Laluxea

The sort of scene I’d like to see is where all the different facets of the arts in a musical sphere are accepted readily by the media and the public. At the moment, because of the press, as soon as one thing becomes really popular, that’s it - you’ve got to find something else, something new.

The whole thing that’s happening with us is the same as the James Taylor thing - but the complete opposite. People are starting to say: ‘Good lyricist, good song-writer but on stage, he sounds very samey after 40 minutes.’ I blame the press. Just let the musicians and the people get on with it - which is all the people ask for.

Many critics let their personal tastes jade what they’re seeing and hearing. It’s that whole thing of being put in a bag. Unfortunately, people are so trendy - that’s the terror of it.

ON CRITICISM

Criticism can be great - valid criticism, that is. I said it before and I say it again - if I play badly, I know I played badly and when I play well, I know I’ve played well. According to my capabilities.

But people shouldn’t go along expecting an enigma when they see this bloke on stage and expect to see the epitome of what they consider to be the best in rock guitar. They should realize he’s only a human being - another struggling musician trying to better himself.

That’s why there’s always this race about who’s the best - nobody’s the best. Because there’s always somebody who’s got a particular field who’s better than the bloke who’s claimed to be the best.

That’s what’s so good for me - that’s what makes the whole scene for me. But for these others, who always have to classify everything…

ON ERIC CLAPTON, GEORGE HARRISON

I went through what I think Eric may have gone through - it’s just the fact that suddenly everything you pick up seems to be going sour. You’re trying your hardest and everybody is putting you down every time you try something.

And I think for everybody who is really trying their hardest and is reasonably sensitive into the bargain, it’s gonna do a lot of damage, and I think it certainly did a lot of damage to Eric. I know another person it did do a lot of damage to - about three or four years ago - and that was George Harrison, who could hardly pick up a guitar because he just thought that every one thought he was a joke. It was obviously totally untrue as far as the public went, but as far as the press went, there were these snide comments and all that sort of thing.

I think it took him - well, he made a friendship with Eric and he went though the sitar thing, which was pretty valid and he did some good things on that. But as soon as he got with Eric, he became a guitar man, and he tried and he tried and he tried. Now he’s having a go and he’s won through. Which is good for him if he’s got the strength and the will to preserve … but for some people, it could shatter them totally.

ON THE BEATLES

It’s funny that since their split, you can see how important it was when the four of them were together.

I met Paul McCartney in New York recently and he was talking to me about the album he was doing - the second one, “Ram.” He said you can’t believe how hard it is when you’ve worked with people for that amount of time - the same four people working together - and you come up with a song. And you just say ‘alright, here it is’ and everybody just fits their bit in and it’s there. I know exactly what Paul means, because it’s like that with us.

He said it was so difficult to get it together with all fresh studio people. And I can sympathize with him. I know what it was like when I was playing sessions in London. The blokes would come in with their song, and every session musician would have to try and do his best. Obviously it wasn’t as good as the bloke’s own group, but some A&R man was saying, ‘Well, there’s got to be the session men, the group don’t match up to the quality we require.’

ON HIS OWN CHOICE OF RECORDS

All sorts of different things. Bert Jonsch is often on. Lots of early rock … lots of that. All the Sun stuff - it still sends shivers up my spine.

You put on something like the early Presley records and you hear the phrasing, you hear the excitement, and everyone’s really into it. At the end of “Mystery Train”, you hear them all laughing - it’s fantastic. And I can still get into those records because I know the excitement and the feeling that was there in those early days when they really knew that they were breaking into something - a new form of music.

ON ELTON JOHN

His albums are really, really good. For what he’s doing. I wouldn’t fault them. For his bag. But when he stands up and in sort of a yellow jacket, pink trousers, and silver shoes, then kicks over his stool which I thought was an incredible sendup of Jerry Lee Lewis, thinking oh yes, great in crowd humor. Then suddenly you realize that he’s serious and it’s a bit of a comedown after watching all that other stuff.

ON THE FOURTH LED ZEPPELIN ALBUM

Personally I lived with it for so long now - and seen so many mess ups by other people in the process of getting it together - that my senses have been battered into a pulp. I can’t ever hear it anymore. It’s become like that. I don’t mean I can’t put it on and listen to it. I mean, I can’t get anything out of it at all. It’s really a dreadful state to be in.

But the fact is that there were so many foul ups by engineers … basically engineers. Some of the tracks were started in December. That was at the Island Studios in London. I can’t remember it all. We’ve got such a backlog of stuff on tape now, that even when we release the new album, we’ll still have a lot in the can.

Anyway, after Island we went to our house in Hampshire, a place where we have often rehearsed, and we decided to take the mobile studio truck there because we were used to the place … we’d often rehearsed there, we lived there sometimes, and we just set the gear up. We took along the Rolling Stones’ mobile truck. Then as we thought of an idea, we got it down on tape right away, and a lot of tracks came out of that. Almost everything on the album.

In a way, it was a good method of doing it. The only thing wrong was that we got so excited about an idea, and we’d rush to finish its format and get it on the tape - it was like a quick productivity thing. We got so excited about having all the facilities there.

What we needed was about two weeks solid with the mobile truck. We only actually had about six days, but we should have made it two weeks. We needed one full week to get everything out of our system and getting used to the facilities, and then really getting together in the second week. That’s probably what we’ll do in the future, now we know the facilities we have available. John Paul Jones is getting a studio put in his house, and so am I. It seems to be the answer really.

You need the sort of facilities where you can have a cuppa tea and wander around the garden and then come in and do whatever you have to do, instead of walking into a studio … down a flight of steps into fluorescent lights and opening up a big door that’s soundproof and there’s acoustic tiles everywhere.

ON RECORDING STUDIOS

I personally get terrible studio nerves. Even if I’ve worked the whole thing out at home beforehand, I get terrible nervous playing anyway. But when I’ve worked something out at home which is a little above my normal capabilities, when it comes to playing it at the studio, well - to use one of our favorite expressions - my bottle goes. If it’s something that you can just knock off fairly easily, then fair enough. But when it gets a little more difficult, well. That’s one reason why I’m personally getting my own studio setup together at home.

At 41, Jimmy Page has spent nearly half of his life in the spotlight --first as a member of influential 60s blues-rock band the Yardbirds, later as one-quarter of the legendary70s supergroup Led Zeppelin, where his innovative instrumental technique established him as one of the premier guitar heroes of that decade. His rock credentials, in short, are the sort that might be expected to afford him a certain amount of musical self-confidence. But when Page and former Bad Company lead vocalist Paul Rodgers first teamed up in a new band called the Firm, confidence took a back seat to another emotion: fear. What if, right in the middle of a Firm song, a restless crowd started calling out for Stairway to Heaven or another Led Zep classic? Or Bad Companys ``Cant Get Enough``?

To be perfectly truthful, I was terrified of that aspect of the whole thing, says Page, who appears with the Firm Wednesday at the Rosemont Horizon. `Both Paul and I had been in pretty big bands, and we both were one- quarter of those bands. Those are very strong identities, something that you cant change. But you don`t want to go out on tour and do things that put you in a nostalgia bracket.

Sure, we`re bound to be in a certain section of the nostalgia bracket, because of what we`ve done in the past. But you don`t want to play on that and say this is all that I`m good for. For us, the only way to counteract that whole problem of numbers from the past was not to rehearse them at all.

As it turned out, shouts for Stairway to Heaven havent proved to be among the Firms problems. Material from the bands self-titled debut album (currently in the Top 20), Rodgers solo efforts and instrumentals from the Page-scored film, Death Wish II, fill up the two hours the band spends on stage. But one show early on in the tour had to be moved to a smaller venue when ticket sales proved sluggish, and the reviews haven`t always been raves --which may be why the normally polite Page showed the tiniest bit of testiness when this interviewer, possibly exhibiting more honesty than sense, noted that she might have to cover Julian Lennon at the Auditorium Theater Wednesday instead of heading out to Rosemont to see the Firm.

The thing is, Julian Lennon will be back, says Page. You mean that you wont be? ``I didnt say that. But he`s younger than I am, isnt he?`` Is the Firm a one-shot deal? ``All I said to you is that you should come and see us, to actually hear what it is that Im trying to do at this point in time.``

Page has let his playing speak for him throughout most of his career. His interviews have been infrequent, and while unfailingly civil--he generously agreed to speak with The Tribune as scheduled despite a bout with laryngitis --he comes across as intelligent but wary. An innocent question about his growing-up days in England, for instance, elicits the reply, Oh, come on, this isn`t the National Enquirer, is it?

Actually, much of Pages past, at least his days with Led Zeppelin, arguably qualifies as topflight tabloid fodder. In addition to the usual rumors of overindulgence in the garden variety fast-lane fripperies--groupies, drugs and alcohol, which eventually did in Zeppelin drummer John Bonham in 1980--the supergroup was widely rumored to be involved in black magic, with Page, who purchased well-known Satanist Aleister Crowleys home in 1970, as the guiding force.

I don`t know what you`re talking about, says Page in reference to the persistent witchcraft rumor (frequently reported as fact). Come on, you work for the press. Surely you don`t believe what you read in it, do you? I`ve never been a black magician in my life. It`s a shame that people print that. They don`t know me, and they expose themselves as being absolute idiots. I find it amusing.

Page is equally adamant about the falsity of another widespread rumor that surfaced after Bonhams death, namely, that Zeppelin was planning to re- form, perhaps as XYZ. ``What really happened was after we lost John we had a meeting and categorically decided--no ifs, buts, maybes--that we could not possibly carry on Led Zeppelin without him,says Page, who describes himself asabsolutely destroyedby Bonham`s death.It would have been an insult to have had another drummer onstage.

Even if we had had three drummers onstage it still wouldn`t have been right. It would have been an insult to what he had put into the band and to him personally. All the rumors you heard about drummers coming in to replace John Bonham were never put around by us. They were started by the business people. It didn`t do any good, though.

Instead, while Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant plunged into a solo project, Page did little until the Death Wish II offer came along.

The director asked if I would like to do it, he says. I had never thought that the opportunity (to do film scores) would come my way. But it was the most perfect thing that could have happened, because at that point I needed the discipline of something like that. I`d like to do another film score sometime, but not for a couple of years.

Pages involvement with Rodgers, with whom he previously had only a ``nodding acquaintance,`` grew out of the Ronnie Lane Action Research into Multiple Sclerosis (ARMS) benefit concerts in 1983. ``I had gotten together with him briefly prior to the ARMS tour,`` says Page. ``Some of our friends had suggested that we get together, and I called him up once out of the blue. At the time, I was just sitting around, really. Well, I was working in the studio, but as far as playing with another musician went, I wasnt doing anything.

Anyway, we got one song together, `Bird on the Wing.` Then, a few months later, the ARMS tour came up, and I really wanted to be part of it. Paul sang on the tour, and we got along pretty well. It was like, well, it would be nice if we could get some vehicle together to go out and play. Then we started talking about how if a compatible rhythm section could be found, and if the music was right, (putting together a group) could be a viable situation. It was sort of step by step.

By the summer of 1984, Page and Rodgers had found the rhythm section in the persons of drummer Chris Slade and bassist/keyboardist Tony Franklin and christened their new group the Firm. While the name has corporate connotations in the U.S., its actually British slang for a group of friends. ``Its a very East End of London sort of expression,says Page.When the boys go out together for a drink and leave the wife or whatever behind, its not unknown to call that group the firm or the old firm.Its unfortunate that the term has a business connotation in the U.S.; it wasn`t meant that way at all.``

One of the best things about the Firm, according to Page, is the musical mutual respect among band members.

Obviously, this is a different band from Led Zeppelin, he says. `I knew Robert (Plant) for many years and we got to know each other very well. This time, its four different sets of personalities getting to know each other. But theres a mutual respect, and I can quite honestly say that each show has been better than the last. You dont get that unless everybody is giving everything that theyve got. It was always that way with Zeppelin, too. But its quite satisfying to see it happening with this band.``