Led Zeppelin (MP3
below)
The Durable Led Zeppelin:
A conversation with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant
(March 13, 1975)
By Cameron Crowe
Over its six-year history, Led Zeppelin has taken
some pretty hard knocks from critics of all stripes -
this magazine not excepted. During those same
years, the band has managed to sell a million units
apiece on all five of its albums and the current
American tour is expected to be the top grossing
event in rock & roll history. Can it be that the
critics can't hear? Jimmy Page and Robert Plant
discuss this possibility and other matters in a
Rolling Stone conversation
John Paul Jones, Led Zeppelin's bassist and
keyboard player, was quietly playing backgammon
and half listening to a phone-in radio talk show on
New York FM.
"I was in a club last night when someone asked me
if I wanted to meet Jimmy Page," the show's host
suddenly offered between calls. "You know, when I
think about it, there's no one I'd rather meet less
than someone as disgusting as Jimmy Page."
Jones bolted up from his game. "Let me just say
that Led Slime can't play their way out of a paper
bag and if you plan on seeing them tomorrow night
at the Garden, those goons are ripping you off. Now
don't start wasting my time defending Led Slime. If
you're thinking about calling up to do that, stick
your head in the toilet and flush."
Would you like to hear what "Led Slime" sounded like at the time?
This is from February 12, 1975.
Click Here for a 90-second MP3
of the show this guy missed.
Click Here for a full seven minutes
of punishment.
Oh, and this is a bootleg recording.
It's supposed to sound this bad.
Jones, normally a man of quiet reserve, strode
furiously across the room. He snapped up a phone
and dialed the station. After a short wait, the talk
show host picked up the phone.
What would you like to talk about?
"Led Zeppelin," Jones answered coolly in his
clipped British accent. The line went dead. Victim
of an eight-second delay button, the exchange was
never given any air time.
It was a familiar battle, as Jones saw it. Although
Led Zeppelin has managed to sell more than a
million units apiece of all five of its albums and is
currently working a U.S. tour that is expected to be
the largest grossing undertaking in rock history, the
band has been continually kicked, shoved,
pummeled and kneed in the groin by critics of all
stripes. "I know it's unnecessary to fight back,"
Jones said. True enough: The Zep's overwhelming
popularity speaks for itself. "I just thought I'd defend
myself one last time."
The night after that aborted defense, in the first of
three concerts at Madison Square Garden, Led
Zeppelin brought a standing-room-only audience to
its feet with one of the finest shows of its six-year
career. On Page's unexpected midset impulse, the
band launched unrehearsed into a stunning
20-minute version of his tour de force, "Dazed and
Confused." The tension of uncertain success was
an evident and electric element in Zeppelin's
performance that evening. "No question about it,"
lead singer Robert Plant enthused before returning
to the stage for a second encore of
"Communication Breakdown," "the tour has begun."
It has been a long time since Zeppelin last rock &
rolled. After 18 months spent laboring over their
new double album, Physical Graffiti, the band has
some warming up to do. "It's unfortunate there's go
to be anybody there," Plant said. "But we've got to
feel our way. There's a lot of energy here this tour.
Much more than the last one." The tour's official
opening night, January 18th at the Minneapolis
Sports Center, went surprisingly well considering
the circumstances. Only a week before, Jimmy
Page broke the tip of his left ring finger when it was
caught in a slamming train door. With only one
rehearsal to perfect what Page calls his
"three-and-a-half-finger technique," the classic
Zeppelin live pieces, "Dazed and Confused" and
"Since I've Been Loving You," were definitely
retired. Codeine tablets and Jack Daniel's
deadened the pain enough for Page to struggle
through the band's demanding three-hour set.
Peter Grant, Led Zeppelin's manager and president
of Swan Song, the group's recording company,
found those first few dates strange: "A Led Zeppelin
concert without 'Dazed and Confused' is something
I'll have to get used to. In a lot of ways that number
is the band at its very best. There's one point in the
song where Pagey can take off and do whatever he
wants to. There is always the uncertainty of
whether it will be five or 35 minutes long."
Page reacted to his injury with quiet desperation. "I
have no doubt the tour is going to be good, it's just,
dammit, I'm disappointed that I can't do all I can
do." He began beating a fist quietly into the palm of
his crippled hand. "I always want to do my very
best and it's frustrating to have something hold me
back in the set the very second I'm able to play it.
We may not be brilliant for a few nights, but we'll
always be good."
The tour progressed satisfactorily through three
nights at the Chicago Stadium and visits to
Cleveland and Indianapolis until Plant came down
with the flu. A show in St. Louis was postponed
until mid-February and while Plant stayed behind to
convalesce, the band flew to Los Angeles for a day
off.
The rest sparked a shift into second gear and
subsequent concerts in Greensboro, Detroit and
Pittsburgh progressively improved, leading up to
Led Zeppelin's tumultuous New York victory and the
first version of "Dazed and Confused" on the tour. In
the meantime, there was little of the savage
hotel-room-splintering road fever Zeppelin is known
for. "There hasn't been much room," said drummer
John (Bonzo) Bonham a little sadly. "The music
has taken up most of our concerns."
It was in late 1968 that Jimmy Page first put
together the band that was to become Led
Zeppelin. The name was suggested by Who
drummer Keith Moon, and embodies an irony that
hardly needs to be commented upon. Page first
approached Robert Plant, then the lead singer for a
raucous Birmingham group called the Band of Joy.
"His voice," said Page, "was too great to be
undiscovered. All I had to do from there was to find
a bassist and a drummer."
The latter came easily. Plant suggested Bonham,
the drummer from the Band of Joy. Bassist John
Paul Jones was the last to join. "I answered a
classified ad in Melody Maker," he said. "My wife
made me." Jones had a sessionman's background.
He had arranged some of the Stones' Their Satanic
Majesties Requests album. He also arranged
albums for producer Mickey Most's stable. "I
arranged albums by Jeff Beck, Lulu, Donovan and
Herman's Hermits."
All four members used the word "magic" when
recalling Led Zeppelin's first rehearsal. "I've never
been so turned on in my life," says Plant.
"Although we were all steeped in blues and R&B,
we found out in the first hour and a half that we had
our own identity."
Robert Plant, now 26, grew up in the Black
Country, where the English industrial revolution
began. He says he lived "a sheltered childhood"
and that he began picking up on Buddy Guy, Blind
Lemon Jefferson and Woody Guthrie almost as
soon as he entered school. Drifting in and out of
groups like the Delta Blues Band, the Crawling
King Snakes and the Band of Joy, Plant became
locally knows as "the wild man of blues from the
Black Country." He met Page in 1968, just before
the formation of Led Zeppelin.
"Pagey and I are closer than ever on this tour,"
Plant said after the New York concert. "We've
almost jelled into one person in a lot of ways."
Jimmy Page, now 31, grew up in Felton, a dreary
community near London's Heathrow Airport. An
only child, he had no playmates until he began
school at the age of five. "That early isolation,"
says Page, "it probably had a lot to do with the way
I turned out. A loner. A lot of people can't be on
their own. They get frightened. Isolation doesn't
bother me at all. It gives me a sense of security."
Page started playing guitar when he was 12.
"Somebody had laid a Spanish guitar on us...a very
old one. I probably couldn't play it now if I tried. It
was sitting around our living room for weeks and
weeks. I wasn't interested. Then I heard a couple of
records that really turned me on, the main one
being Elvis' 'Baby, Let's Play House,' and I wanted
to play it. I wanted to know what it was all about.
This other guy at school showed me a few chords
and I just went on from there."
After a stint of several years as one of England's
leading session guitarists (he played on the Kinks'
"You Really Got Me," Van Morrison and Them's
"Here Comes the Night" and "Gloria," the Who's "I
Can't Explain" and several Burt Bacharach hits,
among others), Page joined the Yardbirds as a
second lead guitarist to Jeff Beck. Beck was soon
to leave the band and Page was left alone in the
spotlight for a time. When the Yardbirds finally
crumbled, Page was free to form Led Zeppelin.
The following conversations with Page and Plant
took place over a period of two weeks. We began
over tea in Plant's suite at Chicago's Ambassador
Hotel. The talk continued three days later in Page's
darkened room. "It's still morning," he shivered,
sitting underneath a blanket on his sofa. "We may
have to talk for three hours before I make any
sense." The resulting interview, from which most of
this material is taken, stretched into late afternoon.
Page, a soft-spoken man, apparently preferred
candles to electric light.
A visit to Plant several days later provided more
material and one final visit with Page on the plane
flight to New York supplied the remaining details.
It wasn't until Led Zeppelin's last American tour in
'73 that the media fully acknowledged the band's
popularity.
PLANT: We decided to hire our first publicity firm
after we toured here in the summer of '72. That was
the same summer the Stones toured and we knew
full well that we were doing more business than
them. We were getting better gates in comparison
to a lot of people who were constantly glorified in
the press. So without getting too egocentric, we
thought it was time that people heard something
about us other than that we were eating women and
throwing the bones out the window. That whole
lunacy thing was all people knew about us and it
was all word-of-mouth. All those times of lunacy
were okay, but we aren't and never were monsters.
Just good-time boys, loved by their fans and hated
by their critics.
Do you feel any competition with the Stones?
PAGE: Naw. I don't think of it that way. I don't feel
any competition at all. The Stones are great and
always have been. Jagger's lyrics are just amazing.
Right on the bell every time. I mean, I know all
about how we're supposed to be the biggest group
in the world and all, but I don't ever think about it. I
don't feel that competition enters into it. It's who
makes good music and who doesn't...and who's
managed to sustain themselves.
What motivates you at this point?
PAGE: I love playing. If it was down to just that, it
would be utopia. But it's not. It's airplanes, hotel
rooms, limousines and armed guards standing
outside rooms. I don't get off on that part of it all.
But it's the price I'm willing to pay to get out and
play. I was very restless over the last 18 months
where we laid off and worked on the album.
PLANT: There's constant conflict, really, within me.
As much as I really enjoy what I do at home...I play
on my own little soccer team and I've been taking
part in the community and living the life of any
ordinary guy, I always find myself wistful and
enveloped in a feeling I can't really get out of my
system. I miss this band when we aren't playing. I
have to call Jimmy up or something to appease that
restlessness. The other night when we played for
the first time again I found the biggest smile on my
mouth.
What's this rumor, Jimmy, about a solo album?
PAGE: Chalk that off to Keith Richards' sense of
humor. I did what could possibly be the next
Stones B side. It was Rick Grech, Keith and me
doing a number called "Scarlet." I can't remember
the drummer. It sounded very similar in style and
mood to those Blonde on Blonde tracks. It was
great, really good. We stayed up all night and went
down to Island Studios where Keith put some
reggae guitars over one section. I just put some
solos on it, but it was eight in the morning of the
next day before I did that. He took the tapes to
Switzerland and someone found out about them.
Keith told people that it was a track from my
album.
I don't need to do a solo album and neither does
anybody else in the band. The chemistry is such
that there's nobody in the background who's so
frustrated that he has to bring out his own LPs. I
don't really like doing that Townshend number of
telling everybody exactly what to play. I don't like
that too much. A group's a group after all, isn't it?
You've managed to continue undaunted in the
midst of such criticism - especially in the early
days of Zeppelin. How much do you believe in
yourself?
PAGE: I may not believe in myself, but I believe in
what I'm doing. I know where I'm going musically. I
can see my pattern and I'm going much slower than
I thought I'd be going. I can tell how far I ought to be
going. I know hot to get there, all I've got to do is
keep playing. That might sound a bit weird because
of all the John McLaughlins who sound like they're
in outer space or something. Maybe it's just the
tortoise and the hare.
I'm not a guitarist as far as technician goes. I just
pick it up and play it. Technique doesn't come into
it. I deal in emotions. It's the harmonic side that's
important. That's the side I expected to be much
further along on than I am now. That just means to
say that I've got to keep at it.
There's such a wealth of arts and styles within the
instrument...flamenco, jazz, rock, blues...you name
it, it's there. In the early days my dream was to
fuse all those styles. Now composing has become
just as important. Hand-in-hand with that, I think it's
time to travel, start gathering some real
right-in-there experiences with street musicians
around the world. Moroccan musicians, Indian
musicians. . . it could be a good time to travel
around now. This year. I don't know how everyone
else is gonna take that, but that's the direction I'm
heading in right now. This week, I'm a gypsy.
Maybe next week it'll be glitter rock.
What would you gain from your travels?
PAGE: Are you kidding? God, you know what you
can gain when you sit down with the Moroccans.
As a person and as a musician. That's how you
grow. Not by living like this. Ordering up room
service in hotels. It's got to be the opposite end of
the scale. The balance has got to swing exactly the
opposite. To the point where maybe I'll have an
instrument and nothing else. I used to travel like
that a long while ago. There's no reason I can't do it
again. There's always this time thing. You can't buy
time. Everything, for me, seems to be a race
against time. Especially musically. I know what I
want to get down and I haven't got much time to do
it in. I had another idea of getting a traveling
medicine wagon with a dropdown side and traveling
around England. That might sound crazy to you,
but over there it's so rural you can do it. Just drop
down the side and play through big battery amps
and mixers and it can all be as temporary or as
permanent as I want it to be. I like change and I like
contrast. I don't like being stuck in one situation,
day to day. Domesticity and all that isn't really for
me. Sitting in this hotel for a week is no picnic.
That's when the road fever starts and that's when
the breakages start, but I haven't gotten to that
stage yet. I've been pretty mellow so far. Mind you,
we're only into the tour a week.
How well do you remember your first American
tour?
PLANT: Nineteen years old and never been kissed,
I remember it well. It's been a long time. Nowadays
we're more into staying in our rooms and reading
Nietzsche. There was good fun to be had, you
know, it's just that in those days there were more
people to have good fun with than there are now.
The States were much more fun. L.A. was L.A. It's
not L.A. now. L.A. infested with jaded 12-year-olds
is not the L.A. that I really dug.
It was the first place I ever landed in America: the
first time I ever saw a cop with a gun, the first time I
ever saw a 20-foot-long car. There were a lot of
fun-loving people to crash into. People were
genuinely welcoming us to the country and we
started out on a path of positive enjoyment.
Throwing eggs from floor to floor and really silly
water battles and all the good fun that a 19-year-old
boy should have. It was just the first steps of
learning how to be crazy. We met a lot of people
who we still know and a lot of people who have
faded away. Some ODed. Some of them just grew
up. I don't see the point in growing up.
You seem sincerely depressed over the matter.
PLANT: Well, I am. I haven't lost my innocence
particularly. I'm always ready to pretend I haven't.
Yeah, it is a shame in a way. And it's a shame to
see these young chicks bungle their lives away in a
flurry and rush to compete with what was in the old
days the good-time relationships we had with the
GTOs and people like that. When it came to
looning, they could give us as much of a looning as
we could give them. It's a shame, really. If you
listen to "Sick Again," a track from Physical
Graffiti, the words show I feel a bit sorry for them.
"Clutching pages from your teenage dream in the
lobby of the Hotel Paradise/Through the circus of
the L.A. queen how fast you learn the downhill
slide." (© 1975, Joaneline Music Inc.) One minute
she's 12 and the next minute she's 13 and over the
top. Such a shame. They haven't got the style that
they had in the old days. . . way back in '68.
The last time I was in L.A. I got very bored.
Boredom is a horrible thing. Boredom is the
beginning of all destruction and everything that is
negative. Every place is determined by the
characters who are there. It's just that the character
rating at the moment has zeroed right out.
Of course, I enjoy it all, but as a total giggle. It's
funny. I miss it. All the clamor. The whole lot. It's all
a big rush. From the shit holes to the classiest
hotels, it's all been fun. From the Shadowbox Motel
where the walls crumbled during the night seven
years ago to the Plaza, where the attorney general
staying one floor above us complained about me
playing Little Feat records too loud last night.
Do you feel you have to top yourselves with each
album?
PAGE: No. Otherwise I would have been totally
destroyed by the reviews of our last album, wouldn't
I? You see, this is the point. I just don't care. I don't
care what critics and other people think.
So far I've been very, very fortunate because it
appears that people like to hear the music I like to
play. What more fortunate position can a musician
be in? But I will still carry on changing all the time.
You can't expect to be the same person you were
three years ago. Some people expect you to be
and can't come to terms with the fact that if a year
has elapsed between LPs, that means one year's
worth of changes. The material consequently is
affected by that, the lyrics are affected by that. . .
the music too. I don't feel I have to top myself at all.
It took a long time for this album mainly because
when we originally went in to record it, John Paul
Jones wasn't well and we had to cancel the time. . .
everything got messed up. It took three months to
sort the situation out.
How does it feel to be your own record company
executives?
PAGE: I guess we are our own executives now,
aren't we? Listen, give us time with Swan Song.
You'll be surprised. We've got some good things
lined up. I think the Pretty Things LP is brilliant.
Absolutely brilliant. We're executives and all that
crap, but I'll tell you one thing, the label was never -
right from the top - Led Zeppelin records. It's
designed to bring in other groups and promote acts
that have had raw deals in the past. It's a vehicle for
them and not for us to just make a few extra
pennies over the top. That's the cynical way of
looking at a record company.
People have been asking me whether I'll be doing
any producing for the label. I don't know. I'm just
too involved with Zeppelin. I was offered a chance -
a longstanding one too - to produce Freddie King,
which I'd love to do. But I'd need time to work on it.
Do you feel that the music business is sagging in
any way?
PAGE: People always say that amidst their search
for The Next Big Thing. The only real woomph was
when the Stones and Beatles came over. But it's
always said, "The business is dying! The business
is dying!" I don't think so. There's too many good
musicians around for the music business to be
sagging. There's so many different styles and
facets of the 360-degree musical sphere to listen
to. From tribal to classical music, it's all there. If
the bottom was to sag out of that, for God's sake,
help us all.
If there was never another record made, there's
enough music recorded and in the vaults
everywhere for me to be happy forever. Then again,
I can listen to all different sorts of music. I don't
really care about The Next Big Thing. It's interesting
when something new comes along, a band of
dwarfs playing electronic harps or something, but
I'm not searching. Look at Bad Company and the
Average White Band. Those guys have all been
around in one form or another for a very long time.
How many of the new ones coming through have
really got a lot of substance? In Britain, I'm afraid
there's not much at all. We've got a deal with Suzi
Quatro and Mud. It's absurd. Top Ten shouldn't be
crap, but it is.
How difficult was the first Led Zeppelin album to
put together?
PAGE: It came together really quick. It was cut
very shortly after the band was formed. Our only
rehearsal was a two-week tour of Scandinavia that
we did as the New Yardbirds. For material, we
obviously went right down to our blues roots. I still
had plenty of Yardbirds riffs left over. By the time
Jeff [Beck] did go, it was up to me to come up with
a lot of new stuff. It was this thing where Clapton
set a heavy precedent in the Yardbirds which Beck
had to follow and then it was even harder for me, in
a way, because the second lead guitarist had
suddenly become the first. And I was under
pressure to come up with my own riffs. On the first
LP I was still heavily influenced by the earlier days.
I think it tells a bit, too. The album was made in
three weeks. It was obvious that somebody had to
take the lead, otherwise we'd have all sat around
jamming and doing nothing for six months. But after
that, on the second LP, you can hear the real group
identity coming together.
PLANT: That first album was the first time that
headphones meant anything to me. What I heard
coming back to me over the cans while I was
singing was better than the finest chick in all the
land. It had so much weight, so much power, it was
devastating. I had a long ways to go with my voice
then, but at the same time the enthusiasm and
spark of working with Jimmy's guitar shows through
quite well. It was all very raunchy then. Everything
was fitting together into a trademark for us. We
were learning what got us off most and what got
people off most, and what we knew got more
people back to the hotel after the gig.
We made no money on the first tour. Nothing at all.
Jimmy put in every penny that he'd gotten from the
Yardbirds and that wasn't much. Until Peter Grant
took them over, they didn't make the money they
should have made. So we made the album and
took off on a tour with a road crew of one.
Jimmy, you once told me that you thought life was
a gamble. What did you mean?
PAGE: So many people are frightened to take a
chance in life and there's so many chances you
have to take. You can't just find yourself doing
something and not happy doing it. If you're working
at the factory and you're cursing every day that you
get up, at all costs get out of it. You'll just make
yourself ill. That's why I say I'm very fortunate
because I love what I'm doing. Seeing people's
faces, really getting off on them, makes me
incredibly happy. Genuinely.
What gambles have you taken?
PAGE: I'll give you a gamble. I was in a band, I
won't give the name because it's not worth knowing
about, but it was the sort of band where we were
traveling around all the time in a bus. I did that for
two years after I left school, to the point where I
was starting to get really good bread. But I was
getting ill. So I went back to art college. And that
was a total change in direction. That's why I say it's
possible to do. As dedicated as I was to playing
the guitar, I knew doing it that way was doing me in
forever. Every two months I had glandular fever. So
for the next 18 months I was living on ten dollars a
week and getting my strength up. But I was still
playing.
PLANT: Let me tell you a little story behind the
song "Ten Years Gone" on our new album. I was
working my ass off before joining Zeppelin. A lady I
really dearly loved said, "Right. It's me or your
fans." Not that I had fans, but I said, "I can't stop,
I've got to keep going." She's quite content these
days, I imagine. She's got a washing machine that
works by itself and a little sports car. We wouldn't
have anything to say anymore. I could probably
relate to her, but she couldn't relate to me. I'd be
smiling too much. Ten years gone, I'm afraid.
Anyway, there's a gamble for you.
PAGE: I'll give you another one. I was at art college
and started to do sessionwork. Believe me, a lot of
guys would consider that to be the apex - studio
work. I left that to join the Yardbirds at a third of the
bread because I wanted to play again. I didn't feel I
was playing enough in the studio. I was doing three
studio dates a day, and I was becoming one of
those sort of people that I hated.
What was the problem with session work?
PAGE: Certain sessions were really a pleasure to
do, but the problem was that you never knew what
you were gonna do. You might have heard that I
played on a Burt Bacharach record. It's true. I never
knew what I was doing. You just got booked into a
particular studio at the hours of two and five-thirty.
Sometimes it would be somebody you were happy
to see, other times it was, "What am I doing here?"
When I started doing sessions, the guitar was in
vogue. I was playing solos every day. Then
afterwards, when the Stax thing was going on and
you got whole brass sections coming in, I ended up
hardly playing anything, just a little riff here and
there...no solos. And I remember one particular
occasion when I hadn't played a solo for, quite
literally, a couple of months. And I was asked to
play a solo on a rock & roll thing. I played it and felt
that what I'd done was absolute crap. I was so
disgusted with myself that I made my mind up that
I had to get out of it. It was messing me right up.
And how do you look on your days with the
Yardbirds?
PAGE: I have really good memories. Apart from
one tour which nearly killed all of us, it was so
intense - apart from that, musically it was a great
group to play in. I've never regretted anything I've
ever done. Any musician would have jumped at the
chance to play in that band. It was particularly good
when Jeff and I were both doing lead guitar. It really
could have been built into something exceptional at
that point, but unfortunately there's precious little
wax of that particular point. There's only "Stroll On"
from the Blow-Up film - that was quite funny - and
"Happenings Ten Years Ago" and "Daisy." We just
didn't get into the studio too much at that time.
Obviously, there were ups and downs. Everybody
wants to know about the feuds and personality
conflicts...I don't think that it ever got really evil. It
never got that bad. If it was presented in the right
way, maybe a Yardbirds reunion album would be a
good thing to do someday. Somehow I can't see
Jeff doing it, though. He's a funny bloke.
You live in Aleister Crowley's home.
[Crowley was a poet and magician at the turn of the
century and was notorious for his Black Magic rites
-- Ed.]
PAGE: Yes, it was owned by Aleister Crowley. But
there were two or three owners before Crowley
moved into it. It was also a church that was burned
to the ground with the congregation in it. And that's
the site of the house. Strange things have
happened in that house that had nothing to do with
Crowley. The bad vibes were already there. A man
was beheaded there and sometimes you can hear
his head rolling down. I haven't actually heard it, but
a friend of mine, who is extremely straight and
doesn't know anything about anything like that at
all, heard it. He thought it was the cats bungling
around. I wasn't there at the time, but he told the
help. "Why don't you let the cats out at night? They
make a terrible racket, rolling about in the halls."
And they said, "The cats are locked in a room
every night." Then they told him the story of the
house. So that sort of thing was there before
Crowley got there. Of course, after Crowley there
have been suicides, people carted off to mental
hospitals...
And you have no contact with any of the spirits?
I didn't say that. I just said I didn't hear the head
roll.
What's your attraction to the place?
The unknown. I'm attracted by the unknown, but I
take precautions. I don't go walking into things
blind.
Do you feel safe in the house?
PAGE: Yeah. Well, all my houses are isolated.
Many is the time I just stay home alone. I spend a
lot of time near water. Crowley's house is in Loch
Ness, Scotland. I have another house in Sussex,
where I spend most of my time. It's quite near
London. It's moated and terraces off into lakes. I
mean, I could tell you things, but it might give
people ideas. A few things have happened that
would freak some people out, but I was surprised
actually at how composed I was. I don't really want
to go on about my personal beliefs or my
involvement in magic. I'm not trying to do a Harrison
or a Townshend. I'm not interested in turning
anybody on to anybody that I'm turned on to...if
people want to find things, they find them
themselves. I'm a firm believer in that.
What do you think about your portrayal in "Rock
Dreams"? As a guitar Mafioso along with Alvin Lee,
Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton?
PAGE: There's nothing about Zeppelin in there at
all. The artist spends his whole time masturbating
over the Stones in that book, doesn't he? The
Stones in drag and things like that. When I first
saw that book, I thought, aw, this is really great.
But when I really started to look at it, there were
things that I just didn't like. People can laugh at
this, but I didn't like to see a picture of Ray Charles
driving around in the car with his arm around a
chick. It's tasteless. But the guy's French, so what
can we say? Ray Charles is blind. What kind of
humor is that? They may be his rock dreams, but
they sure aren't mine.
Out of all the guitarists to come out of the Sixties,
though, Beck, Clapton, Lee, Townshend and I are
still having a go. That says something. Beck,
Clapton and me were sort of Richmond/Croydon
type clan, and Alvin Lee, I don't know where he
came from. Leicester or something like that. So he
was never in with it a lot. And Townshend.
Townshend was from Middlesex and he used to go
down to the clubs and watch the other guitarists. I
didn't meet him, though, until "I Can't Explain." I
was doing the session guitar work on that. I haven't
seen Townshend in years. But I suppose we've all
kept going and tried to do better and better and
better. I heard some stuff from Beck's solo LP
recently that was fucking brilliant. Really good. But
I don't know, it's all instrumental and it's a
guitarist's guitar LP, I think. He's very mellow, and
Beck at his best can be very tasty.
Have you seen Eric Clapton with his new band?
PAGE: Oh, Eric. Fucking hell, Eric. Yes, I saw him
with his new band and also at his Rainbow concert.
At least at the Rainbow he had some people with
some balls with him. He had Townshend and
Ronnie Wood and Jimmy Karstein and (Jim)
Capaldi. "Pearly Queen" was incredible. And I
would have thought that after that, he would have
said, "Right, I'm gonna get English musicians."
Ever since he's been with American musicians,
he's laid back further and further.
I want over to see him after he'd done his Rainbow
concert and it wasn't hard to sense his total
disappointment that Derek and the Dominoes were
never really accepted. It must have been a big thing
for him that they didn't get all the acclaim that the
Cream did. But the thing is, when a band has a
certain chemistry, like the Cream had...wow, the
chances of re-creating that again are how many
billion to one. It's very very difficult.
The key to Zeppelin's longevity has been change.
We put out our first LP, then a second one that
was nothing like the first, then a third LP totally
different from them, and on it went. I know why we
got a lot of bad press on our albums. People
couldn't understand, a lot of reviewers, why we put
out an LP like Zeppelin II, then followed it up with
III with "That's the Way" and acoustic numbers like
that on it. They just couldn't understand it. The fact
was that Robert and I had gone away to Bron-Y-Aur
cottage in Wales and started writing songs. Christ,
that was the material we had, so we used it. It was
nothing like, "We got to do some heavy rock & roll
because that's what our image demands..."
Album-wise, it usually takes a year for people to
catch up with what we're doing.
Why did you go to Bron-Y-Aur cottage for the third
album?
PLANT: It was time to step back, take stock and
not get lost in it all. Zeppelin was starting to get
very big and we wanted the rest of our journey to
take a pretty level course. Hence, the trip into the
mountains and the beginning of the ethereal Page
and Plant. I thought we'd be able to get a little
peace and quiet and get your actual Californian,
Marin County blues, which we managed to do in
Wales rather than San Francisco. It was a great
place. "The Golden Beast" is what the name
means. The place is in a little valley and the sun
always moves across it. There's even a track on the
new album, a little acoustic thing, which Jimmy got
together up there. It typifies the days when we used
to chug around the countryside in jeeps.
It was a good idea to go there. We had written quite
a bit of the second album on the road. It was a real
road album, too. No matter what the critics said,
the proof in the pudding was that it got a lot of
people off. The reviewer for Rolling Stone, for
instance, was just a frustrated musician. Maybe I'm
just flying my own little ego ship, but sometimes
people resent talent. I don't even remember what
the criticism was, but as far as I'm concerned, it
was a good, maybe even great, road album. The
third album was the album of albums. If anybody
had labeled us a heavy metal group, that destroyed
them.
But there were acoustic numbers on the very first
album.
PAGE: That's it! There you go! When the third LP
came out and got its reviews, Crosby, Stills and
Nash had just formed. That LP had just come out
and because acoustic guitars had come to the
forefront all of a sudden: LED ZEPPELIN GO
ACOUSTIC! I thought, Christ, where are their heads
and ears? There were three acoustic songs on the
first album and two on the second.
You talk of this "race against time," Jimmy. Where
do you think you'll be at 40?
PAGE: I don't know whether I'll reach 40. I don't
know whether I'll reach 35. I can't be sure about
that. I am bloody serious. I am very, very serious. I
didn't think I'd make 30.
Why not?
PAGE: I just had this fear. Not fear of dying but
just...wait a minute, let's get this right. I just felt
that...I wouldn't reach 30. That's all there was to it.
It was something in me, something inbred. I'm over
30 now, but I didn't expect to be here. I wasn't
having nightmares about it, but...I'm not afraid of
death. That is the greatest mystery of all. That'll be
it, that one. But it is all a race against time. You
never know what can happen. Like breaking my
finger. I could have broken my whole hand and been
out of action for two years.
You've been criticized for writing "dated flower-child
gibberish" lyrics...
PLANT: How can anybody be a "dated flower
child"? The essence of the whole trip was the
desire for peace and tranquility and an idyllic
situation. That's all anybody could ever want so
how could it be "dated flower-child gibberish"? If it
is, then I'll just carry on being a dated flower child. I
put a lot of work into my lyrics. Not all my stuff is
meant to be scrutinized, though. Things like "Black
Dog" are blatant let's-do-it-in-the-bath-type things,
but they make their point just the same. People
listen. Otherwise, you might as well sing the menu
from the Continental Hyatt House.
How important was "Stairway to Heaven" to you?
PAGE: To me, I thought "Stairway" crystallized the
essence of the band. It had everything there and
showed the band at its best...as a band, as a unit.
Not talking about solos or anything, it had
everything there. We were careful never to release it
as a single. It was a milestone for us. Every
musician wants to do something of lasting quality,
something which will hold up for a long time and I
guess we did it with "Stairway." Townshend
probably thought that he got it with Tommy. I don't
know whether I have the ability to come up with
more. I have to do a lot of hard work before I can
get anywhere near those stages of consistent, total
brilliance.
I don't think there are too many people who are
capable of it. Maybe one. Joni Mitchell. That's the
music that I play at home all the time, Joni
Mitchell. Court and Spark I love because I'd always
hoped that she'd work with a band. But the main
thing with Joni is that she's able to look at
something that's happened to her, draw back and
crystalize the whole situation, then write about it.
She brings tears to my eyes, what more can I say?
It's bloody eerie. I can relate so much to what she
says. "Now old friends are acting strange/They
shake their heads/They say I've changed." I'd like to
know how many of the original friends any
well-known musician has got. You'd be surprised.
They think -particularly that thing of change -they
all assume that you've changed. For the worse.
There are very few people I can call real, close
friends. They're very, very precious to me.
How about you?
PLANT: I live with the people I've always lived with.
I'm quite content. It's like the remnants of my old
Beatnik days. All my old mates, it lends to a lot of
good company. There's no unusual reaction to my
trip at all because I've known them so long. Now
and again there will be the occasional joke about
owing someone two dollars from the days in '63
when I was a broke blues singer with a washboard,
but it's good. I'm happy.
Do you have any favorite American guitarists?
PAGE: Well, let's see, we've lost the best guitarist
any of us ever had and that was Hendrix. The other
guitarist I started to get into died also, Clarence
White. He was absolutely brilliant. Gosh. On a
totally different style - the control, the guy who
played on the Maria Muldaur single, "Midnight at
the Oasis." Amos Garrett. He's Les Paul oriented
and Les Paul is the one, really. We wouldn't be
anywhere if he hadn't invented the eclectic guitar.
Another one is Elliot Randall, the guy who guested
on the first Steely Dan album. He's great.
Band-wise, Little Feat is my favorite American
group.
The only term I won't accept is "genius." The term
"genius" gets used far too loosely in rock & roll.
When you hear the melodic structures of what
classical musicians put together and you compare
it to that of a rock & roll record, there's a hell of a
long way rock & roll has to go. There's a certain
standard in classical music that allows the
application of the word "genius," but you're treading
on thin ice if you start applying it to rock & rollers.
The way I see it, rock & roll is folk music. Street
music. It isn't taught in school. It has to be picked
up. You don't find geniuses in street musicians, but
that doesn't mean to say you can't be really good.
You get as much out of rock & roll artistically as
you put into it. There's nobody who can teach you.
You're on your own and that's what I find so
fascinating about it.
Last question. What did you think about President
Ford's children naming Led Zeppelin as their
favorite group on national television?
PLANT: I think it's really a mean deal that we
haven't been invited around there for tea. Perhaps
Jerry thought we'd wreck the joint. Now if we'd had
a publicist three tours back, he might be on the
road with us now. I was pleased to hear that they
like our music around the White House. It's good to
know they've got taste.
Final comments?
PAGE: Just say that I'm still searching for an angel
with a broken wing. It's not very easy to find them
these days. Especially when you're staying at the
Plaza Hotel.