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On the anniversary of their second album\u2019s release, Jimmy Page looks back at Led Zeppelin\u2019s rise from Brit blues wonderkids to globe conquering rock titans.<\/p>\n
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Slammed by the press, loved by the fans, Led Zeppelin became the biggest band of the \u201870s in the space of two years. In this classic interview from the MOJO archives, Jimmy Page re-lives the victory procession of the band\u2019s second and third albums\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cRobert Plant was really into history. He probably had an A-level in it at school. He knew about the Norse legends, and the Vikings were quite a thing for him,\u201d smiles Jimmy Page. \u201cSo when we went to Iceland \u2013 the land of the ice and snow \u2013 and then once he heard the riff I\u2019d come up with, the riff became a vehicle for his words.\u201d<\/p>\n
The words in question accompany Page\u2019s scything, staccato riff to Immigrant Song, the super-charged opener to Led Zeppelin III. Down the years ill-informed critics have attempted to draw convoluted parallels between Plant\u2019s depictions of Viking raids and the Odin-styled rampage that accompanied the band\u2019s seemingly unstoppable rise. \u201cValhalla, I am coming!\u201d – Plant\u2019s exaltation at the end of the first verse appeared to reflect the singer\u2019s status as the self-proclaimed Golden God.<\/p>\n
As Page states, however, the inspiration behind the song is more prosaic, dating back to the band\u2019s visit to Iceland in June 1970 when Led Zeppelin took part in the first ever Reyjakvik Arts Festival. The brainchild of Russian-born classical pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy, the festival stretched over several days, and used different venues to showcase the arts, both local and global, across multiple disciplines, with Zeppelin ambassadors for British music.<\/p>\n
Their visit came close to being cancelled following a nationwide strike when labour unions who\u2019d downed tools following the repercussions of an economic crisis dating back to the near-collapse of the fishing industry \u2013 Iceland\u2019s primary source of income \u2013 two years earlier. Local university students, however, rallied to ensure that the 4000-capacity Laugarddalsh\u00f6ll venue \u2013 which had been used for a trade fair prior to Zep\u2019s arrival – was ready to accommodate the visiting British rock band whose set proved to be mind-blowing.<\/p>\n
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Six days after their Icelandic trip, on June 28, Zeppelin played Freddy Bannister\u2019s Bath Festival in Shepton Mallet, topping a bill that featured largely American artists including Jefferson, Airplane, Frank Zappa, Santana, The Byrds, Dr John and Hot Tuna.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was bloody freezing! That\u2019s why I was wearing a coat and hat!\u201d laughs Page, remembering the occasion and explaining his Farmer Giles get-up. \u201cBut it was a significant show for us in England and it showed what the band were really capable of. We started with Immigrant Song. I mean, that\u2019s it! There was this pulse coming out, and then this shriek from Robert. It was fantastic stuff! There was real drama to it. And then, later in the set, we did an acoustic set. We hadn\u2019t been able to do it before.\u201d<\/p>\n
In front of a stunned audience estimated at 200,000 people, Page, Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham played for close to three hours, moving far beyond the hard rock sound that had defined their first two albums. As they prepared to record their third album, Led Zeppelin were entering a brand new phase.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a little casket that I kept my riffs in,\u201d deadpans Jimmy Page. \u201cWhole Lotta Love was in there, and then out came the Immigrant Song. It\u2019s the intensity of that riff that gets you, isn\u2019t it? You could stay on it forever. It\u2019s relentless.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following a convivial lunch in a nearby park caf\u00e9, Led Zeppelin\u2019s guitarist and producer is sitting in the annex of his Holland Park residence, discussing his ability to create instantly identifiable chord patterns. On the coffee table in front of him sits a folder, its laminated pages festooned with notes detailing recording dates and information relating to the material on the companion discs that accompany the deluxe editions of Zep\u2019s new remasters which Page has overseen. The first three albums emerged on June 2 to much fanfare and the band\u2019s catalogue will emerge sequentially over the next 12 months. For Page, as ever, restoring Zeppelin\u2019s music has been a labour of love.<\/p>\n
\u201cListening back to that show at the Olympia was quite something,\u201d he says, referring to the live disc that accompanies Led Zeppelin\u2019s self-titled debut album, released in January 1969. The October 10 show precedes the release of Led Zeppelin II by 12 days but includes Heartbreaker and Moby Dick on what is an ever-evolving set.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe\u2019d add songs to the set as soon as we had them. It was important to keep things exciting like that, but when you listen to the band at that show you can hear just how dynamic the playing was,\u201d he nods.<\/p>\n
The speed at which the Zeppelin camp moved is underlined by the fact they went from their first rehearsal in August 1968 to recording their first album and on to securing a deal with Atlantic Records in less than four months. The label\u2019s press release heralding their signature heralded confirmed the \u201csubstantial\u201d nature of the deal. The PR fanfare continued by stating that the hitherto unknown band were undoubtedly capable of following in the footsteps of Cream and Hendrix. Rather than enhance Zep\u2019s reputation, these pronouncements appeared to antagonize the gentlemen of the press, none of whom had been given the opportunity to champion the band and who objected to the sense of hype which the label seemed willing to engineer around them. The situation was enflamed when certain journalists read the small-print on the album\u2019s sleeve and found that the fledgling band had named their publishing company Superhype.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was tongue-in-cheek,\u201d protests Page. \u201cYou can hardly call what happened to us hype. We went out and worked hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the time the self-titled debut emerged, Led Zeppelin were on the road in America supporting Vanilla Fudge. It was at that point that John Mendelsohn\u2019s review of their debut album appeared in Rolling Stone, dismissing the notion that the band could \u201cfill the void created by the demise of Cream.\u201d Page was described as \u201ca proficient blues guitarist\u201d but \u201ca very limited producer and a writer of weak, unimaginative songs\u201d while Plant was is both \u201cprissy\u201d and \u201cfoppish\u201d and, on How Many More Times, guilty of \u201cunconvincing shouting.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was surprised that it was negative to that degree and how cutting it was,\u201d says Page. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t just sticking in the knife, there was serious twisting involved. But I knew it was unfounded and that he just didn\u2019t get it. I mean, there are some bands people bloody hate. It\u2019s like Marmite syndrome. But with this, you couldn\u2019t deny what we were trying to do, and that we were trying to move the boundaries of what music was.\u201d<\/p>\n
If certain sections of the US press sneered at Zeppelin, American audiences themselves didn\u2019t seem to care. \u201cYou could see that bad reviews didn\u2019t affect what people thought,\u201d says Page. \u201cThe audiences were growing. We were playing small clubs at one point and there were more people outside than inside, so we knew things were happening.\u201d Indeed, between late December \u201968 and the end of \u201969, Zeppelin toured the US no less than four times \u2013 something which in itself came with its own problems back home.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople said we\u2019d abandoned England but we hadn\u2019t. I\u2019ve lived in here all the time. But I saw the situation developing over there and I was fresh on that whole climate. It\u2019s like actors these days, you go where the work is and in this case the work was in America,\u201d says Page, reflecting on a period during which Zeppelin graduated from underground clubs such as the Grande Ballroom in Detroit and Miami\u2019s Thee Image Club to convention centres and numerous outdoor US festivals.<\/p>\n
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Page, who is naturally shy and reserved but whose evolving, dandified pre-Raphaelite image is evident from pictures of the time, admits that Zeppelin\u2019s first few US tours were key to the band\u2019s development.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, absolutely, my playing went up a notch, or several. All of our playing did and we began to realize just how good the band really was,\u201d he says. \u201cThere was real alchemy involved because we were playing the whole time. There were four really strong character musicians, with strong identities, who also had the intellect to really stretch things out and make things come together.\u201d<\/p>\n
In late autumn 1969, with the band\u2019s debut moving up the US chart following their third US tour, Zeppelin took a short break before reconvened at Page\u2019s house in Pangbourne, Berkshire, to begin work on their second album.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we came to put II together, I already had the construction for Whole Lotta Love,\u201d says Page. \u201cWe were working and familiarizing ourselves with that. What Is And What Should Never Be was the other song that we had, and that sort of tells you that we knew were we wanted to go from quite an early stage in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Initial recording began once again at Olympic Studios in South West London, with Page producing and engineer George Chkiantz – known for his work with the Small Faces and the phasing on Hendrix\u2019s Axis: Bold As Love, in particular \u2013 assisting on the basic tracks for those two tunes. Then came the idea to continue recording while the band were on the road, with Page in particular relishing the idea of using a number of iconic American studios where some of the band\u2019s favourite records had been made.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe recorded in lots of different studios,\u201d he nods. \u201cA&M Studio in LA is where we did the overdubs for Whole Lotta Love, but we went to Mirror Sound where Del-fi records had been and where Chan Romero and Ritchie Valens had recorded. It was a really fine studio, a really live-sounding studio. In there we did the Moby Dick because it was just perfect for drums. The Lemon Song was done in there as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to record at Gold Star but the rotary pots really weren\u2019t very good,\u201d he adds, on the subject of the studio in which Phil Spector crafted his Wall Of Sound and where the Beach Boys recorded much of Pet Sounds. \u201cWe did actually do something there [pausing] which has got lost\u2026 so we don\u2019t want people searching for it, do we? But, I was keen to do all those real milestone places and stamp it in with the real Led Zeppelin hallmark. It was a way of paying homage, if you like.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the band\u2019s relentless touring schedule, Page retained his studio focus and ensured that Zeppelin\u2019s sound remained consistent, despite the variety of locations he employed to record.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were going for studios where the acoustics were very good when you played the music live,\u201d he explains. \u201cI wanted it to be quite extreme and that\u2019s what I was going for: something that showed all the peaks of what we could do. I could really hear the acoustics in John Bonham\u2019s playing and I knew that the more space we could allow that, the better it was going to sound. If you listen to II, you can hear that, and you can hear the character in the studios themselves on that record.\u201d<\/p>\n
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A key moment in the album\u2019s development emerged with the writing and recording of the semi-acoustic thrust of Ramble On, which Page, referring to his notes, confirms was recorded at Groove Sound in New York.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was starting to get interesting at that point because you\u2019ve got the acoustic rolling through, and there\u2019s the drums, the bass and the electric guitar so it\u2019s as case of \u2018OK. Is it going to start on an acoustic or an electric?\u2019 In this day and age you\u2019d just have a click track and you would just lay things on, but back then we had to do proper planning to make it work.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as that intro goes [beats out the rhythm pattern on his knees], do you remember Everyday by Buddy Holly? Well, that was the idea behind that. I could go through loads of points of reference for some of these tracks but I\u2019m not going to. The guitar part as we know it, it didn\u2019t happen immediately. I could sort of hear it before I played it, but Ramble On has got these textures, some of which are guitar-led, but John Paul Jones\u2019s bass playing is just superb on that track. Just the whole vibe of it is incredible. It\u2019s got it\u2019s own character that is only peculiar to itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Led Zeppelin II was released on October 22, 1969 and topped the US charts, deposing The Beatles Abbey Road from the top slot en route to selling 12 million copies Stateside. By February 1970 it had also topped the UK album chart. Forty-five years on the symbolism that surrounds Led Zeppelin II remains unavoidable: if the \u201860s had belonged to John, Paul, George and Ringo, the \u201870s would belong to Jimmy, Robert, John Paul and John. Unlike The Beatles, however, Led Zeppelin did not rely on singles to promote their albums.<\/p>\n
When an edited version Whole Lotta Love was released on 45 following demand generated by endless US radio play of the album track, the band themselves recoiled, forcing manager Peter Grant to tell Atlantic in no uncertain terms of their displeasure.<\/p>\n
\u201cSingles were for AM radio stations and we weren\u2019t interested in that. We were looking for FM radio play where they would play whole sides of albums,\u201d says Page. \u201cThat meant that in some cases they would play 20 minutes of your music. That\u2019s how we sequenced II, to ensure listeners wouldn\u2019t get bored. The album reflects the energy of being on the road. I know it tells on the record.\u201d
As Plant\u2019s libidinous display on Whole Lotta Love underlines, Led Zeppelin II is also a sexually charged album. \u201cI think most of our music is,\u201d shrugs Page who is also dismissive of the reputation that built up around the band and their carnal exploits around that time.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s put it this way: I certainly wasn\u2019t going to bed with a cup of cocoa!\u201d he snaps. \u201cI was living it, for sure. But as far as I\u2019m concerned, it\u2019s all about the music but I also know that given people\u2019s salacious appetites, all the little bits of scandal and everything else, it all gets absorbed. But it\u2019s the music that\u2019s lasted all these years and, you know what, that\u2019s not about one stupid incident that happened in Seattle on a day off.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The fabled incident at Seattle\u2019s Edgewater Inn \u2013 involving a red snapper and a red-headed groupie \u2013 in July 1969 lies at the heart of Zeppelin\u2019s cruel reputation for debauchery. Tour manager Richard Cole would later take full responsibility for the unsavoury matter.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost people who were there, their stories are so colourful and changed for after dinner speaking that it all becomes removed from the truth,\u201d says Page, considering the endless tales re-told by so-called Zeppelin insiders. \u201cAdmittedly everyone in the group may have a different perspective on events but most other people take outrageous license with this stuff. Yes, like I said we were living it, but for me \u2013 and this will be the epitaph of it all \u2013 it was about a bunch of musicians who learnt about rock\u2019n\u2019roll, blues and serious acoustic guitar players and lots of other areas, and ended up creating a textbook for musicians. That\u2019s the lifetime achievement right there. It\u2019s not some sort of scandalous tit-bit, it\u2019s about the real serious weight of it, about what the music really means. That\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople think Stairway To Heaven was written down there and that\u2019s absolutely not true because I had some of that worked out before then,\u201d says Jimmy Page, embarking on his memories of Bron Yr Aur, the remote 18th Century cottage in Snowdonia which provided both him and Robert Plant with such rich inspiration as they took a break from the band\u2019s hectic tour schedule in mind-1970.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe went down there to have a break but we took the guitars with us. I was playing all the time at that point anyway, so it felt natural,\u201d recalls Page on the subject of the first of two visits to the cottage that Robert Plant had visited with his family while on holiday as a child. In this rural idyll three miles north of the town of Machynlleth, with no electricity and no running water, Page and his partner of the time, Charlotte Martin, and Plant (along with his wife Maureen and daughter Carmen) as well as two members of Zeppelin\u2019s crew settled into a suitably bucolic routine.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a wooden fire so we\u2019d go out and collect the wood for it. We had a couple of cassette players where we\u2019d record ideas,\u201d says Page. \u201cWe had the families there to start with and we were sort of playing things. That\u2019s The Way was the main thing that came out from that first trip down there. We went out of for a walk and I took the guitar with me and I remember looking at the hillside and the whole panorama and it was just beautiful, beautiful. I remember playing that riff and just shaping things. You were there in the moment. We tinkered around with it before, the riff, but suddenly, we had the whole sequence.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Page found the splendid isolation of Bron Yr Aur inspiring, the idea of working with acoustic guitars was not new to him. \u201cBasically, everything I\u2019d ever written, even in The Yardbirds days and previous to that, had started out on an acoustic. I was using an acoustic but I was thinking electric,\u201d he nods. \u201cAcoustic music had also been there from the first album and even on II, but I did feel we could go somewhere else on III.\u201d
In preparation for the band\u2019s third album, Page had also worked up the arrangements to two songs that he felt might be suitable \u2013 the aforementioned Immigrant Song and Friends, the latter penned at his Pangbourne boathouse.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was written after a massive, massive argument with my current lady at the time,\u201d he admits. \u201cI just remember getting the guitar, and I had it in this tuning, and what I played came out like that. It was a combination of everything I was listening to, which was a lot of Indian music, a lot of Indian classical music.\u201d<\/p>\n
Page also began routining Gallows Pole, a Child ballad that Leadbelly had adapted in the 1930s. The version that inspired Page was by American folk singer Fred Gerlach who employed a 12-string on his take on the tune, and whose version Jimmy heard while visiting his then-girlfriend, the songwriter Jackie DeShannon, in LA in 1965.
\u201cJackie turned me on to Fred Gerlach but she didn\u2019t just play me that track. Dick Rosmini was another one There was album of acoustic stuff by him she played me but Gallows Pole stuck with me and now it came into play. I knew it could be done with this band. I thought we\u2019d hold it on the dynamics before John Bonham comes in. That whole thing of getting to know John Bonham\u2019s playing meant that it seemed a natural thing, not to leave him out of the song but to bring him in for major effect.\u201d<\/p>\n
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As well as Gallows Pole, DeShannon\u2019s influence can also be felt on Tangerine, essentially a simple love song and another track that Page had stockpiled during his Yardbirds days.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d written parts of that song even before I\u2019d joined [The Yardbirds] but that song is definitely the result of us having met,\u201d admits Page coyly. \u201cI think the original words were different. We tried a version with the Yardbirds and there was a different chorus. It kinda got lost. I had songs I had written down the years but I didn\u2019t push them, I was waiting to see whether they would fit and, on the third album, it fitted perfectly. It\u2019s this little vignette with the pedal steel on there.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the band\u2019s folk influences became more prominent on their third album, the blues also remained as a key component of their sound, most notably on a track which would become one of their best loved live outings: Since I\u2019ve Been Loving You.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt [Since I\u2019ve Been Loving You] was a way of getting a low-key, cool sort of thing that still had the passion and the feel of the blues but to move it forward beyond the 12 bar blues of, say, The Lemon Song on II. Then we also had the country blues represented on Hats Of To Harper.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dedicated to recalcitrant British acoustic pioneer Roy Harper, Hats Of To (Roy) Harper captures Page and Plant locked in at Olympic Studios with engineer Andy Johns, delivering a deeply psychedelic version of country blues.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe went in there specifically to try out these blues ideas. We got the harmonica involved with some double tracking using a small amp, like a Vox AC 30 with the tremolo. Robert was also singing through the amp.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stretching out for what Page recalls was \u201ca 20 minute jam\u201d, the duo ran through Memphis Minnie\u2019s Keys To The Highway and Big Bill Broonzy\u2019s Trouble In Mind. Both appear as one edited track on the companion disc for III.<\/p>\n
\u201cKey To The Highway really makes the hairs stand-up on the back of your neck,\u201d smiles Jimmy. \u201cYou really do go \u2018What is that?\u2019 We cut Hats Off The Harper that same night and with that same feel.\u201d<\/p>\n
The final track on the album, a gentle goodnight it is not bringing to close a second side that is otherwise acoustic in texture.<\/p>\n
Jimmy Page looks upset, almost hurt. The reason for this is because MOJO has just asked him about how recording at Headley Grange affected the sound on Led Zeppelin III.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t go to Headley Grange for III,\u201d says Page, shaking his head. \u201cYou should know that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baffled by this rebuttal, your correspondent looks to his notepad for reassurance and finds none other than the name of the former East Hampshire poorhouse which was transformed into a residential rehearsal studio in the late \u201860s.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not the first person to mention Headley Grange in connection with III but it\u2019s complete rubbish. I should know, I was there! III was done at Olympic and Island,\u201d continues Page. \u201cBut that\u2019s the way it is with Led Zeppelin: there are so many stories that are just plain wrong and no one tries to find out whether they\u2019re true.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the conversation comes to a close, MOJO vows to inform Page of the source of this error. Further inspection reveals that 1993\u2019s Led Zeppelin: The Complete Studio Recordings box set lists Immigrant Song, Friends, Celebration Day, Gallows Pole, Tangerine and Bron Yr Aur Stomp as all having been recorded at Headley Grange. \u201cWe shall have to blame Atlantic!\u201d says Page upon receiving the information.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still think III is a fabulous album and I suppose the real significance was in the way in which we approached some of the material at Bron Yr Aur,\u201d concludes Page on the album that hit Number One in both the US and UK on release in October 1970. \u201cIt made me think that if we could write in that kind of environment, then maybe we could record as a band in that way too. That\u2019s what happened on IV. And that\u2019s when we moved in to Headley Grange. That was when the band was really writing en masse all the time and things really opened up. If you have to, I suppose you could say that III is what set us on that path.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Images: Getty<\/p>\n
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On the anniversary of their second album\u2019s release, Jimmy Page looks back at Led Zeppelin\u2019s rise from Brit blues wonderkids to globe conquering rock titans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":3273,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mojo-presents"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"kschwarz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3272"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3278,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3272\/revisions\/3278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}