Roll over Beethoven
onezebra12
http://www.newindpress.com/sunday/sundayitems.asp?id=SEA20061006102040&eTitle=Arts&rLink=0
Friday October 6 2006 19:47 IST
I recall as a sixteen year old listening to Led Zeppelin’s second album for the first time. The first track was Whole Lotta Love. I don’t think there had or has ever been such a thumping, extreme stellar track to open an album. And after that song things didn’t let up. The music pulsated, throttled and thrusted for 45 minutes. It was sheer carnage… That was my introduction to Jimmy Page. I was instantly hooked: Robert Plant’s high pitched wails, John Bonham’s exploding drums, John Paul Jones cementing everything together and Jimmy Page’s screeching, weeping, lilting riffs and chords.
It was music that parents loved to hate and mine were no different. I grew up in a conservative, somewhat religious family and this type of sexually provocative and overtly aggressive stuff came directly from the devil. And these guys had attitude and long hair. It was great! Before I ever read Karl Marx I had already become a rebel with a cause, albeit through music. Even now, decades later, I put on those old albums and the music still hits the spot; although back in the 70s it seemed tailor-made for frustrated teenage boys.
I never got to see the band perform but I did see Robert Plant do a solo gig in Liverpool in 1988. He played a few Zeppelin songs and although it was a treat to see a legend perform, it just wasn’t the same listening to someone else play Jimmy’s parts. In fact it wasn’t the same watching Robert Plant. He had toned down his act — the hip swerving, the body thrusting and the sexual moans and groans that were the hallmarks of the early Zeppelin records and concerts were all but gone.
However in 1976 I did get to see the next best thing: the film The Song Remains the Same, recorded at Madison Square Gardens in New York in 1973. I suppose it could have been any huge rock arena where they played during that decade. At one stage in the film the spotlight picks out Jimmy Page on the darkened stage. He stands, tall and slight, with long hair and fetching androgynous looks. His violin bow is held high. He is dressed in black with striking gold dragons emblazoned on his trousers. The bow is brought crashing down onto his electric guitar to bring forth the most ear-shattering, eerie sounds. It is a virtuoso performance by a man who single-handedly carved out a piece of music history for himself.
Showman, composer, producer and performer, Jimmy Page was the driving force behind the British band Led Zeppelin (1968-1980). While the other three members (John Paul Jones, Robert Plant and John Bonham) undoubtedly brought their unique talents to the studio, it was ultimately Page’s band. His music drew from many genres, including American blues and English folk, often fused with Indian influences. The tabla can be heard on the band’s first album alongside a guitar simulated to sound like a sitar, and the influence of the subcontinent is often heard throughout the music that followed. Their third album, Friends, exhibits Eastern influences and was recorded by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant with the Bombay Symphony Orchestra in 1972, during their trip to India. Throughout their music there are elements of pop, Celtic, Indian, Arabic, reggae, folk, and 20th century classical music.
In the studio, Page often used a Supro amplifier and a Telecaster guitar. His use of distorted fuzz guitar (Whole Lotta Love), slide guitar (You Shook Me, Dancing Days, In My Time of Dying), pedal steel guitar (Your Time is Gonna Come), acoustic guitar (Gallows Pole) and recording techniques made Led Zeppelin quite unique in range and a prototype for many future rock bands. Page also put to use the bowed playing technique he developed during his time as a session musician in the mid-60s — check out Dazed And Confused and How Many More Times.
The band never set out to be part of mainstream popular music and rarely released singles. Page recently said that they were an underground band. They certainly shunned crass commercialism. Led Zeppelin therefore never permeated the public conscience in the way that say the Beatles or the Stones did. So it is quite remarkable that Led Zeppelin are second only to the Beatles in all time album sales in the world’s biggest music market, the US, outselling Queen, Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones and just about anyone you’d care to mention.
Many bands often had an extra member in the form of a record producer, who took the raw material of a band and breathed a special brand of magic into the sound to make the recorded article quite unique. Queen for instance had Roy Thomas Baker and The Beatles had George Martin. Zeppelin had Jimmy Page. That is what makes Page so special. He wasn’t just a guitar wizard with an eye for pulling out memorable compositions, he gave the band its sound on record.
In many ways Jimmy Page was the quintessential English rock musician of the 70s. Owner of a stately home or two, dabbling with lifestyle excess, mysticism and the occult, and creating an aura of mystery and suspense around himself and his band. I guess to American youth in particular this seemed very exotic. But to huge swathes of western youth in general Jimmy Page was a rock God.
Page is now 62 but his legacy, and that of his band’s, seems set to continue well into this century. In December it will be the 26th anniversary of the band’s demise, as a result of the death of drummer John Bonham. Their fan base is still huge, and in 2005 the band were given a Grammy Lifetime Achievement award in recognition of a career that changed the face of rock music. Earlier this year, Page and the two other surviving members of the band (Robert Plant and John Paul Jones) received the Polar Music Prize from the King of Sweden. The award is probably not as well known as the Grammy but is arguably more prestigious.
The three remaining members of the band were interviewed for Swedish TV when they received the Polar Prize. Bassist John Paul Jones commented that prior to Led Zeppelin ‘‘there had been nothing like it before’’ and after a brief pause continued, ‘‘or anything like it since’’. I’ll second that, without a doubt.
onezebra12
http://www.mail2web.com/onezebra12