Jimmy Page discusses absent friends, superstar fans, negative reviews, and the next best thing to performing with Led Zeppelin. In 2015, Jimmy Page, founder of Led Zeppelin, spoke with Classic Rock about his life and work, from his early recordings as a teenager to the legacy of rock’s greatest band. He remembered the magic of Zeppelin’s first performance together, the battles with bootleggers and the press, the brilliance of the late John Bonham, and the joke tune that backfired on him. He also revealed why playing with the Black Crowes was the closest he’d gotten to replacing the sensation of Led Zeppelin.
When you reflect back to 1968, when you originally formed Led Zeppelin, how quickly did you realize you had something special? It happened during the first rehearsal in London, on Gerrard Street. I suggested we play Train Kept A Rollin’, but I believe I was the only one who knew it. I’m not really sure what else we did. But as soon as we started playing, everyone knew instantly that we had never played or heard anything like that before. And that was just so accurate.
Had you written any songs for the band before the first rehearsal? I had some content in mind, such as Babe I’m Gonna Leave You, among other things. And by the time I had everyone in my place and we were doing regular rehearsals, we were working on Communication Breakdown and You Shook Me. Laying down that stuff was incredible. We knew exactly how fantastic it was.
What made Led Zeppelin unique among rock groups of the time? In those days, you could find extremely amazing combos centered on one instrumentalist. Led Zeppelin had four outstanding musicians. I knew Cream had three, but getting four players together at such a high level was incredible. To be honest, I knew the group was explosive. I knew what we had based on our practices at my house. And after our first tour of Scandinavia, I knew it would translate in a live setting.
The first Zeppelin album was released in January 1969. What do you recall about the making of that record?
It was fantastic how the first album was done: by performing it live in Scandinavia to really grease it up before coming into the studio. That allowed you to really figure it out before recording it. If you have the benefit of doing so, it’s a very healthy way to enter the studio, especially for males who haven’t spent much time in the studio before. Also, you had to record really completely, and it was fairly harsh; you couldn’t waste time in there, especially with a new band.
You wanted to get inside and make the thing explode. You combine all of the chemicals, and it erupts out of the speakers. The word is chemistry, sometimes known as alchemy. And that album was a full picture, you know? There were so many concepts and combinations that no one had heard before. John Bonham’s playing was full of strength and character, and John Paul Jones provided some excellent keyboard work. It was really great to acquire that album the way it was. From the start, the band generated a lot of buzz in America.
We just walked in and annihilated San Francisco, that was all. The first record hadn’t even come out. The band’s outstanding reputation spreads quickly after hearing the record.
By the early 1970s, Led Zeppelin had become the world’s most successful band, outselling the Stones. How did you handle that amount of fame? If you’re referring to the time of private jets and such, do you mean that type of lifestyle? Because other people were doing it, based in cities and using planes. This made sense. I was referring to how you, as the band’s leader, handled the strain. Was Zeppelin’s manager Peter Grant the key to this, handling everything so you could focus solely on the music?
Yes, to go that far creatively, you needed someone to handle the business side of things. And Peter absolutely handled the business part of things, aside from the album production. However, he and I went to Atlantic in New York in the early phases to complete the original transaction. And when it came to the fourth album, we wanted to release it with no information on the cover – no band name, no title – Peter and I had an intriguing discussion at Atlantic.
How did that go down? When we arrived, the Atlantic lawyers separated us. Peter was in one office, while I was in another. They were insisting, “You’ve got to have the name of the band on the cover.” I responded with a grin: “You can print it on the inside bag, so that when people pull the album out they can see ‘Led Zeppelin’…” I was basically taking the piss. Because they were not going to obtain the album unless they met the conditions we specified. You got what you wanted, and the album became one of the best-selling records of all time.
Yeah. But we were getting a lot of negative publicity at the time. That’s why we decided to release an album with no information and see what people think about it. Forget what Rolling Stone says… Did the negative reviews you received in Rolling Stone hurt? It did not matter. Even the concert evaluations indicated that they most likely spent their time in the bar. They had clearly not focused on what was going on. Right from that moment in San Francisco, people were flocking to see us, and it never stopped.
Do you recall Rolling Stone’s review of Bob Dylan’s 1970 album, Self Portrait? It famously began with the query, “What is this shit?”.
Yes, that is what I would say about Rolling Stone. I would not say that about Bob Dylan. But, for you, were there times when Led Zeppelin failed? Are there any songs in which you can sense the band struggling or reaching for something they couldn’t reach?
I do not think so. I can tell you how it was with Led Zeppelin. When we were working at Headley Grange, recording with a mobile truck, or if we were in the studio and had booked time, we would go in and really work with what ideas we had. Things would come out of jams on the spot. And if a riff didn’t quite work, or if it sounded familiar, it wouldn’t be revisited.
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