Page and Plant interview with Rolling Stone (continued)
What do you think about your portrayal in "Rock Dreams"? As a guitar Mafioso along with Alvin Lee, Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton?
PAGE: There's nothing about Zeppelin in there at all. The artist spends his whole time masturbating over the Stones in that book, doesn't he? The Stones in drag and things like that. When I first saw that book, I thought, aw, this is really great. But when I really started to look at it, there were things that I just didn't like. People can laugh at this, but I didn't like to see a picture of Ray Charles driving around in the car with his arm around a chick. It's tasteless. But the guy's French, so what can we say? Ray Charles is blind. What kind of humor is that? They may be his rock dreams, but they sure aren't mine.
Out of all the guitarists to come out of the Sixties, though, Beck, Clapton, Lee, Townshend and I are still having a go. That says something. Beck, Clapton and me were sort of Richmond/Croydon type clan, and Alvin Lee, I don't know where he came from. Leicester or something like that. So he was never in with it a lot. And Townshend. Townshend was from Middlesex and he used to go down to the clubs and watch the other guitarists. I didn't meet him, though, until "I Can't Explain." I was doing the session guitar work on that. I haven't seen Townshend in years. But I suppose we've all kept going and tried to do better and better and better. I heard some stuff from Beck's solo LP recently that was fucking brilliant. Really good. But I don't know, it's all instrumental and it's a guitarist's guitar LP, I think. He's very mellow, and Beck at his best can be very tasty.
Have you seen Eric Clapton with his new band?
PAGE: Oh, Eric. Fucking hell, Eric. Yes, I saw him with his new band and also at his Rainbow concert. At least at the Rainbow he had some people with some balls with him. He had Townshend and Ronnie Wood and Jimmy Karstein and (Jim) Capaldi. "Pearly Queen" was incredible. And I would have thought that after that, he would have said, "Right, I'm gonna get English musicians." Ever since he's been with American musicians, he's laid back further and further.
I want over to see him after he'd done his Rainbow concert and it wasn't hard to sense his total disappointment that Derek and the Dominoes were never really accepted. It must have been a big thing for him that they didn't get all the acclaim that the Cream did. But the thing is, when a band has a certain chemistry, like the Cream had...wow, the chances of re-creating that again are how many billion to one. It's very very difficult.
The key to Zeppelin's longevity has been change. We put out our first LP, then a second one that was nothing like the first, then a third LP totally different from them, and on it went. I know why we got a lot of bad press on our albums. People couldn't understand, a lot of reviewers, why we put out an LP like Zeppelin II, then followed it up with III with "That's the Way" and acoustic numbers like that on it. They just couldn't understand it. The fact was that Robert and I had gone away to Bron-Y-Aur cottage in Wales and started writing songs. Christ, that was the material we had, so we used it. It was nothing like, "We got to do some heavy rock & roll because that's what our image demands..." Album-wise, it usually takes a year for people to catch up with what we're doing.
Why did you go to Bron-Y-Aur cottage for the third album?
PLANT: It was time to step back, take stock and not get lost in it all. Zeppelin was starting to get very big and we wanted the rest of our journey to take a pretty level course. Hence, the trip into the mountains and the beginning of the ethereal Page and Plant. I thought we'd be able to get a little peace and quiet and get your actual Californian, Marin County blues, which we managed to do in Wales rather than San Francisco. It was a great place. "The Golden Beast" is what the name means. The place is in a little valley and the sun always moves across it. There's even a track on the new album, a little acoustic thing, which Jimmy got together up there. It typifies the days when we used to chug around the countryside in jeeps.
It was a good idea to go there. We had written quite a bit of the second album on the road. It was a real road album, too. No matter what the critics said, the proof in the pudding was that it got a lot of people off. The reviewer for Rolling Stone, for instance, was just a frustrated musician. Maybe I'm just flying my own little ego ship, but sometimes people resent talent. I don't even remember what the criticism was, but as far as I'm concerned, it was a good, maybe even great, road album. The third album was the album of albums. If anybody had labeled us a heavy metal group, that destroyed them.
But there were acoustic numbers on the very first album.
PAGE: That's it! There you go! When the third LP came out and got its reviews, Crosby, Stills and Nash had just formed. That LP had just come out and because acoustic guitars had come to the forefront all of a sudden: LED ZEPPELIN GO ACOUSTIC! I thought, Christ, where are their heads and ears? There were three acoustic songs on the first album and two on the second.
You talk of this "race against time," Jimmy. Where do you think you'll be at 40?
PAGE: I don't know whether I'll reach 40. I don't know whether I'll reach 35. I can't be sure about that. I am bloody serious. I am very, very serious. I didn't think I'd make 30.
Why not?
PAGE: I just had this fear. Not fear of dying but just...wait a minute, let's get this right. I just felt that...I wouldn't reach 30. That's all there was to it. It was something in me, something inbred. I'm over 30 now, but I didn't expect to be here. I wasn't having nightmares about it, but...I'm not afraid of death. That is the greatest mystery of all. That'll be it, that one. But it is all a race against time. You never know what can happen. Like breaking my finger. I could have broken my whole hand and been out of action for two years.
You've been criticized for writing "dated flower-child gibberish" lyrics...
PLANT: How can anybody be a "dated flower child"? The essence of the whole trip was the desire for peace and tranquility and an idyllic situation. That's all anybody could ever want so how could it be "dated flower-child gibberish"? If it is, then I'll just carry on being a dated flower child. I put a lot of work into my lyrics. Not all my stuff is meant to be scrutinized, though. Things like "Black Dog" are blatant let's-do-it-in-the-bath-type things, but they make their point just the same. People listen. Otherwise, you might as well sing the menu from the Continental Hyatt House.
How important was "Stairway to Heaven" to you?
PAGE: To me, I thought "Stairway" crystallized the essence of the band. It had everything there and showed the band at its best...as a band, as a unit. Not talking about solos or anything, it had everything there. We were careful never to release it as a single. It was a milestone for us. Every musician wants to do something of lasting quality, something which will hold up for a long time and I guess we did it with "Stairway." Townshend probably thought that he got it with Tommy. I don't know whether I have the ability to come up with more. I have to do a lot of hard work before I can get anywhere near those stages of consistent, total brilliance.
I don't think there are too many people who are capable of it. Maybe one. Joni Mitchell. That's the music that I play at home all the time, Joni Mitchell. Court and Spark I love because I'd always hoped that she'd work with a band. But the main thing with Joni is that she's able to look at something that's happened to her, draw back and crystalize the whole situation, then write about it. She brings tears to my eyes, what more can I say? It's bloody eerie. I can relate so much to what she says. "Now old friends are acting strange/They shake their heads/They say I've changed." I'd like to know how many of the original friends any well-known musician has got. You'd be surprised. They think -particularly that thing of change -they all assume that you've changed. For the worse. There are very few people I can call real, close friends. They're very, very precious to me.
How about you?
PLANT: I live with the people I've always lived with. I'm quite content. It's like the remnants of my old Beatnik days. All my old mates, it lends to a lot of good company. There's no unusual reaction to my trip at all because I've known them so long. Now and again there will be the occasional joke about owing someone two dollars from the days in '63 when I was a broke blues singer with a washboard, but it's good. I'm happy.
Do you have any favorite American guitarists?
PAGE: Well, let's see, we've lost the best guitarist any of us ever had and that was Hendrix. The other guitarist I started to get into died also, Clarence White. He was absolutely brilliant. Gosh. On a totally different style - the control, the guy who played on the Maria Muldaur single, "Midnight at the Oasis." Amos Garrett. He's Les Paul oriented and Les Paul is the one, really. We wouldn't be anywhere if he hadn't invented the eclectic guitar. Another one is Elliot Randall, the guy who guested on the first Steely Dan album. He's great. Band-wise, Little Feat is my favorite American group.
The only term I won't accept is "genius." The term "genius" gets used far too loosely in rock & roll. When you hear the melodic structures of what classical musicians put together and you compare it to that of a rock & roll record, there's a hell of a long way rock & roll has to go. There's a certain standard in classical music that allows the application of the word "genius," but you're treading on thin ice if you start applying it to rock & rollers. The way I see it, rock & roll is folk music. Street music. It isn't taught in school. It has to be picked up. You don't find geniuses in street musicians, but that doesn't mean to say you can't be really good. You get as much out of rock & roll artistically as you put into it. There's nobody who can teach you. You're on your own and that's what I find so fascinating about it.
Last question. What did you think about President Ford's children naming Led Zeppelin as their favorite group on national television?
PLANT: I think it's really a mean deal that we haven't been invited around there for tea. Perhaps Jerry thought we'd wreck the joint. Now if we'd had a publicist three tours back, he might be on the road with us now. I was pleased to hear that they like our music around the White House. It's good to know they've got taste.
Final comments?
PAGE: Just say that I'm still searching for an angel with a broken wing. It's not very easy to find them these days. Especially when you're staying at the Plaza Hotel.
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