurdy Gurdy Man", a song arranged by
John Paul Jones, is reputed
to be Bonham, although this is very
unlikely.
o One of Bonham's defining
characteristics as a drummer was his
lightning fast bass pedal foot, and his
amazing endurance. He
could also triplets and quads very quickly and with a
very even
rhythm, he didn't even need to build up to them, he could just
jump straight into them. Several examples of this being in
"The Song
Remains The Same" film during his drum solo.
o Bonham played Ludwig drum
kits throughout his career with
Zeppelin, even getting a custom miniature set
made up for his
son Jason. He used Ludwig 2A sized drumsticks.