Terry Reid on Led Zeppelin and how he helped "put them together"
“I’ve found him, the singer”. And Jimmy said, “What does he look like‘?” “Whaddya mean what does he look like’?”, I said. “He looks like a Greek God. I’m talking about how he sings!
I told Peter Grant, Get Jimmy on the phone, I've got a drummer that'll knock his socks off and a guy who will sing rings around his guitar licks. So Jim gets on the phone and goes, 'What does he look like?' I said, Better than you do. That didn't go down very well.
RC: You’ve gone down in the history books as the man who was asked to join Led Zeppelin, but had to turn them down, because Mickie Most had you under exclusive contract.
TR: That’s a load of bullshit! I was the one who put the group together. Jimmy Page offered me the job, but I had two tours of America booked up, so I had to say no. In the meantime, we were doing a gig-in Buxton, I think it was – with the Band Of Joy as support. I’d seen them before, and I knew Robert Plant and John Bonham . And when I watched them on stage, I thought, that’s it I could hear the whole thing in my head. So I phoned up Jimmy the next day and said, “I’ve found him, the singer”. And Jimmy said, “What does he look like ‘?” “Whaddya mean what does he look like’?”, I said. “He looks like a Greek God. I’m talking about how he sings! And the drummer is phenomenal Check it out!” So people keep saying “Terry found Robert”, but he weren’t lost. He took a bit of finding, but he weren’t lost!
RC: So there was no bitterness about missing out on joining Zeppelin ?
TR: No,. I’m the guy who put the greatest rock and roll band in the world together, and I’m proud of it. When you do something good, there’s always people gonna try and make something bad out of it. But it don’t bother me, mate I never got a penny out of it, but I should be bitter about that? No, I’m just proud.
I saw Robert Plant the last time I was over. He’ll do anything for you, God bless him. Its nice to see he got through all that alive. That’s all that matters to me. He made such a fuss of my little daughter-I mean, strewth, she wouldn’t leave! I said, we gotta go, but she wouldn’t go unless Robert came too’
RC: Not the first girl to to lose her heart to Robert Plant.
TR: Yeah, but at six years old! I said to Robert, I think we’ve been through this situation before!
Record Collector, 1992
Less than three years later, having given up on England, Reid would be living in the States. But not before something happened — or, actually, didn't — that's haunted every article on him since: turning down the job as the singer of Led Zeppelin.
Reid refills our glasses and settles back on the sofa. It's clearly a story he's told before, but there's no tragic hint of Ancient Mariner in how he tells it. It was late '68. The Yardbirds, who he'd toured with before, were breaking up again and Peter Grant — Page and Reid's mutual manager — told him Page wanted to discuss a new band he was putting together. "So Jim called me up and said, 'You'd really be good as the singer,' and I said, Who else is in the band? 'Well, I've got John Paul Jones on bass.' I went, Hang on a minute, what kind of band is this, The Incredible String Band? Because I'd heard John Paul Jones in a studio with Donovan; I hadn't heard him play through two stacks of Marshalls yet. So I said, Well, I don't know what you're going to do, but I'd like to take a stab at it. But just one thing, I've made this commitment to Keith Richards to do a tour with the Stones. We never had paperwork with The Rolling Stones, not even a handshake, you should be so lucky, right? So I said, I'll be back in a few weeks. And [Jimmy] was, 'Oh no, we've got to do it now' — because Cream had broken up and everybody in London was trying to put one of those groups together, so it's a big scramble who's first. I said, Give me a break, I can't turn down Keith."
How Reid, who could be the poster boy for positive thinking, sees it, he didn't turn Zeppelin down, he put them together.
"My band was doing some college gigs in the north of England, with Tim Rose, and I'd just bought this great PA system from Sweden called Ackuset, gorgeous, cost me a fortune. We got ours set up and the roadies all went to the pub and a group called The Band Of Joy go on-stage. They're halfway through a song and the PA blew up. I'm thinking, Aw, that's rotten, and then I'm thinking, I paid all this bloody money for this PA, here's my chance to be a sound mixer!
"So I throw this guy Robert a mike and they kept playing and of course now it sounded unbelievable. I'm thinking, Jesus Christ. Who is this guy? And that frigging drummer, Holy shit, I daren't turn the drums up or I might blow my speaker! When we went back I told Peter Grant, Get Jimmy on the phone, I've got a drummer that'll knock his socks off and a guy who will sing rings around his guitar licks. So Jim gets on the phone and goes, 'What does he look like?' I said, Better than you do. That didn't go down very well. But Peter forced Jimmy into trying them out — and that was that." Reid and Plant are still the best of friends.
MOJO, August 2016
The major crossroads in Reid's life came in 1969, when Jimmy Page was putting together the New Yardbirds, which would eventually become Led Zeppelin, and seized on Reid as the perfect singer for the band. Over the years, the story has been told in numerous ways. One version has Reid, about to embark on a tour of America with the Stones, turning Page's offer down. Another suggests that Page couldn't wait for Reid's return from the road and decided to move ahead without him. As Reid explained it to MOJO, neither is quite true. "I didn't turn Jimmy down," Reid insisted. "I told him, I've got to go do this tour with the Stones. When I get back, let's have a go.
"But as it turned out, Mickie Most was at odds with Peter Grant about letting me go from our deal. Peter would say, 'We've got a fucking big problem with Mickie. He's put his foot down about your contract and there's no way of getting around it.'"
What everyone agrees on is that Reid suggested another singer, as well as his drummer, for the gig, putting Page together with Robert Plant and John Bonham. "In Birmingham I'd played with The Band Of Joy a couple of times — bunch of fucking hooligans," cackled Reid. "When Peter and Jimmy were talking about getting people for the band, I said, Whatever you do, you've got to try these guys out." As Reid would later joke of his involvement with Led Zeppelin: "I contributed half the band. That's enough on my part."
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Jimmy Page welcomes Flaming June painting back to Kensington
JP: I was at art college for a period of time … but oil painting, things that I wanted to do, were avoided so I admired the techniques of the Pre-Raphaelites from afar.
Evening Standard, 2 November 2016
Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin has welcomed the return of Frederic Leighton’s 1895 painting “Flaming June” back to where it was first painted. “It’s an emotional day for me,” he said on seeing the pre-Raphaelite icon go on display at Leighton House Museum, Kensington.
The guitarist, art collector and recipient of a GQ Men Of The Year Lifetime Achievement Award was first influenced by the pre-Raphaelite Leighton and his coterie, who included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and John William Waterhouse, when he was at art school in the Sixties. “I connected with pre-Raphaelite art in my early teens, when I released that there was a movement and a brotherhood. The more that I learnt the more exciting it became, especially to find out about their ethos was and that there was an aesthetic behind it.”
This November marks the first time “Flaming June” has returned to Britain since it left in the Sixties. And its return has been much warmer than its departure. For Page, a legend in his own right, seeing the painting was a monumental moment. “To actually see it in all its glory is absolutely magnificent, I’d say it’s quite intoxicating. To be able to see it close up and really appreciate what it is and see it in Leighton House, where it was painted, well it's quite a day.”
