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A pre-Velvet Underground Nico’s first single with a young Jimmy Page and Brian Jones
03.29.2018
11:37 am
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A pre-Velvet Underground Nico’s first single with a young Jimmy Page and Brian Jones


 
Before she became the Teutonic ice queen chanteuse of the Velvet Underground, Nico, via her then boyfriend Rolling Stone Brian Jones, was introduced to Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham and signed to his Immediate Records label, where a young Jimmy Page was employed as house producer, session musician and A&R scout. (Page’s brief career as a session musician saw him adding his distinctive guitar sounds to recordings by The Who, The Kinks, PJ Proby, Lulu, Jackie DeShannon, Van Morrison and Them, Burt Bacharach, French singer Johnny Hallyday, Marianne Faithfull, Vashti Bunyan, Donovan and many others. It’s amusing to think of Jimmy Page being a part of Petula Clark’s “Downtown” single, but there he was. There are several CD compilations of Page’s early session work, probably the best is Hip Young Guitar Slinger.)

Page produced and played on Nico’s sole 1965 single for Immediate, a cover of Canadian folkie Gordon Lightfoot’s “I’m Not Sayin’ ” which was backed by “The Last Mile,” a song composed by Page and Oldham. Jimmy Page plays a six-string in the song, while Brian Jones plays a twelve-string guitar. The single is being re-released by Charly Records in a gatefold sleeve featuring photography by Gered Mankowitz from the original recording session for Record Store Day on April 21.
 

 
A promotional film for “I’m Not Sayin’” was shot at the site of London’s West India Docks (now the considerably different looking Canary Wharf) by Peter Whitehead.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.29.2018
11:37 am
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