Chris Salewicz - Jimmy Page - The Definitive Biography

By now Page had effectively dropped out of art college. Even though he would later acquire a considerable reputation for financial canniness, it is somewhat cheap to suggest that it was only his considerable earnings from session playing that continued to attract him to the craft. In fact, for him the art of recording, and coming to as full an understanding of it as possible, appears to have held far more attraction than treading the rock ’n’ roll boards. And in the most select quarters his skills were being further recognised. In August 1965 came the press announcement about the formation of Immediate Records, an independent label that was the pet project of Andrew Loog Oldham, Rolling Stones manager and wunderkind of UK pop, and his business partner Tony Calder. ‘Immediate will operate in the same way as any good, small independent label in America,’ said Oldham. ‘We will be bringing in new producers, while our main hope lies with the pop session guitarist turned producer Jimmy Page and my two friends, Stones Mick and Keith.’

Page had first worked with Andrew Loog Oldham in 1964, on one of Oldham’s versions of the Stones’ songs, performed by the Andrew Oldham Orchestra, part of his endeavour to become the UK’s Phil Spector. That session was at Kingsway Studios in Holborn, London; the producer was John ‘Paul Jones’ Baldwin.

Page then went on the road with Marianne Faithfull, who that summer had hit the Top 10 with her first release, ‘As Tears Go By’, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and on which Page had played.

Page had been recommended to Oldham by Charlie Katz, who booked musicians for his sessions. ‘He said to me one day, “There’s this young lad, Jimmy, we are trying him out. Why don’t you give him a go? He doesn’t read but Big Jim Sullivan will take him under his wing.” And so Jimmy started playing on my sessions,’ said Loog Oldham. ‘One of the first was Marianne Faithfull’s “As Tears Go By”. He was a bright spark. It was nice having him on the floor … All smiles and not much talk.’

Soon Page found himself playing on the Rolling Stones’ ‘Heart of Stone’, though it was a version that would not be released until the Stones’ Metamorphosis album, in 1975.

‘Jimmy was like a wisp,’ said Loog Oldham. ‘I don’t really know what kind of a person he was, because the great ones keep it hidden and metamorphose on us, so that the room works.’

Andrew Loog Oldham decided to take their relationship up a level, hiring Page as Immediate’s producer and A&R man. ‘In those days if you got on with people you tried to work with them. It seemed logical and Jimmy liked the idea … I thought he was very good. What he went on to do kind of proves it, doesn’t it?’

As for sessions with the Rolling Stones, Loog Oldham recalled: ‘He played on some of the demos Mick, Keith and I did that ended up on the album released in 1975 called Metamorphosis . The Stones did not play on that. I think he was on a Bobby Jameson single that Keith and I wrote and produced … I only considered people the way they considered themselves. Jimmy was a player, an occasional writer at that time with me and with Jackie DeShannon. I never considered him as a solo artist and I don’t think he did either.’

Page worked on a trio of demos for the Stones themselves: ‘Blue Turns to Grey’, ‘Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind’ and the aforementioned ‘Heart of Stone’. Although the version of ‘Blue Turns to Grey’ on which Page played was never released, a later edition of the song was included on the Stones’ 1965 US album December’s Children (And Everybody’s) , and Cliff Richard’s cover of the song was a number 15 hit in 1966. ‘Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind’ and ‘Heart of Stone’ were included on Metamorphosis , the first song being covered by Vashti Bunyan for an unsuccessful release on Immediate.

What had specifically drawn Page to the Immediate production gig was the chance to work with his old mucker Eric Clapton, now with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, who had formed an arrangement with the label.

In June 1965 John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers went into Pye Studios at Great Cumberland Place in London’s West End. Page was at the production helm for what would turn out to be a landmark session in the history of contemporary music.

‘I’m Your Witchdoctor’ and ‘Telephone Blues’ were the tunes involved. They featured John Mayall on keyboards, Hughie Flint on drums, John McVie on bass and Eric Clapton on guitar – the John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers line-up that had recorded the celebrated Beano -cover album. ‘When “Witchdoctor” came to be overdubbed, Eric had this idea to put this feedback wail over the top,’ said Page. ‘I was with him in the studio as he set this up, then I got back into the control room and told the engineer to record the overdub. About two thirds of the way through he pulled the faders down and said: “This guitarist is impossible to record.” I guess his technical ethics were compromised by the signal that was putting the meters into the red. I suggested that he got on with his job and leave that decision to me! Eric’s solo on “Telephone Blues” was just superb.’

It was Page who intuited how Clapton’s solos could be enhanced by pouring reverb onto them, bringing out the flames in his playing, characterised by Clapton’s overdriven one-note sustain.

But – as Page noted – Clapton’s plangent, lyrical playing on ‘Telephone Blues’, the B-side, is perhaps even more distinguished, the first time that he gets to really stretch out with a beautiful, mature stream of notes. You are struck by the clarity of the separation – and simultaneous harmony – of the instruments. Clearly Page had learned much from his countless hours in recording studios, learning to appreciate how the very best rock ’n’ roll records were assiduously constructed, put together piece by piece.

Tellingly, for his first go in the control seat for Immediate, the subject matter of the single’s title track alluded to the kind of dark material with which Page would later be associated, perhaps even tarnished by. The opening couplet ran:

‘I’m your witchdoctor, got the evil eye

Got the power of the devil, I’m the conjurer guy.’

On one hand this was no more than the stock imagery that peppered blues music; yet, in the bigger picture, it holds an interesting subtext. It was as though Page was toying with – giving a test run to, really – the entire mysterious and dark philosophy that would form the aura of Led Zeppelin.

‘The significance of this session cannot be emphasised enough, for it represented the birth of the modern guitar sound. And while Clapton did the playing, it was Page who made it possible for his work to be captured properly on tape,’ wrote Brad Tolinski.

That year Page also worked with the distinguished American composer Burt Bacharach on his album Hit Maker! Burt Bacharach Plays the Burt Bacharach Hits . ‘Page respected Bacharach’s meticulous approach to rehearsing and recording,’ wrote George Case in Jimmy Page: Magus, Musician, Man . Again, it was part of Page’s learning curve. ‘Bacharach, in turn, admired the young Briton’s politeness and polish.’

As part of his deal with Immediate, Page played guitar with Nico, a German actress, model and singer based in France whom Andrew Loog Oldham had met in London, where she was soaking up the scene. Loog Oldham and Page co-wrote a song for her, ‘The Last Mile’, and Page arranged, conducted, produced and played on the tune. It was relegated to the role of B-side, however, to the Gordon Lightfoot number ‘I’m Not Saying’ – again, Page played guitar on this track.

‘Brian Jones brought Nico to my attention,’ said Loog Oldham, ‘and Jimmy and I wrote a song, which we recorded with her as a B-side. It might have been better than the A-side. It should have been the A-side, because that was fucking awful. It really was stiff as Britain. Then he went on the road with Marianne Faithfull. We were all impressed by this new wave of women who were coming in.’