Длиннющая такая ... Интервью с Пейджем и Плантом. Наслаждайтесь!
The following conversations with Page and
took place over a period of two weeks. We began
over tea in Plant's suite at Chicago's Ambassador
Hotel. The talk continued 3 days later in Page's darkened
room. "It's still morning" he shivered, sitting, underneath
a blanket on his sofa. "We may have to talk for three
hours before I make any sense." The resulting interview,
from which most of this material is taken, stretched into
late afternoon. Page, a soft spoken man, apparently
preferred candles to electric light.
A visit to Plant several days later provided more material
and one final visit with Page on the plane flight to New York
supplied the remaining details.
It wasn't until Led Zeppelin's last American tour
in /73 that the media fully acknowledged the
band's popularity.
PLANT: We decided to hire our first publicity firm after
we toured here in the summer of '72. That was the same
summer that the Stones toured and we knew full well
that we were doing more business than them. We were getting
better gates in comparison to a lot of people who were
constantly glorified in the press. So without getting
too egocentric, we thought it was time that
peopIe heard something about us other than that we
were eating women and throwing the bones out the window.
That whole lunacy thing was all people knew about us
and it was all word-of-mouth. All those times of lunacy were
ok, but we aren't and never were monsters, Just good-time
boys, loved by their fans and hated by their critics.
Do you feel, any competition with the
Stones ?
PAGE: Naw. I don't think of it that way. I don't feel
any competition at all. The Stones are great and
always have been. Jaggers lyrics are just amazing. Right
on the ball every time. I mean, I know all about how we're
supposed to be the biggest group in the world and all, but
I don't ever think about it. I don't feel that competition
enters into it. It's who makes good music and who doesn't...
And who's managed to sustain themselves.
What motivates you at this point?
PAGE: I love playing. If it was down to just that, it
would just be utopia. But it's not. It's airplanes,
hotel rooms, limousines and armed guards standing outside
rooms. I don't get off on that part of it at all.
But its the price I'm willing to pay to get out and play.
I was very restless over the last 18 months where we were
laid off and worked on the album.
PLANT: There's a constant conflict, really, within me.
As much as I really enjoy what I do at home . . . I play on
my own little soccer team and I've been taking part in the
community and living the life of any ordinary guy, I always
find myself wistful and enveloped in a feeling I can't
really get out of my system. I miss this band when we aren't
playing. I have to call Jimmy up or something to appease
that restlessness. The other night when we played for the
first time again I found the biggest smile on my mouth.

PAGE: Chalk that off to Keith Richard's sense of humor.
I did what could possibly be the next Stones B side. It was
Rick Grech, Keith and me doing a number called "Scarlet."
I can't remember the drummer. It sounded very similar in style
and mood to those Blonde on Blonde tracks.. It was great,
really good. We stayed up all night and went down to Island
Studios where Keith put some reggae guitars over one section.
I just put some solos on it, but it was eight in the morning
or the next day before I did that. He took the tapes to
Switzerland and someone found out about them. Keith told people
that it was track from my album. I don't need to do a solo
album and neither does anybody else in the band. The chemistry
is such that there's nobody in the background who's so
frustrated that he has to bring out his own LPs. I don't really
like doing that Townshend number of telling everybody exactly
what to play. I don't like that too much. A group's a group after
all, isn't it?

PAGE: I may not believe in myself but I believe in what I'm doing.
I know where I'm going musically. I can see my pattern and
I'm going much slower than I thought I'd be going . I can tell
how far I ought to be going, I know how to get there, all I've got
to do is keep playing. That might sound a bit weird because of
all the John McLaughlins who sound like they're in
outer space or something. Maybe it's the tortoise and the hare.
I'm not a guitarist as far as a techcian goes, I just pick it
up and play it. Technique doesn't come into it. I deal
in emotions. It's the harmonic side that's important. That's
the side I expected to be further along on than I am now.
That just means to say that I've got to keep at it..
There's such a wealth of arts and styles within the instrument
. . flamenco, jazz, rock, blues... you name it it's there.
In the early days my dream was to fuse all those styles. Now
composing has become just as important. Hand- hand with that,
I think it's time to travel, start gathering some real
right-in-there experiences with street musicians around the world.
Moroccan musicians, Indian musicians - - - it could be a good
time to travel around now. This year. I don't know how everyone
else is gonna take that, but that's the direction I'm heading in
right now. This week, I'm a gypsy. Maybe next week it'll be
glitter rock.

PAGE: Are you kidding? God. you know what you can gain when
you sit down with the Moroccans. As a person and as a musician.
That's how you grow. Not by living like this ordering
up room service in hotels. It's got to be the opposite end
of the scale. The balance has got to swing exactly the opposite.
To the point where maybe I'll have an instrument and nothing
else. I used to travel like that a long while ago. There's no
reason I can't do it again. There's always this time thing.
You can't buy time. Everything, for me, seems to be a race
against time. Especially musically. I know what I
want to get down and I haven't got much time to do it in.
I had another idea of getting a traveling medicine
wagon with a dropdown side and traveling around England.
That might sound crazy to you, but over there it's
so rural you can do it. Just drop down the side and play
through big battery amps and mixers and it can be as
temporary or as permanent as I want it to be. I like change
and I like contrast. I don't like being stuck in one situation,
day to day. Domesticity and all that isn't really for me.
Sitting in this hotel for a week is no picnic. That's
when the road fever starts and that's when the breakage's start,
but I haven't gotten to that stage yet. I've been pretty
mellow so far. Mind you, were only into the tour a week.

PLANT: Nineteen years and never been kissed, I remember it well.
It's been a long time. Nowadays we're more into staying in our
rooms and reading Nietzsche. There was good fun to be had, you
know, it's just that in those days there were more people to
have good fun with than there are now. The States were much more
fun.. L.A. was L.A. It's not L.A. now. L.A infested with jaded
12-year-olds is not the L.A. that I really dug. It was the first
place I ever landed in America: the first time I ever saw a
cop with a gun, the first time I ever saw a 20-foot-long car.
There were a lot of fun-loving people to crash into. People
were genuinely welcoming us to the country and we started out
on a path of positive enjoyment. Throwing eggs from floor to floor
and really silly water battles and all the good fun that a
19-year-old boy should have. It was just the first steps of
learning how to be crazy. We met a lot of people who we
still know and a lot of people who have faded away. Some Died.
Some of them just grew up. I don't see the point in growing up.

PLANT: Well, I am. I haven't lost my innocence particularly.
I'm always ready to pretend I haven't. Yeah, it is a shame in a way.
And it's a shame to see these young chicks bungle their lives
away in a flurry and rush to compete with what was in the old days
the goodtime relationships we had with the GTOs and people like that.
When it came to looning, they could give us as much of a looning
as we could give them. It's a shame, really. If you listen
to "Sick Again," a track from Physical Graffiti, the words show
I feel a bit sorry for them. "Clutchin pages from your teenage dream
in the lobby of the Hotel Paradise/Through the circus of the L.A.
queen how fast you learn the downhill slide." One minute she's 12
and the next minute she's 13 and over the top. Such a shame.
They haven't got the style that they had in the old days... way
back in '68. The last time I was in L.A. I got very bored.
Boredom is a horrible thing. Boredom is the beginning of all
destruction and everything that is negative. Every place is
determined by the characters who are there . It's just that
the character rating at the moment has zeroed right out.
Of course, I enjoy it all, but as a total giggle. It's funny.
I miss it all the clamor. The whole lot. It's all a big rush.
>From the shit houses to the classiest hotels, it's all been fun.
>From the Shadowbox Motel. where the walls crumbled during the night
seven years ago, to the Plaza, where the attorney general staying
one floor above complained about me playing Little Feat records
too loud last night.

PAGE: NO. Otherwise I would have been totally destroyed
by the reviews of our last album, wouldn't I? You see,
this is the point. I just don't care. I don't care what
critics and other people think. So far I've been very,
very fortunate because it appears that people like to
hear the music I like to play. What more fortunate position
can a musician be in? But I will still carry on changing
all the time. You can't expect to be the same person you
were three years ago. Some people expect you to be and can't
come to terms with the fact that if a year has elapsed between
LPs, that means one year's worth of changes. The material
consequently is affected by that, the lyrics are affected by that
.. the music too. I don't feel I have to top myself at all.
It took a long time for this album mainly because when we
originally went in to record it, John Paul Jones wasn't well
and we had to cancel the time . . . everything got messed up.
It took three months to sort the situation out.

PAGE: I guess we are our own executives now, aren't we? Listen,
give us time with Swan Song. You'll be surprised. We've got
some good things lined up. I think the Pretty Things LP
is brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. We're executives and all
that crap, but I'll tell you one thing the label was never
right from the top Led Zeppelin records. It's designed to bring
in other groups and promote acts that have had raw deals in the past.
It's a vehicle for them and not for us to just make a few
extra pennies over the top. That's the cynical way of looking
at a record company. People have been asking me whether
I'll be doing any producing for the label. I don't know.
I'm just too involved with Zeppelin. I was offered a chance,
a long-standing one too-to produce Freddie King. Which I'd love
to do. But I need time to work on it.

PAGE: People always say that amidst their search for The Next
Big Thing. The only real woomph was when the Stones and Beatles
came over. But it's always said, " The business is dying!" I
don't think so. There's too many good musicians around for
the music business to be sagging. There's so many different styles
and facets of the 360-degree music sphere to listen to.
>From tribal to classical music, it's all there. If the bottom
was to sag out of that, for God's sake, help us all.
If there was never another record made, I think there's enough
music recorded and in the vaults everywhere for me to
be happy forever. Then again, I can listen to all different
sorts of music. I don't really care about The Next Big
Thing. It's interesting when something new comes along,
a band of dwarfs playing electronic harps or something,
but I'm not searching. Look at Bad Company and the Average White
Band. Those guys have all been around in one form or another
for a very long time. How many of the new ones coming
through have really got a lot of substance? In Britain, I'm
afraid there's not much at all. We've got to deal with Suzi
Quatro and Mud. It's absurd. Top Ten shouldn't be crap, but it is.

PAGE: It came together really quick. It was cut very shortly
after the band was formed. Our only rehearsal was a two-week
tour of Scandinavia that we did as the New Yardbirds.
For material, we obviously went right down to our blues
roots. I still had plenty of Yardbirds riffs left over.
By the time Jeff [Beck] did go, it was up to me to come up with
a lot of new stuff. It was this thing where Clapton set a heavy
precedent in the Yardbirds which Beck had to follow and then
it was even harder for me, in away, because the second lead
guitarist had suddenly become the first. And I was under pressure
to come up with my own riffs. On the first LP I was still
heavily influenced by the earlier days. I think it tells a bit, too.
The album was made in three weeks. It was obvious that somebody had
to take the lead, otherwise we'd have all sat around jamming
for six months. But after that, on the second LP, you can really
hear the group identity coming together.
PLANT: That first album was the first time that headphones
meant anything to me. What I heard coming back to me over the cans
while I was singing was better than the finest chick in all
the land. It had so much weight, so much power, it was, devastating.
I had a long ways to go with my voice then, but at the same time
the enthusiasm and spark of working with Jimmy's guitar shows
through quite well. It was all very raunchy then. Everything was
fitting together into a tradernark for us. We were learning
what got us off most and what got people off most, and what
we knew got more people back to the hotel after the gig.
We made no money on the first tour. Nothing at all.
Jimmy put in every penny that he'd gotten from the Yardbirds
and that wasn't much. Until Peter Grant took them over,
they didn't make the money they should have made. So we made
the album and took off on a tour with a road crew of one.

PAGE: So many people are frightened to take a chance in life
and there's so many chances you have to take. You can't just
find yourself doing something and not happy doing it.
If you're working at the factory and you're cursing every day
that you get up, at all costs get out of it. You'll just make
yourself ill. That's why I say I'm very fortunate because I
love what I'm doing. Seeing people's faces, really getting off
on them, makes me incredibly happy. Genuinely.

PAGE: I'll give you a gamble. I was in a band, I won't give
the name because it's not worth knowing about, but it
was the sort of band where we were travelling around all the
time in a bus. I did that for two years after I left school,
to the point where I was starting to get really good bread.
But I was getting ill. So I went back to art college.
And that was a total change in direction. That's why I say
it's possible to do. As dedicated as I was to playing
the guitar, I knew doing it that way was doing me in forever.
Every two months I had glandular fever. So for the next
18 months I was living on ten dollars a week and getting my
strength up. But I was still playing.
PLANT: Let me tell you a little story behind the song '"Ten Years
Gone" on our new album. I was working my ass off before joining
Zeppelin. A lady I really dearly loved said, "Right. It's
me or your fans." Not that I had fans, but I said, "I can't stop,
I've got to keep going." She's quite content these days, I imagine.
She's got a washing machine that works by itself and a little sports-
car. We wouldn't have anything to say anymore. I could probably
relate to her, but she couldn't relate to me. I'd be smiling too much.
Ten years gone, I'm afraid. Anyway, there's a gamble for you.
PAGE: Ill give you another one. I was at art college and started to do
sessionwork. Believe me, a lot of guys would consider that to be
the apex- studio work. I left that to join the Yardbirds at a third
of the bread because I wanted to play again. I didn't feel I was
playing enough in the studio. I was doing three studio dates a day
and I was becoming one of those sort of people that I hated.

PAGE: Certain sessions were really a pleasure to do, but the problem
was that you never knew what you weregonna do. You might have
heard that I played on a Burt Bacharach record. It's true.
I never knew what I was doing. You just got booked into a
particular studio at the hours of two and five thirty. Sometimes
it would be somebody you were happy to see. other times it was,
"What am I doing here?". When I started doing sessions, the
guitar was in vogue. I was playing solos every day. Then afterwards,
when the Stax thing was going on and you got whole brass sections
coming in, I ended up hardly playing anything, just a little
riff here and there .. . no solos. And I remember one particular
occasion when I hadn't played a solo for, quite literally, a couple
of months. And I was asked to play a solo on a rock & roll thing.
I played it and felt that what I'd done was absolute crap. I was so
disgusted with myself that I made my mind up that I had to get out
of it. It was messing me right up.

PAGE: I have really good memories. Apart from one tour that
nearly killed us, it was so intense, apart from that
it was a great group to play in. I've never regretted anything
I've ever done. Any musician would have jumped at the chance to
play in that band. It was particularly good when Jeff and I were
both doing lead guitar. It really could have been built into something
exceptional at that point, but unfortunately there's precious little
on wax of that particular point. There's only "Stroll On"
from the Blow-Up film-that was quite funny-and "Happenings Ten Years
Time Ago" and "Daisy." We just didn't get into the studio too much
at that time. Obviously, there were ups and downs. Everybody wants
to know about the feuds and personality conflicts . I don't think
that it ever got really evil.. It never got that bad. If it was
presented in the right way, maybe a Yardbirds reunion album
would be a good thing to do someday. Somehow I can't see Jeff doing
it, though. He's a funny bloke.

PAGE: Yes, it was owned by Aleister Crowley. But there were
two or three owners before Crowley moved into it. It was also
a church that was burned to the ground with the congregation in
it. And that's the site of the house. Strange: things have
happened in that house that had nothing to do with Crowley.
The bad vibes were already there. A man was beheaded there and
sometimes you can hear his head rolling down. I haven't
actually heard it, but a friend of mine, who is extremely
straight and doesn't know anything about anything like that
at all, heard it. He thought it was the cats bungling
about. I wasn't there at the time, but he told the help,
"Why don't you let the cats out at night? They make a
terrible racket, rolling about in the halls." And they said,
'The cats are locked in a room every night." Then they told
him the story of the house. So that sort of thing was there
before Crowley got there. Of course, after Crowley there
have been suicides, people carted off to mental hospitals...

PAGE: I didn't say that. I just said I didn't hear the head roll.

PAGE: The unknown. I'm attracted by the unknown, but I take
precautions. I don't go walking into things blind.

PAGE: Yeah. Well, all my houses are isolated. Many is the time
I just stay home alone. I spend a lot of time near water.
Crowley's house is in Loch Ness, Scotland. I have another house
in Sussex, where I spend most of my time. It's quite near London.
It's moated and terraces off into lakes. I mean, I could
tell you things, but it might give people ideas.
A few things have happened that would freak some people out,
but I was surprised actually at how composed I was. I don't really
want to go on about my personal beliefs or my involvement in magic.
I'm not trying to do a Harrison or a Townshend. I'm not interested
in turning anybody on to anybody that I'm turned on to .. .
if people want to find things, they find them themselves. I'm a firm
believer in that.

PAGE: There's nothing about Zeppelin in there at all.
The artist spends his whole time masturbating over the
Stones in that book, doesn't he? The Stones in drag and
things like that. When I first saw that book, I thought,
aw, this is really great. But when I really started to look
at it, there were things that I just didn't like. People can
laugh at this, but I didn't like to see a picture of Ray Charles
driving around in the car with his arm around a chick.
It's tasteless. But the guy's French, so what can we say?
Ray Charles is blind. What kind of humor is that? They may
be his rock dreams, but they. sure aren't mine.
Out of all the guitarists to come out of the Sixties, though
Beck. Clapton, Lee, Townshend and I are still having a
go. That says something. Beck, Clapton and me were sort of
the Richmond/Croydon type clan, and Alvin Lee, I don't know
where he came from. Lester or something like that. So he was never
in with it a lot. And Townshend, Townshend was from Middlesex
and he used to go down to the clubs and watch the other guitarists.
I didn't meet him, though, until "I Can't Explain." I was doing
the session guitar work on that. I haven't seen Townshend in years.
But I suppose we've all kept going and tried to do better and
better and better. I heard some stuff from Beck's solo LP
recently that was fucking brilliant. Really good. But I don't know,
it's all instrumental and it's a guitarist's guitar LP, I think.
He's very mellow and Beck at his best can be very tasty.

PAGE: Oh. Eric. Fucking hell, Eric. Yes, I saw him with his
new band and also at his Rainbow concert. At least at the Rainbow
he had some people with some balls with him. He had Townshend and
Ronnie Wood and Jimmy Karstein and [Jim Capaldi. "Pearly Queen"
was incredible.. And I would have thought that after that, he would
have said, "Right, I'm gonna get English musicians." Ever since
he's been with American musicians, he's laid back further and further.
I went over to see him after he'd done his Rainbow concert and it
wasn't hard to sense his total disappointment that Derek and the
Dominoes were never really accepted. It must have been a big
thing for him that they didn't get all the acclaim that the Cream did.
But the thing is, when ,a band has a certain chemistry, like the Cream
had .. . wow, the chances of recreating that again are how many
billion to one. It's very, very difficult. The key to Zeppelin's
longevity has been change. We put out our first LP; then a second
one that was nothing like the first, then a third LP totally
different from them, and on it went. I know why we got a lot of
bad press on our albums. People couldn't understand, a lot of reviewers
couldn't understand why we put out an LP like Zeppelin ll,
then followed it up with lll with "That's the Way" and acoustic numbers
like that on it. They just couldn't understand it.
The fact was that Robert and I had gone away-to Bron-Y-Aur cottage
in Wales and started writing songs. Christ. that was the
material we had. so we used it. It was nothing like, "We got
to do some heavy rock &roll because that's what our image demands..."
Album-wise, it usually takes a year for people to catch up with
what we're doing.


А конец в комментах. Не поместилась(. Оч хорошая статья, из ранних, ещё цеппелиновских.