Early Days' revisited: Jimmy Page meets the Crowes 
By TIMOTHY WHITE 

10/25/1999 
BPI Entertainment News Wire 
(c) Copyright 1999 BPI Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 


NEW YORK -- Imagine a pipin' hot mess o' fried chicken 'n' chips, wrapped up in a pocket of Middlesex newsprint, with a side of hot bread, boiled greens, and greasy Georgia gravy. Then slam that blue-plate special into a microwave oven with the temperature set on "explode," and the uninitiated will get some sense of the wild musical feast that constituted suppertime on the Jimmy Page & the Black Crowes mini-tour of Oct. 12-19 as it tore through New York; Worcester, Mass.; and Los Angeles. 

But don't believe a critic, take it from a fan -- namely Page himself, who entered two days of rehearsals with the Crowes at New York's Montana Studios at 10th Avenue and 56th Street to find himself confronted with an almost surreal sort of homage/homecoming: "I just walked in, and it was like a total dream," he says, still slightly dazed and confused. "For instance, we did `Ten Years Gone,' and when I did that with [Led] Zeppelin, one guitar was like an army of guitars on the recorded version. But it was so good how [the Crowes ] were playing it --and then all of a sudden they started playing all of the harmonies too -- and they got them right! I'd thought, `Well, there's bound to be bits here that we'll have to "top and tail," ' but they'd done their homework amazingly well. It was sheer bliss for me, hearing all this stuff `living' round me, if you know what I mean. I'd only heard it on the album when I did it, and now there it was, without me!" 

Page swiftly devised his task -- sharing a portion of the guitar rhapsodies he'd originated, integrating them with "this swinging thing -- that's absolutely what's so good about it," which the Crowes had woven into a diverse Zeppelin set that included, at the transporting Oct. 13 show at New York's Roseland Ballroom this writer witnessed, a batch of material from the catalogs of the Yardbirds and the Crowes , plus blues classics like B.B. King's "Woke Up This Mornin'." 

From the moment Wednesday night when Page and the Crowes burst into their own bare-knuckled bottleneck version of Led Zep's venerable "Celebration Day," it felt as if a Delta juke-joint had been transplanted to Manhattan to host a joint Atlanta/West London rent party. Oddly enough, that song off the 1970 "Led Zeppelin III" album always sounded like a manic outtake from an obscure Sun Studios session, as though its distorted leads were run through the same damaged amp that Jackie Brenston's guitarist (Willie Kizart!) had used in '51 for "Rocket 88" after it tumbled off his car roof during the drive to Memphis from Clarksdale, Miss. As Crowes vocalist Chris Robinson yowled into the "Celebration Day" lyric ("Her face is cracked from smiling/All the fears that she's been hiding . . ."), the song's British blues passion merged effortlessly with its Southern sense of heat as it reached the familiar guitar solo. A guitar run redolent of the Allman Brothers Band's best or Lynyrd Skynyrd circa 1976's "One More From The Road" stand at Atlanta's Fabulous Fox Theatre, the break also bared the enduring vitality of Zeppelin's output when top players like the Crowes embrace it. 

"That's the essence of it -- the fact that they're really good, serious musicians," Page says. "Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to cut it the way they did. And I must say that Chris has done an astonishing job with vocals. One chick said to me, `Well, he's doing a good job doing a Robert Plant.' And I said, `Hold it right there!' He's not doing a Robert at all; the only similar thing is that he's got the range to cope with this. He's doing a Chris, putting his own phrasing in and coming up with some amazing stuff." Besides the Zeppelin material, Page says, he was thrilled with the reinterpretations of the Yardbirds' "Shapes Of Things," as well as such Crowes staples as "Shake Your Money Maker," "Hard To Handle," and "Remedy." Page adds of the Atlanta band, "There's a song of theirs I wanted to do but haven't had a chance to learn: `HorseHead.' " 

Born Jan. 9, 1944, in Heston, Middlesex, in England, Page explains that he and the Crowes first met "about four years ago; I jammed with them in Paris, and then they supported us at gigs with Page & Plant. Last summer, there was this charity event in England for the Abandoned Brazilian Children's Trust and Task Brazil. I was approached [because Page 's wife is Brazilian] but didn't have an immediate band at the time, so I contacted the Crowes . We had a wonderful time and did `In My Time Of Dying' and `You Shook Me.' So when their manager called and asked if I'd fancy doing some concerts over here, I said, `I'd love to.' " 

There's long been mutual affection among Southern blues artists and British rockers, as found on such records as Page and Brian Auger's 1963 "Don't Send Me No Flowers" side with Sonny Boy Williamson and the albums "Sonny Boy Williamson And The Yardbirds" (Fontana, 1966), the early Page /Eric Clapton sessions on "Blues Anytime Vols. 1-4" (Immediate, 1967), Derek & the Dominos' "Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs" (Polydor, 1970), and "The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions" (Rolling Stones, 1971). 

"With influences, it goes right back to the South for me," Page confirms, "because it starts in Sun Studios, Sam Phillips' studios, and all those guys he recorded there. Let's face it, he also recorded Howlin' Wolf and was doing blues there as much as he was doing the rockabilly thing." If Memphis was ground zero for Page 's inspirations, other heroes from the region include Mississippi's Otis Rush ("When I first heard `So Many Roads,' it was scary stuff and still is, just purely for the atmospheric thing happening"). But a touchstone nearer the Crowes ' Atlanta roots was Macon, Ga., where Florida-bred guitarist Duane Allman cut Allman Brothers Band albums for Capricorn after he'd graduated from finishing school -- Alabama's Muscle Shoals Sound Studios on Jackson Highway. "Duane Allman was a monster player; he was fantastic," says Page , because he could shine while still keeping his parts in the service of a song, "and I think that's a very important aspect, as far as composition goes, for guitarists." 

The Page / Crowes pairing is being hailed as one of the finest concert performances of the decade, yet access to the faithful was limited. "You want people to go away going, `What a great night I had!' says Page , who may share it commercially. "That's the reason we recorded the last two nights at the Greek Theatre in L.A." Meanwhile, Page 's own handpicked "Early Days: The Best Of Led Zeppelin Volume One" (Atlantic) is due Nov. 23, with "Latter Days," the second volume, coming in 2000. He believes "it's a good representation" of the group's signature songs and hopes it inspires more fans everywhere. Still, he notes that Southern followers can be fickle. 

In Memphis in April 1970, says Page , when Led Zeppelin "sold more tickets faster than anything down there around that period, the mayor said, `Oh, I'll have to meet them and give them the keys to the city.' Well, the thing was that at that time it wasn't very good to play the South with long hair. And after we played we had to run away, to get out of town! We got the keys to the city in the afternoon," he recalls with a huge laugh, "and had to run for our lives that night!"