Jimmy Page: Days Of Heaven Part II
Jimmy Page gets up close and personal about Led Zeppelin's recorded legacy in the second installment of GW Online's exclusive interview.
By Brad Tolinski with Greg DiBenedetto
In the first part of GW Online's historic interview with Jimmy Page, the mythical Led Zeppelin axemaster talked about his little-known second identity--as Zep's brilliant, innovative boardsman. In his role as producer, Page was as much responsible for his band's boundary-shattering sound as George Martin was for the Beatles'.In part two of the interview, Page continues his album-by-album dissection of Zeppelin's history, starting with Led Zeppelin II.
LED ZEPPELIN II
U.S. RELEASE: October 22, 1969
RECORDED AT: Olympic Studios (London), A&R; Studios (New York), Juggy Sound Studios (N.Y.), Mayfair Studios (N.Y.), Mystic Studios (LA.), Mirror Sound (L A.), and "a hut in Vancouver, British Columbia."
GUITARS: 1959 Les Paul, Vox 12-string AMPS: 100-watt Marshall, Vox solid-state
GW: Led Zeppelin I and II are extraordinarily three-dimensional. What role did your engineers play?
PAGE: Glyn Johns was the engineer on the first album, and he had a bit of an attitude problem. He tried to hustle in on a producer's credit, but I said, "No way. I put this band together, I brought them in and directed the whole recording process, I got my own guitar sound--I'll tell you, you haven't got a hope in hell." And then we went to Eddie Kramer for the second album and Andy Johns after that. I consciously kept changing engineers because I didn't want people to think that they were responsible for our sound. I wanted people to know it was me.
GW: Did Eddie Kramer have an impact on Led Zep II?
PAGE: Yes, I would say he did, but don't ask me what. [laughs] It's so hard to remember. Wait, here's a good example. I told him exactly what I wanted to achieve in the middle of "Whole Lotta Love," and he absolutely helped me to get it. We already had a lot of the sounds on tape, including a theremin and slide with backwards echo, but his knowledge of low-frequency oscillation helped complete the effect. If he hadn't known how to do that, I would have had to try for something else. So, in that sense, he was very helpful. Eddie was always very, very good. I got along well with him, and I must say, when I went through all the old recordings for the boxed sets, all of his work held up very, very well. Excellent!
GW: What do you think your biggest accomplishment as a producer/engineer was?
PAGE: The one major thing I contributed was miking drums in an ambient way--nobody was doing that. When I was playing sessions, I noticed that the engineers would always place the bass drum mic right next to the head. The drummers would then play like crazy, but it would always sound like they were playing on cardboard boxes. I discovered that if you move the mic away from the drums the sound would have room to breathe, hence a bigger drum sound. I kept exploring and expanding that approach, to the point that we were actually placing mics in hallways, which is how we got the sound on "When The Levee Breaks" [Led Zeppelin IV]. That was purely in the search for ambiance and getting the best out of the drums. So, it was always better for me to find an engineer who knew exactly what I was talking about. After a while I didn't have to argue because they knew that I knew what I was talking about.
GW: The first album was slammed by Rolling Stone magazine, which was very influential at the time. Did that affect your approach on the second album?
PAGE: Not at all. We knew what we had, and we kept improving all the time. Also, we were playing all the music live and people were responding to what we were doing. That's the ultimate test. It didn't really start bothering me until after the third album. After all we had accomplished the press was still calling us "a hype." So that's why the fourth album was untitled. It was a meaningless protest really, but we wanted to prove that people weren't buying us for the name.
GW: When you were borrowing from classic blues songs on the first two albums, did you ever think it would catch up to you?
PAGE: You mean getting sued?
[Ed Note: A belated plagiarism accusation was filed by Willie Dixon in 1987, who claimed similarities between his "You Need Love" and Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love." The case was settled out of court.]
Well, as far as my end of it goes, I always tried to bring something fresh to anything that I used. I always made sure to come up with some variation. In fact, I think in most cases you would never know what the original source could be. Maybe not in every case--but in most cases. So most of the comparisons rest on the lyrics. And Robert was supposed to change the lyrics, and he didn't always do that--which is what brought on most of our grief.
They couldn't get us on the guitar parts or the music, but they nailed us on the lyrics. We did, however, take some liberties, I must say. [laughs] But never mind; we did pay! Curiously enough, the one time we did try to do the right thing, it blew up in our faces. When we were up at Headley Grange recording Physical Graffiti, Ian Stewart [the Rolling Stones' unofficial keyboard player] came by and we started to jam. The jam turned into "Boogie With Stu," which was obviously a variation on "Ooh My Head" by the late Ritchie Valens, which itself was actually a variation of Little Richard's "Ooh My Soul." What we tried to do was give Ritchie's mother credit, because we heard she never received any royalties form any of her son's hits, and Robert did lean on that lyric a bit.
So what happens? They tried to sue us for all of the song! We had to say bugger off. [laughs] But seriously, blues men borrowed from each other constantly, and it's the same with jazz; it's even happened to us. As a musician, I'm only the product of my influences. The fact that I listened to so many various styles of music has a lot to do with the way I play. Which I think set me apart from so many other guitarists of that time--that fact that I was listening to folk, classical and Indian music in addition to the blues and rock.
GW: You've often spoken about your folk and rockabilly influences in the past, but what were some of your favorite blues records and guitarists?
PAGE: I had lots of favorites. Otis Rush was important--"So Many Roads" sent shivers up my spine. There were a number of albums that everybody got tuned into in the early days. There was one in particular called, I think, American Folk Festival Of The Blues, which featured Buddy Guy--he just astounded everybody. Then, of course, there was B.B. King's Live At The Regal. The first time I heard any of these people--Freddie King, Elmore James--it just knocked one flat. Now that I've said all of that, I'm missing one important person--Hubert Sumlin. I loved Hubert Sumlin. And what a complement he was to Howlin' Wolf's voice. He always played the right thing at the right time. Perfect. [Ed. Note: Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor" and "How Many More Years" were sources of inspiration for Zep's "Lemon Song" and "How Many More Times," respectively.]
GW: What was the impetus for the unaccompanied solo in the middle of "Heartbreaker"?
PAGE: I just fancied doing it. I was always trying to do something different, or something that no else had thought of. But the interesting thing about that solo is that it was recorded after we had already finished "Heartbreaker"--it was an afterthought. That whole section was recorded in a different studio and was sort of slotted in the middle. If you notice, the whole sound of the guitar is different.
GW: I've actually noticed that the tuning of the guitar was slightly higher.
PAGE: The pitch is off as well? I didn't know that! [laughs]
GW: Was that solo composed?
PAGE: No, it was made up on the spot. I think that was one of the first things I played through a Marshall. "Bring It On Home" was played through a Marshall as well.
GW: What led you to use Marshall amps?
PAGE: At that time it was state-of-the-art reliability. They were really good for going out on the road. I was always having trouble with amps--fuses blowing or whatnot. By that time I was using a Les Paul anyway, and that was just a classic setup.
LED ZEPPELIN III
U.S. RELEASE: October 5, 1970
RECORDED AT: Rolling Stones mobile studio (Headley Grange, Hampshire), Island Studios (London), Olympic Studios
GUITARS: Harmony acoustic, Martin acoustic, '59 Les Paul
AMP: 100-watt Marshall
GW: Led Zeppelin III is famous for its acoustic instrumentation, but it is also notable for broadening the band's sonic palette: the East Indian scales on "Friends," American country music on "Tangerine," traditional English folk on "Gallow's Pole," and so on. Did that eclecticism reflect what you were listening to on the road?
PAGE: No. As I was saying earlier, I used to listen to a broad variety of music, and I suppose that's how it came out.
GW: Had you reached a dead end with the blues-based material found on the first two albums?
PAGE: No. We always had some blues on our albums. Playing the blues is actually the most challenging thing you can do. It's very hard to play something original. "Since I've Been Loving You" is a prime example. That was the only song on the third album that we had played live prior to our sessions, yet it was the hardest to record. We had several tries at that one. The final version is a "live" take with John Paul Jones playing organ and foot bass pedals at the same time.
GW: I wouldn't even call "Since I've Been Loving You" a typical blues.
PAGE: Well, it all depends on how you define "the blues." Everybody immediately locks into 12 bars, but I don't think it has to have 12 bars to have that emotive quality. The blues can be anything.
GW: How did John Bonham influence the band?
PAGE: Besides being one of the best drummers I've ever heard, he was also one of the loudest. He was the reason we had to start buying bigger amps. When we recorded "Levee Breaks," we just used a pair of stereo mics in a hallway at Headley Grange. We could've used a separate microphone to mic the bass drum but we didn't need to--his kick sound was that powerful. And his playing wasn't in his arms, it was all in his wrist action. Frightening! I still don't know how he managed to get so much level out of a kit. And up until the last album, he always used both skins on his bass drum.
GW: How did the Indian influences come into the band?
PAGE: I went to India after I came back from a tour with the Yardbirds. I couldn't convince anyone else to come with me; they all wanted to go to San Francisco. I had been listening to that music for quite a while and wanted to hear it first-hand.
GW: So the Indian music was your influence?
PAGE: Let's put it this way: I had a sitar before George Harrison. I wouldn't say I played it as well as he did, though. I think George used it well. "Within You Without You" is extremely tasteful. He spent a lot of time studying with Ravi Shankar, and it showed. I actually went to see a Ravi Shankar concert one time, and to show you how far back this was, there were no young people in the audience at all--just a lot of older people from the Indian embassy. This girl I knew was friend of his and she took me to see him. After the concert, she introduced him to me and I explained that I had a sitar, but didn't know how to tune it. He was very nice to me and wrote down the tunings on a piece of paper.
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