Jimmy Page: The Definitive Biography. Chris Salewicz

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.’

      Quickly forgiven, Beck was admitted back into the Yardbirds fold. This was a necessity, as they were about to join the winter leg of Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars – a regular feature of the American popular music calendar organised by the legendary DJ. But before that there was another avenue to explore.

      An exaggerated, dramatised version of the high-end hippiedom found at Anita Pallenberg and Brian Jones’s home was expressed in the party scene in the classic – yet occasionally extremely pretentious – metaphysical thriller Blow-Up, which Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni started filming in London in April 1966. (The scene was actually shot in Christopher Gibbs’s Cheyne Walk house.) In the film a fashion photographer, played by David Hemmings and clearly based on enfant terrible David Bailey, thinks he has witnessed a murder.

      After completing the London shoot in June, Antonioni decided that to fully represent the capital’s glamorous, swinging spirit he should shoot a sequence in a rock ’n’ roll club. In September he returned to London and booked a meeting with Kit Lambert, manager of the Who. The day before the meeting, Lambert had lunch with Napier-Bell at the Beachcomber restaurant in London’s Mayfair Hotel; the two men were close friends and Lambert wanted to pick Napier-Bell’s brain about how to approach Antonioni. Napier-Bell decided to set him up to the advantage of his own group: ‘I told him to ask for £10,000 and insist that the Who had final edit on their sequence. Antonioni kicked him out after about a minute.

      ‘Then I went to see Antonioni: “We don’t want money. This is art. Of course I don’t want to edit it.”’ (In fact the Yardbirds received £3,000 for their part in Blow-Up: car-freak Jeff Beck immediately spent his share on a second-hand Corvette Stingray.)

      Napier-Bell had scored. The Yardbirds’ Blow-Up sequence was filmed at Elstree Studios in Borehamwood, north of London, doubling for Windsor’s hip Ricky-Tick Club, in the week beginning 6 October 1966. The band played ‘Stroll On’, as it was called in the film’s credits, the lyrics having been rewritten the previous night by Keith Relf for copyright reasons – in other words, so he could snatch the credit. But it was better known by fans who had experienced the song when rivetingly performed by the Johnny Burnette Trio as ‘Train Kept A-Rollin’’ – the same song that the Yardbirds had recorded at Sun Studio in Memphis the previous year. (Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘Smokestack Lighting’, a Yardbirds live favourite, had been first choice, but the idea was shelved when Antonioni decided it lacked the relentless pace he needed for the scene.)

      ‘Train Kept A-Rollin’ would be the very first number that Led Zeppelin would play in their initial rehearsal; in Blow-Up the Yardbirds essay an angry, explosive version of the song before a consciously static audience, which includes a young Michael Palin and a dancing, silver-coated Janet Street-Porter. Page stands stage-right to Beck’s stage-left and, rather in the manner of the Kinks’ Dave Davies, his hair is parted in the centre, his mutton-chop sideburns kissing his jawline and peeking out beneath the twin tonsorial curtains waterfalling from his head. He wears an open black jacket, a trio of badges balanced symmetrically on each lapel. In the sequence Beck freaks out over a malfunctioning amp, smashing his guitar to splintered pieces in a manner that only Pete Townshend would actually do in reality. Upon learning of his role, Beck had recoiled: would he have to destroy his new Gibson Les Paul? No fuckin’ way!

      A bunch of cheap Höfner replica guitars were brought in. ‘Jeff Beck had to be coaxed into smashing the guitar. And then he did it half a dozen times,’ recalled Napier-Bell. It is only after the guitar has been destroyed that the audience breaks out into a feverish response.

      Smashing the guitar wasn’t the only problem Beck had on the film, however. ‘Antonioni was a pompous oaf. I didn’t like him at all,’ he said. ‘The film was a bit of a joke. Crap. I thought, “Oh, that’s the end of us.” Because I saw the premiere in LA. But people loved it. It kept us going.’

      This scene from Blow-Up СКАЧАТЬ