ASK THE ANSWER MAN: JIMMY PAGE

Originally, I toyed with the idea of kicking off my contribution to "Dialogues with Jimmy Page" with a flashy intellectual quotation from George Eliot's Daniel Deronda about what a bruise it is to meet an idealized person and be confronted with their inevitable normalness.

This was supposed to suggest to you that I'm really quite intelligent, so that when you got to the meat and potatoes of the interview you wouldn't be so quick to notice how timidly I held up my end of things.

Then I decided not to get too cute.

What happened, simply, was that after years of imagining that—given the opportunity—I could extract from my chosen victim the definitive personality profile, I was outsmarted.

Sterner stuff than I has been stymied by the Professional Interviewee.

While a lot of these rock star fellows are not all that sharp in the verbal department, or can be tricked into spilling beans by excessive liquid refreshment or cunning strategy, there are those who give interviews because they have something they want to say and, having said it, cannot be induced to drop their guard and muse aloud on their fears and foibles. Mick Jagger is notably such a one.

I just don't see how there could be a bad karma or whatever.

He has nothing on Jimmy Page.

Summoned at last into the presence, the ambition of wrestling him into a corner, overpowering him and stomping on his chest in stilettos (all figuratively speaking) until he blurted out his innermost thoughts went right out of the window.

For one thing, he was just so determinedly personable that I couldn't quite come to grips with this man being the same one you hear all those peculiar things about.

What about all this awe and terror bit in his image then?

"Well, I felt overawed when I met Presley, I've gotta own up—and whenever I've met any of the sort of people that I felt were heroes. It's just natural. But after five minutes, if the people are reasonably human, if they're not just trying to send you up or something, you end up having a normal conversation."

Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, eh? But the whole Zeppelin schtick, and the persona of Jimmy Page as its architect, have been so heavily inlaid and encrusted with fantasy and fascination as to make him a many-faceted enigma, consciously or not.

"What I really want to know about you is what it's like to be the real you," I told him.

"Well, I'm the real me all the time," he responded, half amused and half indignant.

Try another tack, doll.

What interests me is that, assuming one is into the band in the first place, there seems to be a choice between two fundamental fantasies when experiencing Zeppelin in concert.

One of them is evoked in its extreme form by (NME scribe) Charles Shaar Murray's hallucination from Row 39: the band launches into "Trampled Underfoot" and the stage slowly rolls forward crushing the audience to death as row after row of airbashing heads go down and under.

The other one a friend of mine elucidated when, in the middle of "Kashmir," we looked down on the assembly from our position just below the ceiling (where we'd floated from our seats) and he said "I'm in heaven."

The basis for getting involved in one or the other depends on one's perception of rock-induced ecstasy as the ultimate in the physical or a release from same.

Both forms of Zeppelin-mania have their devotees. The first sort predominate in denims emblazed ZOSO while the others favor velvet or satin and experience acid flashbacks on escalators.

And those are just the musical illusion link-ups. What Laura Loins and Sidney Psycho lay at Page's door I don't even want to go into here.

But Jimmy doesn't want to play whenever I start bringing up this kind of thing, Stubbornly maintaining an "I'm just a rock and roller at heart" line.

But don't you feel affected by being so many things to so many people and by all the fantasies your audiences project onto you?

It doesn't seem to interest him. "I've made a point of not getting into all that because it can get really pretentious," he said placidly.

Foiled again. fm

Having lost my grib I let him talk about what he wanted. (This resulted in a 20,000 word transcript recounting the intimate details of the wiring up of his new recording desk. The book comes out next year.)

Back, into the realms of sensationalism. For Page the real purpose of the interview was to dispel rumors. His first concern was to deny any Zeppelin split and to blast the musical press for its insensitivity in speculating upon Robert Plant's plans while he wants to remain in privacy with his family after his young son's death.

"There's no question of the thing splitting up. I know Robert wants to work again."

I asked what other things have been put about that he wanted to straighten out and he said "You tell me," but as I pulled out a variety of Loose Talk he got pretty sore,.

One thing is that supposedly Robert doesn't want anything to, do with Jimmy any more, and before I could finish he asked with astonishment, "Why's that?"

Well, er, they do say that he seems to have been the lightning rod for a lot of—you'll pardon the expressionbad karma.

This caused a minor explosion. "What do you* mean by karma? It's not karma at all, I don't see how the band would merit a karmic attack.

"All I or we have attempted to do is to go out and really have a good time and please people at the same time. I always thought 1 was very fortunate through that, 'cause I can't think of anything better than doing what you really want to do and seeing just a mass of smiles. That's utopia.

"Everybody in the band is really determined to do the best for themselves and the people that have followed us up to now without bullshitting around. I just don't see how there could be a bad karma or whatever.

"I think it's just bad coincidence. Okay, one may say there's no such thing as coincidence, but I really feel that."

Well, there have been whispers, nevertheless, that perhaps an unfortunate association with Page, specifically something like the upset with occult film maker Kenneth Anger, led to him or somebody else putting the whammy on the band.

"There's no question of the thing splitting up."

"It just really upset me, that, because I really did think that he [Anger] was an avatar at one point.

"Sure enough, he really is good when it comes down to his statement on celluloid. But you can never know, I mean, it's like Blake, Einstein, any of these people; you never really know what they re going through.

"Some of the things that manifested on his personal life just totally perplexed me. I can't account for the lunatic fringe."

Okay, then there are the conflicting accounts of how heavy Zeppelin's big boys Peter Grant and Richard Cole really are in handling the group's affairs. (When this came up I couldn't help getting the heebie-jeebies due to Cole's presence behind me.)

Page wasn't even present at the well-publicized backstage fight with Bill Graham's soldiers in San Francisco, to cite a particular episode, but he's prepared to back up Grant and John Bonham.

According to him the audience had been getting a bad time from brutish bouncers all day, and the eventual confrontation came after Grant's little boy was manhandled.

"I'll tell you, there was a whole team/ of guys there with sand in their gloves, it was a very hairy scene.

"I've had brushes with Bill Graham in the past. I'll give you an example. It was the Fillmore where we really broke, and the whole name and news pf the group spread like wildfire through the States from there. Obviously on the return we were excited to be back and really wanted to do our best.

"Now, when we got there it was in the afternoon and I went in with the road manager 'cause we wanted to cart the gear in then, and Graham was playing basketball. I remember going up to him—he didn't seem to be doing anything at the time, he seemed like the referee—and I said 'Hi Bill, it's really good to see you. Can we bring i the gear in now?!'

, "He said 'Don't you fucking get in here, you mother fuckers,' and all this real abuse. It was just like be exploded.

"I was really brought down because we really built ourselves up to going back. Then later he apolpgized. I mean, he's a pendulum."

There is still one story doing the rounds that one of the bouncers involved died later, I told him.

"That's nonsense! Listen, if we'd killed anybody, we'd be bloody in prison. It's ridiculous. It was just a civil case; if somebody hits you and you hit them back, it's self-defense, innit?

"It's just another thing that got blown up. I don't Want to say too much about it."

In a less inflammatory vein, Jimmy Page tales are rife. One of the most persistent is that if Zeppelin did split, he'd be willing to do service with the Stones if Keith gets screwed. Is that nonsense too?

"Well, I've played with Ronnie Wood and Keith and we have a good time. But it's only jamming. I really like f and respect him."

Another current favorite is the one about Page enjoying a spot of tele,vision viewing, when he suddenly saw UFOs on the screen, grabbed his toothbrush and tore off to Cairo, presumably for a rendezvous with little green men.

"That's because somebody didn't read what I'd said, and they were just being bloody stupid.

"I was going to go to Cairo on the tour break and I was tossing up whether or not to go. And there was this TV program hosted by Omar Sharif about the mysteries of the pyramids. They showed this old footage of the pyramids with a zeppelin flying in and I thought, 'Thai's it! I'll definitely go!' It seemed to be such a strange coincidence that that bit of footage would be there on the day I was thinking about it.

• "But UFOs, that's just the usual sort of nonsense that goes on."

Risking one final upset I brought up sqme criticisms of Swan Song, like the complaints that f?eter Grant doesn't have time for anyone on the label besides Zeppelin and Bad Company.

"Well, there is one awkward situation with the label, which is that a lot of folk come along and seem to think that Peter Grant is going to be able to do everything for them. It's just one of those unfortunate things that he's there and they respect him, but he just doesn't want to know. He's got too much on his plate.

"We've had a bit of a shake-up in the record department. After having gone through two label managers we've found out we can do it better ourselves."

I decided to drop the gossip probe at this stage. The thankless task of scrutinizing the interior of the Zeppelin hierarchy and the Swan Song structure can go to a tough investigative reporter.

The future of Led Zeppelin itself is obviously very much on Page's mind.

"I do feel it's time to do some really major, meaty work."

Is the band a stable thing in his life that he has come to depend on? "Well, I get such a charge from playing with everybody. It became so apparent on the last tour that if was something which I really needed.

"It was a great relief and release to be able to get back on stage and work. Obviously the first five gigs were rusty, but' the audience just acted like 'Whoo, great to see you back'.

"If I made a mistake, it didn't seem to matter, they seemed to understand. It made one very, very confident and we got it together much faster than if there had been a lot of'harassment.

"I must admit I didn't know whether I was capable of playing for three-anda-half hours. You could bullshit for an hour, but you can't bullshit for threeand-a-half hours Or people are going to get bored. And they didn't, the enthusiasm was building all the time.

"We had a good programme which covered everything, and we had worked very hard on the environmental aspect of it. You could see the effects like the laser pyramid from a mile away.

"On the really massive places we used videos, which is only fair really. 'Cause I remember going to Wembley to §ee Crosby , Stills, Nash and Young and I thought it was the roadies on stage at first.

I thought it (New Wave) was amazing, especially The Damned.

Throughout the conversation, Page's preoccupation with the work he's engaged in at home was most evident. How exasperating a musician like this can be. Every time you try to get sociological he will talk about music.

"I've been setting up a studio at home which is so advanced there's one bit which is still in the laboratories having the tests on it.

"Basically it's a computerized desk with a memory bank. There are automatic desks around now which just do the volume and the level, but this does every single thing on the board.

"I've been learning how to use it. It's taken a bloody long time, the structural part of it was started before last Christmas and the wiring-up's been two solid months. But anyway, it's playing back nowf and I've started attempting to do a bit of recording on it.

"I've always dreamt of having a studio years and years back, before the group even started. But I always wanted one which wouldn't go out of date in a year.

"Now this thing should last until they do digital recording. I don't want to get too technical, but what it does is, as you build up your mix track by track and you get your balance and equalization and all the rest of it, it's logging it all the time and playing it back exactly as you've programmed it.

"When you finally build up the mix, if you find that the voice wasn't loud enough or something like that, you can just put that track into Rewrite and nothing else changes. It stays constant while you make your alterations.

"And you can put down six or eight alternative mixes and then go into those and take the best bits if you want ,to-

"The possibilities are immense. It allows one to work on your own without an engineer, and anyone who's familiar with 24-track knows how many hands usually need to be involved to get it right."

With a slightly guilty laugh he added that he wouldn't have to ring up any more engineers in the middle bf the night to come and help him.

Part of this recording activity includes work on the chronological live album Page is compiling from tapes of the band from 1969 onwards.

"I'm working on it slowly because I get into that and it's really good academic practice. Then I get sidetracked and want to write something."

Also in his hands is one of the new Roland guitar synthesizers, which he says is amazing.

"It takes over from the keyboard, it's just programmed by the guitar, and it also plays chords.

"I've been working on all these things—new ideas and sounds. And I've got like two-and-a-half years of demo stuff to merge in with all this new work. It's all very good at the moment, because as I say, it's ,like the preZeppelin dreams.

"So there's all that—apart from all these things like holidays people keep going op about," he mutterecLto himself.

An interesting dichotomy emerged from discussing his own musical ambitions in contrast to the merits he appreciates in the New Wave.

"When I heard it, it seemed like adrenalin music, so high-powered, and I thought it was amazing7, especially The Damned.

"It was very much' like mantra music; they weren't altering the tempo at all, just keeping it really, really intense.

"But the ones that I want to stick to the original format are probably getting a bit hackneyed now.

"It will be interesting to see how they do develop, keeping that raw earthiness."

But at the same time he admits to feeling frustration over the failure of the rock and roll culture to throw up any people he regards as real geniuses on a par with the beacons of classical symphonic music.

"That's what really upsets me about rock. All the barriers are opened up, all the classification is gone really and you find people amalgamating this, that and the other musie together, and yet there doesn't seem to be anything that's really important without being pretentious.

"All those really strong melodies like Wagner's—there just isn't anybody.

"So maybe it's just destined to be street music and social comment. Which makes it art, because an artist is somebody who reflects his environment."

He almost hesitantly described some of his own work in progress:

"There are two pieces which are heavily orchestrated. One thing might sound odd, but the guitars are doing everything, taking over the string part and the brass part. They are heavily treated with synthesizers and effects.

"I've done a few bits of orchestration on the records up to now, but nothing really long or substantial. This is something entirely different!

"One thing I'm doing is like a cross between flamenco and modern on the acoustic with electric parts that keep coming in and fading out again, so that there are four totally different, but related, sections coming in.

"It's not quite the same as symphonic stuff, I don't keep going back to a theme, but it's got that sort of thickness to it. There are lots of countermelodies and things.

"Now when you start talking like that a lot of people I know go 'Oh dear, well that's not what's really happening'. But I was very interested to notice that when the Damned split, Rat Scabies was saying 'We were trying to stretch out'. That's it, it's a matter of change.

"A lot of people can't handle that, they just want to fit you into one bag and hope that you're going to stay there all the time."

How far do thes? aspirations and plans fit in with Zeppelin's future beyond that?

"I've always had a little plan of what I'd like to do, and it's materializing a lot slower than the way T initially intended.

"But it still goes hand-in-hand with the band. Whatever I'm going to do, it's only going to be a fourth of that.

"I'm totally committed to music. There's no point in trying to deny it within myself. It's the only thing I'm any good at. And I'm not a natural player or anything like that. It's all down to work.

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"But I really enjoy the recorded sound and messing around getting unusual combinations. Most people would find it very boring, but I get as much buzz out of that as a motorcyclist gets out of his motorcycle."

Maybe this has turned out to be more of a personality inventory than I thought. Shrinks say that the only really happy people are those who are strongly motivated by their work. So is Jimmy Page happy?

"I'd never ever be happy. The only time I feel—oh, no, I won't say the only time—but you know I get very enthusiastic and excited over something that's being written out of nowhere.

"If your work's going well everything's fantastic, but if it isn't you seem to be up against the wall.

"Obviously there are a lot of things one has to come up against which you really hate. But I could never retire be^ cause it's so fascinating, you never know what's coming next.

"It's a challenge, a mystery. It's like dancing on the edge of a precipice..."

Reprint courtesy New Musical Express