Jimmy Page: “The Holy Grail is yet to be discovered”

This article originally appeared in Uncut’s December 2014 issue

By Jimmy Page’s standards, 2014 has been a surprisingly busy year. He has overseen the launch of a lengthy Led Zeppelin reissue campaign, published his autobiography and even teamed up with designer Paul Smith for a range of limited edition Zeppelin scarves. Next year, he promises, there will even be the prospect of new music.

“Time sometimes passes quite quickly,” he tells Uncut. Page will be 71 in January, but he looks in remarkably good shape. With his bronze tan, white ponytail and wide smile he resembles an old school Hollywood star recently returned from the south of France. Dressed in black, and taking occasional sips from a glass of sparkling mineral water, he is animated as he answers your questions on subjects ranging from deep Zeppelin album cuts to the prospect of a Yardbirds reunion, his formative musical inspirations and his extraordinary session work from the 1960s.

Page even responds to Robert Plant’s claim – in these very pages – that he suggested reuniting with his former bandmate for an acoustic project… “It’s just spin,” says Page. “I don’t think it’s productive in any shape or form to what he’s doing or what I’m doing.” Now on with your questions…

Reliving all of the wonderful moments from this cannon of music, which moment took you by surprise the most?
Michael Des Barres
A lot of it you think, ‘Well this might possibly happen, that might possibly happen.’ But I’d say as far the manifestation of it went, it was getting the first gold disc for Led Zeppelin, for Led Zeppelin 1. You were fully aware of gold discs and things like that, with artists that you were personally endeared to along the way, American artists. Suddenly everything that we’d done, all the work etcetera etcetera, we had broken America I know, but the fact is that gold disc I was so symbolic to everything for me, that was a major thing. It would have been a surprise if I had thought about it a year earlier maybe, because I wasn’t still in The Yardbirds, do you see what I mean?

Would you please show me how to play “Black Dog”? It’s been bothering me for a long time.
Brian May
Well, I’ll have to then if Brian’s asked! What are the chords for “Black Dog”? It’s in A, and then it sort of goes to an E chord but then while it’s snaking around it, it has some sort of little triplets that take you back into the A. So, yes, it’s tricky. You just have to sort of know how to count it.

Is there one guitar you’ve had that you feel is more magical than the rest?
J Mascis
I think most people would think it’s a 59 Les Paul because I bought that from Jed Walsh who insisted that I buy it off him in 1969, and I go into the second album with that. So “Whole Lotta Love” is done on it, and I also played it at the 02. Same guitar. I’m pretty loyal to my guitars you know, but then they’re pretty loyal to me to. But there are a number of guitars. There’s also an acoustic guitar that all of the first four albums were written on. So I mean that’s quite an important one. But as far as the one that people got to see then it’s the 59 Les Paul. How many guitars do I have? I don’t know. I don’t know! But I think the answer to it is, more than I can play at any one point in time. Even though I do have double necks so I can try and play more than at one time!

Why has it taken you so long to put your autobiography together?
Christian Parker, Shoreditch
I was doing other things at the same time! One of the things that slowed it up was knowing, say, there was a photo session in the past, in the Seventies, and knowing that there were contact sheets. Maybe the images are now with agencies, but not the contact sheets. So I wanted to get into the contact sheets, and that wasn’t necessarily always so easy to do. There were also certain photographs that I wanted to get, but I didn’t remember who the photographer was. It just took time to piece it all together. But however long it took, I knew that nobody had done an autobiography in photographs. As it goes from 13 through to 70 years of age, it’s got a whole history of a working musician. All the changes that go on are almost chameleon-like but nevertheless they’re driven by this one thing – which is a passion towards music. That was the challenge: to do something that had never been done before but which just unfolds there more you go through it.

What new projects are in the pipeline and when can we expect to hear them?
Derek Murphy, Dublin, Ireland
I’ve been involved in some other epic projects. I’ve got all the Zeppelin remasters finished, for all of the albums, so they’ll be coming out, staggered release. I also got material for a ‘what happened in this day in history’ for the website, it’s all stockpiled. So things will be coming out in healthy instalments, which then allows me to focus on musicians and music that I want to be seen to be doing next year. I hoped I could do it this year, but I can’t. It’s too much. I don’t want to have to contract musicians and then go, “I’m sorry, I’ve gotta go over to the States for a month to do some promo.” I want to start generating the passion within all of the musicians that I’m working with, and we’re going to go through like a rocket. It’ll manifest itself next year.

Can I tell you anything about it? Well, I’ll be playing guitar. That we can all guarantee. And I won’t be singing. Is it song based? I want go out there and play music from all the way through. I did a solo tour in 1988. I did exactly the same thing then. You know, I’ve only had one solo album out, really. And one single in 1965. So I haven’t really tried to sort of flood the market with my own stuff! I want to get out there and play exactly what it is that I’ve got in mind here to do, including new material. But there’ll be really some good surprises in there. I think people want me to go out there and play. They know all the sort of stuff that I can do. I can play in many sorts of categories because we’ve seen that with Led Zeppelin, all the acoustic stuff, and this, that and the other. That’s exactly what I would do.

Are there any plans to release any more experimental music?
Bruce Yardley, Leeds
I tell you what is coming out which I’m really excited about this, it’s the mix that I did of Lucifer Rising but I’m leaving the guitar on it, it’s got like a 12-string, because that is the guide guitar that’s showing me where I’m going to do the overdub. This isn’t what got sent to Kenneth Anger, because I didn’t want hardly any guitar at all, there’s only a little bit of guitar at the end, guitars coming in more across it but the mix is really, really superb, I’m really proud of it. And I’ve got some experimental music that was done with bow and Theremin which is like, hang on to your seats because it really, really is something else, it’s disturbing. I’ve got like home stuff that I did at the same studio or equipment that I did the Lucifer Rising on, with that whole guitar textures and overdubs and I think people want to hear that. They want to know what it was I was doing. I’ll show you what it was like and what I was doing and you’ll see. That’s coming on the website. Vinyl.

Who inspired you to play guitar?
Maryann in California
Lonnie Donegan inspired everyone because he made it look as though it was possible to do. But who really moved it out of just playing acoustic to electric was all those people that were playing in the 1950s, really. Initially, it was the rockabilly style guitar, Johnny Burnette Rock & Roll Trio. When you heard that it was just something that inspired you so much to want to play out of the box, because it’s so abstract the guitar playing on that. Scotty Moore’s guitar playing, Cliff Gallop, Jonny Neats, all of these people, they gave me the inspiration… If you heard them you were infected by them, if you listened to it, then you were just seduced by it. That was what was going to write the whole of the manual for use as much as anything else.

Then The Beatles opened it up for bands to write and down here in the south it was the Chess catalogue more than the Tamla Motown. There was this great fusion that had gone on from rock though the blues and all that wonderful music, that Chicago blues movement, really, that went on Vee-Jay and Chess. All that stuff was so exhilarating.

Where did you buy your records when you were growing up?
Paul Lloyd, Crystal Palace
In Epsom. Rumbelows, It was by the Clock Tower. Rumbelows had a little section at the back where they sold records. It’s just like you see this old footage where they’ve got people going in booths and all of that. I’d go there from school on the day where they had their deliveries in, so they’d get their deliveries in the weekdays for the weekend and you go in there and then you can check certain artists to see what their new record was. Yeah that’s it, I was really on that. I didn’t wait till Saturday, in case something had already sold out in the morning. I’d be going in there and checking what they had. I could only afford the equivalent of my pocket money, it was like the equivalent of one single. But I also had to pay for guitars so there was a lot of bobbing and weaving when it came down to being a record collector or a guitar player.

Is there a definitive list of all your session work?
David Burns
No, but I’ll tell you something interesting. On the BBC, there’s a little musical clip that comes on, I think the song’s called “I’ve Got Everything You Need Babe”. There’s a new version of it right now, but beforehand when it was originally there, I heard this solo and I said, “My goodness, that’s me!” So I tracked it down that it was Bern Elliot & The Fenmen. So I must have done this session, because it’s definitely me without a shadow of a doubt. I wouldn’t have remembered I did a solo let alone a song or was on the session, but they were coming really fast and furious. You didn’t know who you were going in with, that’s the most important thing, so I didn’t have a whole list myself. I can estimate how many. It’s a hell of a lot, it’s gotta be. I was doing it for the equivalent of three years or something like that. Three sessions a day.

Are there any surviving live multi-track tapes from the Japan 1971 tour?
Ian Coe, Toronto
Maybe. But not for now. There’s been a lot of Led Zeppelin material that’s come out, including live material. But also there’s the 02 which shows the three remaining members with Jason, a more recent incarnation. I’m so keen for the Led Zeppelin material from the studio to go out to give more information on what went on and I thought that really tipped the scales. Now there’s other things to do. And I stockpile material. So, yeah, there’s always someone wanting to know what’s considered to be the Holy Grail ‘cause it’s yet to be discovered. But there’s no point in even thinking about that at the moment. I’ve put quite a lot of time into the Led Zeppelin material, really.

What do you consider to be your finest non Led Zeppelin achievement?
David Goodson
It’s hard to say. There’s so many different areas isn’t there, it’s difficult. I’d surprise everybody but I’d be very sincere if I said that doing the Olympics with Leona Lewis was phenomenal. She’s really plucky, she’s superb, and she sang “Whole Lotta Love” brilliantly. In actual fact we managed to do the full length of “Whole Lotta Love” – it wasn’t edited or anything like that – and she sang it beautifully. It was so cool the way she approached it. For that audience, and the fact we didn’t fuck it up… we’re really going to do this and we’re going to do it proud. That was important. It was a Led Zeppelin number but it took on another persona… I was really proud to be able to play that riff for the handover.

Would you consider playing with The Yardbirds again?
Byron Lewis, Barry, Vale of Glamorgan
But who would sing? Keith Relf died all those many years ago. He’d done a couple of other things, Renascence and Medicine Head. Keith Relf was really damn good. Could Jeff Beck do it? Sing? He doesn’t want to sing “Hi Ho Silver Lining” let alone sing “For Your Love”. That’s unfair, that’s really unfair! But I can’t sing, so there we are. Maybe Eric would like to sing? No, don’t say that because then it’ll start all that stupid rumours. I’m not starting. I’m just thinking who’s going to sing. At least you got three of the original guitarists still there and the current ones that have been since.

Where does Zozo come from?
Preston Currie, Sudbury, Suffolk
It comes from me, everyone had a symbol. Originally, there was going to be no information on the album, Led Zeppelin 4. Then somebody had suggested having a sort of mark, a craftsman mark. But it wasn’t going to be so easy because everyone’s going to have their idea on maybe what that one symbol should be, so it came down to everyone should choose their own symbols. Because it’s the fourth album, all the others have been I, II and III in Roman numerals, so then we’ll have four characters, if you like. Having been working on it along with all the rereleases, I think of it as IV and actually I think of Houses Of The Holy as V. That said, everyone chose their own symbol and I chose mine. What does it mean? It means I chose my symbol and put it on there. If I do a book, then that’s probably the right time to describe the whole process of it if you don’t mind.

A telephone can be clearly heard ringing in the studio on Zeppelin’s “The Ocean”. Who was on the phone?
Phil Tate, South Shields
I don’t know. Do I find it strange that people pick up on these very specific points of records? No. I’m thrilled that the records are recorded in such a way that the hifi quality, even though it’s tough – the music’s not light and wimpy – that you can hear detail on it because that’s what you’re supposed to do. It was supposed to be something whereby you could hear everything that was going on and yet there would still be an intensity and a character for each number. Each one separate sound, very different in its approach almost in its performance so you can hear those sorts of things and it’s great that you can.

I think that’s got a lot to do with the analogue recording, I really honestly do. All of those things were done from analogue. On IV, you’ll hear a version of “Stairway To Heaven” that is absolute hifi, that’s exactly what hifi is all about. It was done well in the first place, it was executed really superbly well, and of course when you’ve got these great musicians you want to make sure you can hear what they’ve done.

In the Seventies, you ran a bookshop, Equinox. Can you tell us about it?
Julie & Mo, Germany
I was interested in alternative… basically, things alternative. There was quite a number of like-minded people around at that point in time so I had a bookshop in West London because there were a couple on Museum Street and there was one in Cecil Court. Basically, it was an occult bookshop, and it covered all manner of things like astrology and yoga, eastern mysticism, western mysticism, it was right across the board. It’s very similar to what you have in a bookshop like Watkins really, that’s what it was.

How involved were you in Swan Song?
Davy Maguire, Dublin
Very much so. We were all very keen to have something as a record label. We were thrilled. Dave Edmunds, Pretty Things. Detective, they were good. That first album of theirs, it was really good. It should have been more popular, it should have sold better, shouldn’t it? Bad Company… Bad Company was more Peter Grant’s thing, Peter had the Bad Company thing and put that together and that was really a great band to have on there because of Paul Rodgers, he’s phenomenal – he was then and still is.

The Pretty Things were a band that were really changing their music and had done because they probably did one of the best singles way back in the day with “Rosalyn”, that’s wild! That’s serious! And then they had gone through SF Sorrow and the music that they were doing on Swan Song was incredible. It was the sort of band that when someone said, “Oh, some tapes have come in,” I was really keen to hear what they’d done, because it was always so good! Good writing, good performance from everybody. A fine band.

Jimmy, would you agree with Robert Plant’s offer to do an all-acoustic set?
Taylor Miranda, Ferndale, California
That’s coming from a soundbite that is inaccurate. He would have no intention whatsoever of doing it. So I’m not getting into it. People keep giving me these quotes. I don’t follow what he says… all I know is, it’s speaking in volume that we just did that one show. He can say whatever he wants. He can say “Jimmy this, Jimmy that…” I don’t care. I’ve got acoustic songs. Don’t you think I’ve got some new material for what I’m going to do? It’s just spin. It’s spin, and it’s not on. The Robert Plant questions are difficult for me to answer because I’ve had enough of all of this stuff, to be honest. Robert says this, Robert says that. I just don’t want to be presenting soundbites so that it’s like some kind of ping pong match. I’ve had enough. I don’t need it. The only reality of it is that we did one concert. No matter how you dress it up, look at the situation. That’s it.