{"id":38,"date":"2013-10-25T12:07:23","date_gmt":"2013-10-25T12:07:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smartwpress.com\/jamsession\/?p=38"},"modified":"2013-10-25T12:07:23","modified_gmt":"2013-10-25T12:07:23","slug":"a-conversation-with-jimmy-page-and-robert-plant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sergiowalgood.com\/web\/2013\/10\/25\/a-conversation-with-jimmy-page-and-robert-plant\/","title":{"rendered":"A conversation with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Paul Jones, Led Zeppelin\u2019s bassist and keyboard player, was quietly playing backgammon and half listening to a phone-in radio talk show on New York FM.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in a club last night when someone asked me if I wanted to meet Jimmy Page,\u201d the show\u2019s host suddenly offered between calls. \u201cYou know, when I think about it, there\u2019s no one I\u2019d rather meet less than someone as disgusting as Jimmy Page.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jones bolted up from his game. \u201cLet me just say that Led Slime can\u2019t play their way out of a paper bag and if you plan on seeing them tomorrow night at the Garden, those goons are ripping you off. Now don\u2019t start wasting my time defending Led Slime. If you\u2019re thinking about calling up to do that, stick your head in the toilet and flush.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jones, normally a man of quiet reserve, strode furiously across the room. He snapped up a phone and dialed the station. After a short wait, the talk show host picked up the phone.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat would you like to talk about?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLed Zeppelin,\u201d Jones answered cooly in his clipped British accent. The line went dead. Victim of an eight-second delay button, the exchange was never given air time.<\/p>\n

It was a familiar battle, as Jones saw it. Although Led Zeppelin has managed to sell more than a million units apiece on all five of its albums and is currently working a U.S. tour that is expected to be the largest grossing undertaking in rock history, the band has been continually kicked, shoved, pummeled and kneed in the groin by critics of all stripes. \u201cI know it\u2019s unnecessary to fight back,\u201d Jones said. True enough: The Zep\u2019s overwhelming popularity speaks for itself. \u201cI just thought I\u2019d defend myself one last time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The night after that aborted defense, in the first of three concerts at Madison Square Garden, Led Zeppelin brought a standing-room-only audience to its feet with one of the finest shows of its six-year career. On Page\u2019s unexpected midset impulse, the band launched unrehearsed into a stunning 20-minute version of his tour de force, \u201cDazed and Confused.\u201d The tension of uncertain success was an evident and electric element in Zeppelin\u2019s performance that evening. \u201cNo question about it,\u201d lead singer Robert Plant enthused before returning to the stage for a second encore of \u201cCommunication Breakdown,\u201d \u201cthe tour has begun.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has been a long time since Zeppelin last rock & rolled. After 18 months spent laboring over their new double album, Physical Graffiti, the band has some warming up to do. \u201cIt\u2019s unfortunate there\u2019s got to be anybody there,\u201d Plant said. \u201cBut we\u2019ve got to feel our way. There\u2019s a lot of energy here this tour. Much more than the last one.\u201d The tour\u2019s official opening night, January 18th at the Minneapolis Sports Center, went surprisingly well considering the circumstances. Only a week before, Jimmy Page broke the tip of his left ring finger when it was caught in a slamming train door. With only one rehearsal to perfect what Page calls his \u201cthree-and-a-half-finger technique,\u201d the classic Zeppelin live pieces, \u201cDazed and Confused\u201d and \u201cSince I\u2019ve Been Loving You,\u201d were indefinitely retired. Codeine tablets and Jack Daniel\u2019s deadened the pain enough for Page to struggle through the band\u2019s demanding three-hour set.<\/p>\n

\"music<\/a><\/p>\n

Peter Grant, Led Zeppelin\u2019s manager and president of Swan Song, the group\u2019s record company, found those first few dates strange: \u201cA Led Zeppelin concert without \u2018Dazed and Confused\u2019 is something I\u2019ll have to get used to. In a lot of ways that number is the band at its very best. There\u2019s one point in the song where Pagey can take off and do whatever he wants to. There is always the uncertainty of whether it will be five or 35 minutes long.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Paul Jones, Led Zeppelin\u2019s bassist and keyboard player, was quietly playing backgammon and half listening to a phone-in radio<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[6,7,8,9],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","category-jamsession-news","tag-interview","tag-jam-session","tag-live","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sergiowalgood.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sergiowalgood.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sergiowalgood.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sergiowalgood.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sergiowalgood.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sergiowalgood.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sergiowalgood.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sergiowalgood.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sergiowalgood.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}