Jimmy Page by Those Who Know Him
This month's issue of
Uncut magazine has a cover story entitled
The Real Jimmy Page, containing extracts from interviews with people
who have been close to him over the years. A few of the raw interview transcripts are posted on the
Uncut site. The transcribed interviews are
with Andrew Loog Oldham, Donovan, Richard Cole, Steve Albini and Michael Winner. Here's a
page of links to the transcripts and other Page material on
Uncut. The magazine article, additionally, carries remarks by Robert Plant, Jeff Beck (his oldest friend), Chris Dreja, Stephen Davis, Pamela
des Barres, Kenneth Anger and many others.
Page and Zeppelin fans, enjoy. The rest of you may prefer
this.
And now,
Originally posted by SevenThunders
Originally posted by Astyanax[/url]
Perhaps we should get Tipper Gore on the case. A new CD stickering campaign: PARENTAL ADVISORY: MAY CONTAIN SATANIC REFERENCES.
You know this really isn't a bad idea... Devil worship is not exactly wholesome. Half of these occultists and devil worshipping rock and rollers
die of drug abuse.
Just how many 'devil-worshipping rock and rollers' are there, then? Is their name Legion?
There have been a few dabblers, certainly. Mostly, they're alive and well, because they tend to be a little brainier than their cohorts - the legions
of dumb rock 'n' roll animals who worshipped nothing but the Billboard charts and their drugs of choice and are now six feet under, sprouting
weeds.
And really, anyone who thinks 'devil-worshipping rock 'n' rollers' have any kind of monopoly on hedonism and excess should brush up on the
biographies of the giants of country music - think George Jones, Johnny Cash, the Louvin Brothers, the immortal (but all too mortal) Hank Williams and
any number of others. One of the Louvins died of gunshot wounds inflicted by his wife, whom he was trying to strangle with a telephone cord at the
time. Charming feller. In case you don't remember him, he and his brother were the ones who originally sang
I won't lose a friends by heeding God's call
For what is a friend who'd want me to fall?
Others find pleasure in things I despise
I like the Christian life...
Oh yes, the mealymouthed America-Jesus-Republican Party-lovin' hypocrites of Nashville could always teach them longhairs a thang or two about tyin'
one on. And recording a gospel album next morning before the hangover wore off. Sunday morning coming down, y'know?
It may also be illuminating to read up on the lives of some of the great classical composers. A biography of Beethoven would be a fine place to
start.
Whatever the genre, musicians are, by the nature and demands of their profession, boozehounds, drug fiends, skirt-chasers and gamblers. It's the
nature of the beast. Satanism has precisely nothing to do with it.
Anyway,
Led Zeppelin weren't Satanists. Jimmy Page may have been one for a while. As Michael Winner says in his
Uncut interview, Page
had grown out of all that well before his forties. As for the rest, Plant is a mystical pantheist who hasn't touched a drug since his son Karac died
in 1978; John Paul Jones is a musical monomaniac who was once offered the job of musical director of King's College, Cambridge; and John Bonham's
church was the local pub.
Satanism, gadzounds. A bogey to frighten children with. Don't you folk feel just a little bit silly, talking about it as though it actually meant
anything?
Sorry to the Zepplin folks that like it. I just don't - for a few reasons.
) Dancin' Days, virtually anything else off of PG, to name a few).
But so many people know only that song. 
