LIGHT & SHADE Copyright © 2012 by Brad Tolinski All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. www.crownpublishing.com CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tolinski, Brad. Light and shade: conversations with Jimmy Page/Brad Tolinski. —1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Page, Jimmy—Interviews. 2. Rock musicians—England—Interviews. 3. Led Zeppelin (Musical group) I. Page, Jimmy. II. Title. ML419.P37A5 2012 782.42166092—dc23 [B] 2012009454 eISBN: 978-0-307-98573-6 Jacket design by Eric White Jacket photography: Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns v3.1 For Kane and Nico Tolinski CONTENTS Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication OVERTURE CHAPTER 1 “There was a fight almost every time we performed …” CHAPTER 2 “I wanted to play loud …” MUSICAL INTERLUDE A conversation with Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck CHAPTER 3 “I took full advantage of them …” MUSICAL INTERLUDE The Yardbirds according to Chris Dreja CHAPTER 4 “I wanted artistic control in a vise grip …” MUSICAL INTERLUDE A conversation with John Paul Jones CHAPTER 5 “Fuck the sixties! We’re going to chart the new decade …” MUSICAL INTERLUDE A conversation with Jimmy Page and Jack White CHAPTER 6 “They told us we were committing professional suicide …” CHAPTER 7 “The tours were exercises in pure hedonism …” CHAPTER 8 “It was my life—that fusion of magick and music …” MUSICAL INTERLUDE A conversation with Led Zeppelin publicist Danny Goldberg MUSICAL INTERLUDE Top ten Led Zeppelin guitar moments CHAPTER 9 “I was knocked sideways …” MUSICAL INTERLUDE A conversation with Bad Company and Firm vocalist Paul Rodgers CHAPTER 10 “I still had a lot to offer and say musically …” MUSICAL INTERLUDE An inventory of Jimmy Page’s primary guitars, amps, and effects CHAPTER 11 “We’re older and wiser …” MUSICAL INTERLUDE A conversation with men’s fashion designer John Varvatos GRAND FINALE The astrology of Jimmy Page THANK YOU BIBLIOGRAPHY About the Author OVERTURE OR MORE than fifty years, guitarist/composer/producer Jimmy Page has influenced contemporary music in both large and subtle ways. F While still in his teens, he and a small handful of musicians helped introduce American blues to the British Isles, sparking a revolution that set the stage for artists such as the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and Cream. His virtuoso guitar work on countless studio sessions in the sixties, with artists as disparate as Nico, Joe Cocker, Donovan, and Them, helped create the soundtrack for Swinging London’s much- celebrated youth explosion. And his groundbreaking playing, writing, and production work with Led Zeppelin dominated the seventies and continues to resonate decades after. Even now, Page remains a dynamic force whose inventiveness continues to surprise. His recent “photographic autobiography,” Jimmy Page by Jimmy Page, is an original and beautifully designed assessment of his life and career, while his new website, jimmypage.com, with its smart graphics and informative content, should satisfy the cravings of his worldwide legion of fans to know what he’s up to. Considering his many accomplishments and rich history, one would assume that there would be several books about him. The world of Jimmy Page, however, has largely been uncharted. Sounds like another Led Zeppelin mystery, but the truth is that this one is fairly easy to solve. There is the matter of Page’s natural reticence; he is, after all, the man who chose to dress himself as a hermit in the band’s 1976 concert film, The Song Remains the Same. More significant, however, is the fact that Page has had an uneasy, sometimes antagonistic relationship with music journalists and critics—the very same people who tend to write rock and roll biographies. So why the hostility? Absurd though it may sound, in the early seventies, when Led Zeppelin was coming into its own, the hipster rock press often was, to put it mildly, less than enthusiastic about the band and its now-universally-hailed music. Rolling Stone magazine was particularly savage. In 1968, critic John Mendelsohn wrote a 389-word vivisection asserting that Led Zeppelin’s first album offered “little that its twin, the Jeff Beck Group, didn’t say as well or better three months ago.” Several months later, Rolling Stone chose this same Mendelsohn to review Zeppelin II, which he dismissed as “one especially heavy song extended over the space of two whole sides.” Stone was by no means alone in picking on Led Zeppelin. In December 1970, Detroit’s legendary rock and roll magazine Creem printed a notorious “anti-review” of Led Zeppelin III, in which critic Alexander Icenine used faux, drug-addled gibberish to express his utter contempt for the album: What is a Led Zeppily? I have oftimes asked of my own selfhead this questlung upon retiring to my bed patterns. Or sometimes, how is a Red Zipper not a Load Zoppinsky? Many times there is no answer and they refuse to do it for ya. How did Jimmy Page respond to these and other “sober” assessments of his work? He turned his back on the entire rock writing community. As the band got bigger, the reviews got better and Page’s chilly attitude toward the press began to thaw. But in many ways the damage had already been done. Veteran rock writer Jaan Uhelszki recalls one exchange with Page during Zeppelin’s 1977 tour that is as telling as it is funny. “I’d been on the road with the band for over a week and couldn’t get Jimmy to do an interview,” Uhelszki says. “Finally, on the last day of the tour, he agreed to an audience on the condition that the publicist had to be there. I didn’t find out until the time of the interview that Jimmy stipulated that I must first ask the publicist my question and then she would relay the question to him—even though we all spoke the same language and I was sitting a mere six feet from him. This went on for about an hour.” But maybe Page had a right to keep his guard up. Most writers just wanted to know about his alleged drug use, weird groupie sex, or whether it was true that he’d made a pact with Satan. Truth is, few journalists treated him or his band with the respect they accorded his