On this day 12 August

It was the summer of our smiles

12 August On This Day, photo taken at Jimmy Page's Plumpton Place house

• 1966 The Yardbirds - Monticello, IN at Indiana Beach Ballroom -and- Hamilton, IN at Cold Spring Resort
• 1967 The Yardbirds - Holyoke, MA at Mountain Lake Ballroom
• 2000 Jimmy Page with The Black Crowes - Mesa AZ 

Plumpton Place, restored by Sir Edwin Lutyens (designer and builder of a part of New Delhi in India), is an Elizabethan manor house in Plumpton village, East Sussex, England. The original structures on the property were constructed in the mid-16th century. The separate entrance is made of two cottages connected by a porch with a long path leading to the main house.  The manor house has six bedrooms, five en-suite bathrooms, a tennis court and its own moat.  Jimmy Page bought the house in 1972 and sold it ten years later.  His studio was located on the upper floor level.

1973 Jimmy Page in his Plumpton Place house studio

Plumpton Place house is surrounded by a moat

For your laid-back summer acoustical listening pleasure:

♪ Summer's Day (Jimmy Page) YouTube
♪ Only The Black Rose (Jimmy Page) Soundcloud
♪ Black Mountain Side (Jimmy Page, Julie Felix show 1970) YouTube

On this day 11 August

 he more things change...

1979 11 August On This Day Led Zeppelin at Knebworth

• 1967 The Yardbirds - Salem, NH at Canobie Lake Park Ballroom
• 1969 Led Zeppelin - Las Vegas, NV at Ice Palace 
• 1979 Led Zeppelin -  Knebworth  

1969:
While on tour, Jimmy Page flew cross country to New York City for work on Led Zeppelin II at A&R Recording, a studio recording company founded in 1958 by Jack Arnold and Phil Ramone.

1979:
"The sustained roar that greeted Led Zeppelin as they trooped onto the massive Knebworth stage at twenty to ten last Saturday said it all."
~ Hugh Fielder, Sounds

The release of In Through the Out Door was to have occurred at this point but that didn't happen till 15 August 1979, and Robert Plant groused about it during the Knebworth show.

According to Dave Lewis, in Led Zeppelin: Celebration II: The 'Tight But Loose' Files, the album was named to describe its recent struggles amidst the death of Robert Plant's son Karac in 1977, and the taxation exile the band took from the UK. The exile resulted in the band being unable to tour on British soil for over two years, and trying to get back into the public mind was therefore like "trying to get in through the 'out' door."

Recorded at Polar Studios, the album was mixed at Jimmy Page's Plumpton Place studio.  The album went to No. 1 on Billboard's chart in its second week on the chart and stayed there for seven weeks. The remaster that was released in 2015 was again in the Billboard top ten.

1979 Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin Knebworth

1979 Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin Knebworth

1979 Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin Knebworth

♪  Audience footage 8mm (Led Zeppelin, Knebworth 11 August 1979) YouTube
♪  Led Zeppelin (Knebworth 11 August 1979) 

On this day 10 August

 Ledded, unledded - it's all good

1994 10 August On This Day Page & Plant record in Marrakech

• 1966 The Yardbirds - Manitou Beach, MI at Green's Pavilion Lakeview Park
• 1969 Led Zeppelin - San Diego, CA at San Diego Sports Arena
• 1994 Page & Plant - Unledded Tour – Marrakech Morocco at J'ma el Fna Square

1969

By now Led Zeppelin was already considered a supergroup. 

The term supergroup is generally applied to bands comprised of musicians who are already successful as solo artists or as part of other groups, but sometimes is applied to bands that stand out from all the rest. As the San Diego Union said about Led Zeppelin's gig at the San Diego Sports Arena on this day in 1969, "The danger with being a supergroup is having a super image, which means that when you appear on stage, it’s suddenly Magic Time. Sometimes that magic will happen, but usually it does not. Last night at the International Sports Arena, the British supergroup Led Zeppelin created a kind of instant magic..." 

...just by walking onto the stage.

1994:

It started with an invitation to do an MTV Unplugged show and ended being an album and a tour.  It wasn't supposed to be a Led Zeppelin "reunion", and John Paul Jones wasn't invited.  There were lots of Led Zeppelin songs, anyway, reinterpreted with a Middle Eastern/Moroccan flavor, and the album was called No Quarter.

MTV Unplugged was supposed to be "intimate acoustic studio performances by major artists from across the globe". Never mind that Jimmy Page's guitars were still quite plugged in, or that they were backed not only by the usual components of a rock band but also by an orchestra.  The 90 minute MTV special was the highest-rated ‘Unplugged’-era episode in the network’s history.  The DVD includes bonus footage, and was recorded on a London soundstage, in the hills of Wales and in the J'ma el Fna Market Square of Marrakech, Morocco.

In my opinion, a fine effort but not the best showcase for Jimmy Page, who had long ago demonstrated that musical influence didn't have to mean blatantly sounding like the source. Jimmy Page was perfectly capable of the sublime, of internalizing a concept and revealing an entirely new way of hearing what had been heard before. Kashmir - without the orchestra - is a clear example: It does a superb job of evoking desert sands, caravans, and the exotic simply through the use of DADGAD tuning and rhythm.

“I was well aware of a lot of ‘exotic’ music in the late ‘60s,” Jimmy Page told Michael Leonard for Gibson Guitar in 2011. “I had a sitar and got interested in modal tunings, Arabic music. .... I wasn’t just listening to blues, I was trying to find all sorts of new ways for my playing.”

But hey, No Quarter was, after all, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, together again even if they had forgotten John Paul Jones' phone number. Still good, after all those years.

Unledded promo photo

1994 Jimmy Page MTV rehearsal

♪  Gallows Pole  (Page & Plant, 1994)  YouTube
♪  Battle of Evermore (Page & Plant, 1994)  YouTube
♪  The Truth Explodes/Yallah (Page & Plant, Marrakech 1994) YouTube

On this day 09 August

 Phony lords, real rebels, and music to unite them all

1994 09 August On This Day Page & Plant Marrakech, Morocco

• 1966 The Yardbirds - Arnolds Park, IA at Roof Garden Ballroom
• 1967 The Yardbirds - Leesburg, IN at Tippy Ballroom
• 1969 Led Zeppelin - Anaheim, CA at Anaheim Convention Center Arena
• 1969 Jimmy Page & Robert Plant with Screaming Lord Sutch at Experience Club 
• 1994 Page & Plant - Unledded Tour - Marrakesh, Morocco

RIP Robbie Robertson (1943 - 1923)

♪ The Weight (Jimmy Page, The Edge, Jack White - closing credits for It Might Get Loud, 2008)

1969:
David Edward Sutch (1940-1999) was not of the nobility although he was known as 3rd Earl of Harrow, and although he was the UK's longest serving party leader, he was never elected to office. In fact, Screaming Lord Such was an English musician who gave himself his own title, started his own political party, and used the money earned from concerts to pay for his political campaigning . Lord Sutch was a shock-rocker before the term was invented. His 1970 debut album Lord Sutch and Heavy Friends was produced by Jimmy Page and featured Jimmy Page and John Bonham among others. It was named as the worst album of all time in a 1998 BBC poll, which is kind of too bad since aside from Sutch's vocals the music is just fine.

1969 Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin Anaheim (photo RM Dechellis)

1969 David "Screaming Lord" Sutch & Jimmy Page

1994:

For all you grammar police types out there, Marrakech and Marrakesh are both acceptable spellings for the former Moroccan imperial city.

Alan Lomax (1915-2002) was an American field collector of folk music traditions from around the world.

Jimmy Page mentions the Berber women's fierceness and no wonder. Berbers are an ancient nomadic people of the deserts of Northern Africa. Before they were called Berbers, their name meant “free man“.  Berber women are no less determined than Berber men to preserve their ethnic identity and the fierce independence of their people. One of the great Berber religious and military leaders was the Berber queen, Kahina, who in the 7th century led resistance to Arab Islamic expansion in Northwest Africa. She was a believer in the scorched earth policy.

The word Gnawa has three meanings: The people, originally brought to Morocco as slaves and free farmers (some as slaves to the Berbers); a religious/spiritual order; and the deeply hypnotic trance music associated with the religious/spiritual order that is used in the magical treatment of physical and psychic ailments.  The music has a parallel with American blues, music that also has roots in slavery.  More on Gnawa music.

1994 Jimmy Page/Page & Plant Marrakech

1994 Page & Plant with Moroccan musicians

♪  Thumping Beat (Jimmy Page and Lord Sutch 1970) YouTube
♪  'Cause I Love You (Jimmy Page, John Bonham and Lord Sutch 1970) YouTube
♪  City Don't Cry (Page & Plant, Live in Marrakech 1994) YouTube
♪  Wah Wah (Page & Plant, Live in Marrakech 1994) YouTube

On this day 08 August

 Expect the unexpected.

1998 08 August On This Day Jimmy Page with Puff Daddy
♪  Come With Me/Kashmir(Godzilla soundtrack) Soundcloud

• 1966 The Yardbirds - Detroit Lakes, MN at Detroit Lakes Pavilion
• 1967 The Yardbirds - Ann Arbor, MI at The Fifth Dimension
• 1969 Led Zeppelin - San Bernardino, CA at Swing Auditorium
• 1971 Led Zeppelin - Montreux, Switzerland at Montreux Casino Hall
• 1998 Jimmy Page with Puff Daddy 

The Yardbirds 08 August 1969

1969:
Jimmy Page broke a string right off the bat at this show, and it was so hot in the southern California auditorium that his guitar wouldn't stay in tune.

1971:
The casino at Montreux was so packed that Peter Grant tried to talk Claude Nobs into piping music outside to the overflow crowd.

Montreux  08 August 1971

1998:

For some reason some people seem horrified that Jimmy Page collaborated with Puff Daddy (as he was then known) on this hip-hop rap version of Kashmir, yet it is an example of the wide-ranging musical mind of Jimmy Page to have done so. In fact, the song went platinum in the US. Jimmy Page and "Daddy" (as Jimmy Page refers to him on his website) performed the song on Saturday Night Live. In the censored version of Come With Me, Godzilla's roar masks Daddy's obscenities, yet Gozilla isn't given credit as a guest artist.

Note that while 08 August is the date stated on the website to be when JP first heard the final mix, the movie soundtrack, film, and single had already been released by then.

• Jimmy Page & Puff Daddy performed the song on Saturday Night Live 09 May 1998
• The soundtrack album was released 19 May 1998
• The film was released 20 May 1998
• The single was released 9 June 1998
• The single peaked at #2 on the Billboard chart on 25 July1998
• The remix maxi-single was released 28 July 1998

♪  Led Zeppelin, San Bernardino 1969

♪  Newsreel footage 16mm (Led Zeppelin Montreux 1971) YouTube

♪  Come With Me/Kashmir (Godzilla soundgrack, Jimmy Page with Puff Daddy, a.k.a Sean Combs, a.k.a. Diddy, a.k.a. P Diddy) YouTube

On this day 07 August

 A joy to hear anytime anyplace

1971 07 August Led Zeppelin at Montreux

• 1966 The Yardbirds - Mentor, MN at Maple Lake Pavilion
• 1969 Led Zeppelin - Berkeley, CA at Berkeley Community Theatre
• 1971 Led Zeppelin - Montreux, Switzerland at Montreux Casino Hall

1971 Led Zeppelin at Montreux

1971 Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin at Montreux

1971:
With the help of Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegün of Atlantic Records,  in 1967 Claude Nobs, Géo Voumard and René Langel founded the Montreux Jazz Festival. Originally a jazz festival, it opened up to other music genres in the 1970s.  Led Zeppelin played Montreux that year and the next.

In British slang, a nob is an important person, a person of social distinction.  In 1970 Eva Von Zeppelin threatened to sue the band for making money off her family name.  “Then we shall call ourselves the Nobs when we go to Copenhagen,” shrugged Page. “The whole thing is absurd.”

Did Led Zeppelin choose to call themselves The Nobs for a little while because of Claude or because of Eva? Jimmy Page hasn't explained.




♪  16mm film (Led Zeppelin, Montreux 1971) YouTube

♪  Led Zeppelin (Montreux Switzerland at Montreux Casino Hall, 07 August 1971)

On this day 06 August

 

1998 06 August Jimmy Page and Robert Plant at Tom Kenny wedding in Ireland
♪  Roisin Dubh by Innisfree Ceoil

• 1966 The Yardbirds - Chicago, IL at Chicago Civic Opera House
• 1969 - Led Zeppelin - Sacramento, CA at Sacramento Memorial Auditorium
• 1998 - Page & Plant - County Kerry, Ireland at Tom Kenny's wedding reception

1998:

Tom Kenny, an Irish lighting designer, has worked with many bands over the years including Led Zeppelin. In 1994, Bill Curbishley, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant's manager, asked Kenny to do the lighting for the Page and Plant tour.

In Tom Kenny's words:  “This was the first time Jimmy and Robert had worked together in years and both were jaded with the typical concert. ... My ever-changing live lighting approach really suited the band's emotionally inspired, fiery performances every night. We did another amazing tour in 1998 and I've worked with both Jimmy and Robert on solo projects since. 

Later that year Jimmy Page and Robert Plant performed at Tom Kenny's wedding.  

2012:

Adidas Underground was a series of events "popping up" in varying London locations.  They combined art, music, fashion and other unique experiences.  In 2012, twelve different evenings were put on to celebrate the London 2012 Games.  One of them was held on this day, with the Stone Roses performing in front of celebrities, VIPs, competition winners and Olympic medalists - not to mention Jimmy Page.  And, as so often happens when JP is around, everybody had to get their photo taken with him.

2012 06 August Jimmy Page at Adidas Underground for a surprise one-off Stone Roses performance

Olympic rower Pete Reed & Jimmy Page

Jimmy Page & fashion designer Pam Hogg

Here's some Robert Johnson for you because why not.

♪  Sweet Home Chicago (Robert Johnson) YouTube
♪  Crossroad (Robert Johnson) YouTube
♪  Kind Hearted Woman Blues (Robert Johnson) YouTube
♪  Travelling Riverside Blues (Robert Johnson) YouTube
♪  Travelling Riverside Blues (Led Zeppelin) YouTube