Entertainment
Song 180: “Dazed and Confused” by Led Zeppelin, Part Two — “Inspiration is What You Are to Me”
In this episode, we dive into the history and inspiration behind Led Zeppelin's iconic song 'Dazed and Confused.' Focusing on Jimmy Page's artistic choices and the formation of the...
Song 180: “Dazed and Confused” by Led Zeppelin, Part Two — “Inspiration is What You Are to Me”
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A history of rock music in 500 songs.
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Boundary music.
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Song 180.
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Days and Confused by Led Zeppelin.
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Part 2.
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Inspiration, that's what you are to me.
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Before we begin, this episode contains some brief discussion of sex with underage girls,
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attempted rape, and drug and alcohol abuse.
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If those subjects are likely to upset you, you may wish to read the transcript or skip this episode.
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When Jimmy Page, Peter Grant and Chris Dreyer started their plans for the New Yard Birds
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page, who from the start was going to be the leader of this band, had to make a simple choice
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between art and commerce.
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On the one hand, the music page was listening to most at the time was acoustic folk music,
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music not a million miles away from what the other X Yard birds were doing actually.
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He was a pan of the English folk-broadcast styles of Bert Janchen, David Graham, and the music
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he enjoyed most at this point was by people like Penn Tangle or the incredible String Band,
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who were combining English traditional music, psychedelic rock music, and jazz to create
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something utterly unlike anything that had been heard before.
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But on the other hand, Jimmy Page also liked money.
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He liked money a lot.
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This is the character trait that gets brought up more than any other by anyone who has
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spent any time at all around him.
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Peter Grant once said, if you want to bump off Jimmy Page, all you have to do is throw
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a tuppance in front of a London bus.
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He intended this new band to be a major, major success, and one he would have full control
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of.
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He and Grant formed our own company, SuperHype, which was to own everything involving the
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band, with Grant taking care of the business and page the artistry.
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The deal, much like that between Frankie Valley and Bob Gordio, was done on a handshake.
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Grant would never have a contract with any musicians he managed, and Page and Grant both
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knew that there were only two ways of making money as a British band.
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You needed to focus on either Britain or America.
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If you were going to focus on Britain, you needed to have hit singles and lots of them.
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The British pop industry always moved fast.
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You were only as good as your last hit record, and if you had had a hit three months ago,
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everyone wanted to know what you'd done lately.
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And as the yard birds' recent experience had proved, there was no guarantee of getting
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a hit record no matter what you did.
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They'd had one of the most successful producers, whose formula had worked for everyone from
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Dunnevin to Lulu, and a tracked record of top 40 hits with their earlier lineups, and
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yet everything they'd done for a couple of years had flopped.
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But in America there was a new way of getting successful, which didn't require hit singles.
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There was a circuit of large venues, largely put together by Frank Barcelona at Premier
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Talent Agency, a booking agency which specialised in mock bands, the first agency to do so.
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Barcelona divided the US up into territories and had preferred venues and promoters in each
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territory.
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People we've heard of before, like Don Law and Bill Graham.
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Between that circuit and the new FM radio stations that was bringing up, primarily in
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college towns, and which played album tracks rather than singles, it was now possible for
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a particular kind of band to make a great deal of money by playing America without a hit
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single at all.
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But the kind of band that was having success in the US at this point wasn't playing
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psychedelic folk.
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The bands that were having that kind of success were playing what was being called heavy
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music.
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Bands like I am Butterfly.
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If you wanted to have reliable success then, you wanted to target America and you wanted
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to play heavy music.
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So Paige had a choice.
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Should he play heavy music and make money, or should he play music inspired by the folk
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guitarist he was seeing at Les Cousins and make the music he wanted to make?
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He ended up deciding to do both.
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He was going to make music that would pay a lot of attention to dynamics.
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Most of the bands that were having success in America were doing extended heavy jams,
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for ones that had very little dynamic variation.
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They would start at one level of intensity and stay there, with people taking solos,
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and maybe getting faster and louder towards the end.
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But the main effect was a hypnotic, in trancing one.
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The audience would get lost in the music as it lasted for 10, 15, 20 or however many
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minutes.
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But Paige was going to make music with loud, heavy passages and, often in the same song,
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with quiet, folkier passages inspired by people like Bert Janch, John Memburn and David Graham.
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There was going to be light and shade in this music, applying a pop session player sense
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of dynamics and structure, a folk guitarist technique and the old yardbirds' rave-up
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formula, to the new, heavier rock music.
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The plan he came up with was to put together a band on the same lines as the Jeff Beck group
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or the Who.
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A group in fact that would be much like the one that had recorded Beck's ballerow a couple
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of years earlier.
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He would be the only guitarist, and there would be a frontman with a great voice, Dre
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or on bass, and the best drummer he could find.
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The only problem was that he couldn't actually find a frontman or a drummer, at least at first.
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He had multiple ideas for both of course, but nobody was interested.
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For the drummer, he approached among others B.J. Wilson, the drummer with vocal
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Harvim, who had played with him on the session for Joe Cockers with a little help from my friends,
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Ainsley Dunbar, the drummer with the Jeff Beck group, and Clim Katerney, who, after leaving
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the tornadoes, had become one of Britain's top session drummers. The first two turned the
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drop-down, sticking with the bands that were in. While Katerney never got back to Peter
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Van to bat the offer, as he was too busy playing sessions.
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Katerney has since played on dozens of UK number one hits, for everyone from Benny Hill 12 in
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Stardust. Similarly, he was unable to find a singer to join the New Yardbirds. Pages initial
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top for lead singer, according to Richard Cole, was Danny Hutton, a session singer for Hanabar
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Barbera Records, who had had one minor hit under his own name with roses and main bows,
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which had made number 73 in the US.
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If I were a king, I'd give up everything, just to why you knew me, cuz roses and rain
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rose to you, the sky is always blue, when never I'm with you, I think I just love you, cuz
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But as we heard in the episodes, I never learned not to love. Hutton had formed his own new group,
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which was soon to be one of the biggest groups of the 70s, three dog night.
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So instead, Pages started looking around London. He considered a few people, but Steve
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Wimwood was busy with traffic. Steve Mariette was just about to leave the small faces,
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but Pages was still wary of Dunardton's threats of violence against anyone who poached him.
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And Joe Cocker and Chris Farlow were both having successful solo careers.
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The next singer he turned to was Terry Reed, the former lead singer of Peter J and the J-walkers,
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who had been on the same bill as the Yardbirds on the Rolling Stones and I-Kentina Turtor in 1966.
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Read was interested, but there are three different stories, all of which might partly be true.
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One, the one read always told, and which seems plausible, is that read had agreed to do two US tours
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supporting the Rolling Stones, and told Page that he couldn't join Page's new band unless he got
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compensated for the lasting come from those tours. Another, the way that some of those associated
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with Super Hype told the story, is that Peter Grant mentioned in the office that Page wanted
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Terry Read to be the singer of his new group, and Mickey Most, who at the time was working with
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Grant, quickly signed Read up to a solo contracting roomed in Fistardom, not letting his new client
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join the band his associate was managing. And the third story, as told by Peter Grant, is the
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Grant was against the idea because Read was already signed with the Most Organization,
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Grant had worked with him, and found Read's father too difficult, and dissuaded Page from going with him.
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Read instead stayed as a solo artist, working with Most, who produced several attempts at
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it singles for him, like his version of Super Long's My Supergirl, Donovan's disturbing song about 14-year-old girls.
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Read, who died last month, was regarded by most of his peers as the best blues rock singer in
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Britain, but most planned to make him a star was very far from successful. Read's only
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entry in the UK charts in any capacity was an archival album he released in 2016, spending
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one week at number 95 on the album charts. Although he would go on to be a respected
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cool artist, but while he didn't end up singing in the New York Birds, he did end up
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pointing the way to the man who would. Read once it became clear that he wasn't going to
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take the job, suggested to Page that he and Dreyer go to the West Midlands to see a singer
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he'd often been on the same bill as. And so it was that Page and Dreyer visited the West
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Midlands College of Education in Wholesale to see a band with the ridiculous name, Obst
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Tweedle. A lot of sources have the band name as Hubstweedle with an H, but that's probably
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people mistranscribing a brummy accent, the repostors that clearly show the spelling. The band
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were unimpressive, but the lead singer Robert Plant was much better than the band he was performing
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with. Plant was several years younger than Page, only 19 years older than time while Page
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was 24. But he was already a veteran performer, though up to that point in unsuccessful one.
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Plant, like almost every kid born in the late 40s, had become a big Elvis plan as a small
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child. But by the time he was 13 or 14, he was already something of a budding scholar
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of the Blues, getting a paper round and using the money to buy records at Robert Johnson's
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King of the Delta Blues singers. Saying later, when I first heard preaching Blues and
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Last Fair Deal gone down by Robert Johnson, I went, this is it.
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By the time he was 15, he was a fair Blues harmonica player and had ambitions of being a singer.
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He sat in with a band of school friends, the Jory men, when their singer got ill. Although
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they wouldn't let him stay with the band once the singer got better, as they all had
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banned uniforms and didn't have one that fit him. Age 16, he went to his first proper
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Blues show, seeing Sonny Boy Williams and two in Birmingham, on a bill with several
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British actors who have intersected this story in one way or another. The Art Birds, the
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Spencer Davis group, whose vocalist Steve Wynne would would later briefly be considered
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by Page for the New Year Birds, and Long John Baldurianis Huchikuchi men featuring Rod Stewart.
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At that show, Plant went up to Williams and had a urinal and tried to introduce himself.
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When Williams and reactor does one might expect, Plant sneaked into his dressing room and
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stole the harmonica as revenge. Coincidentally, Page had, for size the
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last few months before, because of an album with Williamson for JoJo Gamelski.
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Plant spent the next few years singing in a variety of local blues bands with names like
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The Falling Kingsnakes and Black Snake Mone, on the fringe of Birmingham's R&B scene.
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Bands from the area were getting signed up at this point in the hope that Birmingham
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would be the next Liverpool. Some, like the Spencer Davis group or the Moody Blues, would
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have some success. But others, like the Senators, whose She's a Mard opened the Brunbeek
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in the
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Bands. None of the bands Plant was in got even that far though, and his parents were
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encouraging him to become an accountant, even though by the age of 16 he already knew
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that he only ever wanted to make music. It was after a gig with The Falling Kingsnakes
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that Robert Plant first met John Bunham, the drummer on that track by the Senators we
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just heard. Bunham was three months older than Plant but was already married and would
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soon have his first child. Bunham had played with many bands around the Birmingham area,
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playing at one time or another with several future members of the Moody Blues, and with
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Roy Wood and Trevor Burton later of the move. At the time he was in a band called Way of
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Life, whose bass player Dave Pegg would later go on to join Fairport Convention. Bunham
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came up to Plant and told him that his band were great but that their drummer was Rubish
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and that he was better. Soon Bunham was the drummer with The Falling Kingsnakes and
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he and Plant became friends. But Bunham had a habit of either quitting bands because
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he was known as the best drummer on the scene and so would get a better offer or being
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fired because he was a loud player who would drown out the other band members and add
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very little discipline and would show off. Soon he had quit The Falling Kingsnakes and
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been lured back to Way of Life at a higher pay rate. When Bunham left, the groups split
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up and Plant moved on to another local band, the Tennessee teens, who renamed themselves
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Listen and muddled their stage show after the move, who had become the biggest band yet
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to come from the West Midlands. However, Plant almost became the singer with a different
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band. Neville Holder, who also had occasionally been aroady for bands that Plant was in,
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was playing with him guitar with a band called The In Between's and suggested that they
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should get Plant in as their singer. However, their bass player Jim Lee vetoed it, saying
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that if they got in a fifth member they would make less money each. So Holder continued
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as the lead singer of The In Between's, who was shortly to change their name firstly to
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Amphos Slade and then to the name by which they became famous, Slade. Both Listen and The
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In Between's would often play the same bells, who were booked by the same agents and were
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good friends. So what happened next is all the more surprising. Listen got signed to CBS
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records on the strength of Plant's voice and put out a single, a cover version of The
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Rascals You Better Run, which was actually planned back by session musicians as the label
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didn't think the rest of the band would up to scratch.
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But Unbeknownst to them The In Between's had also got a record deal, and their first record
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came out the same day as Listen's record. And it too was a cover version of You Better Run
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by The Rascals, produced by Jimmy Page's older Quintance Kim Powerly, who at the time would
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move to the UK and was living with P.J. Probe.
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The receptionist from the booking agency The Booked and Both, claimed in one biography of Plant
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that at one point she actually had not a holder on one phone line and Robert Plant on the other,
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both asking her which record she liked best. For the record she told them both that she preferred
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theirs, but she secretly preferred The In Between's version. Unsurprisingly, since both bands were
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playing to the same audiences in the same area, neither record was a success at all,
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a shame as both are actually very good records. The lack of success caused Listen to Split up,
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and Plant was making so little money he had to move in with his girlfriend and her parents,
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and live off the money she was making as a shop assistant. He was 18 at this point,
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and promised her that if he hadn't become a star by the time he was 20 he would give up music.
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After Listen to Split up, CBS, who had only been interested in Plant anyway, decided to go ahead
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with a solo career for him. His first single, Our Song, appears to be an attempt to give Plant
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the kind of career that Tom Jones or Engelbert on Bidding had.
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Plant hated the experience of recording that track, apparently needing 90 takes to get a
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performance the producer was satisfied with, and the record only sold 800 copies.
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A follow-up did no better, and Plant was dropped by the label.
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For a while he tried to have a career in Cabaret, using the stage name Robert Lee,
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and he also briefly sang with a big band whose lead knew his father,
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but he was getting nowhere and having to supplement his income by working on a building site.
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Plant was, though, starting to get inspired by the new music coming from the West Coast of America.
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In particular, there were three bands who would always cite as major inspirations.
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Moby Grape, Buffalo Springfield, and especially Love. As he said in 1970,
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all that music from the West Coast just went bang, and there was nothing else there for me after that.
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Three years before I had been shouldering listening to Sonny Boy Williamson.
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Now I was sobbing to Arthur Lee. Arthur Lee would continue to be one of Plant's biggest vocal
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influences throughout his career, and while Plant kept his blues influences, he now wanted to
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make music like the West Coast musicians. He was also starting to get influenced by bands
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like the Incredibles Spring Band, and other bands were played on John Peel's radio show with
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the perfume garden. Over the course of 1967 and early 1968, Plant was in three different bands,
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all called Band of Joy. When he got himself fired from the first group, he formed a second band
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of the same name who performed with warpaints on their faces. The original band of Joy carried
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on for a while but changed their name to the good egg when Plant's band started to become more successful.
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Then the members of the second band of Joy quit, and planned for them the third band of Joy,
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including the keyboard player and bassist from the original one, along with his old drummer from
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the crawling King's Nakes John Bonham, and guitarist Kevin Gammond, who had previously played with
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the great reggae singer Jimmy Cliff. Bonham's band made from way of life Dave Pegg also briefly joined
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the band but didn't end up sticking around. This third lineup of the band of Joy toured around
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the UK, playing venues at the Marquis and London and the club of Go-Go in Newcastle.
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As well as doing a brief tour of his support for Tim Rose, the focusing of who popularised
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Hage-L and Morning Jew, and who had been in the band with Jake Holmes as we heard last episode.
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The band of Joy also recorded a few demos, mostly cover versions of the kind of songs that
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Plant now enjoyed, like a version of Buffalo Springfields for what it's worth,
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an a version of Hay Joe which was muddled on Moses' arrangements. Also the model for Jimmy Hendrix
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is hit with the song, but with Plant's vocals sounding well influenced by Arthur Lee singing on
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Love's Fast Aversion of the Song.
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But no record label was interested in the band of Joy, and Bonham left the group to play with Tim
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Rose. Bonham was only with Rose for a short while but he played on at least one BBC session for
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John Peel's show with Rose. After four tracks for that session, the one that shows Bonham's playing
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ability after most is the version of the old banjo standard Foggy Mountain Breakdown,
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retitled Foggy Mountain Breakdown on Maywith Mustard, which has definite signs of Bonham's later style.
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With Bonham gone, the band of Joy split up. Trevor Burk met the move had given Tony
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Secunda the move's manager, a copy of their demo, and Plant and Gammond recorded another demo
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for Secunda, but that came to nothing. Plant then hooked up briefly with Alexis Corner,
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returning to his blues roots, and the two recorded a couple of tracks together with
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Corner's piano player Steve Miller, not the American guitarist of the same name,
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which are the first recordings that show off what Plant could actually do on vocals in harmonica.
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For the first time, Plant was actually singing in a studio like Robert Plant.
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When I quit you warm up down the road I go.
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Steal away now, steal away now. Corner was vaguely interested in recording more with Plant,
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maybe doing an album together, but Plant was also very aware that he was about to hit that
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deadline of 20, the point at which he'd have to quit using get a real job if he wasn't successful.
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And that was all the more pressing as his fiancé was pregnant.
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While he was waiting for stuff to happen with Corner, he formed another band, Obstweedle,
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with his friend Bill Bonham, no relation to John, and they started playing pubs around Birmingham,
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playing the same Moby-Greypon love covers that the band had joy of been playing.
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And it was that band that Jimmy Page, Chris Dreyer and Peter Grant came to see on the 20th of July 1968.
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One month through the day before Plant's 20th birthday and the promise end of his music career.
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Before the gig, Page mistook Plant for a roadie, but when he saw Plant on stage he was bold
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over by his performance. Page's only concern was that someone with that much obvious star power
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who hadn't already been discovered must have something wrong with him. Was he impossible to work
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with or something? But still, Page was desperate for a singer, and even if Plant turned out to be
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difficult, he was obviously good. Plant got back to his lodgings a few days later to find a
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tight run from Peter Grant, saying, Fiery Robert Plant, tried funding you several times,
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please call if you're interested in joining the Yard Birds. Now Plant had a decision to make.
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Jim Lee, the in-between space player, would later relate to conversation he had with Plant,
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where Plant was talking about the Yard Birds offer but saying he would rather play the blues with
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corner than play Pop with the Yard Birds. But then at the end of the night he saw Lee drive
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off in his sports car, the in-between suddenly had a hit record but they were making serious money
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as a live act. And shouted, Nice car, I guess I'll have to start playing Pop. Plant went down to
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meet up with Page at Page's house in Pangbourne, which he found hugely impressive and which rather
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confirmed him that he'd made the right choice at least financially, in joining what he had
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assumed was a pop band. But what both men found more importantly was that they were sympathetic
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musically. Their taste didn't perfect the align. Page had no time for bands like Love and Buffalo
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Springfield who planted odd. But they both liked the pop R&B of the Spencer Davis group in the small
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faces. They both liked the blues and they both had a love of folk music. In particular, Page played
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plant one of his favourite records. Joan Baez's version of Andredan's Babe I'm Gonna Leave You.
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Both agreed that that was exactly the kind of material that they wanted to do and that they could
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work up something interesting from it. But they still needed a drummer. Page had asked most of
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the session players in you and they had all turned him down as Ed Keith Moon but Plant had a
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suggestion, his old friend John Bunham. Page and Grant went off to see Bunham play with Tim Moes
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and William Fest. Bunham at least at first was less impressed with the idea of joining the Yard
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Birds. He was making more money with rows than he had ever made before and not only that but a
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lot of big name singers were often to join their bands, including some like Chris Fowler and Joe
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Cocker who Page had played with and had considered for his new Yard Birds. Why would he want to join a
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bunch of Hasbeens? And not only that but Bunham's wife was dead set against the idea. Not the idea
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of joining the Yard Birds but of going off with Robert Plant who she thought of as someone who
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dreamed big but never actually had any success. Bunham had twice been in bands with Plant
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and twice they'd gone nowhere. He had a good job now making Forty Quidd a week and here came his
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old mate Plant once again trying to drag him off on a hair-brain scheme. Eventually though Bunham
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agreed. Partly it was for the opportunity to be part of a band to help shape the material he
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was playing rather than just playing a frontman's songs. Though Bunham was never someone who
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hid his light under a bushel. He would play five minutes solo's during Tim Rose's sets for
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example. But also it was because Page wanted him so much that he offered to give him a vast
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increased salary. Early on in the New Band's career everything was coming out of Page's pocket
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and rather than getting equal shares the other three band members were his employees.
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And so Page offered to pay Bunham 25 pounder show for UK gigs,
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50 pounds for your opinion gigs and 100 pounds for American ones and they already had a 10
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date Scandinavian tour lined up. He'd been making more in a night from the New Yard Birds than he
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made in a week with Tim Rose. That was enough to sway both Bunham and his wife and he agreed to
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turn up for a rehearsal on the 12th of August. But actually there was still one member of the New Yard
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Birds to join. As far as I can tell nobody has ever given a clear answer as to why Chris Dreyer,
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the only original member of the Yard Birds still with the band didn't stick with the New Yard Birds.
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He was still involved with the planning on the 20th of July when he went with Page to see plant,
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but by the 12th of August when the New Band rehearsed for the first time he was out.
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Depending on which version of the narrative you read either he decided he didn't want to
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carry on in the music business and wanted to be a photographer. And left Page looking for a new
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bass player or he bowed out gracefully with no hard feelings when Page got an offer from a better
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player. Either way Dreyer wouldn't make music again until the early 80s when he and his former
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Yard Birds bandmates Paul Sandwell-Smith and Jim McCarty formed a new band, Box of Frogs.
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And then Dreyer and McCarty toured with a new lineup of Yard Birds from 1992 through 2013,
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when Dreyer retired due to ill health. In his place came Page's old session colleague,
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John Paul Jones. Jones had been getting antsy about playing sessions ever since a few months
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earlier when he played a super session album titled No Introduction Necessary, which on various
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tracks it featured Page, Clem Cateenny, the drummer that Page had considered for his new band.
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Big Jim Sullivan, Albert Lee and Nikki Hopkins, all backing a new singer named Keith Degroot
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and a bunch of rockabilly covers.
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Jones had enjoyed that, just jarring with a bunch of his friends. A lot more than he enjoyed
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most sessions. He'd been able just to play music that they all liked rather than playing whatever
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and he hadn't had to write orchestral charts. He'd been making a lot of money as a session
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bass player in Arranger, but he was getting burned out. Like John Bunham, he wanted to make music
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that would be his, not music that other people wanted. His wife suggested to him that he might
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want to join a band rather than keep playing sessions, and initially he told her that there were
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no bands or a worth joining. He wanted to play with good musicians. But then she told him that she'd
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seen him while the music magazines that Jimmy Page was forming a band and suggested he get in touch.
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Jones had obviously played a lot with Page and was impressed with his musicianship.
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And so called Page up and said that if he wanted a bass player, Jones was available.
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Dreyer said later, I wasn't John Paul Jones and Jimmy McCarty was not John Bunham. These were
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the pivotal players who created that sound. I knew about John Paul and I thought, you're not
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going to top that Jimmy, you're a lucky man there. At that point he was a better bass player than
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Jimmy was a guitar player and of course he understood music. There was no way I was going to interface
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myself between him joining the band. And you couldn't have met a nicer guy, what a real ace gentle
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money was. The four men met upon August the 12th 1968 for their first rehearsal. It was a bit cautious
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at first. Plants and Bunham had never met Jones and the band members all had wildly disparate
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tasted in music, though there was some overlap. They had to get a set together quickly for the
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yard birds tour that was going to take place soon. And so Page was casting around for songs they
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all knew and couldn't find any. He suggested Train kept a role in the yard birds live staple
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and quickly told Jones who had never heard the song what the chords were.
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The song would become part of the new band's live set for the next year or two.
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The new band immediately jelled and after playing that one song they knew that they could work
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together. There were still some problems initially. Bunham had a tendency to overplay.
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He could play with sensitivity and restraint. He just often chose not to. That problem was solved
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relatively quickly by Peter Grant explaining to Bunham that Jimmy Page was the bass. And if Page
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told Bunham to be more restrained, Bunham would either be more restrained or he would be both out of
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the band and out of the nearest window. Bunham took the lesson to heart and many people have
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credited this decision to tame Bunham's wild man excesses. With a line going to grow and become
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someone who played for the song rather than just to show off. Though have no doubt about it, Bunham
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would always show off. Bunham and Jones became the new band's secret weapon. Page is the guitar hero
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and plant as the frontman got all the attention. But almost every musician who ever talks about the
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band that formed that day talks about the rhythm section. Bunham's influence from jazz musicians
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like Jean Cooper, his boyhood idol, and Jones' arrangement skills and the influence of Motown
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bass player James Jamerson, were very different from the influences of most of the rock bands coming
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up. Kewal Vetti were mostly only listening to other rock bands. As mentioned last episode,
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at this point Jones only had two rock albums revolved from pet sounds and was far more interested
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in soul than rock. They quickly worked opposite of old Yard Bird's live favourites like
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Bluescuvres like Halin Wolves How Many More Years, their version of Babe Amgurra Leave You,
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and a couple of soul covers that planted been performing with Obstweedle. The new group were good
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and they knew it and worked well together, though there was some amusement among the other three when,
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at the end of the rehearsal, Page insisted on the mall chipping in a few pens for the beans on
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toasted teeth and showing a break. There was just one problem before the band could go much further
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and that was Mickey Most. Page absolutely did not want Mickey Most to produce anything his new band
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did. He had hated the experience of working on the Yard Bird's tracks with Most and he had heard
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bad things about the way that most had taken control of the Jeff Beck group sessions and
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sidelined their singer and lodged to it. Terry V later said of his discussions about joining the band.
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Jimmy was only in the Yard Bird's for five minutes but he wasn't going to allow a piece of the
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new group but Jimmy. But Grant had to deal with Most. The Grant would look after the management
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and most of the production of every artist either to come. There was only one thing for it. Grant
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would have to call his old friend out of millions. Grant told Most that he had been given on the
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short time to live and he wanted to leave as much when he as possible to his wife and kids.
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Would Mickey see his way to giving up his half of Jimmy Page's new group so that Peter could make
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as much money from them as possible in what little time he had left. Most agreed.
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And now the new group were free to record their first album.
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The first album of course being three week hero by the Has Been crew and a P.J. Probe.
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Jones had been hired as a ranger, contractor and bass player for Probe's first of many attempts
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at comeback albums. Putting charge of getting the musicians together for the sessions,
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he chose Page as one of the guitarists, gave Bonham his first session work as one of the two
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drummers for the album, and got planted on tambourine, harmonica and backing vocals to give his
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new bandmate a bit of extra cash. After that the group went on their Scandinavian tour.
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There's not much being written about that tour surprisingly, and sadly no recordings of the
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shows appear to exist anywhere. But it became very clear very quickly that this new version of the
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art birds was something special. Plant was the one the other few were worried about, and would be for
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a while, but the new group still wondering if he was the right man for the job almost a year
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into their career, because compared to the others he had far less experience, but some of those
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worries at least were put to rest at the show in Stockholm, where a plant's mic broke halfway
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through the show and he carried on, and his voice was powerful enough that the audience could
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still hear him even over the extremely loud instruments. When they got back to the UK,
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there were tight enough that Page decided that even though the new group didn't have a record
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deal yet, they should go into the studio and record the set they'd been playing.
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The group was still at this point performing as the new yard birds, but a strongly worded letter
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from Chris Dreyer's lawyers pointing out that they'd only been given the mic to the name for
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the Scandinavian shows, caused a rethink, and they changed their name to Led Zeppelin, after Keith
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Moon's joke about the Bexbel Aero session. At also it didn't hurt that the combination of a heavy
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metal and something playing was reminiscent of Iron Butterfly, who were currently very big in the US.
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The album would also be called Led Zeppelin, though now it's normally referred to as Led Zeppelin
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1 to distinguish it from their later albums. The album would be entirely funded by Page with no
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advance from a record company, so it had to be recorded quickly. They recorded it in Olympic
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studios over a period of nine days, with Glenn Johns, Page's old friend would recommend it
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in for his very first session work, Engineering. Or at least that's how Johns is credited on the
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final album, as we will see though, credits can be deceiving. Johns was one of the most sought
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after engineers of the period. He engineered almost all the stones as UK recordings from 1965
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through the mid 70s, as well as records by the small faces, Chris Farlow, Pentangle, the move,
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and many more. And a few months after recording the Led Zeppelin album he would be the de facto
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producer of the Beatles Get Back sessions. When Page asked him to engineer an album by his new band,
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Johns pointed out that if there was no producer other than the band, Johns would end up essentially
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being the producer, and so he wanted production credits in a percentage, as was standard.
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As he said later, I went to see Pete's in Oxford Street and said I needed to get an agreement,
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and he said no problem. We agreed a percentage of the retail price which was normal, and we sure
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can. I wouldn't normally have gone into the studio without a contract, but because I've known Jimmy
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and John Paul since we were virtually kids, it never entered my mind that there would be anything
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amiss. According to Johns, the production was split, with Page and Jones doing the arrangements,
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while Johns took care of the so exciting things. But Page was the sole credit to produce from the
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finished album, and Johns would never work with Page again, though Johns was for the Randy engineered
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several subsequent Led Zeppelin albums. In these sessions, Johns accidentally discovered a new
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technique for recording drums, which he would make a trademark of his work in later years.
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He had moved by the mics he usually used for recording drums to record a guitar over dub on one
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track, and when he put the mic back, he forgot to put it back on the same track as the other drums.
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When he listened back to the next song recorded, he realised that for the first time he had recorded
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drums in stereo, and that it made them sound much bigger than his previous technique of just
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giving one track to the drums. He rearranged the mics so both the floor,
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tongue and snare mic were now pointing at the snare, but from opposite directions,
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equidistant from it, and pan the tracks half left and half right, rather than have everything in the
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centre. The result was a bigger drum sound than he had ever achieved before, though it's also
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the case that Bonham was allowed to play at the most. It's worth noting as well that Jimmy Page's
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solo production credit, as well as erasing Johns's contributions, also erased those of the other
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band members, particularly Jones, who everyone involved claims had a far bigger hand in the
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arrangements than he ever got credit for, possibly more so than Page. Indeed, the first Lads
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Eplan album is a fascinating example of how credits don't always tell the full story about who
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did what, and also of how there's a continuum from totally original through totally plagiarised,
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with songs falling everywhere on that continuum. The album was made up of the set that
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had been performing live, and so many of the songs evolved from Jams on cover versions,
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and sometimes the band didn't do a wonderful job of erasing their origins.
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Of the nine tracks on the album, only two of the tracks now have the same songwriting credits
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on cover and tissues that they had in the beginning, and one of those two arguably shouldn't.
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So let's go through the album track by track and look at where they drew from.
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The album opens with good times, bad times, a song that is prior to the originality end of our
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continuum. The track was originally credited to Page, Jones and Bunham, but more recent releases
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had planned creditors of actor as well. Plant was originally not given any songwriting credits
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on the album at all, supposedly because he was still under contract CBS, the label he'd recorded
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as singles for. That makes little sense to me because that contract would have covered him as a
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singer, not a songwriter, and in which case it would surely be more important not to credit him
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for his vocals, but maybe he also had a publishing contract with them as part of the deal.
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Either way, Plant's name has now been added to five of the songs.
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The song was primarily a collaboration between Page, who wrote the chorus, and Jones,
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who came up with the riff on a Hammond organ. The song is a totally original one,
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though even the most original of songs has influences from other people.
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In this case, Bunham's drum part is inspired by a much simpler part that Karin
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a piece played on the vanilla footage's cover version of Ticket to My Hade.
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And according to a piece, one of Led Zeppelin also told him that Jones' riff was inspired by
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Tim Bogey's bass playing on the same track. Though this seems unlikely to me, because, as I've said,
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Jones was almost completely ignorant of heavy rock music at the time.
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The next song, Babe, I'm going to leave you, was miscredited, but the fault was for once not the bands.
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We heard Jones' bires as version of Babe, I'm going to leave you earlier.
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That song was written by Anne Readon, a minor folk singer in 1958, and she performed it on various
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college radio stations and so on.
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Can you when I'm going to leave you? When that old summer comes, summer comes,
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ero-ling, summer comes, um, that old highway.
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Readon's friend, Janet Smith, heard the song and started playing it herself.
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And then Jones' bires heard Smith's version on local radio and started performing it.
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Bires didn't realise that Smith was performing a song whose right-ish he knew,
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and so on Bires' 1962 live album, the first time the song was recorded for release.
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It was credited to traditional arranged by Jones' bires.
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Bires was later informed that the song was by Readon and corrected the credit when she
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put out a song book. And so for example when the association recorded their version in 1965,
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they gave Readon the credit.
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But Paige had learned the song from a copy of Bires' album which said it was a traditional song.
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And so his radical v-working of the song was initially credited to
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traditional arranged page, though Planta's always claimed that it was him rather than
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Paige. You came up with the guitar figure, though in this case I tend to believe Paige
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just claimed that it was his work.
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Unlike with several of the songs we're going to look at, this was an honest mistake and dealt
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with appropriately. It remained unnoticed until the late 80s when Smith's son was listening to
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the album and his mother noticed that her friend's song was on it. Readon got in touch with the
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group and as it was fairly radically reworked, the credit on Led Zeppelin's version was amended
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to make her and Paige co-actors, and amended again later when Planta named without it to the
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song, and V-Dem was given a lump sum in back royalties. The next song in the album is You Shook
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Me, a cover for Blue Standard.
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That's how it started out as Blue Guitar, an instrumental by El Hooker.
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Leonard Chess, the owner of Chess Records, then bought the rights to that track from the label
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it was released on and had muddy waters over the vocals on Hooker's backing track.
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Willie Dickson wrote the new lyrics, and Dickson was given Soul Songwriting
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credits on Waters as single, despite the music being the exact same track that had been released
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with Hooker as the credits composer.
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The song was a favourite of Jeff Beck, and Beck copied the intro for the R Bird's B-side
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Steel Blues, an instrumental credited to Back and Key Threalth, though the song diverges after that point.
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And as we heard last time, the Jeff Beck wrote because of the version of You Shook Me for their
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Truth Album, with Mod Stewart on vocals and featuring Jumple Jones on keyboards.
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You know that You Shook Me, you Shook Me, a whole night.
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When Beck found out that Led Zeppelin had covered the song on their album,
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he apparently cried with fury. Paige always claimed that he hadn't known that Beck
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recorded a version, but that seems fashionally unlikely, given that Jones played on the track,
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Beck shared a marriage with the group, and the Jeff Beck group were explicitly abandoned Led Zeppelin
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were modelling themselves on. Led Zeppelin's version was appropriately credited to Dickson,
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although J.B. Lin-Wah's name has since been added to the credits, as it has on the original.
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Lin-Wah was another blues singer, who somehow got added to the credits even though nobody
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seems clear on what, if anything, he contributors. The next track up is Daysden Confused.
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We heard last time how Jimmy Page and Jim McCarty as her J.C. Holmes players original in New York,
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and run out and bought copies of his album.
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I feel like a mouse and your act like a cat.
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I'm Daysden Confused, hanging on by a thread.
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I'm being abused.
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And how the song had then become a highlight of the R Bird's live show for the last few months of
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the group's existence.
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I'm Daysden Confused as it stayed as it go.
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Give me a clue. I just want to know.
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Give me a clue as to where I'm at.
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I feel like a mouse and your act like a cat.
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The R Bird's version, when live versions have been given archival releases,
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has always had the songwriting properly credited to Holmes.
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The New York birds are continued to include Daysden Confused in their set,
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enlarged the same arrangement that the R Birds had performed.
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And when the group recorded their album, they included it.
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By this point, Page and Rewritten live excitedly, making them notably misogynist
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in a way Holmes's original live X hadn't been.
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When the album came out, the credit read just Jimmy Page.
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And it remained that way until 2010.
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According to Holmes, when he first heard about Led Zeppelin had done,
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he was under the impression that the law said that copying had to be exact, words and music.
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And if someone plagiarised your work but altered it, you weren't entitled to credit.
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Later, he realised that was not the case, but said,
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I don't want Page to give me full credit for this song.
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He took it and put it in a direction that I would never have taken it.
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And it became very successful.
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So why should I complain?
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But give me at least half credit on it.
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It's probably more difficult to wrench that song away from him than it would be any other song.
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And I have tried, you know.
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I've written letters saying, Jesus, man, you don't have to give it all to me.
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Keep half.
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Keep two thirds.
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Just give me credit for having originated it.
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That's the sad part about it, but I don't even think it has to do with money.
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It's not like he needs it.
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It totally has to do with how intimate he has been connected to it over all these years.
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Page over those same years would completely deny that the song was anything other than original.
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Saying in an interview in 1990, I'd rather not get into it because I don't know all the circumstances.
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What's he got? The riff or whatever.
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Because Robert wrote some of the lyrics for that on the album.
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But he was only listening to, we extended it from the one that we were playing with the art birds.
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I haven't heard Jake Holmes, so I don't know what it's all about anyway.
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Usually my riff is pretty damn original.
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It's notable that when confronted over plagiarism, no matter what the song,
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Page always blames plant, even when, as in this case,
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plant had no songwriting credit.
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Eventually in 2010, Holmes took Page to court and got the fair credit he wanted.
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The credit for Led Zeppelin's version of the song now reads,
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Jimmy Page inspired by Jake Holmes, and he gets a chunk of the money.
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Notably though, that wasn't the end of his legal battles.
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Recently the film Becoming Led Zeppelin included the art birds version of the song,
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with Holmes's original lyrics, but still crediting Page's writer and without Holmes's permission.
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Holmes took Page, the song's publishers, and the filmmakers to court,
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and a settlement was reached in August this year.
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Side two of the album opened with, your time is going to come.
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Another song which seems to be actually original, apart from a few blues floating
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lyrics that can't really be attributed to anyone, Markter.
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Probably on the original release, while most of the other claimed
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originals were credited to Page, Jones, and Bonham.
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This one was credited only to Page and Jones, though Plant was later added to the credits.
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That track became the first Led Zeppelin original ever to get covered.
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The pop singer Sandy Shaw, given the chance to produce an album for herself for the first time,
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chose to record an album of covers of hip artists like The Love in Splinthal,
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Dr. John the Nacktripper, and The Rolling Stones.
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Among those tracks was her version of Your Time Is Going to Come.
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This is all I've got and say to you baby, Your time is going to come.
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Next up, after a cross-fade, was Black Mountain Side,
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an acoustic instrumental performed by Page and Guitar and Tabler player Viv Am Jassani,
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with none of the rest of the band on it.
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The songwriting credit on that one was solely to Jimmy Page,
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which was a bit of a source but to birth, Janch, who a couple of years earlier had recorded this
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arrangement of the traditional folk song Black Waterside.
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As the original melody was a traditional one, though Janch's arrangement for the guitar was very much
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his own work, Janch's publishers decided it wasn't worth fighting over.
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Janch would later say, the thing I've noticed about Jimmy whenever we meet now is that he can
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never look me in the eye. Well, he bit me off, didn't he? Or let's just say he learned from me.
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I wouldn't want to sound impolite. The next song on the album, Communication Breakdown,
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supposedly evolved on stage from a version of Eddie Cochran's song, Nervous Breakdown.
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However, this is one case where the resemblance is very, very distant. I can hear very
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little connection between the Cochran song.
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Angela let's skip one.
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I can't Quitchy Baby was written by Willie Dixon and first record of Be Lotus' Russian
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in 1956 with Dixon on bass.
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This was one of two acknowledged covers on the album, both of them credited to Willie Dixon.
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Unlike future Dixon credits on Led Zeppelin albums, this one was properly acknowledged
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at the time.
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And the final track on the album, How Many More Times, is a patchwork of a few older songs.
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Credit it at the time to Page, Bonham and Jones, with Plant later added to the writing credits.
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The principal sources for the song are two Hall & Wolf tracks, both recorded in 1951.
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The better known of them is How Many More Years.
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But there's a close relationship to no place to go, which has a more direct Liverpool
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resemblance, which has a very similar riff to How Many More Times.
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Page always tries to claim that the riffs of his work in original, and it's only Plant's
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lyrics that are ripped off.
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But while Plant did have a punch on for plagiarising old blues lyrics, Page was more than happy
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to think musical ideas from the same records.
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The variety is taken from other songs too.
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Plant quotes a couple of his own old Alexis Koina collaborations, and there's also this section.
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Which is based on The Hunter, a song originally recorded by Albert King for Stacks, and written
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by Booker T and the MGs and Carl Wells.
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And also referencing Mr Pitiful, another Stacks record by Otis Redding, co-written by Redding
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and Steve Crock for the MGs.
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The sessions for the album only lasted nine days, and were productive enough that they
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recorded two more tracks, or released until decades later.
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A re-victive the Burt Burns song Baby Come On Home recorded as a tribute to Burns who
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had been a friend of pages, and a song called Sugar Mama, a re-victive happening ten
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years time ago, with blues lyrics, credited to Page and Plant.
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This is not the same as the song Sugar Mama and PJ Probe's 3-Week Hero album, though
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the title of that one might hypothetically have inspired the Led Zeppelin version.
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That Page and Plant credit would become more common from that point on.
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Most of the bands originals from their second album Full Wood were credited that way,
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cutting Bonham and Jones out of the songwriting credits.
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Jones later said, in all honesty, I'd say that I probably should have paid much more
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attention to the writing credits in the earlier days of Zeppelin.
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In those days I'd just say, well I wrote that but it's part of the arrangement, or something
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like that, and I'd just let it go, not realizing at the time that that part of the arrangement
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had more to do with dividing than just arranging something.
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I always thought that John Bonham's contribution was much more than he ever received credit
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for.
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In fact, I know it was.
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He also said, Zeppelin was really a partnership between four people, and sometimes when you
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see songs with Page, Plant and everything, it makes it seem like it was a learning
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mechanic situation where they wrote everything in John and I just kind of learned the songs
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that Jimi and Robert taught to us.
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That's so far from the truth it's ridiculous.
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However, whatever the truth was as to who wrote or produced what.
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At this point, Jimi Page's word was law.
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This was partly because at this stage Peter Grant was loyal not to the group as a group,
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but to Jimi Page as an individual.
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And partly because Page had financed everything.
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Because Page didn't want to spend much money, he had the group so well rehearsed before
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going into the studio, so the entire cost of the album was only £1782, including the
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artwork.
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A photo of the Hindenburg disaster on the front, and a photo of the four band members
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on the back.
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The back photo was taken by Chris Dreyer, one of the first commissions he got in his new
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career as a photographer.
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Glenn Johns was immensely proud of the results, and excitedly played the tracks for the other
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musicians he was working with at the time, but both Mick Jagger and George Harrison told
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him that they simply didn't get what he was so excited about, and weren't at all impressed.
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The mega stars of the 60s were not prepared for the 70s first supergroup.
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The group started playing clubs around the UK, but went down very badly, especially at
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first, when they were still using the New York birds name.
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The group would eventually become big in the UK, but they would never have the same kind
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of success over here as they would have in the US, where they concentrated their efforts.
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Brant flew to the US and started doing the rounds at the record industry.
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Initially, he had a handshake deal with Mo Austin at one of the brothers for the North American
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rights of the band, and with Chris Blackwell at Island for the rest of the world.
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For what was a reasonable amount of money, but then fate stepped in, and by fate, I mean
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Dusty Springfield.
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Dusty Springfield was in the US recording the Dusty and Memphis album, and she told the
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album's co-producer, Jerry Wexler, about the new group she'd heard that John Pull Jones
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was performing with Jimmy Page.
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Jones had been the bass player in a range on a lot of Springfield's records, some of
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which had also featured Page on guitar, and she insisted that Wexler should sign this
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new supergroup, who were bound to be the best thing around.
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Wexler knew of Page by reputation, and had even met him when Page had visited the US and
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hung out with his old friend Bert Burns.
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Wexler had no interest in rock music at all.
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He loved blues, soul and jazz, but Atlantic had been making a great deal of money by
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signing artists like the vanilla fudge and cream to their atco subsidiary, set up for
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pop music.
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Most of these acts have been signed by Arme Turtigan, who had decided that White Guitar
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groups were the wave of the future, but Wexler saw this as his chance to get another of
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those acts signed up.
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He agreed to sign lead zeppelin without having heard a note of the band's music, purely
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on the basis of Dusty Springfield's enthusiasm for Jones and Page's reputation.
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They got an advance of more than $200,000, a huge sum in those days, especially for
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a totally unknown band and total sale for every release.
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Atlantic had no right to change a note of the music, to release anything that Zeppelin
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didn't approve or to alter the artwork, and Page had one more concession he wanted.
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He insisted that the albums not be released on Atco, the White Pop label, but an Atlantic
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proper, the label that made Charles and Aritha Franklin were released on.
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Peter Grant then decided to pay a visit to Clive Davis at Columbia for a chat.
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Davis assumed that Led Zeppelin would be recording on Columbia, because the Yard birds
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have been signed to the label.
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Grant had a long chat with Davis, and Davis eventually said,
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So are we going to talk about Jimmy Page?
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And Grant responded,
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Oh, he's already signed with Atlantic.
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Davis hadn't realised that when Page had joined the Yard birds, he hadn't been
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out of the 20 of their contract, and he was a free agent.
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Grant had just wanted to wind Davis up.
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It was announced to the press that the group of impaired, the highest advanced ever paid
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to a new group.
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A statement that might even have been true, and this simultaneously intrigued a lot
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of people who wanted to see what this new band was like, and annoyed the underground music
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press.
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And at this point, magazines like Rolling Stone were still seen as part of the underground
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counterculture, rather than the oppressive mainstream force they later became.
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The group with the worst thing you could be in the eyes of people like Rolling Stone.
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There were sell-outs, all hype, and it for the money rather than the art.
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There were greedy bread heads.
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And indeed they were, in that they actually wanted to get paid what they thought they
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were worth.
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In a very short time, in fact, Led Zeppelin would revolutionise the economics of touring
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for big bands.
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Because once they were successful, Peter Grant would start demanding that rather than
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a flat fee, promoters would pay the band 90% of the Doris' seats.
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Something that the other big bands would copy once they saw it was possible.
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Led Zeppelin was the first band to make it possible to become really rich from live
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performance.
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But that was to come in the future.
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For now, the group were going to start, they've not at the bottom, then at least at the
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bottom of the bill.
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Grant put together a list of venues that he wanted the group to play before the album came
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out in January 1969.
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Most of the same venues that Frank Barceler and Witt premier talent booked.
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The film or the Grandible Room and so on.
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From Boxing Day 1968 through the middle of February 1969, Led Zeppelin toured these venues,
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usually is the support for the vanilla fudge.
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Sometimes for other bands like Iron Butterfly or Country Joe and the Fish.
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By the end of that period, the headline has started to refuse to come on after Led Zeppelin.
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By the time they got to the Boston Tea Party, they ended up playing 12 on-course.
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Running out of songs to do and just covering whatever role they'll have in little Richard
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songs all of them knew.
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They lost money on that initial tour.
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Page was still financing things, though the advance from Atlantic helped a lot and became
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the first large sums of money that planned to abandon whatever scene.
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But the point was to make themselves known as the Bandacee in the US.
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While there were still stuck playing pubs and student unions in the UK, there were headlines
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as a major venues in the US within a month of their first album being released.
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The album was commercially successful, making the top 10, but it fared less well with the critics.
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John Mendelssohn's review in Rolling Stone ended.
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In their willingness to waste their considerable talent on unworthy material, the Zeppelin
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has produced an album which is sadly reminiscent of Truth.
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Like the Beck Group, they have also perfectly willing to make themselves a two or more accurately
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one-a-half, man-show.
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It would seem that if they were to help fill the void created by the demise of Cream,
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they will have to find a producer and editor and some material worthy of their collective
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attention.
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Led Zeppelin would have a famously adversarial relationship with the music press for
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their entire careers, largely as a result of these initial bad reviews.
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At Atlantic wanted to follow up and quick, and the group needed to tour the US more.
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In a brief break between their first and second US tours, they went into the studio again
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and started work on the album, most of which would be cut on the road.
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We won't look at every track on the second album, titled Led Zeppelin 2, the way we did
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the first, but it's worth talking about some of the highlights, and the first track
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cut for the album was one of the most famous tracks of the group cut, and another one with
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disputed credits.
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The song was based around a riff that Paige had come up with and was originally credited
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to the four band members.
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Paige later explained,
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I came up with the guitar riff for a whole lot of love in the summer of 68 on my houseboat
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along the Thames in Pangbo in England.
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I suppose my early love for big entries by rockabilly guitarist was an inspiration, but
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as soon as I developed the riff, I knew it was strong enough to drive the entire song,
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not just open it.
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When I played the riff for the band in my living room several weeks later during rehearsals
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for our first album, the excitement was immediate and collective.
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We felt the riff was addictive, like a forbidden thing.
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The riff is Paige's composition, but it bears a passing resemblance to Earl Hugger's
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guitar part and muddy waters as you need love, written by Willie Dixon.
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And Bob up Plant Slavic's are much more than a little to that song.
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Although while he was familiar with that track, Plant was probably not actually directly
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copying the original.
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Paige's old immediate records colleagues are small faces, who were one of Plant's favorite
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bands, who recorded their own take on the song titled Unied Loving and credited to
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Steve Marietta's money lane, compared Plant singing when the instruments drop out.
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With Steve Marietta Unied Loving.
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When Willie Dixon discovered the resemblance in 1985, he sued.
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And now the song is credited to the four members of Led Zeppelin and Dixon, though according
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to Dixon's family he never thought he got enough compensation.
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As well as the famous riff, there was an extended instrumental section of the song on which
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Paige plays the Theromen.
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An idea he had got from Mandy California, the guitarist from Spirits, who had played
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on the same bill with the group.
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As we'll see in a future episode, Paige may have got some other ideas from Mandy California
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too.
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The track was released as a single in most countries and became a US top 10 hit.
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The single was the full-length track, but a promo version was also sent out to radio stations
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with most of the Theromen stuff cut out.
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However Pete advanced rule about not releasing singles in the UK applied and it was never
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released here.
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Sensing a gap in the market, Mickey most released an instrumental version by a group of
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studio musicians he had put together, CCS, led by Plant Soul collaborator Alexis Corner.
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Their version made the top 20 and started a short run of hit singles for the group.
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And was also used for many years as the theme tune for top of the pop.
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Making it almost certainly the most heard version of any Led Zeppelin song, at least in the UK.
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I've seen some sources saying that the version used on top of the pop was a sound like
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remake by most of the same musicians, recording as the top of the pop's orchestra to avoid
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the BBC having to pay royalties to make you most slable.
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A week after recording the basic track for a whole lot of love, the group went on their
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next US tour and the rest of the album was recorded as Plant later put it, on the
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run between hotel rooms and the GTOs.
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The GTOs being a famous band of LA based groupies, several of whom took a shine to
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the members of the band.
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It's this second US tour that really gave the band a reputation for excess that they
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would keep for the rest of their career.
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As I've said from the very start, this podcast is about the music first and foremost.
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And I only talk about the more unsavory aspects of musicians' behaviour when they're important
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parts of the history, because sadly it would be much much easier to list the male rock
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stars of this period who did not behave in frankly monstrous ways than to list those who
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did.
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On the other hand, the appalling behaviour of Paige and Bunham particularly has become
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part of Led Zeppelin's history in a way that would make it irresponsible of me not to
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cover it.
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While people talk about the band having a bad reputation, if you look at the stories,
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whenever an individual of individuals are named, it's always some combination of Jimmy
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Paige, John Bunham and the Tom Manager Richard Cole.
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While no doubt both Planta and John's got up to their share of the kind of behaviour
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that all rock stars in their 20s do, and they were certainly at least aware of their
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bandmates' behaviour and so complicit in that respect, the two only rarely get named
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as doing anything specific.
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Indeed, John seemed to be separate from the others to an extent, sometimes travelling
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on his own, and barely ever gets mentioned as anything other than a gentleman.
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Within a few years, Jimmy Paige's admiration for the occultist Alistair Crowley would lead
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to a room among the groupy population of America that Led Zeppelin had sold their soul to
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the devil in order to become rock stars.
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All that is, except John Paul Jones, who would refuse to send a contract.
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I will be covering Led Zeppelin more in the future, and those episodes will cover the
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period where most of their most notorious acts took place, and I will also shortly be
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doing an episode which will focus very specifically on groupy culture and the way musicians treat
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it groupies, so I'm not going to deal with that too much in this episode.
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But it's worth noting that even this early on, both Bonham and Paige were indulging in
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behaviour that most people would find revolting.
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Some of these behaviours, like an incident involving Bonham, Richard Cole, some members of
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the Vinilla Fudge, a groupy and a freshly caught fish, reports different whether it was
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a mud shark or a red snapper, were consensual, at least on the part of the humans involved,
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that fish probably had other opinions, and passed into rock legend as humorous stories
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getting exaggerated along the way.
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Frank Zappi even recorded a song called The Mud Shark, after the Vinilla Fudge told him
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about their exploits.
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But sadly, a lot of what went on was not consensual.
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The main source for a lot of the stories is Richard Cole, who was not the most trustworthy
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of narrators.
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He self-compessively destroyed his brain with drugs and alcohol during the 70s and did
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not have a reliable memory.
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And the living members of Led Zeppelin have denied some of the allegations he made.
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Plant, who comes off from Cole's stories far better than Page and Bonham, said,
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These stories would filter out from girls who'd supposedly been in my room when in fact
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they'd been in his, while Page said of Cole's autobiography.
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I'm so mad about it that I can't even bring myself to read the whole thing.
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The two bits that I have read are so ridiculousy false that I'm sure if I read the rest
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I'd be able to sue Cole and the publishers, but it would be so painful to read that it
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wouldn't be worth it.
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So between my own design not to get sued, the unvaliability of the sources, and a natural
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distaste for talking about such things, I'm not going to go into much in the way of detail
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about what went on on that tour, other than to say that Jimmy Page has been documented
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in multiple sources, is having a federal election at this time for girls who were significantly
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under the age of consent.
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While Ellen Sander, a journalist for Life magazine, touring with the group to write an article
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on them, ended up not writing her article because on the last day of the tour, John
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Bannem sexually assaulted her, and it was only the intervention of Peter Grant that
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stopped him from raping her.
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But again, the worst was yet to come and will be covered in future episodes, and this
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is a podcast about the music first and foremost.
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And it was on that same tour that they recorded most of Led Zeppelin II, the album that turned
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them from a big band into the biggest band, songs like The Lemon Song.
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Which was credited to the four members of the band until Halim Wolf pointed out the
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similarity to his own song, Killing Floor.
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At which point his name was after Disco writer, there was also Bring It On Home.
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Which was credited to the four band members, at least till the 80s, when Willie Dexon noticed
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that it bore more than a little resemblance to a song Heedwitt in Fifth Sonny by Williamson.
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Dixon now has the songwriting credit for that track, and there was Mobey Dick.
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That started out as a variation of Bobby Parker's Watch Your Step, the same song that the Beatles
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had lifted for I Feel Fine.
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But in that case the track became basically just an excuse for a drum solo for Bannem, a
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solo that was a few minutes long on the record, but could sometimes stretch to half an hour
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on stage.
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Much of the rest of the album, though, was original material, with plans in particular
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stepping up as a lyricist, writing songs about his wife, about his conflicted feelings
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for his sister-in-law, and about Hobbits, sometimes all in the same song.
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Where Led Zeppelin I have been a continuum of songs muddled on other people's records
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to varying degrees, ranging from passing inspiration to outright plagiarism, the songs on Led Zeppelin
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II, an album that to this day is often considered the group's masterpiece, full more into a
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bi-modal distribution.
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There are a handful of songs that are just straight lifts from someone else's record,
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and a handful that are total originals.
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The album achieved many things.
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It established Page and Plant as a songwriting team, at least on the songs they actually
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wrote.
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It established Page as the producer.
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Where the first album had been recorded with Glenn Johns as the only engineer, this album
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had four different engineers and six different studios.
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Page was going to make sure that nobody was going to be able to take soul credit for the band's
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sound except him, and it went to number one on pretty much every album chart worldwide,
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knocking the Beatles final album, Abbey Road, after number one slot at the beginning of
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1970.
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The 60s were over, and there was a new group at the top.
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And they had managed to do something that was both artistically satisfying and incredibly
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lucrative.
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But at the end of 1969, the group were wealthy, famous, and already burned out.
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However, covered from that burnout and what they did with their stardom is a story that
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will wait for another time.
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A history of rock music, in 500 songs, is brought to you by the generosity of my backers
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on Patreon.
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Each week, Patreon backers will get a 10 minute bonus podcast.
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This week's is on Jim's Blues by PJ Trobe.
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Visit patreon.com slash Andrew Hickey to sign up for as little as a dollar a month.
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A book based on the first 50 episodes of the podcast, from Savoy Swingers to Clock
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Rockers, is now available.
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Search Andrew Hickey 500 Songs on your favorite online bookstore or visit the links in the
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show notes.
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This podcast is written and narrated by me Andrew Hickey and produced by me and tilt
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a riser.
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Visit 500 Songs.com that 500-0-0 the numbers songs.com to read transcripts and liner notes
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and get links to hear the full versions of songs accepted here.
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If you've enjoyed the show and feel it's worth reviewing, please do leave a review
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But more importantly, tell just one person that you liked this podcast.
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Thank you very much for listening.