Jimmy Page On His Spectacular Life and Career, Interviewed by Jeff Koons

Jimmy what are your plans for 2015 and beyond okay well it's it's an interesting question because what what I've been involved with is I I had a sort of plan [Music] Hey Wow you know wow that was really something Jimmy I think yeah and being the presence of of Jimmy but you know it I'm really I'm so thrilled to be on the stage here with Jimmy and I I heard that Jimmy Page was going to be here at the 92nd Street Y and one of my staff members told me and I said they said he's going to be in conversation I say with who and they said it didn't say anybody so I got on the phone immediately and I called and I said please let me interview Jimmy let me talk with Jimmy and so I'm just so thrilled because within my life and learning how and I'm sure that we all can share this type story but I learned how to feel through listening to Jimmy's music and I was 14 the first time that I heard Jimmy's music I heard Led Zeppelin 1 and my life was changed all of a sudden I I felt a sense of of hope and of expansion and so you've just been so generous Jimmy and you know it's just so great to be here and to talk with you and to learn about you know your life and this book is fantastic it's a photo autobiography and we'll look at some of the images thanks Jeff thanks so much sorry now when I look at that all of a sudden within my own mind I hear your time is gonna come yeah well I thought this is a really this is a really good place to start some of the photographs in the book come from like my own archive of the family archive as such and this this was taken by the organist and choirmaster of the this church choir that I went to and he he was an amateur photographer and consequently there was this photograph taken and a few others but this was given to my family so the the fact of it is this whole book was relative to my life in music but actually I was playing the guitar at this point and that was during the pot that the process of clearing copyrights on all of the images in the book if I didn't have them myself I got hold of the the estate of the name of by the way the name of the the organist and choirmaster was mr. coffin waiter which was pretty appropriate somebody from the church quiet so anyway I've got hold of his relatives and he was when I say I did it was somebody on my behalf and then the story was related whereby mr. coffin had told his son-in-law was now the in in charge of the estate that he remembered me going to choir practices early with a guitar to try and tune it with the organ so you know where there's a will there's a way I suppose so but it was was Church the first experience of music of being in the course or you but it sort of was it was really odd by this point I'd already been on I'd been seduced by music coming out of the speakers you know the radio and really it was American music that was sort of translated either the real product coming through the rock and roll rockabilly Little Richard that sort of thing or it was like the local heroes like Cliff Richard or there was this this guy called Lonnie Donegan who started like the whole skiffle movement and skiffle meant that if you had a guitar then you could actually possibly be able to play it and do these sort of songs and it a lot of the the guitarist from the sixties they all started off the same way really the Schiphol yeah so you were on television as a young man around 13 or 14 yeah was it a yeah were you doing skiffle it was a really it was skiffle it was a very embarrassing you know it's one of those I'm gonna tell you they know you know when you vent a whole sort of lifetime in music there are certain things that come up and haunt you and and that that is one of them because I can see this precocious kid you know really trying hard as nervous as anything in front of the cameras beaming whatever there's being done into everybody's homes you know like I was quite a shy shy kid I still I still quite a shy person really I'm sort of quite introvert so under that sort of scrutiny all manner of things were said and mistakes were probably played as I as I carried on through it but it's got a charm about it you know in the the book and the book is fantastic because it covers you know Jimmy's life and there are many images I'm gonna go to another one but we go from this really such a rapid development because when you're you know working in sessions and a session musician you're still just maybe about 15 years old at this time I'm a little older than that what happens is when the choirboy picture obviously under school and that clipped the skiffle clear permanent school I actually sort of joined a band straight after school I'd done a deal with my dad that I would do that keep my academic work out because you didn't really quite know what was going on with all this guitar business but an or did I really I mean I'd been infected by something and it was no getting rid of there was no cure for it I mean I was that was it but I'd promised to do all this you know to do my academic work and I had and in effect I I was in a group and we were doing sort of blues music and the chest catalogue we were playing a lot of during that point of time as a kid as a teenager and I'd already access sort of Indian music Arabic music rockabilly country blues which is the acoustic guitar playing and the electric movement that had come out of Chicago like Chess Records and all of that when I got this opportunity to be a session musician I also played harmonica it was I was a young kid I was sort of seven years in junior to anybody else that was in the session scene at that point of time but the fact that I had all these different styles of guitar that I felt passionate about and I tried to learn not too well but at least I could you know approach the wall it put me in good stead for this this whole job as a studio musician because you weren't a specialist as such you went in there and you go right across the whole a field of guitar playing and you know it suited me quite well because I'd I was self-taught but I obviously was doing the right thing so Jimmy I read that when people would hire you a lot of times at the time you didn't read music that they would just let you perform whatever you wanted to perform it was just kind of like get out of the way and let Jimmy just kind of do is see that's true that's true in the in the early days of sort of being introduced into it I could read core charts so I could learn you when to stop and when to start and I could do that but they'd say well you know you you know just had something if you want and because I was the age that I was at I was the same age as all the sort of young groups that were out there and I had the same points of reference like R&B music and blues music and and rock or all this sort of stuff and I also could play fingerstyle acoustic playing so I could fit into many areas but in the early days it was yeah and I had the chords and they'd they'd say well you know just you know make up things if you want you know just piecing things don't just play the basic chords and I got a reputation I guess for doing that and and being reliable I guess it the other thing was that it was a very close shop this world of the studio musicians and looking back in retrospect I must have done pretty well because if you'd have messed up or customers money you know every second was money and if I hadn't been able to sort of deliver it and I didn't think of it in and what pressurized way at all but actually it would have been a lot of pressure you know if I'd have thought that way because one mess-up and you wouldn't be seen again so I did pretty good you know and you know Jimmy was really like the number one number two session musician you know in in England in London yeah and so there are many records that we are very familiar with Jimmy played on you played on some of Herman's Hermits songs on Donovan Donovan Donovan I did a few things sunshine Superman is one everyone knows I worked quite a bit on the Donovan albums with him too and what are some other ones are you really proud of well okay I was right across but I was on say the Hoos can't explain well actually you should really applaud them because it no it the but to be involved in something like that I was born in I mean you can hear what I do in right in the background yeah because Pete Peters playing there like the lead in everything but to actually be on that session and it was in this small recording studio and everything is like the performance in these days like performance art and the just being there in the energy of it and I'm just doing the riff underneath under the on those circumstances but llaves on some really really dramatic sessions like I played on Goldfinger but yeah but Shirley Bassey came into the it was rehearsed by John Barry and Shirley Bassey comes into the studio and she she goes to the mic she just does one take and she's so dramatic collapses on the floor it was a magical time but but it but it moved on into I was like an apprenticeship is what it was I got to learn to read music I had to learn to read music and also I've been very interested in studio techniques from the sort of records that that I'd really pulled me in and pulled me right into the speakers in those early days and how those things were were done I tried home recordings myself but I wanted to know how it was done properly now listen to Les Paul and just wondered at what was going on there as a kid but you know the things of like Sam Phillips and and what was going on in chess was more sort of accessible immediately and I tried those sort of things at home but as a studio musician I could ask how it was really done and to engineers so like in the book all these different photos have such vast stories and information of your life so now we're going into the yardbirds [Applause] and I go back to the point where when we first meet we both got homemade guitars so that's how far back we go and Jeff and I had always spoken about because I did the the I got accepted into the studio world and I was really happy doing that because it's pretty it was also quite creative up to a point and Jeff had always said I'd be really good if you join The Yardbirds and cuz I'd help Jeff get the job in the yardbirds and he did superb work in the yardbirds and I I thought yeah be really good but there were five yard birds and and that's it they were known as five live yard birds but I happened to be there at the night on the night where paul samwell-smith who was of bands producer and writer and the bass player where he quit the band and they had they had a sequence of events coming up like that Marquis club was a big big Club in London and they had that coming out and it was said there was a discussion and I and I said well look I'll play then I'll play I'll go in on bass I think I was so happy to get out of the world of the studio musician that I would probably would have played the triangle or the tambourine but anyway at this point Jeff isn't in the band anymore and there's a four of us sort of doing a really good job and what what happens is this is in France we're doing a TV show but what what happens with the 4-yard bizarre is that we are over here and we're touring the whole of the underground circuit and the brandy ballrooms in Detroit the Fillmore Winterland and etc etc and we get to the point where I don't know what your next photograph is gonna be but but we we'd built up like a cult audience you know coming to these things and coming to see The Yardbirds and listened to what we were doing which was pretty different to what was coming out on the singles and I made a decision at that point well let's get to the next photos okay yeah yeah so when the yardbirds the 4-yard Batson split and and III actually tried to encourage them to keep going but then they you know they've been through three guitar changes and Kieffer Alfred had you know caught enough really of it and pluses this crippling schedule of singles that we were doing had nothing whatsoever to do with what we were doing live so when that band dissolved and I had the opportunity they dissolved in they dissolved in July of 1968 and what's so interesting here is that I'd made up my mind in Italy if they weren't going to continue that I wanted to form my own band and I knew exactly what it was that I wanted to do with it I played the whole of the underground circuit with The Yardbirds I built up a reputation I'd seen the emergence of what they called underground radio stations which was FM stereo and they were playing longer tracks and AM beyond our singles market and I was keen to form a band where I would produce it because I didn't want to get anybody else haven't want to be in this situation like we had in the yardbirds where somebody was getting us to record things which had nothing whatsoever to do with a band I knew what I wanted to do and I knew exactly how to go about doing it if I could find the personnel now the the idea of Led Zeppelin one that I had was at the guitar that was going to be a guitar to a de force however it was not going to be at the expense of the other musician so everyone was going to be featured and the dearth that the group character if you like the fusion of the musicians was going to be representative of each of the individuals and I think that that's really how it how it was on the first album it was designed to be [Applause] in your work prior to that when you're mentioning about Jeff Beck before and like listening to Jeff Beck truth and listening to you play and you can just hear what's gonna come and you know you shook me is on on truth but it's nothing like on Led Zeppelin well no because I didn't know I didn't know he'd recorded you shook me no but that was that we were the sort of groups around that point of time were all doing similar sorts of numbers and and it's a coincidence the Jeff's versions totally different one the version that I did was closer to the Muddy Waters version when I intended to be the inventor when when you listen to Led Zeppelin one or you listen to Jimi's music I'm always so moved because it's so vast and all of a sudden you're involved with a sociology and psychology and philosophy and the the people the the individuals the stories that are being played you always can feel empathy for that person because you're never I mean even you know it's the Blues and everything but you always can feel empathy for them and there's always this I don't know it's subjective but it's totally objective at the same time it's just and and it lets the listener experience that and I'm always Jimmy I tell you I'm so moved I listen to your music every day and I never talk but it always just is so profound and so moving so strong and I always think that Jimmy must have gotten together all these professionals and they sat down to create the perfect artistic works to move people and that did you do it well that was that was the attempt to have a to put together a band that was really gonna shake everything and the important part of this is you know I've alluded to the fact that the yardbirds were still together I I think I did in in 1968 it was to lie when they when they disbanded well the fact is that there is that like some divine intervention at this point that must bring us all together because john bonham for example wasn't even known down in london he was only known locally up in in in Birmingham although I saw him play with Tim rose in London and he'd played but he never had the chance to play drums like John Bonham was going to play in in in Led Zeppelin it gave everybody and John Paul Jones was a he'd a fine session musician and he'd done some arranging but he never had the chance to show what John Paul Jones could do until he was in Led Zeppelin and the same with Robert Plant but and as I say you could you can hear everybody's the the these master musicians playing together and the but nevertheless in the first album there was a definite direction of for example babe I'm gonna leave you something like that well you've got that thank you but you've got it's the approach to that was unlike anything that anybody anybody had ever done before with the acoustic and the electric guitars and the blending and the dynamics and the tension the drama of it I'd worked when I first met Robert I bought into to my house and we I played him Dazed and Confused The Yardbirds are done and I'd played him the amongst other things but I played him baby I'm gonna leave you and I said well I'm gonna I played in the source material of Joan Baez and I said we you sing this sing around this and I'm gonna play this and you'll see what I'm doing and it was really good that he was he was mutable and he wanted to you know get into it because otherwise I had to look for someone else but but but it but but the thing is okay so Yardbirds break up in July the end of July we've got August we're playing in Sibley but now have rehearsed at my house it is dinner I'm gonna change this to your perform this is in the month this is in them yeah they see what really early days at the Marquee Club but we've come over here playing we did we do our album in October we're playing in the States by well by the end of the 1968 so Burnley talking about a handful of months and the band has rehearsed at my house that we go to Scandinavia a handful of dates a few dates in London like the marquee and we go in the studio in October and that's it we're over here by December and by January February we've sort of really made a dent in America it's phenomenal how it's so quick and I'm sorry I just want to jump back to babe I'm gonna leave you because you know I've listened the Joan Baez version yeah and you know it's fantastic and it is great to listen to her voice but what you brought to it - that song is you know it's a migration ya know you know all of a sudden you know you have antlers coming out of your head and it's the power and the force of nature and you know that's it just everything goes to a difference but see what I heard in the djembe is one was it was it was on an album and it was a live in concert and I thought it was a traditional number because on that there was a vanguard album I remember it had no writer so I assumed it was traditional but it was really haunting and I and it just inspired me to come up with this whole the whole of the gig as you know it the whole of the guitar bed that is that it's all about with the acoustic and then this sort of flamenco accents it comes into into heighten the whole drama of it yeah it's yeah it's something that I probably would have done it with The Yardbirds if we'd have stayed together as it was it was something that I had you know was burning inside me to do this but with the quality of these musicians I mean it just really came alive as well because you could really push the dynamics on it okay so this image Jimmy you're in the studio yeah and you're working on which song well I can tell you now because okay so there was this this house that I had where we rehearsed Led Zeppelin one and then we've toured around and then we go in to my house again and we we rehearse whole lot of love what is and what should never be and we get we go to this studio where we've recorded the first album it's called Olympic studios and now I know exactly what it is that this is that is being recorded here and with the with these sort of new remaster packages that have come out there's companion this and on Led Zeppelin - there's a track called la la now that this is the this is the acoustic guitar part being put on an Lala and there's the organ which is part of Lala as well so it sits exactly at this at this point of the sessions which may be run over a couple of days of whole lot of love and what isn't what should never be they were rehearsed it at my house at Pangborn but this one was sort of put together in the studio la la la which it comes out as an instrumental because Robert hasn't had time to work on it with the lyrics so he just sort of stays on the shelf until but relatively recently it came out in June and now you can hear the full story about yeah so I'm Jimmy pure my creative process as a visual artist you know I carry things around it resonates things that I find interesting but they're your creative process does it start you you know you hear a rift or how does it start how does it build how do you bring things into it yeah well it's stiff it's it starts for me it always starts from the guitar even though I wrote lyrics in the earlier days I wasn't that keen to be doing that so I wasn't sort of writing reams of poetry and then putting the music to it it was all about the music and I guess trying to develop my own technique so it had a character to it but very much so that will go back to the baby I'm gonna leave you that whole aspect of the finger style playing and what people could sort of think of more as folk guitar but also the the aspect of the the it's it's it's like trance music really from the the the riffs from the Chicago the sort of Howlin wolf and this sort of thing all those things as well so you get you get you get like this hybrid really of blues music and folk music and rockabilly it's it's all in there modern classical's there too and sort of my appreciation of Indian music an Arabic music and all this stuff was there before I even did sessions but now I've got a chance to to really just keep expanding all these ideas you know and so are you feeling it I mean is it that you know there's a certain feeling or what is it that how it comes about because well say okay well a lot of love you see that's something which I'll put right that into something which is more in the elements of sort of trance really because you want when you hear the version I'm sorry if I'm not something I'm not trying to sell anything so you got a comparison between like the Led Zeppelin whole lot of love which everyone knows and then the version which is on the companion disc it's more like a voodoo ritual you know because it did it's unnerving when it gets the choruses and there's no choruses and you've just got this whole pulsating rhythm now that comes down straight from the guitar if that's how that thing started up and I knew exactly how that was supposed to be you know and say immigrant song as well I'd have liked the riffs and then just lay that in with the band and I mean the riff is exactly what the bass drum pattern is going to do you know it's all this sort of stuff so it could be things which is supposed to be hard and intense and other things which is supposed to be really quite light intrinsic and and and and and and more more challenging possibly and and do you always think of these things as vast just that these sounds are well because they carry so far I mean they are it's so yes for example on the first album we were doing these things as in in there riff format and song constructions because it's acoustic guitar your time is going to come you know that sort of thing and but then you know I just was applying the guitar overdubs very very quickly to it because I already sort of had it in my head I hadn't worked them out but I just knew instinctively what to sort of play if you see there was always elements of spontaneity about all of the overdubs oh okay oh I'm sorry oh no no no do this but because this is this room here this is rather interesting because that is the that's the that's my house where Led Zeppelin gets routine there and whether we're we're doing the first album and we're whole lot of love is rehearsed that's that room where I'm standing up there with a huge yard in using this was your home okay yeah that's it that's that that was it yeah and you can see by the top right that it was right on the edge of the river River tents and it was it was fantastic you know it was wonderful living there and the countryside and I had this launch a boat and I could take it out on the river at night and I had a really good lifestyle I tell you and it's injured there's a drawing down at the bottom is that I love this story Jeff because that Jardin year came from Paris that but but but that on the left but that is it's a three graces by burne-jones and I used to go searching through sort of flea markets and things and I really thought that I found a burne-jones and actually it turned out to be a print from the time temporary print but I was really I thought ah this is it you know you you've got a good eye and now you've really proved it and so music today I mean the sounds have been compressed a lot yeah do you see do you think there's a future that music can come back and we can get larger sounds get it that's gonna remain Dublin's the main difference in the music of Led Zeppelin and say what there is today is that you're relying totally on performance and capturing in live performance and from what I what I sort of see about ProTools recording it still involves the imagination and the application of that with mixing and you get some amazing stuff that's done but we're sort of disturbs me a bit is when you hear that vocals are done not in whole verses but but syllable by syllable they're put together and you know from my point of view it's it's about performance and when we're talking about music today I do go in in in London I go to two clubs where there's young musicians playing and for no reason and business reason or anything like that not to look the bands to produce not at all it's more a question to see how young musicians how they feel it how they see and what their interpretations of how they put guitar music together for example with drums or whatever but because it's constantly changing music is always going to keep changing and I just really like to to hear what's going on you know like we all do it's great okay but that reel-to-reel it looks fancy yeah yeah yeah so but yeah this is I mean in being able to put some of these images together I was able to go through the book and and choose different images so the last one that was up there I had that image in I had to select it down and the the 92nd Street while I was asking for fewer images and so then that image we ended up bringing back in what was really nice but I had that image in Prior and then he's pulled out but I always enjoyed this one because this you know you could look at and you could you know you out in the countryside and yes with that type of acoustic guitar and the Led Zeppelin 3 is is exactly that you could see from the from the picture before and I say 1s attempt it was in the countryside more or less but this is down in Wales and this is as a result of touring and touring and touring and touring during 1969 we just did not stop and in in the book I've got the itineraries and that's not all of it but even that looks it's just so intense a whole of that year and at this point where Robert and I go to this cottage in Wales which really is a countryside out there there's just sort of sheep on hills and and it's just valleys and mountains it's absolutely stunning and yeah it was it was that sort of right there I'll tell you that there's a bit of stubble sort of gently staying at this cottage which had he didn't have electricity it had gas lights and so there wasn't really that much hot water you'd have to boil it up in a kettle and so I started growing a beard at this dis point of time and and the beard just keeps going for quite a while and I don't know whether he can have another photograph it almost looks like a sort of black father Christmas but anyhow any now yeah this is it's it's it's down by the river in the gorgeous Welsh countryside that surrounds Bronner on that was the name of this cottage and it was quite magical their third album absolutely Jeff that's that's where it kicked that you know we kicked off some of the acoustic stuff there and we wrote that's the way was so that's out for a walk Nevers out for all so now then this is an out for a walk they cease yeah so yeah I mean you I mean the band Led Zeppelin really kind of change this the looking at live performance I mean you're talking about the kind of a happening and a performance type of art I mean this is as big as the arena's would get right I mean did encephalon really start the large arena shows yeah yeah quite possible we get to that point because it Beatles had obviously done that we show you stadium and now the thing with Led Zeppelin is that right from the beginning of it once within a few months going into 1969 we can't supply the demand everywhere that we play is full and we start doing repeat nights in place isn't it still fullfil for so when we were doing outside events it wasn't confined by the four walls and you can see that it was just immense but we were just getting all the way through even right up to 1980 we were just getting huge crowds coming and it just kept appearing to get larger and larger and did that energize you I mean would you feel the audience and feel more energized and feel like you could go into even deeper trance music well I think I think what happened is that we all it was very physical the music but it's in the early footage of us we're sort of quite contained within it but you start to explode more physically as well as as musically you know so there was quite a lot of physical performance to all of this now by this time the sets are getting pretty long and and one of the hardest things because by now it's obviously not the first album we're moving on through the beards gone it's gone but the the sets got longer because the hardest and most challenging thing was as we did a new album like the second album it was what material to put in and then third album what material to put in the set and we just keep extending the sets because he didn't want to drop anything because all of the numbers once they went in the set you could you could have real fun with them and changed them around on the night you never quite knew when you stood on the edge of the stage what what was actually gonna happen and I had an idea of the running order of the of the show but there'd be things that would happen every night that would be different so you would change it yeah okay this is another example of just how vast everything was at this time yeah I was huge well well you see we were able to stay in New York and then commute outside of New York to go to Washington Pittsburgh Philadelphia Boston by plane and come back and actually be able to unpack and in those days you know I'd have like a little traveling suitcase which is a record player and I've had my sounds and my books here and it was all quite civilized and cool but when you just see a show of us all coming off a plane there was a bit of a story behind it but yeah and I always loved those those costumes of yours yeah okay yeah cool they are cool and did you design them well not not that one I didn't but but because this is the one that's in some remains the same yeah and that's that so this is about 1973 and because that's recorded at Madison Square Garden in 1973 song reminds and so but then then I started to really get into the whole aspect of the visual side of things and I have the the dragon suit made up which is this elements of that on this on this outfit here but I actually I didn't design this but elements of this start to to come into the other it's interesting how it actually comes my way this thing but elements of it start to appear on the other stage clothes later yeah you know I look at those clothes and the Stars and you know it's planets yeah and the planets the stars I mean dragon yeah dragons but it's just perfect and then you know the double neck guitar I mean yeah so people all I don't know what you can say cannot go but it's all unsaturated and it's all you know Sophie I can take ya iconic but again it you know it's so far out there but it understands it comes back underneath under you and you know I do think I think that worry that there's empathy and the music that's there I mean it's a it's the dishwasher the guy doing dishes but has these strong sensations and huge feelings but you can always you know you can connect for them you never feel intimidated by the power because if the powers too strong for you're gonna shy away from it well you know so you can play with it yeah yeah definitely I mean I always I'm trying to understand its strength yeah well the the the thing is that Led Zepplin said would definitely generate energy I mean it's it's when you when you even when you see bands with an audience you you see the band will start up and they'll they'll send out sort of message to the audience and then the audience respond and send back an energy and this is sort of communion between the audience and the band that were billed but the the energy and that Zeppelin concert was just incredible just amazing and there wasn't it wasn't enjoying an endurance test to be playing three hours it was just really so three and a half hours is really exhilarating and the fact that we could there was this sort of harnessing of the energy and the power of the music we're even on the first album you've got these areas where where it's really quiet and then you've got the the intensity of the chorus if you want to call it that but you know the the layering and you got the aspect of something like stairway where you said they double neck you know the stet double neck is as a result of stairway to the heaven because it had so many different guitars on it the KU snake had six string solo and he had the the twelve strings and it was a really important piece to come up with Alice she's perfect right yeah well all right so you having a good time you know yet did she this is I think I think I caption this homeopathic remedy yeah yeah yeah so but the endurance I mean how did you maintain that type of endurance of the schedule and then you know the lifestyle well okay I tell you what the reality of it was that if you were in a band like that you just had that energy to be on this video because it was just so exhilarating but the truth of it was as those tours got longer it was difficult and I know everyone's going to laugh but it would get to the point where you didn't sleep for a night and then during Madison Square Garden for the filming in 1973 I don't think I really slept for that for like whatever it was five days or whatever but it built up from way way back in the early part of that tour and I wasn't sort of losing sleep every night but he just sort of built it was just a sort of energy chat was difficult to switch off that's really the truth of it yeah this is from that time yeah yeah this is New York actually and it was a photographer from New York especially New Yorker Waring Abbott and yeah he did the eat eat these images and a great honor in 77 loser and so this is the dragon outfit too is that well this is this is what I called the poppy suit because this has got poppies but I still got that dragon suit that I call the dragon suit is a black one with all the gold embroidery so I can no no embroidery but this this I'd call this one the poppy suit but it's confusing because you can see a dragon on it I know yeah but it's consistent the imagery is consistent going through so do you know what song you're playing here can you tell by that no no no no no not on that one sometimes I can tell but not not enough oh yeah be honest but it's lots of people to get thinking what it is yeah it's great and it's great that the celebration day film also captures you know this type of look on film too with a move man yeah that was that that was so good because and it was so important to to get it out because it sort of showed us I mean there's so much but we can see today lots of imagery around that that time and with with the band you know and they've been DVDs that came out of the time because it was important to sort of have that document if you like but it was celebration day it was we'd actually done Live Aid and it was horrific and and it was it was because we only had half an hour to rehearse and it wasn't enough because I think Queen had been rehearsing for months in England and they did it the right way and we did the Atlantic 40th here in New York and that we came in when I said the the within hours of it and and to the the time we were supposed to go on stage is stretched and stretch the stretch I'm all sort of pretty exhausted by the time we went on so we celebration day we had a chance to actually come together and rehearse properly for it and be seen so people who were gonna go there hadn't even been born maybe when they'd suffered and were around some people were maybe some people had seen it but the fact was there there was a reputation and there was a reason why there was a reputation of why we were so good and this sort of connection on stage and it was important to to not take this casually take it really really seriously and still have the area whereby or the element whereby you could change things on stage like we would have done in the past and improvise and we did so celebration day showed us more or less looking like we look now but just to show that you know yes sure we could do it if we had to and it was great jason bonham wonderful thing wonderful Jason you know Jason had the important thing of putting in so much rehearsal to this with Jason myself and John Paul Jones was was because this was a sort of pad that Robert was going to be singing on and it was just really important that Jason who we ease in that film song remains the same when he's a kid he's just teaching him drums I mean you him as Jason the kids you know and it was I'd toured with Jason in 1988 and we played here at the Ritz and a couple of times and were a couple of nights only once did we do this 1988 this too but I I knew how good Jason was on the drums and and how good he was at playing the Led Zeppelin stuff and so when the opportunity came for all of us to play with you know John Paul Jones Robert myself with Jason it was important to to have Jason feeling a member of the band and not just you know what I mean not an outside of it right in there the only way to do that was to have all these solid rehearsals and just us playing to get them all we did was led separate material we didn't start drifting off into new things it was just that was a mission and he had the biggest shoes to fill on that stage but he was phenomenal okay then in the book I also learned that you you performed it Jason sweat it the band members yes yeah there yeah yeah so this is this is the this is the side of the stage from again 1977 to and those are the guitars that the are there they sort of backups in case you make a string or what in those said you know she says only one double-neck yeah yeah but there everything else has got to back up to it more or less yeah here it's listed the main artillery yeah it is like may not city of the guitar me yeah that's fantastic yeah but you know that that emit was on the screen just a little while ago but we went past it but it shows that you're backstage and maybe you're tuning your guitar and you can see everybody out there yeah but I really love that image cuz you know the self I mean you'd live with your creativity you live with your your passion and and but yet you know it's it's all that's so intimate they're in that image and you know then the worlds out there in front of you to go out and to share that and do you see the creative act as as a generous act that well I think the I can't impress them in enough are on everybody just how how each concert was different and and and how there were different elements because we took it that seriously we weren't the sort of band who went out there indeed just a carbon copy of what the record was no it was far from that was really a full-on a sort into the music and that's why all of the albums come out so differently because we weren't caught up in a singles market so it was he soul we were able to sort of expand all the musical horizons and keep pushing it and thereby you come up with new things you see so here you're with yeah Robert Turing yeah this was we came back together to do a project which actually was linked to MTV and I guess that was all right so we started talking about going to Morocco and recording in Marrakesh in the square which is a medieval square and I think then they started to scratch their heads a bit it there was so there were two parts to this we called it the unleaded project and no quarter and this part was recorded in in a sound studio and we had an orchestra what we had the part of a Western Orchestra and then the Egyptian musicians as well there were four string players and four percussionists torment everything else that we got our own drummer here and this was done in the studio and I think we might while we're doing Kashmir at this point and the however there was also this recording that was done in Morocco and we went over there we'd like one track that was done to a tape loop that we that we performed in the square and then we started working with local musicians called in hours and we were coming up with music daring then on the spot with them so this this whole project was really interesting in a creative level because it was it was moving all the time and it was there was no time to sort of stop it was whatever onward you know you've always have been involved with world music and oh yeah types of music yeah yeah and so this is early on in the o2 I can tell you that you know I think we all feel so lucky you know it's just so great that you did it your I want to tell you the story and I want to tell everyone the story of this because we've done all this rehearsing with Jason and we do we do production rehearsals and then we've got one concert that's all we've got we don't have a warm-up I mean never nobody goes out without having a warm-up and so we're out on on the stage and I don't really know how hot it's going to be or anything so I've got so this is this is probably intuitive visited maybe this might be the production rehearsal but the reality of it is that's what we get a production rehearsal and the only audience to vibe this whole set off of is just the people of this sort of crew and all of that so then we get onto the stage of the o2 and it's so hot but I didn't think it was going to be that hot so I've got like waistcoat and that's the first three numbers of the idea is it's going to be the first number is good times bad times gotsegment playing into rambled on into black dog and so people are by the end of that they're gonna oh my goodness so we're taking this seriously and we had the whole point but as there hadn't been any warm-up gigs you didn't really know we didn't play the whole set in front of an audience or anything so it's really it was really quite historic and very brave at the same time but so there's this outfit that during the course of that Oh to show or the celebration day DVD you see that the layers are coming of the after the first three numbers of the jacket then it's not longer fall of waistcoat comes off because he's boiling on the face they've got so much lighting on us that it's like being in a song it's unbelievable anyway there we are leather there the forced or what's doing [Applause] so you know Jimmy you've been involved with so many I mean everybody is been so influenced by your work and but so many people really tried to show you the impact your influence on them so you're here with the Black Crowes yeah and so you even tour with them a little bit or you do some performances with them yeah when we actually had this project well at this pot this point I've been invited to play with them the two brothers have played with me in a charity event in London and it was like a reciprocal gesture really to come I was asked to come and play with them now what we were doing was Black Crowes music and Led Zeppelin music but actually all that gets released is the Led Zeppelin music because there was a rerecord clause that they had and they weren't allowed to be record their music so it didn't appear on the on the CD and that which is a great shame but we played here we kicked that off at the Roseland Ballroom is here actually and they were fact they were so good to play with Black Crowes they were fantastic a real real good band it was well we really enjoyed it okay yes so okay that so even a larger arena here oh yeah could they get any bigger I've got to tell you that this this this lady here Leona Lewis she had never done a solo she'd done anything solo at this point she'd she'd been in this x-factor would you have X Factor here yet or something similar yeah and she was she was on it and she'd she was offered the chance to do this and she jumped more or less she'd Melissa the Olympian Olympic it's supposing ceremony where they're going to do the the handover from Beijing to London and she's offered to do this and she was amazing absolutely amazing because she just won the X Factor final and the next thing she does is a Beijing Olympics she was really really ballsy she was great and I had I had the best you know I mean I that was great I mean I really enjoyed playing with I'll tell you and they did the the opportunity was to play whole lot of love first of all it was putkin would you like to would it be okay if where they played whole lot of love of the Olympics and I went yeah absolutely great and then they said oh yeah but really then it comes back you know it's email correspondence right then it comes back well what we really want to do is to have Leona Lewis singing you play it and and David Beckham be on that thing as well it's all about the Olympics in London and everything and they I said well I want to play it all and they said no you can play the whole of the version with the middle part and everything and the owner Lewis is going to sing you know oh boy yeah oh yeah yeah I'll jump at something like this and so oh sorry it was that it was great yeah was cool I didn't you no choice Lee after because all of this comes like post do too and so does this quite closely after the OT right well this is the Oh Tuesday December and I think we're doing this in the sound stage of Warner's I think in January and this was this was fascinating because Davis Guggenheim had this idea of doing the documentary and what he wanted the three of us to have like this communion on on the stage but he didn't want us to confirm notes or meet up beforehand so that we had any sort of safety plan I tell you I would done they would have we could have we could have said like a blues number if we get stuck we'll just do some and see how we all work on it but as it was we all had to come in from separate directions and he captured every moment of our expressions and it was fascinating it was great working with him and we did we did one number and I'm not going to say because you're gonna clap but but but it's it's there it's I think it's just here right now on the bottom one and harass the agent the edge is discussed in the documentary about how he's like a sonic so he's like a scientist you know and he explains how he does it all but on this number he actually had libs are so low and it's just brilliant to his great solo that he does because he doesn't know he's going to be presented with this number and it was in my time of dying yeah yeah it's a great film yeah and and again I think that the edge and you know Jack White really you know they're trying to show you also just how much they appreciate and what you brought to the table and your influence on this is well today that's the last image in the book and a little bit spill on the highboy it might get loud and and on this one it says it might get loud well Jimmy has so many things that he's involved with and and working on and he has so many people I mean if you look at the album covers he's been involved with they're amazing but if Jimmy ever is doing something in their future I mean I hope you think about maybe the possibility that I could at least try to present an image for a cover to at least have the chance to [Applause] yeah so we have some questions oh yeah the audience has written some notes I'm have to get my glasses and butt [Applause] I'm also very shy of yeah it's a Jimmy this is how did you become interested in playing the theremin ah ah well the theremin music was was sort of alive and well in sort of 1930s really and it was quite a quite a it was a piece of science really and it was sort of played with two hands and there was there was a smaller version of it which just looked like a transistor radio really with an aerial but the effect was the same that when you switched it on you tuning in so that you didn't have any sort of sound coming it's really amplifier but then the closer that you got to the aerial that you'd have a low sort of note here and a high the closer you got to the aerial the higher the tone would be so I married this up with yeah they were they were around in the sort of late late 60s but I married this up with the with the tape delay so that I could make all all sort of quite radical ships with it I mean it's it's used on on the whole lot of love you can hear it on that I'm a middle section and and it's also on no quarter you can hear it just as making a bit of appearance ah because because the whole of the Led Zeppelin thing was something where you could really really sort of change them mutate things I really used to work out pretty quite a bit on those shows so can you talk about putting your work in the studio sorry can you talk about your work in the studio putting together all the guitar parts of Achilles last staff yeah okay well the the whole recording at that point of time was done the whole of that album was done over a three-week period so that's that's the recording of it and and the overdubs and the mixing the whole the whole work is done in three weeks I write from Led Zeppelin one I was very a keen to be applying guitar textures I mean something that I'd heard before from Les Paul of course but but but giving these they giving the guitar textures and I I and the colors of it I mean it's the whole thing you know that the the building the architecture of it if you want and I wanted to do something which was a guitar epic and that really good had everything really everything sort of thrown at it that I could do and and that that's it Achilles last and he's the one that really represents that and how I went about it was I gave you the time of the recording the all of the whole of the album because the the guitar I know it sounds unbelievable but the guitar overdubs for that we're done the initial guitars were done and then all the overdubs are done in more or less one night yeah I know I know I mean I I couldn't do it now probably but I'd like to think I could but know that that that's that's what was done with them was the just a focus and the work ethic was unbelievable then yeah yeah that's a you know we're talking about the music but all the the producing and all the the yeah thing and all the detail and how you know you could have a good memory when you produce yeah that's for sure especially with something like Achilles because you've got to know exactly where all the guitar parts are and you've got to cue them in and the other thing about especially the Led Zeppelin music was the fact that there'd be the engineer and you know I was a producer so I was in the studio more than everybody else in doing the mixing as well and so there be cases like when I was working with say Eddie Kramer here in New York and second album there wouldn't just be the two hands on the desk that may well be a third hand for me or even as there were more tracks but I'd say the second album had 8-track recording but when you get to 16 there be more channels and more effects channels and by doing the mixing stage is a real organic mixing it wouldn't be sort of programmed that you'd have like four hands sometimes on these mixing consoles doing these things so yeah you know it's interesting too because sometimes you know and some of the songs it's almost like you can hear through like the tape or something you can hear like another version of the song underneath it whether it's like a little bit of a vocal that sounds like it's coming through from underneath it's almost like you're hearing the back side imitates yeah well you see it's sumter sometimes especially on the first album you you hear Roberts voice is so loud that it's coming through the other the other sort of instruments too it's it's it's bleeding through but then when the main vocal goes on you still hear this ghosting going on so when it comes to the point of something which is this an effect like this yeah then I employed that into something like a whole lot of love so it becomes a real sort of effect so you know I all the time I was working on things you know like there was something I came up with which was like reverse echo backwards echo and that's on the first album and then that features through to it comes to its climax in when the levee breaks and you hear all the sort of we'll stop Thanks yeah we could each song is just amazing how close is the alternative take of song remains the same on the new reissue to how you originally envisioned it as an instrumental and and how did it develop into it's a a final vocal well when the when it came to the point of doing the records I'd usually or the point of recording I'd usually for the first album I had pretty much all of it but I'd always have maybe four numbers to go into the studio with and it just so happened that when it comes to the point of houses of the Holy I've got this I've got rain song and I've got I've got and the entirety of that and I've done our home demo of it as well with Mellotron and everything and then over the hills and far away is another one I got the complete thing oh but I've got something which I've called like an O loosely I've called it an overture and the idea of it was it was going to to come in with such such vitality and then sort of climax and then you'd segue into rain song now when it came to the point of a record of rehearsing this with the band yet was going really well it was supposed to be a guitar instrumental by the way and the the it was going really well but there was there was a call for a halftime in it so we put a half-time in it and then once a half-time win in it Robert started singing over the half-time and what was going to be the overture suddenly becomes song remains the same so which is brilliant you know that the whole of the the lyrics and the vocals and everything on that would he superb so so that was the original idea of it was an instrumental but but as with everything else it's you know it's going to change in mutate and so it always stayed in its original form if you like but it was song remains the same followed by rain song because I had the ability of doing it on the double neck I could do both of them and whenever we did it would do them together so it still sort of followed the originals little plot but but it changed Jimmy what are your plans for 2015 and beyond okay [Applause] well it's an interesting question because what what I've been involved with is I I had a sort of plan and the plan started off when the when the celebration day which had to come out even though it came out a few years after the o2 concert it was important to have that out and that that that was a sort of style of it I also wanted to get this website together the book because of the book comes before the website and then I would been archiving my material and I got through the sort of stuff that I'd done in early stages when I was doing home recordings and things and it goes to the yardbirds and it gets to the point of Led Zeppelin and I listened to the the mixes that were done at sunset sound and and I this is this is this is the way in advance of where we're at now and I'd hoped that that I could imagine a project whereby all of these outtakes and different versions could come in a sort of value well I'm all I can do with dignity with the with the original not just a couple of bonus tracks flying in but so that was a sort of full project having companion disks so we now know about that you know you know what they are the companion December at the point where Led Zeppelin four and houses of the holy we're about halfway through but there's more releases to be coming next year but the the game plan that I had was that well these releases would be going on for next year then I'll be getting up to speed like I did video to to be playing live [Applause] I think [Applause] well I think with encouragement like this and I definitely have to but anyway that's the plan for 2015 is to be working on a very secret project that I'm going to do I don't know what it is or anything project about what it is and I'm sure there'll be internet forums telling me what I'm doing what I'm gonna do and hopefully the you know into later 2015 I'll be seen to be playing which is what the idea is so that was my game plan going back to the celebration day coming out you know you can see how yeah we're all what anyways Jimmy I mean this has been fantastic you see what we want you know okay we want more because we're we're we're so amazing I I do too but I really felt I really felt that all that all the projects the the Led Zeppelin stuff and the put the current releases where redresses the studio world of Led Zeppelin and giving more information on it I thought that that was so important to do it and do it drop so so but you know it's alright I'm still a young other iPilot palm of my hand you know it's amazing a great artists get better and you are so fantastic you're so amazing and I always like to think of like Picasso I mean late Picasso is amazing it doesn't get any better and make page you know doesn't get any better I guess we want to thank everyone I think thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: 92Y Plus

Views: 1,179,256

Rating: 4.8472805 out of 5

Keywords: 92Y, 92nd Street Y, Jeff Koons (Visual Artist), Career (Quotation Subject), Jimmy Page (Musical Artist), The Yardbirds (Musical Group), Led Zeppelin III (Musical Album), Led Zeppelin (Musical Group), Led Zeppelin (Award-Winning Work), Music, Rock and Roll, Classic Rock

Id: HEzSDK747yc

Length: 78min 56sec (4736 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 05 2014