On This Day 13 August

"He's the man who started everything. He's just a genius."
~ Jimmy Page, about Les Paul

"Dazzling"
~ Jimmy Page, about James Brown

Posted 13 August 2020 On This Day James Brown vs Led Zeppelin mashup

2013, 2015 13 August On This Day James Brown vs Led Zeppelin mashup

Note from Mage Music: As we move along through the On This Day year I try to capture the multiple years' different posts on jimmypage.com.  I don't have a bunch of spare time and I do have a slow internet connection, so they won't all be here right away.
 

2011 13 August On This Day 

• 1966 The Yardbirds - Amarillo,TX at Checkmate Young Adult Club
• 2009 Les Paul died

Les Paul (1915-2009)
Born Lester William Polsfuss, Les Paul was a man of many talents.  A guitarist, songwriter, maker of stringed instruments and inventor, Les Paul, was a pioneer of the solid-body electric guitar from which rock and roll rose.  As a guitarist he experimented with overdubbing, tape delay, phasing effects and multi-tracking, not to mention playing the guitar using style techniques that pushed the envelope beyond what others were doing at the time.  Jimmy Page paid attention.

Les Paul wasn't the first to come up with a solid body guitar but Gibson's Les Paul models are considered by many to be the guitar of choice.  Goldtops were the first of the Les Paul line for Gibson, with the Les Paul Custom being next.  These were the Black Beauties, black guitars with gold-plated hardware. After that came the Les Paul Standards (Jimmy Page's Number One and Number Two, among others). There have been countless versions and special editions of Les Paul guitars put out by Gibson over the years.

Les Paul's fertile mind came up with many innovations for the electric guitar and for the recording industry, including the eight-track deck for multi-track recording and a disc-cutter for acetate discs.  He has a permanent exhibit in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and has received dozens of awards, not only for his contributions to the music industry.  Les Paul was also inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. 

Les Paul: not just guitars

Les Paul's casket gives the date of August 12th for his death, but apparently his website at one point said August 13th.  Whatever. Video mashups aren't my thing. James Brown may be dazzling, and Jimmy Page might appreciate all kinds of music but I'm a mere mortal and I'd rather have Jimmy Page's music as he himself created it.

1993 Jimmy Page with goldtop Les Paul guitar (image from Coverdale/Page Pride and Joy video - )

♪  Lover (When You're Near Me) Les Paul 1988 YouTube
♪  Pride and Joy (Coverdale/Page) YouTube
♪  James Brown vs Led Zeppelin video mashup YouTube

On This Day 12 August

It is 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, designed 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

The 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 Placestudio.  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 not quite two weeks ago is in the Billboard top ten again.

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
♪  Full show (Led Zeppelin, Knebworth 11 August 1979) YouTube

Happy Birthday Leo Fender

The world has changed significantly due to the labors of these men

Leo Fender  (August 10, 1909 – March 21, 1991)

This man carries the revolution forward

Jimmy Page with Fender Telecaster String Bender, taped on location at Les Paul's house in Mahwah, NJ on July 18, 1985 

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

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

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 

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.

1971 Led Zeppelin Montreux

1998:

For some reason some people were 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 the date stated on the Jimmy Page website is likely not accurate.

• 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

♪  Full show (Led Zeppelin, San Bernardino 1969) YouTube

♪  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