FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
Communication Breakdown: Japanese Led Zeppelin TV commercial, 1969
04.11.2013
04:51 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
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:
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
04.11.2013
04:51 pm
|
Houses of the Holy: The backstory to the famous Led Zeppelin album cover
03.08.2013
10:16 am
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
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.
 
image
 
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).
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
03.08.2013
10:16 am
|
‘Stairway to Heaven’ tribute at Kennedy Center Honors moves Robert Plant to tears
01.07.2013
08:26 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
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.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
01.07.2013
08:26 pm
|
Led Zeppelin vs Beatles: ‘Whole Lotta Helter Skelter’
01.04.2013
01:57 pm
Topics:
Tags:

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

Music and video by Soundhog.
 

 
Via Nerdcore

Posted by Tara McGinley
|
01.04.2013
01:57 pm
|
‘Trampled Under Foot’: Barney Hoskyns’ brilliant oral history of Led Zeppelin
09.16.2012
11:22 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
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.
 
image
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…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
09.16.2012
11:22 pm
|
Holelottadick: The Residents do a rude Led Zeppelin cover, 1971
06.04.2012
12:18 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
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.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
06.04.2012
12:18 pm
|
Led Zeppelin: Rocking the Gladsaxe Teen Club for Danish TV in 1969
05.14.2012
06:30 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
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.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
05.14.2012
06:30 pm
|
Happy Birthday Muddy Waters: Watch his legendary performance at the Blues Summit in Chicago 1974
04.04.2012
06:01 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
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…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
04.04.2012
06:01 pm
|
Jimmy Page: Releases ‘Lucifer Rising and Other Sound Tracks’ next week
03.16.2012
04:48 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
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.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
03.16.2012
04:48 pm
|
Dazed and Confused, indeed: the true story behind the Led Zeppelin classic?
03.14.2012
02:43 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
“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

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
03.14.2012
02:43 pm
|
James Brown vs Led Zeppelin - ‘Whole Lotta Sex Machine’
01.15.2012
12:59 am
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
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

Posted by Marc Campbell
|
01.15.2012
12:59 am
|
Happy birthday ‘Led Zeppelin IV’
11.08.2011
02:20 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
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.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
11.08.2011
02:20 pm
|
Michael Winslow’s AMAZING cover of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’
10.19.2011
02:10 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
Michael Winslow performs Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” on Norwegian TV show Senkveld med Thomas og Harald. Holy crap! 
 

 
Thanks you, Skye Nicolas and High Definte!

Posted by Tara McGinley
|
10.19.2011
02:10 pm
|
High quality video of Led Zeppelin on French TV in 1969
08.03.2011
02:06 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
This is footage from French TV show Tous En Scene of Led Zeppelin performing at the Theatre Olympia in Paris on June 19, 1969.

Footage from this telecast has been available on Youtube in mostly low quality uploads for awhile now, but this clip is exceptionally nice. There’s a bit of rehearsal footage at the end.

Crank it up!
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
|
08.03.2011
02:06 am
|
Mashup of 80 YouTube covers of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Black Dog’
07.20.2011
04:45 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
Israeli mashup artist Kutiman has taken bits of 80 YouTube clips of amateur musicians covering Led Zeppelins ‘Black Dog” and put them together into one seamless version of the song. Imagine the work that went into this project and the amount of sonic shit Kutiman had to endure to make it happen. The result is simply amazing.
 

 
Via Open Culture.

Posted by Marc Campbell
|
07.20.2011
04:45 pm
|
Page 3 of 4  < 1 2 3 4 >