On This Day 21 September

If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.

~ Jimi Hendrix

1983 21 September On This Day Jimmy Page at Prince's Trust Rock Gala, Royal Albert Hall

• 1983 Jimmy Page - London, England, Prince’s Trust at Royal Albert Hall
• 1998 Page & Plant - San Diego, California at Cox Arena
• 2005 Jimmy Page made an honorary citizen of Rio
• 2009 Jimmy Page attends Jeff Beck concert at O2
• 2012 Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones at Celebration Day press conference
• 2013 Jimmy Page at Jester’s Care for Kids third annual Gala Party Night. 

1983: 

The night after the ARMS benefit, the same group of master musicians performed at another benefit concert at the Royal Albert Hall, the Prince's Trust Rock Gala.  The Prince's Trust was founded in 1976 by HRH The Prince Of Wales to support 13 to 30 year olds who are unemployed, struggling at school and who are at risk of exclusion. The first Prince's Trust Rock Gala was held at the Dominion Tottenham Court Road in 1982. 

2005:

Jimmy Page was awarded honorary citizenship in the state of Rio de Janeiro for his work with Brazil's poor and abandoned children via "Casa Jimmy,'' a residential shelter. The honorary citizenship was approved by the state legislature on Sept. 9, 2004 but Jimmy Page was unable to receive the award until a year later. His work in Brazil helped earn him the title Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, one of Britain's highest honors, awarded by Queen Elizabeth in June, 2005. 

2005 Jimmy Page made an honorary citizen of Rio

 2009:

2009 Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Ronnie Wood at Beck's O2 concert (Ross Halfin photo)

 2012:
Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones held a press conference in London after launching the screening of Celebration Day, the concert film of the 2007 O2 reunion show.

The press conference covered the show, the band’s early career and the possibility of a reunion, with Page, Plant and Jones avoiding questions about any future reunion. At one point, Jimmy Page said, “Can I ask you a question? You’ve all been to see the film. Did you enjoy it?”

Asked why it took so long to release the DVD, John Paul Jones responded, “Five years is like five minutes in Zeppelin time.”

2012 John Paul Jones, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page at Celebration Day movie release press conference, London

2013:
On this day in 2013 Jimmy Page attended the third annual Jester’s Care for Kids Gala Party Night, a fundraiser put on by Thailand's Jester's Motorcycle Club to benefit the Care for Kids charity. Jimmy Page supports this charty by attending the Gala Parties and donating items to be auctioned for the cause. In 2013 he donated boxed sets of CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray and vinyl copies of Led Zeppelin’s reunion concert in 2007, as well as four signed Ross Halfin photos in frames.

2013 Jimmy Page at third annual Jester's Gala Party Night, with auction winners of Ross Halfin photos 

♪

♪  Celebration Day movie trailer (2012) YouTube

♪  Celebration Day movie teaser/Kashmir (2012) YouTube

♫  Celebration Day press conference (Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, 2012) YouTube

On This Day 20 September

A call to ARMS

1983 20 September On This Day Jimmy Page at Royal Albert Hall, ARMS benefit

• 1968 Led Zeppelin begins recording first album at Olympic Studios
• 1983 Jimmy Page - Royal Albert Hall, London for ARMS Concert

1983:
The ARMS Charity Concert started out with the idea for a single performance at Royal Albert Hall in London in support of Action into Research for Multiple Sclerosis (ARMS).  The concert was the brainchild of Ronnie Lane, former bassist for The Small Faces and The Faces, who had himself been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

The concert was such a success that it was decided to perform a further nine concerts in the US. These performances included Joe Cocker, with Paul Rodgers replacing Steve Winwood in Jimmy Page's set. 

There are a lot of nay-sayers out there who have decided that Jimmy Page was no good at the ARMS concerts. I simply say perhaps these people are "listening" with their eyes or their prejudices - and not their ears.

1983 20 September On This Day text

1983 Royal Albert Hall ARMS benefit musicians

1983 Jimmy Page, Royal Albert Hall ARMS benefit

1983 Jimmy Page, Royal Albert Hall ARMS benefit

1983 Jimmy Page, ARMS benefit

♪

♪  Prelude/City Sirens/Who's To Blame/Stairway to Heaven (Jimmy Page, ARMS RAH 1983) YouTube
♪   Layla (finale with all musicians, ARMS RAH 1983) YouTube
♪  Full concert with Ronnie Lane footage (ARMS RAH1983) YouTube

On This Day 19 September

Jimmy Page, from sea to shining sea

1998 19 September On This Day Page & Plant at Hollywood Bowl

♪  The Window (Page & Plant 1998) Soundcloud

• 1970 Led Zeppelin - New York, NY at Madison Square Garden- 2 Shows
• 1998 Page & Plant - Hollywood, CA at Hollywood Bowl

1970:

A little over one year from their first concert, Led Zeppelin not only was the only act on the bill, the band was booked for two shows in a row at Madison Square Garden.  At both shows Robert Plant spoke about the death of Jimi Hendrix on the previous day.

Jimi Hendrix death announcement by Robert Plant at MSG 

1970 Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin at MSG

1998:

Most High is from the studio album Walking into Clarksdale, released through Atlantic Records in 1998. By May 1998 it reached #1 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. In 1999, the song won a Grammy for Page and Plant for Best Hard Rock Performance. Most High was released as a single. To me the real winner is the song on the B side, The Window.

Text from 19 September On This Day

1998 Hollywood Bowl setlist

2015:

A little fun at jimmypage.com today, with an interactive image. I've posted a few views from it for you, though none of them contain Jimmy Page or Robert Plant.

♪

♪  What Is and What Should Never Be (Led Zeppelin, MSG 1970) YouTube

♪  Full set (Page & Plant, Hollywood 1998) YouTube

♪  Most High (Page & Plant, Walking Into Clarksdale) YouTube

♪  The Window (Page & Plant, B-side of Most High single 1998) YouTube

On This Day 18 September

Firmly under control and Satisfaction Guaranteed

1984 18 September On This Day Jimmy Page with The Firm, Sol Studios

• 1970 Page/Plant press conference New York, Savoy Hotel
• 1984 Jimmy Page recording at Sol Studio with The Firm
• 1998 Page & Plant - Laguna Hills, CA at Irving Meadows Amphitheatre

1970:

In New York for the two Madison Square Garden sets the next day, on this day Jimmy Page and Robert Plant sat down for a press conference at their hotel.  

Interviewer: How does it feel to be number one?
Plant: A shock...
Page: We knew we were appreciated by the fact that people were coming to along to see us in such great vast numbers all over the place - England and the continent and wherever... but no one expected this.

Perhaps Robert Plant was shocked, but somehow I've got a suspicion that Jimmy Page had vast numbers of appreciative audience in mind all along.

On this day in 1970 - likely unbeknownst yet to Jimmy Page or Robert Plant or anyone at the conference given all the laughter - Jimi Hendrix, the extraordinary left-handed guitarist and musician, had died. Led Zeppelin never played more than a few phrases of any of Jimi Hendrix's body of work other than The Killing Floor (below). It's extraordinary how uniquely different the two takes are. For Led Zeppelin, that song morphed into The Lemon Song. For Jimi Hendrix The Killing Floor is one of many monuments to his incredible talent.  The original, of course, was by Howlin' Wolf, in 1964.

RIP Jimi Hendrix (27 November 1942 - 18 September 1970)

1984:
One of the fun things for me in doing the Mage Music blog is the research involved with each On This Day post. I enjoy the challenge of searching the internet and my many books and magazines to find what I'm looking for. The research requires sifting out facts from all the copy/paste inaccuracies and fuzzy memories, hunting down obscure references, and learning new tidbits that I hadn't come across before, which I then share with you, my readers.

Most of all, though, this labor of love means I get to listen to lots of music every day.

In seeking out the various songs and their live performance versions I'm forced to listen to music I might otherwise pass over. That's not an onerous task mind you.  Far from it, in fact.

For instance, I tend to relegate The Firm and Mean Business to the background of my musical preferences, rarely calling them up to listen to - but that's a mistake on my part. Listening only to absolute favorites means always listening to the same stuff. As wonderful as that seems, doing so reduces contrast - the light and shade that Jimmy Page has so often referred to over the years. It means losing the perception of musical nuances.

The funny thing about listening to less-favorite music, though, is that I wind up with new appreciation for it because of the greater listening experience that I bring to it. And like Magick, what was not-so-interesting is transformed to very cool stuff after all.

So yeah, I'm hearing both of the albums and The Firm's live performances with new ears. And I'm liking it.

Why shouldn't I? After all, it's Jimmy Page: Satisfaction's guaranteed.

1986 Jimmy Page with The Firm, New Orleans (Mark Bowman photo) 

♪

♪  The Killing Floor (Jimi Hendrix, Stockholm 1969)  YouTube
♪  The Killing Floor (Led Zeppelin, LA 1969) YouTube
♪  Full set (The Firm, Hammersmith Odeon 1984) YouTube
♪  Satisfaction Guaranteed (The Firm, promo video 1984) YouTube
Les Paul appearing as The Bartender; May Pang (John Lennon's former girlfriend) making a 2-second cameo appearance; and Jimmy Page hamming it up for the camera.


 

On This Day 17 September

"This is my invitation, I want to change your destination..."

~ Cadillac, from The Firm's Mean Business album

1984 17 September On This Day Jimmy Page with The Firm – finished recording Long Black Cadillac at The Sol

• 1968 Led Zeppelin - Malmo, Sweden at Folkets Park 
• 1971 Led Zeppelin - Honolulu, HI at Honolulu Civic Auditorium
• 1984 Jimmy Page with The Firm – finished recording Long Black Cadillac at The Sol
• 1988 Jimmy Page Outrider Tour - Mesa, AZ at Mesa Amphitheatre
• 2013 Jimmy Page attends Queens of the Stone Age concert

1971 Led Zeppelin - Honolulu, HI at Honolulu Civic Auditorium (day 2)

1984:
Given the experience of all the members of Jimmy Page's band, The Firm, it's no wonder they were able to record songs in one take. Recorded and mixed at Jimmy Page's Sol Studios in Berkshire, England, Cadillac appeared on The Firm's second album released in 1986, Mean Business.  There, it is just plain Cadillac, not to be confused with various versions of The Long Black Cadillac performed by other artists, light-years different from The Firm's song. Jimmy Page's Cadillac is dark and dirty. Magick oozes from his guitar.

As far as that version of "Cadillac" goes, we were lucky to get it. Because it was a live number and you can't do that in a room with a couple of takes because it has to be alive...
~ Jimmy Page, Guitar World July 1986, page 87

The Firm and Mean Business never did take off, though they were decently high on the charts. People still were expecting the Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, when in fact there was - and is - much more to Jimmy Page than that. A shame, to be so blind to that lovely musical Magick.

2013 Jimmy Page backstage at Queens of the Stone Age (Ross Halfin photo)

2013 Jimmy Page with Josh Homme and Troy Van Leeuwen backstage at
Queens of the Stone Age concert (Ross Halfin photo)

2013 Jimmy Page and Troy Van Leeuwen of Queens of the Stone Age

♪

♪  Cadillac (Jimmy Page The Firm, Mean Business 1986) YouTube
♪  Cadillac (Jimmy Page The Firm, Birmingham England 1985) YouTube
♪  Full set (Jimmy Page Outrider Tour, Mesa 1988) YouTube

 

On This Day 16 September

Awards, weddings and an On This Day mystery.

1970 16 September On This Day Led Zeppelin awarded top Melody Maker poll spots
Melody Maker review 

• 1970 Led Zeppelin tops Melody Maker poll
• 1971 Led Zeppelin - Honolulu, Hawaii at Honolulu Civic Center
• 1978 Jimmy Page at weddings of Richard Cole & Tracy Heron-Weeber and Simon Kirke & Desiree Serino
• 1988 Jimmy Page Outrider Tour - El Paso, TX at Special Events Center
• 1998 Page & Plant - Denver, CO at Red Rocks Amphitheater

1970:
Just a year after their first shows, Led Zeppelin was topping the Melody Maker poll. All four band members plus Peter Grant attended the award ceremony at the Savoy Hotel in London. Led Zeppelin was number one Group, number one UK Album and number two International Album with Led Zeppelin II; Robert Plant was number one Male Singer; Jimmy page was number two in the guitar category.

1970 Led Zeppelin at Melody Maker Awards in London

1971:
Honolulu was hot and sticky, with an obnoxious audience. This first of two nights' shows got poor reviews. Still the best band on the planet.

1971 Honolulu - nice shot of Bonzo's kit (photo Robert Knight)

1971 Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin in Honolulu

1978:
What an incredible collection of talented folks at this joint wedding celebration.

2013:
Here's the On This Day mystery.

2013 16 September On This Day post - Ofra Haza

Ofra Haza (1957 - 2000) was an Israeli singer, actress and international recording artist. Born in the slums of Tel Aviv, her music rose above political boundaries to reach a broad international audience. Haza received numerous platinum and gold discs and she performed at the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony in Oslo in 1994. 

In 1995 she covered Led Zeppelin's Kashmir on her album, Queen In Exile. The song appears twice on the album with different approaches.  Haza died of AIDS-related pneumonia, reportedly due to a blood transfusion in a Turkish hospital following a miscarriage. 

The mystery is why Jimmy Page posted this when he did. As far as I can tell, the date and the year are not connected to any specific event associated with Ofra Haza. Maybe someone else can tell me. Maybe Jimmy Page would be so kind as to contact me and let me know.

♪

♪  Kashmir (Ofra Haza, 1995) YouTube
♪  Kashmir (Ofra Haza, 1995) YouTube
♪  Full set (Page & Plant, Red Rocks 1998) Panicstream

 

On This Day 15 September

Jam Sandwich.  Yeah.

1981 15 September On This Day Jimmy Page records main title music for Death Wish II
♪  Synth Track (Jimmy Page, Death Wish II soundtrack) Soundcloud

• 1968 Led Zeppelin - Goteborg, Sweden at Liseberg Amusement Park (billed as The Yardbirds)
• 1981 Jimmy Page records main title music for Death Wish II
• 1998 Page & Plant - West Valley, UT at E Center

1968:

Still billed as Yardbirds.

1968 Led Zeppelin - Goteborg, Sweden at Liseberg Amusement Park

1981:
Death Wish II is a soundtrack album by Jimmy Page, released (vinyl) by Swan Song Records on 15 February 1982, to accompany the late Michael Winner's film Death Wish II. Recorded at Sol Studio in Berkshire, UK, it was the first major work Jimmy Page had done since John Bonham's death.  Session drummer Dave Mattacks, who had worked with Jimmy before Led Zeppelin and was friends with Bonzo, was the drummer for the soundtrack and worked with Jimmy Page at Page's Sol Studio.

  “I set up in the middle of this room. Jimmy set up a little guitar amplifier beside me initially; then at one point told me he was going to place the amp in another room. He told me, ‘I don’t want to ruin your drum sound’. I went, ‘You’re not ruining my sound; we’re working on this together’. I realized later on that he was using ambient room mics to make the drums louder and he didn’t want them to pick up the guitar; he wanted separation. He’d do a guide guitar track with me, sometimes replacing it or overdubbing numerous times…what John Paul Jones termed ‘the army’. Jimmy was using a lot of different amplifiers.
  “Jimmy had just gotten the Roland guitar synth and there were occasions he couldn’t reach all the pedals and controls, so he’d be overdubbing another pedal, helping him get all these bizarre sounds, which you can hear on the soundtrack."
  ~ Dave Mattacks, drummer for Death Wish II, interview by T Bruce Wittet, 2012

The soundtrack was released in CD format in 1999.  To mark its 30th anniversary Jimmy Page released a limited remastered vinyl edition on 1 December 2011, of 30 autographed copies and 1000 individually-numbered, non-autographed copies of the soundtrack.  This anniversary version included previously unreleased material, updated artwork and new sleeve notes.

Roger Ebert gave the movie a "no star" rating (awarded only to movies that he considered "artistically inept and morally repugnant").  He didn't mention the soundtrack in his review.  I've never seen the movie, but the music gets four stars from me.

Track identification log for "Synth Track" for Death Wish II

Jimmy Page in his Sol Studio, Berkshire UK, recording Death Wish II

♪

♪ Title music for Death Wish II (Jimmy Page, Death Wish II soundtrack 1982) YouTube
♪ Who's To Blame outtake  (Jimmy Page, 1982) YouTube
♪ City Sirens (Jimmy Page with Steve Winwood, Death Wish II soundtrack,  ARMS 1983) YouTube
♪ Jam Sandwich  (Jimmy Page, Death Wish II soundtrack 1982) YouTube
♪ Chopin's Prelude  (Jimmy Page, Death Wish II soundtrack 1982) YouTube
♪ Closing scenes and credits for Death Wish II (Jimmy Page, Death Wish II soundtrack 1982) YouTube