"LED ZEPPELIN - We blew everyone else off the stage - and we will do it again",(PAGE)
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LED ZEPPELIN - We blew everyone else off the stage - and we will do it again
by Marcus Dunk
1 December 2007
The Daily Express
44 45
DEBAUCHERY, devil worship, drink and drugs – more than 30 years on since their heyday, the excesses and extremes of Led Zeppelin are still the stuff of legend. Other groups may have lasted longer and landed more No1s but nobody set the template for hard rocking and living quite like four Englishmen who made up the world's biggest and best rock band.
Now, 27 years since the death of drummer John Bonham caused the group to disband, Led Zep are back. And if the astonishing demand for tickets is any indicator, it seems they are more popular than ever.
Reforming for a one-off concert at London's O2 Centre on December 10, with Bonham's son Jason behind the drum kit, the group put tickets up for sale on the internet. The response astonished even them, with more than 30 million fans attempting to snap up the 20,000 available.
For guitarist Jimmy Page, playing together again as Led Zeppelin is something he tried to avoid for many years. "After John Bonham's death I spent 15 years not even wanting to think about Led Zeppelin, " he says. "But I also have difficulty thinking it's all over. Now at least one concert is planned and I'm incredibly happy about that." With his gangly physique and greying mane of hair combed back with gel, the 63-year-old Page comes across as more of a grandfather than a god of rock.
He certainly seems a long way from the man once thought to have sold his soul to Satan to play the band's legendary guitar licks. But compared with fellow band members Robert Plant and John Paul Jones, he is probably glad that his days of wild living are not etched all over his face.
AND wild they were. This was the band whose exploits in the Seventies are still spoken of in hushed and head-shaking awe. It was more than mere standard hotel room wrecking (of which they did their fair share); they lived the rock 'n' roll life to the limit, riding motorbikes along hotel corridors, hiring 10 ft pythons and setting them loose in rooms and organising legendary sex parties which, on one occasion, featured a shark caught by the group.
In the midst of the madness was Page. "Jimmy was incredible, " says Michael des Barres, a musician who knew him in the Seventies. "He was the classic rock star with the moated castle, the velvet clothes, the fabulous cars he couldn't drive and the 80,000 guitars." Page admits: "I'm not going to deny that we were the roughest and wildest band ever. What do you expect? At 24 I was the oldest of the band and had already been around a block or two. Plant and Bonham were just 20, came straight from the country and were suddenly sleeping in five-star hotels with armies of beautiful women throwing themselves at us. Our lives were completely topsy-turvy for 10 years." With a refreshing lack of false modesty, Page admits that he knew from the very first day that Led Zeppelin were going to be the most influential rock band ever. "After we played two songs at our first rehearsal, I knew: this band is going to make us famous and wealthy, " he says. "All that talent thrown together was without precedent. Even The Beatles didn't have the amount of sheer talent that we had." Formed in 1968, the group immediately clicked and began to write powerful blues-based rock. From the release of their debut album in 1969, they were a sensation. After the death of Jimi Hendrix, Page became the new guitar god, on a par with Eric Clapton, while singer Plant was the blond rock Adonis.
Add the talent of Bonham, one of the hardest playing drummers ever in the rock world, and the musical genius of John Paul Jones to the mix and Led Zeppelin were untouchable.
"If I listen to our records from that time now, I think, 'My God, we were incredibly good!'" laughs Page. "We really blew everyone else off stage and in that way created a separate status for ourselves in the music world." Along with innovative music and powerful performances, the key to the group's success was their single-minded vision and refusal to compromise. "From our very first album we never gave an inch, " says Page. "We did not issue singles but we sold more records than the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac and the Stones together."
HE ADDS: "The funny thing is, I was able to make the first record of Led Zeppelin in 1969 with my own savings. I put in £1,000 and a few months later we sold the rights of our first album in the US for
200,000. That was an awful lot of money back then.
Thanks to that, we were all quickly financially independent and didn't need to answer to anyone." As the band's popularity grew, so did the stories and legends about their wild and wicked ways. The smell of sulphur hung about the group, with rumours of dark satanic goings-on encouraged by Page's burgeoning interest in the occult.
An interest in the life, work and writings of Aleister Crowley developed into an obsession for Page, who ended up buying the notorious Satanist's former home Boleskine House, which is on the shore of Loch Ness and said to be haunted.
But the Jimmy Page of today is a different man. Married with children, he has been heavily involved in recent years with TASK Brasil a charity to help Brazilian street kids. Visiting Rio in 1994, he was shocked by the poverty and violence and has devoted money, time and his name to the charity ever since. He has been so devoted that he was even made an honorary citizen of Rio. He says: "The greatest satisfaction is knowing that I can help someone who needs help." With so many other interests, it has often been suggested Led Zeppelin came to an end at just the right time. Even if Bonham had not died in 1980 (he choked on his own vomit after drinking 40 vodka shots), some critics suggest it was good for the band to go out at the top of their game.
It's a suggestion that can still make Page angry. "Tremendous nonsense!" he says. "Just before Bonham died, we got together to discuss a new musical direction to take. Led Zeppelin would definitely have continued and we would absolutely have been the biggest band in pop history." The band gave its last concert in Berlin on July 7, 1980. "I remember it well. As I do the concert in Ahoy, Rotterdam (June 21, 1980) – Bonham was on top of his form that night." Page is equally forthcoming about the last time Led Zep played without Bonham. The set at Live Aid in 1985, he believes was a disaster.
SAYS Page: "I don't want to blame anyone but the two drummers [Phil Collins and Tony Thompson of Chic] hadn't learned their parts. You can get away with that in a pop band but not with Led Zeppelin." The mistake will not be repeated at the forthcoming show. The group are already working on the preparation and no one other than Jason Bonham will be taking up position on the drum stool. "Jason is a fantastic drummer who has the same feel as his father, " smiles Page. "His arms are just as broad and he hits as hard as his dad did.
"When we recently practised for the first time, Jason asked: 'OK, so we're playing Kashmir. Do you want the version from 1974, 1975 or 1976?' He knows the Led Zeppelin history as well as anyone and his name is Bonham. What more could you want?" For the group's numerous fans, and particularly the multitudes who have missed out on tickets, the answer to that question would be a full-blown concert tour.
Page smiles at the idea. "We're focusing on this one performance for now, " he says. "But we hope it won't be the last."
LED ZEPPELIN - We blew everyone else off the stage - and we will do it again
by Marcus Dunk
1 December 2007
The Daily Express
44 45
DEBAUCHERY, devil worship, drink and drugs – more than 30 years on since their heyday, the excesses and extremes of Led Zeppelin are still the stuff of legend. Other groups may have lasted longer and landed more No1s but nobody set the template for hard rocking and living quite like four Englishmen who made up the world's biggest and best rock band.
Now, 27 years since the death of drummer John Bonham caused the group to disband, Led Zep are back. And if the astonishing demand for tickets is any indicator, it seems they are more popular than ever.
Reforming for a one-off concert at London's O2 Centre on December 10, with Bonham's son Jason behind the drum kit, the group put tickets up for sale on the internet. The response astonished even them, with more than 30 million fans attempting to snap up the 20,000 available.
For guitarist Jimmy Page, playing together again as Led Zeppelin is something he tried to avoid for many years. "After John Bonham's death I spent 15 years not even wanting to think about Led Zeppelin, " he says. "But I also have difficulty thinking it's all over. Now at least one concert is planned and I'm incredibly happy about that." With his gangly physique and greying mane of hair combed back with gel, the 63-year-old Page comes across as more of a grandfather than a god of rock.
He certainly seems a long way from the man once thought to have sold his soul to Satan to play the band's legendary guitar licks. But compared with fellow band members Robert Plant and John Paul Jones, he is probably glad that his days of wild living are not etched all over his face.
AND wild they were. This was the band whose exploits in the Seventies are still spoken of in hushed and head-shaking awe. It was more than mere standard hotel room wrecking (of which they did their fair share); they lived the rock 'n' roll life to the limit, riding motorbikes along hotel corridors, hiring 10 ft pythons and setting them loose in rooms and organising legendary sex parties which, on one occasion, featured a shark caught by the group.
In the midst of the madness was Page. "Jimmy was incredible, " says Michael des Barres, a musician who knew him in the Seventies. "He was the classic rock star with the moated castle, the velvet clothes, the fabulous cars he couldn't drive and the 80,000 guitars." Page admits: "I'm not going to deny that we were the roughest and wildest band ever. What do you expect? At 24 I was the oldest of the band and had already been around a block or two. Plant and Bonham were just 20, came straight from the country and were suddenly sleeping in five-star hotels with armies of beautiful women throwing themselves at us. Our lives were completely topsy-turvy for 10 years." With a refreshing lack of false modesty, Page admits that he knew from the very first day that Led Zeppelin were going to be the most influential rock band ever. "After we played two songs at our first rehearsal, I knew: this band is going to make us famous and wealthy, " he says. "All that talent thrown together was without precedent. Even The Beatles didn't have the amount of sheer talent that we had." Formed in 1968, the group immediately clicked and began to write powerful blues-based rock. From the release of their debut album in 1969, they were a sensation. After the death of Jimi Hendrix, Page became the new guitar god, on a par with Eric Clapton, while singer Plant was the blond rock Adonis.
Add the talent of Bonham, one of the hardest playing drummers ever in the rock world, and the musical genius of John Paul Jones to the mix and Led Zeppelin were untouchable.
"If I listen to our records from that time now, I think, 'My God, we were incredibly good!'" laughs Page. "We really blew everyone else off stage and in that way created a separate status for ourselves in the music world." Along with innovative music and powerful performances, the key to the group's success was their single-minded vision and refusal to compromise. "From our very first album we never gave an inch, " says Page. "We did not issue singles but we sold more records than the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac and the Stones together."
HE ADDS: "The funny thing is, I was able to make the first record of Led Zeppelin in 1969 with my own savings. I put in £1,000 and a few months later we sold the rights of our first album in the US for
200,000. That was an awful lot of money back then.
Thanks to that, we were all quickly financially independent and didn't need to answer to anyone." As the band's popularity grew, so did the stories and legends about their wild and wicked ways. The smell of sulphur hung about the group, with rumours of dark satanic goings-on encouraged by Page's burgeoning interest in the occult.
An interest in the life, work and writings of Aleister Crowley developed into an obsession for Page, who ended up buying the notorious Satanist's former home Boleskine House, which is on the shore of Loch Ness and said to be haunted.
But the Jimmy Page of today is a different man. Married with children, he has been heavily involved in recent years with TASK Brasil a charity to help Brazilian street kids. Visiting Rio in 1994, he was shocked by the poverty and violence and has devoted money, time and his name to the charity ever since. He has been so devoted that he was even made an honorary citizen of Rio. He says: "The greatest satisfaction is knowing that I can help someone who needs help." With so many other interests, it has often been suggested Led Zeppelin came to an end at just the right time. Even if Bonham had not died in 1980 (he choked on his own vomit after drinking 40 vodka shots), some critics suggest it was good for the band to go out at the top of their game.
It's a suggestion that can still make Page angry. "Tremendous nonsense!" he says. "Just before Bonham died, we got together to discuss a new musical direction to take. Led Zeppelin would definitely have continued and we would absolutely have been the biggest band in pop history." The band gave its last concert in Berlin on July 7, 1980. "I remember it well. As I do the concert in Ahoy, Rotterdam (June 21, 1980) – Bonham was on top of his form that night." Page is equally forthcoming about the last time Led Zep played without Bonham. The set at Live Aid in 1985, he believes was a disaster.
SAYS Page: "I don't want to blame anyone but the two drummers [Phil Collins and Tony Thompson of Chic] hadn't learned their parts. You can get away with that in a pop band but not with Led Zeppelin." The mistake will not be repeated at the forthcoming show. The group are already working on the preparation and no one other than Jason Bonham will be taking up position on the drum stool. "Jason is a fantastic drummer who has the same feel as his father, " smiles Page. "His arms are just as broad and he hits as hard as his dad did.
"When we recently practised for the first time, Jason asked: 'OK, so we're playing Kashmir. Do you want the version from 1974, 1975 or 1976?' He knows the Led Zeppelin history as well as anyone and his name is Bonham. What more could you want?" For the group's numerous fans, and particularly the multitudes who have missed out on tickets, the answer to that question would be a full-blown concert tour.
Page smiles at the idea. "We're focusing on this one performance for now, " he says. "But we hope it won't be the last."
Up here so high I start to shake, Up here so high the sky I scrape, I've no fear but for falling down, So look out below I am falling now, Falling down,...not staying down, Could’ve held me up, rather tear me down, Drown in the river
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for fuck sakes, get over it
"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago- never mind how long precisely- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world." Herman Melville : Moby Dick
"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago- never mind how long precisely- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world." Herman Melville : Moby Dick
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
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I still consider heartbreaker/living loving maid to be some of the best lead guitar work ever done
if he can still play, then I will try to see them, if and when
thanks for the article
Exactly right.
I'm betting Jimmy can still tear it up. I don't think he'd agree to do the show if he couldn't. He sounded great on the Page Plant tour when I saw them back in 1998, and he sounded great on the Jimmy Page and the Black Crowes live album from 2000 or so.
Sha la la la i'm in love with a jersey girl
I love you forever and forever
Adel 03 Melb 1 03 LA 2 06 Santa Barbara 06 Gorge 1 06 Gorge 2 06 Adel 1 06 Adel 2 06 Camden 1 08 Camden 2 08 Washington DC 08 Hartford 08
if I get to see these fuckers....words won't be able to describe
Please Led Zeppelin, come to the Pacific Northwest!!!!
Thanks for posting this!!
-Eddie Vedder
6/24/06 Cincinatti, Ohio
6/14/08 Manchester, Tennessee
I think if everything you did like what happened with Jimmy and McCartney turned to gold than you would get pretty confident pretty quickly.
Sha la la la i'm in love with a jersey girl
I love you forever and forever
Adel 03 Melb 1 03 LA 2 06 Santa Barbara 06 Gorge 1 06 Gorge 2 06 Adel 1 06 Adel 2 06 Camden 1 08 Camden 2 08 Washington DC 08 Hartford 08
The thing is, I don;t think he does have a huge ego in the way most people would understand it. Yes, he plainly sees no point in being falsely modest about his achievements as a musician, and he's right. He's a musical genius. But on a person-to-person random basis he seems laid-back, soft-spoken and perfectly normal. When I interviewed Chris Cornell back in May in London, someone was waiting outside the dressing-room door to come in and see him. The tour manager stuck his head round the door and alerted Chris that someone was waiting, but whoever they were waited patiently in the corridor for 15 minutes until we'd finished up the 45-minute talk. And this patient hanger-about in corridors turned out to be, eventually, none other than Jimmy Page. He smiled sweetly and said hello as I left and of course I said hi and shook his hand - who wouldn't? Later I found out he'd been perfectly happy to chat for 15 minutes to my friend who was waiting for me outside in the corridor, even introducing himself to her as if he didn't expect her to know who he was.
Point of the story - anyone with a huge ego would have made a nuisance of themselves, expected Chris to drop what he was doing, tried to turf me out. But like I said - casual, normal, perfectly laid-back. I was impressed. I got to meet two of my biggest musical heroes that night, and neither of them disappointed me.
www.chriscornell.org.uk
I guess he better be honest about how he feels about his band rather than expressing some false modesty. Modesty works fine when you start or you didn't have the chance to achieve something big.
Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
"If I wanted you to understand, I would have explained it better"
Johan Cruijff
I also saw them live back in their heyday. 1975 at Earl's Court. It was my first big stadium show and I had a pretty good seat - it was also the first time anyone had really used big projection screens, certainly in the UK. I remember it as an amazing show although I was only a kid, and the footage on the DVD is pretty much how I remember it.
www.chriscornell.org.uk
I would GLADLY pay the pay-per view and be awake at whatever strange hour it would be on here...PLEASE! whatever it would take to watch this show.
waw. did you hear any of their bootlegs? if no, restrain to comment
I have heard a lot of their bootlegs and ofocurse I don agree with the other dudes opinion. led zep boot = sensational.
Sha la la la i'm in love with a jersey girl
I love you forever and forever
Adel 03 Melb 1 03 LA 2 06 Santa Barbara 06 Gorge 1 06 Gorge 2 06 Adel 1 06 Adel 2 06 Camden 1 08 Camden 2 08 Washington DC 08 Hartford 08
obviously never heard a zeppelin boot. go find some.
seriously, i wanna rail on everyone posting shit about zep, but i don't have the energy. if you don't get it, you obviously don't like pearl jam..
WOW awesome story!