press reports

[dancing_days@xxxxxxxx (Adam Shoop)]

January 1st, 1969
Official Atlantic Press release....
LED ZEPPELIN - THE BEGINNING

	Led Zeppelin began in a small, stuffy rehearsal hall, mid London,
late 1968.  "Four of us got together in this two by two room and started
playing.  Then we knew - we started laughing at each other.  Maybe it was
from relief, or maybe from the knowledge that we knew we could groove
together.  But that was it.  That was just how well it was going." Jimmy
Page, master guitarist, former Yardbird, was watching his thoughts, his
ambitions, his concealed desires as a musician, take shape in the new
supergroup, Led Zeppelin.  "The statement of our first two weeks together
is our album.  We cut it in 15 hours, and between us wrote 8 of the
tracks.  Our main problem was knowing what channel to take it along
musically.  Everyone in the group had such a high musical content we
thought each of us would be into our own thing.  But it all fell
together.

	"We'll probably always be faced with the fact that individually
each member could cut his own album going in his own direction and it
would be great.  But all those ideas in one outfit, well, that's pretty
fantastic too."

	The formation of Led Zeppelin was no easy task.  When it became
generally known that Jimmy Page was putting a group together, he was
inundated with calls from musicians all over the country.  When the Yard
Birds finally split up in the summer of 1968, Jimmy was ready to take his
bass player Chris Dreja with him into Led Zeppelin.

	Chris eventually backed out of the arrangment, choosing to go
into management.

	"When I joined the Yardbirds, my main reason was to give myself
the opportunity of playing my own music.  Before that, my only interest
was session work.  I began to feel limited not beign able to express
myself.  When I left, it was for almost exactly the same reasons.  The
group split up because everyone began to feel the need to go in his own
direction.  The pity is, there would have still been great potential."

	It was all down to Jimmy Page, alone, on a one man campaign to
make himself heard.  as a session guitarist he was, and still is, one of
the finest in England, contributing his work to tracks by such as the
Stones, Donovan, and latterly, Joe Cocker, who took the Beatles 'With A
Little Hep From My Friends' to such a smash.

	"I was working on the Donovan album, 'Hurdy Gurdy Man', with John
Paul Jones who did some of the arrangements.  He asked if I could use a
bass guitar in Led Zeppelin.  John is an incredible arranger and
musician.  He didn't need me for a job, but he felt the need to express
himself and figured wecould do that together."

	"Sessions are great, but you can't get into your own thing.  Both
myself, and John felt that in order to give what we had to offer we had
to have a group.  He wanted to be part of a group of musicians who could
lay down some good things."

	"I can't put a tag to our music.  Every one of us has been
influenced by the blues, but it's one interpretation of it and how you
utilise it.  I wish someone would invent an expression, but the closest I
can get is contemporary blues."

	"I want us to be raw and basic.  That was the whole thing that
made the Yardbirds happen.  To go into your own thing is fine, but it has
to be a form of experimentation that evolves from a basic sound that
everyone knows and can relate to."

	"Perhaps that's why the blues is so big.  You can recognise the
roots."

	It took about two years for Led Zeppelin to emerge.  The name was
concieved by Jimmy Page when he was still with the Yardbirds nd each
member of the group took a shot at recording on his own.  Jimmy Penned
"Beck's Bolero" for Jeff Beck.  Today it's a Beck standard, then it was a
track on which the Who's Keith Moon played drums.  "When we were kicking
around group names, I suddenly remembered Led Zeppelin which I had come
up with at the time."

	That too, would have to be a supergroup, but every musician, to
his own bag, and for Jimmy Page, it's John Paul Jones, John Bonham and
Robert Plant to make Led Zeppelin an example of good music.  And this is
a group that won two standing ovations on their first date in London,
with only sixhours of rehearsal behind them.

	It's the greatest trip any selection of musicians can take their
audience on, the greatest feeling of being into a scene, on which America
is ready and waiting for.
By JUNE HARRIS

(I know that was kind of long, so I'll continue with backround info.
tomorrow.)

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