16. May 2014
COOL: “Sitting in Jimmy Page’s Soho hotel suite is disarming enough,”
By Walter Price
Sure, for obvious reason I could only write about all the things that flow from Morrissey and Robert Plant’s mouths for days, scratch that, possibly forever. With accompanying playful jabs at whatever they’re promoting. It’s all out of love really. A whole lotta love.
I just read this, I suppose exclusive, interview with Led Zeppelin co-mastermind Jimmy Page over at musicradar.com and what he had to say and how he delivered his points made me long for the days of real Rockers. Mainly his seemingly non-arrogant answers made me comfortable and at the same time wishing younger artists would read this article and learn how to conduct business. (We’ll go into that at later date.)
Speaking to Jeff Slate, the guitarist provided some fascinating insight into what’s going on with Zep and their new deluxe reissues. Page also subtly takes the reader to back-in-the-day making of albums that could have only been produced by the the band themselves. Ground breakers, note for note.
Here are a few of my fave Page quotes from the interview. Check out the full deal at musicradar.com HERE!
“Things change – within five years things are changing. So you’ve got to have your material mastered to that format to the way that you see it and hear it; otherwise, they’ll do it for you, and they’ll fuck it up. That’s what happened when Atlantic put out the first set of CDs. They were horrible! Absolutely appalling. And it was insulting because for Led Zeppelin, the criteria of it was always – and still is – quality.”
“I’ve got different memories for each song. That’s the whole thing, and I haven’t sort of laid all of that down. Do you know what I mean? It’s not documented. With the second album, on the first set of recordings, we rehearsed it at my house, the first few numbers. Basically, it’s Whole Lotta Love and What Is And What Should Never Be – we recorded in London, and that’s the sum total of that sort of recording at that time. It was only a couple of days that we would go in there. There were more overdubs on What Is And What Should Never Be. The whole complete package is on there, the solos and everything. The vocal is slightly different from the final one – yeah, it is.”
“But really, we did this so that our catalogue can now be out there in whatever format people are listening to music on, and I’ve also done super-high resolution versions for whatever comes next. And in the process I found I could hear things that I hadn’t heard in years – and certainly not on previous versions. I mean, the best way to hear these would be for you to hear the original master tapes, but I can’t have everyone round to my house to hear them. So I think this is as good as it gets and that the fans will be really happy with these first three albums… and what’s to come.”
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