Posted on 05/22/2005 9:43:39 AM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
Somebody get him a cheeseburger.
That's been true for 40 years. Jimmy Paige got his start as a session musician, partly because guys like Pete Townsend couldn't get the hang of that newfangled electric guitar. Recording time was very expensive in the mid-60's -- hence you brought in the hired-guns to lay down the guitar tracks quickly. Getting it right on the first cut was the goal. Incidentally, you won't find Paige's name on any of The Who's albums. He got paid a premium to play uncredited. This preserved Townsend's reputation as well.
Yep! I remember when the Stones played "Saturday Night Live" (I think it was the "Some Girls" album"). Couldn't believe the Stones would "stoop" to playing on TV. Of course the were attempting to jumpstart their careers against such acts as Blondie & The Talking Heads -- Punk/New Wave bands that had no such self-limiting rules.
I have never heard that story, but it explains why Paige was chosen by Moon and Entwistle when they founded Led Zeppelin.
I do the same thing! And after the "Shoe the children" line, I always think, "Shoo, children! Shoo!"
The electric guitar work on "Magic Bus" was Jimmy Paige. My source was the Led Zeppelin biography, "Hammer of the Gods."
He did. The whole thing was written with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek.
Now I certainly know of Page's tenure as an in-demand session player, even at the tender age of 17. However, saying that he was responsible for many or even some of Townsend's recorded licks.............sorry; don't buy it. I'd have to see far more evidence to believe that. Townsend happens to be one hell of a guitarist (even if his lead chops are wanting).
ummmm................huh???
During one of the many band spats endured by The Who, John Entwistle and Keith Moon started a band with Jimmy Paige and Robert Plant. Moon said he thought this band would go over like a lead zeppelin. When The Who got back together, Paige and Plant got another bass and drummer, and kept Moon's idea.
Well, I'm just recounting what I read in a biography of Led Zeppelin. You might be drawing the wrong conclusions, too. Just because Pete Townsend couldn't get the hang of an electric guitar rift on a single cut in 1964, doesn't mean that he's a bad guitar player, or that he's some kind of a fraud. It just means that the electric guitars of the period were damn hard to master -- especially for a relatively young kid who could barely afford one a year prior.
Some of the stuff you regularly see done on a modern electric guitar would have been impossible on the ones constructed in the early '60's. The strings are lighter, the amps are more powerful and so on.
The big guns of that period were Eric Clapton (who was only around 15 when he burst onto the scene), Jeff Beck (another 'Yardbird'), Jimmy Paige (who was still unknown except to music insiders), and that's getting to be about it. You might throw George Harrison into that mix. The bench strength just wasn't there.
Why do you think all of these guys were so ga-ga over Jimi Hendrix when he arrived on the scene? Hendrix could do things then that are still hard to do now.
Me too. I saw him a few times in the sixties, and he played really creative, original music. He's underappreciated, in my opinion.
I'm a blues fan and not so interested in his seventies more pop oriented stuff, but I admire his ability to give his audience what it wants and hang in there over such a long time.
He's probably making good money all these years, and more power to him. And he can still really play that guitar.
I remember the days when they actually had a terrific selection of tubes, as well as a testing machine. Back then, many of the employees of Radio Shack actually knew something about electronics. While I was able to pick up some preamp tubes there, I don't recell them ever stocking the tubes I needed for my power section (6550s... I was a bass player!) although they could order them.
Radio Shack is a good example of what's happened over the years. To a place where you could get just about anything you might need to an electronics project, and people who could help you figure out what you might need to do, to today's "You've got questions, we've got blank stares" employees!
Mark
I remember when DEVO first played on SNL. The guys in my band and I were taking a break from practicing and watching TV, and we were sure that it was a "joke" band, not the real thing... I remember thinking, "Why did that bass player chop up that Gibson bass?"
It was only a few weeks later when I saw the album in a music store that I found out that DEVO was "serious!"
Mark
Did you have an Ampeg? The B-3 player's Leslie used the 6550 as the power tube too.
Mark
"...that I don't want to get caught up in all that - funky shit goin' down in the city"
I remember as well. Of course, SNL is still a great program to see some really good "live" rock and roll. Often the musical acts are the highlight of the show. Some of those old shows from the 70s-90s are great just to see some of the bands at the start of their careers. And SNL has always had a rule that bands must play live. This is why it was such an abomination when Ashlee Simpson was caught lip syncing on the show.
I believe it was Page who played on a number of early Kinks recordings (I can't think of any early Who track that has anything that sounds like what Page would have played.).
You just can't beat the sweet sound of an Ampeg SVT. My late best friend had an unusual rig: Furman parametric EQ and Furman X-over pushing a CS-800 which was hooked to a 8X10 for the highs, and a 2x18 scoop for the lows. It was huge. He called it Darth Vader's bass amp. The road crew hated him.
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