As the blues-rock of the late ’60s hurtled towards the hard rock of the ’70s, four men were pushing the limits: Jimi Hendrix, and the Yardbird triumvirate of Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and Page. Jimi Hendrix is gone. This apparently doesn’t affect his legacy, but it does affect his ability to create new music that still matters, regardless of how many “lost†recordings are posthumously released. Jeff Beck, who continues to be an amazing and inventive guitarist – and has the edge over Hendrix in the still-alive-and-well department – tends to prefer spending time with cars instead of guitars. These days he appears on record and on stage with less frequency than Elvis. Eric Clapton, meanwhile, has all but forsaken the driving blues-rock music that propelled him to early fame, opting instead for his current grandfatherly white-bluesmaster persona. One needs to look no further than what he did to “Layla†on his MTV Unplugged special to see that rock and roll is indeed a distant memory for Slowhand.
That, of course, leaves Mr. Page. The man who poured concrete into the throat of rock and roll has never stopped working his brand of musical genius on the form. With the release of Walking Into Clarksdale, Page and Robert Plant have revisited the styles that made Led Zeppelin the preeminent purveyors of innovative hard rock. Whether it was reinterpreting decades-old gritty blues numbers or fusing Middle Eastern drones with searing guitar riffs, Page and Zeppelin always had a tight grasp on, and full understanding of, their influences.
Walking Into Clarksdale is the latest example of Page extending the language of those influences. Indeed, the title of the new record takes its cue from a tiny town in the middle of Nowhere, U.S.A. called Clarksdale, Mississippi. It may seem like an obscure locale, but Clarksdale lies in the heart of the region that gave birth to the blues: the Mississippi Delta. For Page and Plant, walking into Clarksdale could just as easily be construed as “walking back.â€
The record is vintage Page, easily recognizable but fresh enough in its construction to show how Page and Plant have managed to refresh and reinvent the music they make together. The blues roots are still here, but the cultural impact of other points on the globe have been even more deeply explored. For Page, it was simply a matter of stripping it all back to what he grew up with. Sitting in his hotel in Manhattan, seemingly a million miles from Clarksdale or Cairo, Page reflects on this latest addition to his repertoire.
“The most obvious thing for us to do,†he begins, “was to go back to the four-piece unit that we knew best and that has always worked best for us. A lot of people thought we were going to carry on with that big extravaganza from the last tour [behind 1995’s fully orchestrated No Quarter], but for us it was more important to come to terms with the songs.â€
Page started by writing most of the songs on an old Harmony Sovereign guitar, one that he has used ever since the making of Led Zeppelin III. Then Page, Plant, bassist Charlie Jones and drummer Michael Lee headed to a most unlikely location to record: Abbey Road Studios in London. Gone was the farmhouse in Bron-yr-Aur or the privacy of his Sol Studios. “I sold Sol because it was 10 minutes down the road, and when I moved there was no point in keeping it,†says Page. “I’d recorded in Abbey Road in the ’60s and I’d worked with George Martin there as well. We all call it the Beatles’ studio, but it was really his studio, wasn’t it? Or EMI’s studio, anyway.â€
Page laughs at the irony. “In fact, I remember doing sessions there in the daytime and you’d see all the Beatles’ equipment pushed up against the wall because they only went in there at night – and they spent all night. So the studio could safely put in afternoon sessions and know the Beatles wouldn’t be there. I’d never had the freedom to turn up an amp in there before. This time I had the freedom in their huge room, and I just took full advantage of it.†He laughs again.
“Poor Robert, he couldn’t sing in there with us because there was so much leakage. He had to stand in between the double doors and sing with his notebook and mic stand. We had a great time in there.â€
The Clarksdale sessions lasted barely a month, which seems to be an abbreviated amount of time for a modern-day record. But Zeppelin often recorded quickly, sometimes even on the run. “We did Presence in three weeks and In Through The Out Door in three and a half. The main thing is that we can work fast, and we enjoy working fast. We’ve always been about spontaneity.â€
The finished recording hints at the music Zeppelin was producing when it disbanded after the death of John Bonham. “When The World Was Young†has tones and melancholy riffs that easily could have been found on In Through The Our Door, as does “Upon A Golden Horse,†which recalls “Carouselambra†with its minor-chord drones into the verse. But there are sounds and passages that come from other ventures of Page’s “Please Read the Letter†shares the roiling riffs that were the foundation of Outrider, while “House of Love†resonates with the snarling attack of the Firm’s Mean Business. Tracks like “Most High,†however, break the more exotic ground that was first explored with “Kashmir,†as Page explains. “‘Most High’ is an alternate tuning, the only one on the record. It’s in a C tuning: the bottom string is C, the fifth string is G, the fourth string is C, the third string is G, the second is C, and the top string is E. I haven’t used that particular tuning before. I had it set in my TransPerformance guitar, but I’ve only used it occasionally to make a big open chord. I had a tuning close to it which I used for ‘Bron-Yr-Aur’ and on ‘Friends’ [low to high: C A C G C E], but actually for those songs the A string remains the same. So,†he laughs, “in that case, the string remains the same.â€
Even though Page has long been one of the most visible employers of alternate tunings, especially for some of his original blues and slide compositions like “Hats Off To (Roy) Harper†[C G C G C E] and “Bron Y Aur Stomp†[C F C F A C], the determination not to agonize over the recording process preempted their use. “It’s really the sort of thing I do more at home,†he muses. “A lot of this record was written on the spot – apart from going away and thinking about a section and bringing it back in. That’s not the most ideal time to be fiddling around with a tuning that you don’t know, because ideas are coming out fast and furious.â€
Those fast and furious ideas manifest the spectrum of music Page has absorbed over the last five decades. “My roots go back to when I was at school. Today, everybody keeps going on about bloody ‘world music’†he says with a touch of disdain. “It isn’t new music at all. It’s the fact that communications are better and people are more open to hearing stuff today. I was listening to that music back then, and I’ve listened to it all through my life. There’s so much in me that’s relevant to all that, and I can still put a new slant on it.â€
Does this constant exploration of non-traditional music affect his playing style? “When it comes to other techniques, like tapping, that’s not my bag, and I don’t listen to it for hours on end because I’m not going to get that much from it. But if there’s a street musician from Morocco or a country-blues player, I’m going to get far more exhilaration out of that because it’s where I’m coming from.â€
Page settled into Clarksdale with a relatively stripped-down setup, mirroring the song-writing approach. He used his trademark Les Paul, the Harmony Sovereign, a Gretsch Chet Atkins, and a Fender Tonemaster amp for the majority of the songs.
Since the sparseness here comes consciously, there are surprisingly few swaths of his “guitar army,†the dizzying multiple layers of guitar overdubs that defined tracks like “Achilles’ Last Stand.â€
“Well, ‘Achilles’ is the ultimate example of that,†he recalls. “When you’re doing an overdub, you’ve got to shape the sound in your head. That’s where I guess I’m lucky; it’s part of what I can do without a struggle, almost immediately. It’s probably experience, really, isn’t it? I’ve got a lot of experience,†he grins.
“But ‘Achilles’ began as a bit that had come out of ‘Dazed and Confused,’ a live bit that we did. And I said to John Paul Jones that I’m going to put a rising scale over this. At the time, he said ‘Well, it can’t be done,’ and I said, ‘Oh yes it can. I know what it is.’ I didn’t even bother to play it but it was in my head from the point when we were first rehearsing it in Los Angeles. I remember the day it happened, and I knew what it was; I could just feel it. And then when I got in the studio I did it in harmony!â€
Pages laughs at the recollection. “I knew the scale and how the rest of it should go; or, rather, what I call a progression. I’ve never been into practicing scales, though I shouldn’t say that because I don’t want to discourage anyone from doing them, but I just did progressions. I mean, it could be a scale, but I think of them as progressions.â€
“The only time I did practice scales was when I was playing sitar, and then you have scales in the classic Indian sense of ascending and descending. You have to practice them to become familiar with the music. For instance, when you have two different sets of notes in one particular raga, if you’re ascending you mustn’t touch any of the notes in the descending scale.â€
The mention of “Achilles’ Last Stand†brings about more of Page’s thoughts on his playing over the years. For a time, he thought of the epic as the pinnacle of his playing, but his blues solos have come to have singular importance to him. “I was always happy with my playing on ‘Achilles,’ but then I thought the solo on ‘Tea for One’ was really good.â€
“But other people have pointed out the solo on ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You.’ And you know, ‘Tea For One’ was about the only time we consciously tried to do something in Zeppelin that we’d done before. Really, it was the only time; we set out to do a more laid-back version of ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You.’â€
Page is looking forward these days, not back. He is in the middle of a new tour, and has little time to think about anything other than his current collaboration with Plant.
But the question has to be asked: Is there anything he hasn’t done, or anyone he would like to try working with? After all, he’s worked with and guested on albums by artists from the Rolling Stones (Dirty Work) to Tom Jones (uncredited sessions) to John Paul Jones (the latter’s Scream for Help soundtrack). It takes him a moment to answer.
“Well if I was to work with anybody, it would be in an instrumental capacity. I’ve been spoiled as far as singers go, if you think about it. Working with Robert and Paul Rodgers, David Coverdale….David Myles [who sung on Outrider] was an excellent singer. But the one thing that Robert and I had, that he was missing all the time that he wasn’t working with me and I was missing all the time I wasn’t working with him, was the fact that we can spark off of each other. If I have an idea, he knows exactly where I’m coming from. It’s really good – really good – and it’s a really healthy package at the moment.
“I was thinking about it the other day. We’ve both been away, and now we’re coming home.â€
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