1977 GIG Magazine Interview (Long)

["David Montgomery" <dmontgomery@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Gig Interview: Jimmy Page
Chris Salewicz, GIG, May 1977

"When you've discovered your true will, you should just forge ahead like a
steam train. If you put all your energies into it there's no doubt you'll
succeed."

London: The overriding first impression that emanates from both Led
Zeppelin's music and the legendary self-isolation the band and its entourage
maintains is one of power. Something akin to a mega-sized armour-plated
rhinoceros moving relentlessly ? and often, one suspects, humourlessly ?
through contemporary rock music.

In what seemed initially to be thoroughly in keeping with this assumed
tradition, it soon became apparent that endeavouring to be placed in an
?Interview Situation? with Jimmy Page would not prove to be the easiest
journalistic task I had ever undertaken. Indeed, there were moments when
scoring this interview seemed to be taking on all the elements of a parody
of The Quest For The Rap With The Big Name Rock Star.

Negotiations commenced at the end of November last year. They were
consumated in the second week of February at Swan Song's offices on London's
Kings Road. In the interim, Page had cancelled two scheduled appointments,
though we had actually met on one of these occasions. There had been a
further meeting at Emerson, Lake and Palmer's converted cinema rehearsal
studios, where Zeppelin was rehearsing for their first tour since Robert
Plant has sustained severe injuries in a car smash on the Greek island of
Rhodes in the summer of '75.

Almost predictably, when the interview did actually take place, six days
before the band was due to fly out to Texas (where the first dates would be
postponed because of Plant's tonsilitis, though that's another story), Page
revealed none of the superstar arrogance or aggression one might expect,
talking at length of Led Zeppelin with an almost religious fervour.

We also discussed his fascination with the occult and, in particular, with
the self-styled ?Great Beast,? Aleister Crowley (whose former Scottish home,
Boleskin House, Page now owns), and his related interests in ecological
matters. The guitarist seemed more content and at ease when dealing with
these subjects than when talking about the band; though by the time they
were raised he had warmed to the task of being interviewed.

For the first fifteen minutes of the interview he sat on the edge of a
couch, huddled over and shivering into the cup of tea he was holding in both
hands. His speech was frequently little more audible than a whisper. Indeed,
he seemed so fragile and it appeared to be such an exhausting emotional
effort to talk about Led Zeppelin, the impression remained that it might
completely upset his thought pattern ? or he might actually call off the
interview ? if he were asked to speak up.

Later on in the interview I would look up from my notebook and see Jimmy
Page lying back on the couch and looking at me through his legs. Or
stretched out with both eyes firmly shut and a hand stuffed down the crotch
of his frayed jeans as he delivered his semi-audible soliloquy.

Notwithstanding an acute bronchial cough that punctuated his speech, he
chain-smoked throughout the interview?

His eyes were ringed with the kind of wrinkles that some would describe as
laugh lines and others might attribute to the effects of constant nervous
tension. In fact, in the fall of last year Page spent some time as an
in-patient at an exclusive health farm near London. This was supposedly to
recuperate from the effects of having become dangerously underweight. Now,
though, as he told me in his soft accentless Home Counties voice, "I just
needed to get away for a while and see things from a different perspective.
There was nothing sinister. I needed to get into a regular pattern. A
regular schedule. And it seems to be working."

What sort of? uh? line do you want to take on this?" he asked me with what
seemed to be a slight edge of suspicion.

I summarized the majority of my questions. After that, he seemed a little
more comfortable: "Okay. Well, fire away. You can always edit out what you
don?t want."

Okay, then. So how have the rehearsals been? Pretty rigorous?

"The rehearsals started a month before Christmas and with the Christmas
period off we've been working consistently ever since. They've been going
well. Really well.

"Of course, the first task was to clean off the rest which is obviously
going to set in after eighteen months without being on stage? Although we
recorded Presence some fourteen months ago it?s not quite the same because a
tour is a concentrated series of dates. We'll have three days on and one day
off. And we have like a three and a half hour concert to contend with.

"Consequently there was a stamina aspect involved apart from anything else.
Plus the constant dilemma that appears from tour to tour about the
repertoire as such. What to drop, what not to drop? Which is always a great
problem when you've seen everything go down really, really well for its own
merit, for its own vibe, so to speak, and the atmosphere that that
particular number's portrayed and evoked. As has been the intention.

"As far as our playing goes, the way it ended up was everyone was just a
hundred percent confident and really bursting to go."

Have you dropped any numbers that were in the last live set?

"We've dropped a few things. But nothing of great importance. None of the
epic things but?"

What have you added?

"Stuff from the new LP. ?Candy Store Rock,? ?Achilles,? ?Nobody's Fault But
Mine?? We've also added ?Ten Years Gone,? a number we never did in the past.
It offered such a challenge as far as the guitars went. It?s really my baby
because I worked it out note for note at home. At one point there were nine
guitars going to present all the harmonies so obviously we lack some of
that. But nevertheless the overall feeling of the number comes across. And
comes across very well.

"And we're doing ?The Battle Of Evermore? which I think (laughs) is a very
sort of noble challenge really. We'll probably get applause for the sheer
guts of the thing rather than anything else.

"But they're coming off good. All of them."

So it?s all happening okay, the, as far as live?

"Yeah."

Do you get very apprehensive about going back on the road?

"Well, obviously when you haven't played a concentrated tour for two years?
well, it goes on for months. And obviously you've got to take into account
the fatigue aspect and all this sort of thing.

"But I'm pretty confident. Everyone's confident. As far as the playing goes
there's no problems at all. We've got such a variety in there ? Oh, ?Babe,
I'm Gonna Leave You? is another number that we've been doing? pedal steel
guitar instead of the usual. So it sounds pretty different from the
original.

"It's very interesting. And yet we've obviously kept in there all the key
epics: ?Achilles,? ?Kashmir,? ?Stairway?? things like that.

"But the most amazing thing, really, is that we started nine years ago
putting out albums, albums which have been constantly subject to change as
far as content goes, to the point where we stuck our necks out only because
that's the material that we've got when it comes to the time of recording.
But rather than stick to the previous formula and work stuff around it we've
just stuck to our guns. And because of that we?ve got a wide variety of
material?

"But nevertheless it's marvelous to think that after what is basically a two
year break ? even though the film's come out ? to hit the top of all these
polls (a reference to Zeppelin's having swept the boards of various assorted
music publication polls throughout the world) is really quite stunning,
really quite?awe-inspiring. A confident boost beyond all measure, you know,
to realize you're still thought of as being really contemporary instead of
a? (laughs) nostalgia-band, shall we say.

"Not that I ever thought we'd become a nostalgia band because we've got too
much up our sleeves to fall into that bracket. Nevertheless, it's nice to be
reassured. In the warmest possible way."

You obviously feel as strongly about the band now as ever.

"Yes (very decisively). And I feel very strongly about the timeless quality
of the songs too. I think that's where it's at? That's probably why we're so
critical about their construction when we start putting them together. So
you don't just rest on the obvious sort of clichés that were around in '72.

"I mean, it's so easy to sit there and jam a soul riff and to make a song
out of a soul riff."

The reaction that I have to Led Zeppelin's music ? and I know I'm not unique
in this ? is unlike what I get from any other band. On first hearing a new
Zeppelin record it often seems to slightly grate. There are usually edges to
it which you have to grow to understand. Also, whenever I haven't played any
of the records for a couple of months I'll put them on and immediately get a
colossal rush.

There's something there ? something indefinable unless you accept that it?s
just down to the chemistry of the four members ? that suggests the band
contains the true essence of rock'n'roll.

"Well, inventive rock'n'roll?it's got the root which is in all
rock'n'roll?the earthiness. But it's also got all the other facets that,
shall we say, musicians of today have been able to get. You know, finger
style, folk areas and things like that. And traces of jazz. Generally the
three strong areas. Which is so important."

And also whether it's in the hard rock or the acoustic side there's also
this enigmatic sense of power and strength. Yet many people still look on
you as just a heavy metal band.

"Well, they did. I think it's dawned on them now that we are a band that's
going to be subject to change all the time. Like it or loathe it.

"But the most encouraging thing about that is that when an LP is announced
the advance orders are so great that it seems they automatically assume
there is going to be a certain over-riding quality to it. Which is really
reassuring because that's what we've been going for. Which again related to
that lasting quality. Which one can only hope for.

"One can say ? and it sounds pretentious ? but it's the test of time which
shows it."

So was that your idea of the band when you first conceived it after the
Yardbirds ended? That it should have incredibly strong quality and
inventiveness.

"Definitely, Yeah. I mean, the first album has got the catalyst for so much.
You know, the blues and the sort of step off from that. And the working
together between Robert and myself and the acoustic work and the way you can
stretch an acoustic number? you know, keep the dramatic quality there. Which
is, after all, the atmosphere that you're trying to convey. And trying to,
you know, develop the mystery.

"And I hope that's still there. I think it is."

How do you feel about Presence?

"I think it?s the most important album myself. In many respects. Because of
the amount of time it took to do. Working up against a deadline it took
three weeks: the tracks took about a week. Then we had a slight break in the
middle when Robert fell over and he thought his leg had gone again. Then we
started again and continued.

"And it was pretty much up to me because after that the group really left it
to me. Which is really an honour after so long to have that sort of trust;
that they know you're not going to sort of mess it up, and don?t mind if you
embellish the thing or whatever? Because some of those tracks changed
immensely by the time all the overdubs and effects had gone on.

"Although it may not be the best track on the album ?Royal Orleans?? the
first verse of that is as it was. As a riff. After that you hear all these
guitars coming in (hums guitar parts). And that's the sort of thing which I
can do to change the whole mood of how a number comes out."

So when you did Physical Graffiti, for example, you'd work in the same way
whereby you'd just be left alone to produce the tracks?

"Yeah. Pretty much. There'll be the tracks and then Robert will come in and
do his vocal parts and sometimes Jones will come in and do a little
synthesizer work on the tracks. But usually it's down to me and (laughs) I'm
quite happy with that.

"As I say, it's an honour to have that sort of relationship with the band.

"The time spent on Physical Graffiti was really because of work that came in
between time and there was the problem of studio availability. We just
couldn't get in.

"And there was the new material which related to that point and I wanted it
to have a sort of chronological touch about it. And that's why there are all
those tracks that go way, way back and reflect the development of the band.
And then you have the apex of 'Kashmir'."

What do you feel in retrospect about The Song Remains The Same film?

"Well, I think the film's successful in so much as it is a frozen celluloid
statement of an evening.

"And the soundtrack as such? (pause) I wouldn't call it a live album because
we've got so much live stuff in the bag going back to '69 at the Albert
Hall. We've got some fabulous live stuff. And, it wasn't necessarily the
best live material we had but it was the live material that went with the
footage so it had to be used. So, you know, it wasn't like A Magic Night.
But it wasn't a poor night. It was an honest sort of mediocre night.

"You know, I've always thought of the band as being reasonably consistent as
far as the concerts go. I think we always start off shaky and it's at the
end when the whole thing builds. Which we build up between ourselves. We
build up the ? I don't know what you might call it ? the ESP aspects of it
where when you do start jamming and entering areas which are open to free
form and you start coming across the different rhythms and you might just
stop it and start and stop. And use some shock tactics.

"A lot of that is just off the cuff, you see. And that's where everybody's
really working. You can just anticipate what's coming. And a lot of bands
don't manage to be able to do that? a lot of larger bands anyway. They play
it safe with everything just about note for note perfect apart from some
change in the solo or something.

"But they don't let the solos go on for a long time on purpose so they can
really get their teeth into improvising and showing what can really be done.

"And consequently you hear a number one year and so much has changed from a
few years before. Because there is that quality.

"Again Presence by the way? We really needed that as a band that has been
together for such a long time to prove to ourselves that? You know, we've
always spoken of the instant chemistry and how the band get together and
start jamming and within those jams, riffs come out. And it doesn't take
long before you've got the framework of a song which often gets reviewed but
nevertheless it's there from the inception.

"Whereas you do hear stories of big bands that get together for two or three
weeks and they can't get anything together. There's like two or three
different strong frameworks every rehearsal. And that sort of three week
thing proved that it can be done.

"Mind you, there was a helluva lot of emotional anxiety and frustration
related to that as well. You know, the uncertainty of Robert's position and
one thing and another? And the way that the band really stuck together
during this whole thing because of the loyalty between the band and each
other. And that was the emotional release of getting it all out.

"That's why it's an important album to me. Because it reflects all the
spontaneous aspects."

How did you personally react when you heard about Robert's car smash? What
were your immediate reactions?

"Well, I was shattered. (profound concern in his voice) I'd been with Robert
the day before and I'd just left to go to Sicily. And I was in Sicily when I
heard the news."

So did you hear what state he was in or did you just get garbled reports?

"No, I just heard that he was hurt very seriously. A doctor had to come out
from London immediately and put him on a plane because the medical
facilities there were so impossible."

Was there any time when you thought ?Well, what happens if he doesn't get
better or if he dies? What happens to the future of the band?'

"Well, I've always felt ? and this has been discussed ? that no matter what
happened, provided he could still play and sing, and even if we could only
make albums, that we'd go on forever.

"Just really because the whole aspect of what's going to come round the
corner as far as writing goes is the dark element, the mysterious element.
You just don't know what's coming. So many good things have come out of that
that it would be criminal to interrupt a sort of alchemical process like
that. And we're aware of that and we wish to play forever.

"There's a lot of important work to be done yet anyway. It's only just
started."

You're obviously very confident of the future of the band now. Have you
always been so?

"Yeah."

Never any doubts at all?

"No, no, no."

But there does seem to be a contradiction in that you're so into the music?

"It's the all important thing, yeah."

But at the same time Led Zeppelin is a colossal business empire.

"Well, that's just one of those things that happened to snowball up behind
us really. But nevertheless the music is the most important thing. If we'd
been conscious of trying to sustain a particular sort of market then we'd
have stuck to a formula. Which is a terribly dangerous thing. When you know
you're going through changes it obviously reflects on your music ? lyrics,
especially. If you try and suppress that, then you get into trouble. If you
suppress it for the sake of a formula.

"But then that's our philosophy of what we're up to and other people have a
different way of looking at it.

"But it's only the test of time which can lay down the importance of what
you're doing. You see, there's been so much flak directed towards us. I knew
that it would take a time before a proper perspective was reached about what
we were really doing. The fourth album probably being the first milestone in
that respect, even though the third should have been.

"When the third LP came out, Crosby Stills, Nash and Young had just toured.
They'd done an acoustic set followed by an electric set. And, of course, our
third album having more predominant acoustic work on it then the reviews
related it to Crosby, Stills and Nash and said 'Well, obviously they've been
influenced by them.' And missed the point altogether. They forgot that we'd
used acoustic guitars very heavily on the first album. Not quite so much on
the second but it was there.

"And, you know, after we'd been on the road after second album had been
released we really wanted to have a rest and consequently sitting around a
log fire in Wales you don't put up a 200 Watt Marshall set-up but you get
your acoustic guitars. Consequently acoustic numbers came out.

"And if they've got a validity you owe it to yourself to lay them down."

Oh, incidentally, I've always felt that John Paul Jones' situation within
the band was exceptionally important, especially in the way he seems to
cloak a lot of the changes. Do you not feel that he's underrated?

"Underrated? Well, quite possibly. Yeah, as far as a bass player relative to
a rhythm section. Yeah.

"But as far as the writing goes everybody has an equal share of coming forth
with the ideas they've got. But it always seems to end up with myself when
it comes to most of it. And I think Robert and I are sort of very
sympathetic to the sort of loony vibe because we've always been working
together."

Yeah, there is a sense of you and Robert as The Terrible Duo, the
Inseparables?

"Yeah. Yeah. But it's not to the point of a Jagger-Richard thing where
nobody else gets a look in. It isn't a cut-off situation. It's just
developed from the early days where, say, Jonesy may come up with one riff
for one section and Bonzo the same whereas I'll probably come up with the
whole framework. Or piece together all those little bits and pieces."

How is Robert standing up to the stagework?

"Fine. Fine. He's been rehearsing ten hours a day. Ten hours on the trot."

I understand that a changed Robert Plant who has taken to reading Nietzsche
on plane journeys has emerged since the accident. I know that you were ill
for about nine months prior to joining the Yardbirds and I've heard you're
supposed to have spent much of that time reading. Was that when your
interest in the occult began?

(Fifteen second pause) "My interest in the occult started when I was about
fifteen."

Do you agree that whereas Western society tends to see occult matters as a
very dark ? a very black ? thing it is, in fact, a very light and
enlightening thing?"

"Well, there has been a major revival, a spiritual revival, throughout the
world and it reflects all over the place. Not just within the West.

"And there's a great interest in the Celtic mysteries and the Dark Ages and
the areas where a lot of these truths were just erased for the sake of the
Church, you know. But I'm quite fascinated by these things."

So obviously the folkie Traditional English side of Zeppelin all emanates
from one logical area of interest, no?

"Yeah. Well, a man's a product of his environment. It depends how much he
wants to educate himself in that framework. You know, in relationship to his
craft. There should be no boundaries, so just carry on as far as you can and
do it."

Page, of course, is an ardent aficionado of occultist and magician, Aleister
Crowley (1875-1947). Indeed, the guitarist owns Equinox, an occult bookshop
situated off London's Kensington High Street, which has a large section
devoted to Crowley's works as well as having his birth chart pinned to one
wall. And, as already mentioned, Page spends most of his time on British
shores at the home that Crowley once owned, Boleskin House.

Not unexpectedly, such matters are beginning to arouse the interests of the
more sensational end of the British press. In fact, only a few weeks ago a
National Enquirer-like weekly magazine featured an aerial photograph of the
house on its cover along with details of collapsing staircases and the
appropriate ?Dark Man Of Pop? blurb about Page.

"Well," says the guitarist, "They should have gone into the history of the
house and Crowley would've come out like a shinning angel compared with what
else went on.

"I mean, it's had a history of suicides and con tricks. Plus the site of the
house is on the site of a church and a graveyard, and the church was burnt
down by an arsonist with the whole congregation in it. So the actual
foundations of the house are built on hallowed ground.

"But I'm not really interested in going on about Crowley in so much as, say,
Pete Townshend does about Meher Baba. I'm not interested in trying to turn
anybody on in any way whatsoever. You know, there are a thousand paths and
they can choose their own.

"All I know is that it's a system that works? (laughs) Although, of course,
there's not much point in following a system that doesn't work."

But what about the hassles you've had with Kenneth Anger? (Page wrote the
score for film-maker occultist, and author of Hollywood Babylon, Kenneth
Anger's imminent film, Lucifer Rising, but was turned down by Anger towards
the end of last year and replaced by none other than Mansonite Bobby
Beausoleil. Since then Anger has denounced Page on every possible occasion.)

"I think it's more the problems he's had with himself. All I know is that at
the end of the film I promised him ? as I had before ? the loan of a three
speed projector which makes the editing so much easier. I said to him 'well,
it's just going to be your own time invested'. And I also told him that he
must put the music on after he put the footage together so I was just
waiting for him to contact me, really. He had other music that I'd done
instead of the stuff that I'd delivered which he said he wanted to use.
Nevertheless, I still needed to hear from him. And I never heard anything."

Didn't he come down here and stick things onto the door of this record
company?

"Oh, that was his curse. That was pathetic. His curse amounted to sending
letters to people. Silly letters saying 'Bugger off, Page' and this sort of
thing.

"How can you take that sort of thing seriously? (Sounds quite deeply disappo
inted). A man you had thought to be a genuine occultist and it turns out to
be just? theatre. It's a shame, really."

Although it's quite acceptable these days, do you wish your occult interests
weren't known about?

"I just don't want it rammed down people's throats as though I'm saying it's
the be-all and end-all and the only way you'll be able to put things
together. I'm not saying that at all. You might go off and study the
Gurdjieff system and be equally?

"But what I can relate to is Crowley's system of self-liberation. In which
repression is the greatest work of sin. It?s like being in a job when you
want to be doing something else. That's the area where the true will should
come forward. And when you've discovered your true will you should just
forge ahead like a steam train. If you put all your energies into it there's
no doubt you'll succeed. Because that's your true will. It may take a little
while to work out what that is, but when you discover it, it's all there.

"You know, when you realize what it is you're supposed to be here for. I
mean, everyone's got a talent for something. Not necessarily artistic but
whatever you care to say. And it's just a process of self-liberation. I
mean, I just find his writings to be twentieth century. As a lot of the
others weren't.

"And there's really nothing more to say than that. I find him quite a
curious, highly enigmatic character. Consequently I enjoy my researches into
him. But it doesn?t want to be blown out of all proportion, though, because
that would be? silly, you know. I'm just another artist, too."

Yeah, it's an interest in all things occult and, as you said, all things
English or, rather, of Albion. And that's just one area, right?

"Mmmmm."

Uhh?Returning to the music for a moment do you feel any great responsibility
in your position as one of the ruling triumvirate of rock'n'roll along with
the Stones and the Who? Do you feel any great responsibility towards
rock'n'roll?

"Well, I've always felt a commitment, shall we say? Because I got into it
because I was so turned on by the sounds that I heard when I was really
young and I just wanted to be involved in it. It was just something
thrilling that could send chills up your spine."

Presumably your parents told you you'd grow out of it?

"No, actually they were very encouraging. They may not have understood a lot
of what I was doing but nevertheless they had enough confidence that I knew
what I was doing; that I wasn't just (laughs) a nut or something? "

Do you and the rest of the other three members of Zeppelin see much of each
other socially?

"Not that much. But we do. We don't live in each other's pockets so it's
always a great joy to see each other again."

Do you by any chance find the rock'n'roll lifestyle a strain in anyway?

"What side of it?"

Well, and, taking into account your stay at the health farm, the
irregularities of the hours, for example?"

"Well, that taxes you physically."

And inevitably, therefore, it must tax your mental powers?

"Well, in a way, yes. Except that when I'm very tired I can do my best
writing. You know, late at night because there's nothing to distract you and
all those day to day problems have gone. And I can just start concentrating
on the guitar and get lost within it and I find that all these things are
coming out."

But there are those who bemoan rock'n'roll as being vastly uneconomic in
terms of both financial and human terms, especially human terms?

"But the willpower gets you through. And the adrenaline and the feedback
from the audience at live concerts ? which is maybe what we've been
missing ? is the thing that charges you up like a battery."

You really enjoy playing on stage, do you?

"Oh yeah."

You don?t prefer recording from playing live or?

"Both. And things have been out of balance in that respect. And one knows
something's missing and gets edgy about it. But it's not until you play
again ? when you rehearse ? that you know what it is.

"Of course, a lot of it has been done by Robert's recovery. And certainly
not even wanting to breathe a word of the subject of a tour until nature had
dictated her terms and things became good.

"But then there is that bond between us that gives enough confidence to just
wait and see. Not just go off making solo albums or kicking with others, as
they do.

"There's incredible dedication in what we're doing. Be that rightly or
wrongly. Subjectively, that's just the way it is. That's the way it's got to
be. There's nothing complacent about things. The minute you start not
criticizing what you're doing then you're in trouble.

"And if you start thinking everything you're doing is a master piece
(laughs) then you're in trouble."

© Chris Salewicz 1977