littlequeenies:Back from their tour of Australasia Zeppelin have once again slipped into their hap
littlequeenies: Back from their tour of Australasia Zeppelin have once again slipped into their happy knack of almost complete silence. They are probably the first major group to maintain their privacy so successfully and completely.To recap on their amazingly successful career as a group, Monica Foot talked to Jimmy Page - the most reticent member of the group. She began at the beginning.That first record was made exactly three months after Jimmy Page had got it together and formed the world’s most spectacular instant supergroup. He thought it was just timing: “We arrived on the scene at just the right time. Cream had disbanded. Hendrix was into other things and Atlantic were looking for a new group to boost. We were it”. No television There’s a bit more to it than just lucky timing-hard, hard work. Page himself practises at least three hours each day. The band spend nearly a year on the road to begin with. In one year (1969) their air fares alone came to 24,000 pounds.By 1970, it was reckoned by the cognoscenti that they were earning more money from performing live than any other group in history. Take into account that they have never done a British television gig; nor have they ever released a single. Phenomenon is right: an incredible stage act and stage presence plus an equally good live effect on album.“I’m 27; John Paul Jones is the same age. Robert and John Bonham are both 23. I joined The Yardbirds in 1966 straight from session work. I’d been at Art School and done G.C.E.s in Sutton and Croydon. I lived in a van for a whileand got quite ill from that.“The good thing about the guitar was that they didn’t teach it in school. Teaching myself was the first and most important part of my education. I hope they keep it out of the schools. “I knew Jeff Beck and I enjoyed music. I couldn’t read music, I taught that myself too. I can write it down at my own pace.“The Yardbirds eventually folded. We had one hit: “Over Under Sideways Down” in 1966 and we did the film Blow Up with Antonioni.“I wanted a band, John Paul Jones phoned up to ask if I’d be interested in using him. I jumped at the chance. Musically he’s the best musician of us all. He had a proper training and he has quite brilliant ideas. I heard Robert and Bonham and there was just no question about it. Musically, it jelled immediately.“It’s very hard getting groups together, and the characters become very important particularly on the road. But we seem to get on better and better. Perhaps we’re just lucky.“We like to take out music off into different tangenes. We always have done that. Even now with “Dazed and Confused”, say. When we first did it in the studio we did it live, setting aside one section of the bow and so forth. We released the second take.“I asked him about the record sleeves of Zeppelin LPs - always distinctive. “Number Three” didn’t come out quite right. It was intended to be like those gardening calendars or the zoo wheel things that tell you when to plant cauliflowers or how long whale’s are pregnant. But there was a misunderstanding with the artist - who is in fact very good, but hadn’t been properly briefed - and we ended up with a deadline and a teeny-boppish thing with I think is a bit of a compromise.“ “Album Two was insane. We’d put down a rhythm track in London, added the voice in New York, put in harmonica in Vancouver, then come back to New York to do the mixing.” Tarot Cards “Now, on the last record, the sleeve has a lot of meaning. The old man carrying the wood is in harmony with nature. He takes from nature and he gives back to the land. It’s a natural cycle - it’s right.“His old cottage gets pulled down and they put him in these urban slums; old slums; terrible places. The Hermit is painted by a friend of mine - Barrington Colby - he’s holding out the light of truth and enlightment to young man at the foot of the hill. No, those aren’t Robert’s goats. Do you know the Tarot cards? Then you know what the Hermit means."My house used to belong to Alasteir Crowley. I knew that when I moved in. Magic is very important, if people can go through it. I think Crowley’s completely relevant today. We’re still seeking for truth; the search goes on."Crowley didn’t have a very high opinion of women and I don’t think he was wrong. Playing music is a very high sexual act. It’s an emotional release and the sexual drive comes in along with all the other impulses. But once you start earning money people start assuming things about you and your whole life is changed. Your friends change; you get involved in high finance. You can’t try and programme it. It just happens.” Loch Ness “At least as musicians we aren’t doing any environmental or moral damage. In fact the musicians can ask some of the ugly questions that politicians don’t want to answer. We’re not trying to indoctrinate anybody.Why shoud people automatically asume that they have to fall in this man-made cycle: go to work and manufacturate stuff so that you can get a bit of money to buy manufacturated goods."It’s only rebels who ever get anything done. Most people in high office are complete idiots. Take Loch Ness. The Hydro Board wanted to put pylons along the edge of the loch to save 55,000 pounds in a scheme that has been costed at 12 million paounds. We have to make sure that natural amenities like Loch Ness are respected. they are irreplaceable."I’m interested in the Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau. I have a place up there. I love it. It’s really beautiful. How can this faceless men wreck it for a piffling amount of money. The whole desition rests with one man and that’s really wrong."If I wasn’t into rock I would be living in somewhere like Wales in a commune.”We left it at that. We shook hands in the street. Jimmy Page went to check out the latest records in a little corner shop - the modest, quiet superstar. *****This interview was done by Monica Foot and published on April 22nd, 1972 in Disc and Music Echo. From The Eye of Zoro, not longer on the web. -- source link