Led Zeppelin perform for a bunch of bored French people, 1969
06.19.2013
02:13 pm

Topics:
Music

Tags:
Led Zeppelin


 
Little-known footage of Led Zeppelin performing “Communication Breakdown” and “Dazed and Confused” on French television in 1969.

The first bit is rehearsal footage. It’s shot poorly, but the group’s performance is as spirited as the French audience’s reaction to it is not.

This is Led Zeppelin and they just sit there!
 

Written by Richard Metzger | Discussion
The album Led Zeppelin recorded BEFORE ‘Led Zeppelin’
06.01.2013
08:38 am

Topics:
Music

Tags:
Led Zeppelin
PJ Proby


 
Most Led Zeppelin fans are unaware that the band’s first recordings were actually not the songs that became Led Zeppelin I, but rather P.J. Proby’s quirky Three Week Hero album recorded shortly before their debut was and released in 1969. Even if they have heard of it, chances are they haven’t heard the actual music. I’m here to help!

John Paul Jones, who like Jimmy Page, was then a very much sought-after session musician and arranger got the gig working with the, um, mercurial front man—Proby was, and is, a man considered mad, bad and dangerous to know, one of rock’s original madmen, inexplicably still alive—via producer Steve Rowland. Jones asked if he could bring in his own group for the session, thinking it would serve as a rehearsal of sorts before they went into the studio themselves and Rowland agreed. Jones told Chris Welch:

“I was committed to doing all the arrangements for the album. As we were talking about rehearsing at the time, I thought it would be a handy source of income. I had to book a band anyway, so I thought I’d book everybody I knew.”

It’s not known exactly when the two-day recording commenced, but August 25th, 1968 is probably the correct date, and would mark the very first time that Led Zeppelin, then still-known as The New Yardbirds, would enter a recording studio together.
 

 
Proby had already worked with Jimmy Page before, as the young rhythm guitarist had played on his 1964 debut long player, I Am P.J. Proby, with legendary session player “Big Jim” Sullivan supplying lead (The slight, baby-faced Page was then informally known as “Lil’ Jim Pea” to differentiate him from the slightly older Sullivan).

From an interview with P.J. Proby on the Led Zeppelin fansite, Finding Zoso:

FZ: One of my favorite records of yours, which was actually your last record with Liberty [Records] was Three Week Hero. A lot of people don’t know that the entire lineup of Led Zeppelin backed you up on that album. Can you tell us a little bit about that album and what it was like?

PJ: Yeah, after that session, Big Jim Sullivan was the most sought after lead guitar player in England so he was on everybody but everybody’s sessions. At that time Jimmy Page couldn’t really pick lead all that well. So he went off and wasn’t heard for a long time and the next thing I knew he was in The Yardbirds. About 1968, a friend of mine from Hollywood, Steve Roland had come over to London and had done pretty well as a producer for [the group] Dave, Dee Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. So I went down to Steve and asked him to produce my next album, EMI wanted one out now. I listened to some stuff he had there, demos, and he said, “I’ll put a band together for you.”

So when I got to the studio that day, there was what they called, “The New Yardbirds”. There was Jimmy Page, lead guitar player, a great lead guitar player by now and John Bonham and another guy Paul Jones and Albert Lee [Huh?]. Anyway, we recorded that album, I think it was in two days. We even undershot, we recorded it with about thirty-five minutes left over, and so Roland yelled down, “Why don’t you all busk it? We shouldn’t waste the studio time.” I told the boys, “Y’all start picking and I’ll write as you pick.” So the three last numbers on the album, [the medley], I just made up as the boys played.

Afterwards, I said, “Man, y’all did a terrific job. I’ve got some tours coming up, would you back me?” They said, “We’d love to, we’ll be your backing band, but first we’ve got two obligations we’ve got to honour in California and they named two places in California that I had just come back from playing with a band of mine that was called Canned Heat. The boys told me they were going over to play in San Francisco and all that, and I said, “Look, from what I’ve heard and the way you boys played tonight, not only are you not going to be my backing band, I’m going to say goodbye right now, because I don’t think I’m ever going to see you again. That’s how successful you’re going to be. You’re exactly what they want, you play all that psychedelic stuff and everything.“

The heavy metal word hadn’t been invented then, it was just hard blues and stuff. So I said, “You’re going to go over there and go down so great I don’t think you’re ever going to come home.” They didn’t ever come back until they changed their name to Led Zeppelin and stayed over there and came back huge huge stars.

FZ: Did you ever manage to catch up with them once they became big stars?

PJ: No I never have and I have never seen Jimmy Page since. I said goodbye that day when I cut that album and I haven’t seen one of them since.

In case you’re wondering, Robert Plant played harmonica on Three Week Hero. He doesn’t sing on it.
 

 

 
If you’re a Led Zeppelin fan and you’ve never heard “The Day That Lorraine Came Down,” before, prepare to have your ever-lovin’ mind blown. Easily in my top 100 favorite songs:
 

 
This improvised in the studio number, “Mery Hopkins Never Had Days Like These” was not on the Three Week Hero album, rather appearing on the B-side of the “The Day That Lorraine Came Down” single. As if there could any doubt—trust me, there won’t be—Proby calls the players out by name (including the great Alan Hawkshaw who is playing organ), but I’m not sure if this is John Bonham here as Proby refers to the drummer as both a “fat man” and bald.
 

 
“Jim’s Blues”—basically the prototype for Led Zeppelin‘s “You Shook Me.” “Jim” probably refers to Proby (real name James Marcus Smith) and not Jimmy Page.

Below, a scant two years later and Led Zeppelin were headlining at the Royal Albert Hall:
 

Written by Richard Metzger | Discussion
Communication Breakdown: Japanese Led Zeppelin TV commercial, 1969
04.11.2013
01:51 pm

Topics:
Music

Tags:
Led Zeppelin


 
Wonderful Japanese TV commercial for the first Led Zeppelin album. “Jimmy Pagi,” “Robert Planto,” kawaii (cute) John Paul Jones and John Bonham in their only TV spot.

Plus a promo film for “Communication Breakdown” that caught me totally by surprise:
 

Written by Richard Metzger | Discussion
Houses of the Holy: The backstory to the famous Led Zeppelin album cover

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One of the most iconic record covers of the 1970s is Led Zeppelin’s fifth album, 1973’s Houses of the Holy and it’s also one of the most mysterious. Fans have long speculated about the “meaning” of this cryptic image of naked, golden-haired children crawling around an apocalyptic landscape towards… what? Was it a reference to the creepy 50s sci-fi film Village of the Damned? An apocalypse cult? Or was there some “occult significance” to Jimmy Page? I’m sure there must have been quite a lot of stoned, meandering conversations back then about this one.

The cover, produced by the legendary London-based design firm, Hipgnosis, was shot on the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. Aubrey Powell, the Hipgnosis partner who actually designed the cover, told Q magazine in 2003 that the concept was based on Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End, where hundreds of millions of Earth’s children gather together to be taken off into space.

But there’s an odd factoid or two about the Houses of the Holy album cover that might surprise you: First off, it was not a small army of naked children with wigs on, it was only two kids, a brother and sister, who were photographed over the course of ten days at dawn and at dusk. One of them went on to become a world famous TV presenter, Stefan Gates, of the BBC’s popular Cooking in the Danger Zone show.

Gates said of the shoot, which he did at the age of five with his older sister Samantha:

“We only got a few quid for the modelling and the chance to travel to places we had never been before. Our family wasn’t well off, we certainly couldn’t afford holidays, so it worked out great for us.

“For the Zeppelin cover we went to Ireland during the Troubles. I remember arriving at the airport and seeing all these people with guns. We stayed in this little guest house near the Giant’s Causeway and to capture the so-called magic light of dawn and dusk we’d shoot first thing in the morning and at night.

I’ve heard people saying they put wigs on several children. But there was only me and my sister and that’s our real hair. I used to love being naked when I was that age so I didn’t mind. I’d whip off my clothes at the drop of a hat and run around having a great time, so I was in my element. My sister was older so she was probably a bit more self-conscious.”

Designer Aubrey Powell said of the shoot:

“It promptly rained for ten days straight. I shot the whole thing in black and white on a totally miserable morning pouring with rain. Originally, I’d intended the children to be gold and silver. Because I shot in black and white and it was a gray day, the children turned out very white. So when we hand-tinted it, the airbrush artist, by accident, put a kind of purple tinge onto them. When I first saw it, I said, ‘Oh, my God.’ Then we looked at it, and I said, ‘Hang on a minute, this has an otherworldly quality.’ So we left it as it was. Everybody was so cold, and so freaked out because it wasn’t working, that the only thing I could keep everybody together with was a bottle of Mandrax and a lot of whiskey.”

Oddly, in 2007 Stefan Gates claimed to have never listened to the album and that he felt there was something perhaps sinister about the cover image. “It carries too much significance for me,” he said at the time. “A part of me wants to go out to the Giant’s Causeway with a big pair of speakers, strip naked and play it just to see if I have some kind of great epiphany.”

Samantha Gates, now living in South Africa, recalls:

“I remember the shoot really clearly, mainly because it was freezing cold and rained the whole time.

“We were naked in a lot of the modelling shoots we did, nothing was thought of it back then. You probably couldn’t get away with that now.”

Stefan Gates believes shooting the album at the age of five has a huge, but mostly subconscious, role in his life. “Although it’s just my naked behind you can see, perhaps being a part of something like that at a young age made me seek out more ambitious and adventurous experiences.”
 
image
 
Above, Stefan Gates holds the famous album cover at the site of the Giant’s Causeway in Nothern Ireland. Below, the image from the gatefold of the Houses of the Holy sleeve, shot at Dunluce Castle.
 
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The February 2010 BBC 4 radio show Stefan Gates’s Cover Story saw him return to the Giant’s Causeway to experience the album there for the first time, played on a boom box (but presumably clothed).
 

Written by Richard Metzger | Discussion
‘Stairway to Heaven’ tribute at Kennedy Center Honors moves Robert Plant to tears
01.07.2013
05:26 pm

Topics:
Music

Tags:
Led Zeppelin
Heart


 
Holy shit is this amazing. I had no expectations of anything when I hit play, but I was absolutely blown away by Heart’s Ann and Nancy Wilson leading this truly great version of “Stairway to Heaven” at the Kennedy Center Honors. It really is as good as everyone’s been saying.

Jason Bonham, son of the late Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, played drums. As the song progresses, back-up singers, a string section and the Joyce Garrett Youth Choir come onstage.The bowler hats on Bonham and the singers, were meant as a tribute to John Bonham, who passed away in 1980.

The President and First Lady, fellow honoree David Letterman, Jack Black, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and a visibly moved Robert Plant watched. The performers got a well-deserved standing ovation at the end.
 

Written by Richard Metzger | Discussion
Led Zeppelin vs Beatles: ‘Whole Lotta Helter Skelter’


 
I know, I know, the clichéd mashup… However, this one is kinda fun.

Music and video by Soundhog.
 

 
Via Nerdcore

Written by Tara McGinley | Discussion
‘Trampled Under Foot’: Barney Hoskyns’ brilliant oral history of Led Zeppelin

barney_hoskyns_led_zeppelin
 
I have always liked Barney Hoskyns’ writing. He has a subtle and incisive way of getting to the seed of any story. His biography on Montgomery Clift, Beautiful Loser was sublime. More recently Hotel California: Singer-Songwriters & Cocaine Cowboys In The L.A. Canyons was perhaps the best book written on West Coast music. He also wrote a commendable biography on Tom Waits, and written histories on Glam and Soul, particularly the exceptional Say It One Time For The Brokenhearted: Country Soul In The American South.

Now Hoskyns has delivered Trampled Underfoot: The Power and Excess of Led Zepelin, which is the best biography written about Zeppelin to date.

It’s the best because Hoskyns’ book is a mammoth oral history of the band, told through over 130 interviews, featuring the key players, the management, the wives, the girlfriends, the roadies, the producers, the engineers, the PR people, the record label, the security, the druggies, right down to the designers of the album sleeves and office staff. Where there have been gaps, caused by death (drummer John Bonham, manager Peter Grant) or refusal (Kenneth Anger), Hoskyns has lifted directly from the original, key interviews, to maintain the story’s immediacy.

In an exclusive interview with Dangerous Minds, Barney Hoskyns talked to about Trampled Underfoot and the power and excess of Led Zeppelin.

DM: Why did you choose Led Zeppelin?

Barney Hoskyns: ‘I chose Zeppelin because I love them. The mission really was not to preach to the converted, if you like, it was to an extent to preach to the unconverted. Obviously, I hope that the Led Zeppelin community will read it and take to it, and embrace it. But I think I wanted to pitch it at as much skeptics, to say look a) Zeppelin’s music was incredible and b) the story is extraordinary.

‘And I think there was an opportunity to demystify the story a little bit, just to sort of get away from glorifying the usual larks and antics, and Hell-raising, and to make the story a bit more real. I think, was the mission, and that’s kind of how the book mutated into an oral history. Because it didn’t start out like that, but the more interviews I did, I ended up doing over 130, the more it became clear to me there was an opportunity to tell the story in a different way, with the kind of immediacy you get from people just talking quite openly and candidly. And I thought let’s see if we can tell the story in a kind of continuous way, from start to finish. That was the mission and that was the methodology.’

Hoskyns starts the book from the with the earliest moments in the band member’s careers. This is a youthful Jimmy Page showing his prodigious skills on TV with his skiffle band, before going onto a brief career as a session musician.

Page was so talented a guitar player that unlike most session musicians, he played both acoustic and electric guitar. Jimmy could play anything, and was the guitar on records by The Kinks, Donovan, Lulu and even Val Doonican. As can be seen from Hoskyns’ book, Page dedicated himself so much to playing his guitar that he was removed from the world, becoming that slightly isolated, mysterious figure of his adult years.

Most session men were middle-aged, with an interest in angling and loft-conversion. Yet, it was at one session that Page met a bass player and sometime musical arranger, John Paul Jones. The pair got on because of their age, but also because they had a respect and admiration for each other’s talent.

While Page and Jones were connecting in recording studios, Robert Plant and John Bonham were performing with various bands across Birmingham, which in the mid-1960s was considered to be the next Pop Capital of Britain after Liverpool, as it had so many music acts (The Move, The Moody Blues, Steve Winwood) coming to the fore. Plant and Bonham were equally dedicated to their talents. Bonham was a self-taught drummer, who even then was showing the skill and innovation that his contemporaries found difficult to match. It’s interesting to note that all these years later how many people in Hoskyns’s book still describe Bonham as the best.

Robert Plant was also trying out his skills fronting various bands. He had a love of Blues and Rock, and was developing his powerful and unique way of singing.

The turning point came when Page joined The Yardbirds at Jeff Beck’s insistence, which led Page into the orbit of manager Peter Grant.

Grant had the reputation of a hard man, one that he liked to play up. When stories circulated he had hung some recalcitrant manager over a penthouse balcony by his ankles, Grant neither admitted nor denied the charge, only quipping, “Let’s say I acquainted him with the view.” This was the kind of whispered tale that created the fear and myth about Grant.

As manager, Grant became like a father to Page and helped support the young guitarist with his vision to create a new Supergroup, one that he could lead. Page contacted Jones, and then through different connections, Plant and Bonham were brought in. The foursome that was to become the biggest band of the 1970s was born.
 
barney_hoskyns
Author: Barney Hoskyns
 
DM: Why did Led Zeppelin take-off? Was there a gap, say after The Beatles split?

Barney Hoskyns: ‘I think there was a gap there and Peter Grant spotted the opportunity, if you like. I think he intuitively knew there was room for a new band, a supergroup, you might call it, though Zeppelin weren’t a supergroup in the sense of Cream was a supergroup. The disbanding of Cream left a gap for Atlantic Records. Clapton had decided to mellow out and to calm down, and that allowed some other bands, or Zeppelin to step into the breach.

‘I think it was an evolution musically. ‘There are 4 guys with extraordinary talent, who have respect for each other. And they all kind of liked each other. They hung out with each other. There weren’t ego struggles, until the tensions start coming in as a result of many things, not just drugs. But until that moment, you know, these 4 guys, they weren’t punching each other in the dressing room. They’re having fun.

‘And, it was about the alchemy of these 4 musicians that was at the heart of everything. Without that you can hype a band to death and but it’s not going to mean much if there isn’t some substance and quality there form the outset, and there was that. But that’s not the whole story, as the book makes clear, there was an awful lot else that went on around this. There was the machinery, an extended family, that all contributed in creating this machinery, that all contributed to creating the phenomenon.

‘It was all very sudden and was done by sheer brute force in many ways. Peter Grant was a powerful figure who decided that Zeppelin was going to be his mission then nothing was going to stop him from turning that band into the biggest band on earth. And it was kind of brilliantly done. If the music hadn’t been as great as it was then even Peter Grant would never have succeeded in that mission.

‘The thing is there will always be a wave of adolescents, a new generation coming through that will need a band of its own. I’m not sure that’s the case now, as I think pop culture, rock culture, is very different, but then, there was a new generation, a semi-generation coming through, for whom bands like The Beatles and The Stones belonged to their older siblings, or boys and girls who were 4 or 5 years older. I think Led Zeppelin were the best in every sense technically and mythologically, as they sort of captured the imagination at that time, especially in North America, where there was almost a religious aspect, a mass cult of Zeppelin, the likes of which we will never see again.’
 
More from Barney Hoskyns plus bonus of Led Zeppelin ‘In Concert’, after the jump…
 

Written by Paul Gallagher | Discussion
Night Flight: Inside Led Zeppelin’s private jet on NBC Nightly News, 1973
07.17.2012
09:17 am

Topics:
History
Music
Television

Tags:
Led Zeppelin


 
An NBC Nightly News report from July 31, 1973 awkwardly segues from an introduction about criminal activity to a story about how Led Zeppelin are so rich that they can afford to rent their own private jet.

Led Zeppelin used to park themselves in big city hotels (New York, LA, Chicago, Dallas) and then would fly in and out of the smaller cities and back that same night, ferried to and fro between hotels, airports and concert halls via a squadron of limousines.

“The Starship,” as the former United Airlines Boeing 720 passenger jet was re-dubbed by its owners (Ward Sylvester and pop singer Bobby Sherman) had been modified at the cost of nearly a quarter of a million dollars, with the intention of renting it out to touring super-groups. Swivel chairs, a bar, and a 3/4” Sony U-matic videocassette player and TV were installed (The plane’s library contained films ranging from Deep Throat to the Marx Brothers), and a bedroom, for “privacy” was built into the back of the plane. Shag carpeting, champagne, the Starship had it all, even President Nixon’s Air Force One didn’t compare. There were two stewardesses on the plane and it cost $2500 an hour to run.

John Bonham was once rumored to have flown the jet from Los Angeles to New York. Legend also has it that he once drunkenly tried to open the jet’s hatch to take a pee while the plane was flying over Kansas City…

Having your own private jet these days, no big deal. Back in 1973, only demi-gods owned them and such a story would make The NBC Nightly News. The reporter doing the voice over seems to be annoyed that young guys in their 20s wearing bell-bottoms would have this much money.
 

 
Page and Plant on-board.
 

 
A fireplace?
 

 
Robert Plant and groupie Audrey Hamilton, the inspiration for “Hot Dog.”
 

 
More photos and video after the jump…
 

Written by Richard Metzger | Discussion
Holelottadick: The Residents do a rude Led Zeppelin cover, 1971
06.04.2012
09:18 am

Topics:
Music

Tags:
Led Zeppelin
The Residents


 
Long before they covered The Beatles, Cannibal & the Headhunters, James Brown, Elvis, George Gershwin or Hank Williams, in 1971, the Residents rudely took on Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” (rechristened “Holelottadick” and letting the intention of Robert Plant’s lyrics really hang out there) on their unreleased (but widely bootlegged) Baby Sex album.

Baby Sex was once broadcast in its entirety on Oregon radio station KBOO-FM during their “Residents Radio Festival” in 1977. The album’s second side is an astonishing studio collage piece titled “Hallowed Be Thy Wean” which includes a live recording of The Residents at San Francisco’s Boarding House in October 1971 with Snakefinger, the first time that “The Residents” moniker was employed by the group.

Baby Sex also features a ripping cover of Frank Zappa’s “King Kong,” that could almost be the Mothers of Invention playing. The Residents’ direct musical and sonic debt to Zappa (and Pink Floyd’s “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict,” for that matter, “sampled” at length in “Hallowed…”) becomes much more obvious after you’ve given Baby Sex a listen. (Original Mother Don Preston would later collaborate with The Residents on their epic 1977 Eskimo album).

Elsewhere on the album, the cryptic ones “steal this riff” from Tim Buckley’s “Down By The Borderline” (from Buckley’s Starsailor album, which was released by Zappa’s Straight Records) and manage to sound like a geeky version on Santana.
 

Written by Richard Metzger | Discussion
Led Zeppelin: Rocking the Gladsaxe Teen Club for Danish TV in 1969

led_zeppelin_scandanavia_1969
 
Roughly 6 months after their first gig (where they were billed as ‘The Yardbirds med Jimmy Page’) this is Led Zeppelin giving a hint as to why they will dominate venues and stadia across the world during the 1970s.

Recorded at the Gladsaxe Teen Club, Denmark, for TV Byen / Danmarks Radio on March 17, 1969, Led Zeppelin perform “Communication Breakdown”, “Dazed and Confused”, “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”, and “How Many More Times”. Impressive and tight, this was what I considered as “grown-up Rock ‘n’ Roll” when I was young - the kind of music you studied after achieving good grades in Bowie and Bolan - and forty-three years on, it is still a cracking masterclass.
 

 

Written by Paul Gallagher | Discussion
Happy Birthday Muddy Waters: Watch his legendary performance at the Blues Summit in Chicago 1974

muddy_waters_birthday
 
McKinley Morganfield, aka Muddy Waters born ninety-nine years ago today, at Jug’s Corner, Issaquena County, Mississippi. The legendary Father of Chicago Blues and influence on artists from Jimi Hendrix to The Rolling Stones, Angus Young to Led Zeppelin

Muddy Waters had always wanted to be a great musician, as he once told writer Charles Shaar Murray for the N.M.E. in 1977:

“....ever since I can remember, this is what I wanted to be. Something outstanding. If I couldn’t make it in music, I’d be a big preacher, a great ball player.

“I didn’t want to grow up with no one knowin’ me but the neighborhood people. I wanted the world to know a lot about me. I thank God I got it through…”

Nearly thirty years after his death, Waters is still as relevant, and as important, as Murray summed up back in 1977:

“The reason that Muddy Waters is still a great and not just an honored ancestor, a museum grandaddy, is that no one can do it like Muddy Waters.

And somehow I don’t think anyone will.”

And here’s the proof, Muddy Waters at the Blues Summit in Chicago from 1974, with Dr. John, Michael Bloomfield, Koko Taylor, Junior Wells and many more.
 

 
Bonus clip from ‘Beat Club’ 1970, after the jump…
 

Written by Paul Gallagher | Discussion
Jimmy Page: Releases ‘Lucifer Rising and Other Sound Tracks’ next week

jimmy_page_lucifer_rising
 
Jimmy Page has revealed via his Facebook page, that he will release his music for Lucifer Rising next week.

In a “special announcement” Page said:

On March 20th, the Spring Equinox 2012, the title music for Lucifer Rising and Other Sound Tracks will have its premiere and release.

The title music, along with other musical pieces recorded at my home studio in the early Seventies, have been revisited, remixed and released for the first time.

This is a musical diary of avant-garde compositions and experiments, one of which was to appear on the film Lucifer Rising.

The collection has been exhumed and is now ready for public release. This will be available exclusively on the website.

There will be a standard release on heavyweight vinyl.

In addition there will be a special run of 418 numbered copies. The first 93 copies will be signed and numbered.

There are liner notes and commentary to each track. The tracks are:

Side One

1) Lucifer Rising - Main Track


Side Two

1) Incubus
2) Damask
3) Unharmonics
4) Damask - Ambient
5) Lucifer Rising - Percussive Return

Jimmy Page, March 2012

As you all know, Page was originally asked to write the music for the film by Kenneth Anger, but various difficulties saw their collaboration fall apart. Anger later claimed he could turn the guitarist into a toad or a statue of gold.

While Page’s soundtrack has been available as a bootleg for some years, this is its first official release, which you can purchase via Jimmy Page’s website

This is what the bootleg version sounds like:
 

 

 
And what Kenneth Anger said after being asked just one more question about Jimmy Page.
 

 

Written by Paul Gallagher | Discussion
Dazed and Confused, indeed: the true story behind the Led Zeppelin classic?
03.14.2012
11:43 am

Topics:
Music

Tags:
Led Zeppelin
The Yardbirds
Dazed & Confused

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“Dazed and Confused” is thought of as a Led Zeppelin original and Jimmy Page’s dramatic use of the violin bow during his extended soloing made the song a centerpiece of the Zeppelin live experience. But the song actually debuted during Page’s tenure in the Yardbirds, and apparently before that as well. From The Thieving Magpies: Jimmy Page’s Dubious Recording Legacy:

On August 25, 1967 the Yardbirds caught an acoustic act fronted by Jake Holmes at the Village Theatre in New York’s Greenwich Village. Holmes and his two sidemen played a song about a love affair gone dreadfully wrong. The song was called “Dazed & Confused.” It’s often been described as a song about a bad acid trip. Jake Holmes set this author straight in a 2001 interview.

“No, I never took acid. I smoked grass and tripped on it, but I never took acid. I was afraid to take it. The song’s about a girl who hasn’t decided whether she wants to stay with me or not. It’s pretty much one of those love songs,” Holmes explained.

Asked whether he remembered opening for the Yardbirds, Holmes laughed.

“Yes. Yes. And that was the infamous moment of my life when ‘Dazed & Confused’ fell into the loving arms and hands of Jimmy Page,” he said.

 

 
The Thieving Magpies: Jimmy Page’s Dubious Recording Legacy (Perfect Sound Forever)

Part II (which is even juicier than part 1)

Hear Dazed and Confused by Jake Holmes on his Myspace page

Written by Richard Metzger | Discussion
James Brown vs Led Zeppelin - ‘Whole Lotta Sex Machine’


 
While my co-conspirators here at Dangerous Minds are asleep or away for the weekend, I like to slip in a little something that might be met with disapproval if they were around… in this case, a mash-up. While there are those among us who find mash-ups played out, I still find joy in a well-constructed and imaginative melding of often incongruous elements into something that coheres in novel or humorous ways, expanding upon the original sources, resulting in a fusion that can be lesser or better than the sum of its parts or their equal. A really good mash-up can become a beautiful thing of its own, transcending its sources and finding a sonic identity of and beyond its sources.

In “Whole Lotta Sex Machine,” I think the combination of Led Zeppelin and James Brown creates some genuine heat and it is sure as shit entertaining. This has been around for a couple of years as an audio track (in fact its appeared on DM in the past), but last year DJ Eric ILL added a video mash-up to the audio mix by Fissunix.

Vocals: James Brown - “Sex Machine”
Guitar riff : Led Zeppelin - “Whole Lotta Love”
Drum loop: Run DMC & Aerosmith - “Walk This Way”

You can download the audio track here.
 

 
Thanks to Chris Frantz and Tara McGinley

Written by Marc Campbell | Discussion
Happy birthday ‘Led Zeppelin IV’
11.08.2011
11:20 am

Topics:
History
Music

Tags:
Led Zeppelin


 
It was forty years ago today that Led Zeppelin IV (AKA “Zoso”) was released. Lacking the group’s name or a title, just symbols chosen to represent each of the band members (and never intended to be read as “Zoso”), the album sold huge right out of the gate. It entered the UK charts at #1 and remained a best-seller for well over a year. Although it never topped the US charts (it peaked at #2) it has always been the band’s most popular effort, and includes their best-known, most loved song, the eight minute rock anthem “Stairway to Heaven.” It’s on virtually every “top whatever” rock and roll lists you can name, normally in the first ten items.

Interesting to note that three outtakes from the Led Zeppelin IV IV recording sessions, “Down by the Seaside,” “Night Flight” and “Boogie With Stu” were later included on the sprawling double album Physical Graffiti in 1975.

Below, Led Zeppelin perform “Black Dog” and “Misty Mountain Hop” at Madison Square Garden in 1973.
 

Written by Richard Metzger | Discussion
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