Saturday, August 15, 2015

On This Day 15 August

It appears Mr. Page has very fond memories of Texas.
1969/1979 15 August On This Day Led Zeppelin in Texas/In Through The Out Door released
♪  In The Evening (Led Zeppelin ) Soundcloud
  • 1966 The Yardbirds - Wichita, KS at Cotillion Ball - The Mixer Hop
  • 1967 The Yardbirds - Mendon, MA at Lakeview Amusement Park
  • 1969 Led Zeppelin - San Antonio, TX at HemisFair Arena
  • 1970 Led Zeppelin - New Haven, CT at Yale Bowl
  • 1979 In Through The Out Door released

1970 Led Zeppelin - New Haven, CT at Yale Bowl
1970:
It's hard to believe Led Zeppelin ever performed at unprepossessing venues like the Yale Bowl, a narrow stage with an awning to cover them. The acoustics must have been interesting. 

1979:
In Through the Out Door, the eighth studio album by the English rock band Led Zeppelin, is the target of illogical criticism. This is not because of where it was recorded or how long it took to be released (recorded at ABBA's Polar Studios in Stockholm, Sweden over three weeks' time in November and December 1978, but not released until 15 August, 1979).  It's not because it didn't reach the top of the charts as did the other albums, because of course it did and it is back there again.

Most of the criticism is that Jimmy Page screwed up on ITTOD. The story is repeated over and over about how John Paul Jones and Robert Plant were forced to take over because Jimmy Page and John Bonham didn't show up "on time" at the recording studio, and because Jimmy Page was strung out on heroin. The story is that Jimmy Page was just along for the ride on this one.

Such closed-minded thinking. Never mind that Jimmy Page co-wrote all but two of the songs on the album and, as usual, did all the production.  Never mind how insulting these stories are to the others.  As if John Paul Jones and Robert Plant were not good enough or entitled to take the lead with Led Zeppelin's music unless it was forced on them. As if John Bonham's drumming was any less than stellar on ITTOD.

As if Jimmy Page had ever let anything get between him and the music. 

In a July 28, 2015 radio.com interview, Jimmy Page provides a different and more realistic explanation: 
"We’re going into rehearsals, and [John Paul Jones] shows up with this massive theater organ, it was called a Dream Machine [note: it's possible as few as seven of that model of the $60,000 instruments were ever built]. It was a Yamaha Dream Machine, Stevie Wonder had one too. John had it at home and had been working on it, and lo and behold, he’s got these songs together. He’d never written complete songs for Led Zeppelin before. But now he had. It was cool. Because the album before, I’d written it all. It was a guitar driven thing. There’s keyboards on the first Led Zeppelin album, and over the years. But it made obvious logical sense that if he had numbers that he’d written on this new state-of-the-art keyboard, let’s do an album which focuses on the keyboard and features it at the forefront, and that’s how it went."

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