Chris Salewicz - Jimmy Page - The Definitive Biography

‘It was a compressed pop-art explosion, with a ferocious staccato guitar figure, a massive descending riff and rolling instrumental break and LSD-inspired lyrics that questioned the construction of reality and the nature of time,’ wrote Jon Savage in 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded . But by some it was seen as wilfully clever clogs. Penny Valentine, Disc and Music Echo ’s reliable record reviewer, was extremely dismissive: ‘I have had enough of this sort of excuse for music. It is not clever, it is not entertaining, it is not informative. It is boring and pretentious. I am tired of people like the Yardbirds thinking this sort of thing is clever when people like the Spoonful and Beach Boys are putting real thought into their music. And if I hear the word psychedelic mentioned again I will go nuts.’

In fact, in the UK ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’ only stuttered to the edge of the Top 30. As far as Britain was concerned, the Yardbirds were – in the jargon of the time – on their way out.

On 5 August 1966 Page played bass with the Yardbirds in the eighth-floor Auditorium of Dayton’s Department Store in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a regular gig venue. Although he had visited the United States twice before, this was the very first American show that he ever performed. This, the Yardbirds’ third US tour, had been scheduled to kick off a week earlier, but Beck was bedridden with tonsillitis, which was why he had not been present at the initial ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’ session. At Dayton’s Department Store there were two concerts, one at 1 p.m., the other at 4. ‘The surroundings felt quite surreal,’ Page remarked on his website many years later. For the show he was clad in a purple jumpsuit.

‘Shapes of Things’ had been a US hit when it was released in February that year, reaching the number 11 slot; it was followed by ‘Over Under Sideways Down’, out in June and two months later still in the US charts, where it would peak at number 10, the group’s biggest-ever American hit. The Roger the Engineer album had been released in July in the USA as Over Under Sideways Down , and that esteemed LP would get to number 52, not bad for a group starting its career in the USA.

The tour trundled through the Midwest – Chicago, Detroit, dates in Indiana – and down into Texas and assorted Bible Belt areas, playing the same sort of state fairs that had so irritated the Rolling Stones on their early US tours – unaware perhaps that these sort of shows were where Elvis Presley first honed his live act. Jeff Beck had not fully recovered from his illness, and would frequently take out his ire on the inadequate amplifiers at the venues. ‘If he didn’t get his sound right, he’d just kick the amps offstage,’ recalled drummer Jim McCarty.

Not that the shows weren’t without a modicum of glamour. Due to a national airline strike, Simon Napier-Bell had been obliged to charter a small private plane. After Beck had smashed his own Marshall amp, he insisted that he would not carry on without an identical replacement. According to Napier-Bell, Page used the dilemma to undermine him: ‘“Simon is our manager,” he said, “so it is on him to find a replacement.” There were hardly any Marshall amps at all in the USA at that time – probably no more than 20 – so when I finally tracked one down we had to send the plane to pick it up, which cost an absolute fortune, far more than the amp cost. But that kept Jeff Beck happy, and allowed Jimmy Page to feel he’d got one over on me.’

On 23 August 1966 the Yardbirds played Santa Catalina Island, a resort 22 miles from Los Angeles in the Pacific Ocean. The group arrived on a boat from Long Beach filled with competition winners from radio station KFWB, and one of these fans noticed that Beck seemed in a ‘difficult’ mood. He had been in this ‘mood’ for the entire tour: his tonsillitis had never fully gone away and now seemed to be on the offensive once again.

For Simon Napier-Bell, however, this show at the island’s Casino Ballroom was the best he had ever seen by the group. Beck played a solo, he said, that seemed to last for ever. During it he interplayed with Page’s thundering bass guitar, and their sonic concoction drifted off into the soundscapes of what already was becoming known – and dreaded by Penny Valentine – as ‘psychedelia’.

By the time the Yardbirds returned to Long Beach, it was clear that Beck was not in good shape. Although he retired for the night to the arms of Mary Hughes, his Los Angeles girlfriend, he was so sick the next day that that night’s show, at Monterey County Fairgrounds, was cancelled.

Beck’s health was bad enough for him to have to drop out of the rest of the tour, a cause of considerable controversy within the group, but a decision of huge significance for Page. For the remaining 12 dates, beginning on 25 August at San Francisco’s Carousel Ballroom, Chris Dreja switched from rhythm guitar to bass, and Page, wearing the newly fashionable wide-flared trousers, took over as lead guitarist. ‘It was really nerve-wracking,’ he said, ‘because this was the height of the Yardbirds’ concert reputation and I wasn’t exactly ready to roar off on lead guitar. But it went all right, and after that night we stayed that way. When Jeff recovered, it was two lead guitars from then on.’

During the tour Page would hear his own guitar work on the radio, on a single from a recent session he had played in London produced by Mickie Most. Now ‘Sunshine Superman’ by Donovan, an innovative and definitive sound of the summer of 1966 that heralded a golden period and shift of style for the former folk singer, was rising up and up the US charts, reaching the number one slot for a week. Although not released in the UK until December that year, it would almost emulate its US chart position, reaching number two.

Jimmy Page and Donovan Leitch were like-minded musical souls, each with their own interest in metaphysics. Playing on ‘Sunshine Superman’ with Page was – yet again – John Paul Jones on bass. At those same sessions Page played the haunting guitar on Donovan’s equally memorable ‘Season of the Witch’, which was on the Sunshine Superman album. Built around a D ninth chord shown to Donovan by master guitarist John Renbourn, ‘Season of the Witch’ was ideal for extended versions and would be frequently employed as soundcheck material by Led Zeppelin.

Back in the UK, Jeff Beck’s health returned, and he drove over to Page’s Pangbourne home, its interior design already beginning to reflect the prevailing rock-star rococo style. The two guitarists worked out a stage routine that would allow each to play lead guitar, intertwining with one other and mutually strengthening their playing and that of the group. Among the songs they developed was a version of Freddie King’s ‘Goin’ Down’ – though this was never recorded.

They needed to work fast. On 23 September the Yardbirds again hit the road, supporting the Rolling Stones and the Ike and Tina Turner Revue on a 12-date tour of the UK, two shows a night, ending on 9 October 1966.

The tour kicked off at London’s Royal Albert Hall, where the Yardbirds allegedly blew the Rolling Stones off the stage. Yet the review they received from the NME , especially for Jeff Beck, was extremely sniffy; it irritated him that he was described as ‘a guitar gymnast’. Simon Napier-Bell utterly disagreed with such an assessment: ‘They were really fantastic. What Jeff and Jimmy were doing was playing Jeff Beck’s solos, but in harmony. It was astonishing to hear, and to watch.’

Difficulties soon arose, however. According to Chris Welch in Led Zeppelin: The Book : ‘One problem was that Jeff couldn’t handle the competition and would try to blow Jimmy off the stage. Page was always on the ball, but Jeff’s returning fire in guitar exchanges would be unpredictable and relied on volume when accuracy failed.’ Napier-Bell was in agreement in an interview he did with Jim Green in the October 1981 edition of Trouser Press : ‘Jimmy deliberately upstaged Jeff, Jeff got moody and walked out towards the end, fortunately we finished it.’