Jimmy Page had a major impact on classic rock music, and not just because his best guitar solos are some of the greatest ever. Led Zeppelin’s founding guitarist assembled the perfect band of musicians who were just as talented as him. As a producer, his recording philosophy changed everything about making hard rock albums in the 1970s. Now imagine he never made it to Led Zeppelin. It almost happened. Page was nearly killed in his sleep by his friend and Yardbirds bandmate Chris Dreja.
Jimmy Page | Michael Putland/Getty Images Jimmy Page was nearly killed in a near collision with his friend at the wheel
Rumors of a band member’s death dogged one famous English band in the late 1960s (we think you know who we mean). Page was nearly an actual casualty of a tragic accident while he slept.
The guitarist didn’t drive, so he often...
Jimmy Page | Michael Putland/Getty Images Jimmy Page was nearly killed in a near collision with his friend at the wheel
Rumors of a band member’s death dogged one famous English band in the late 1960s (we think you know who we mean). Page was nearly an actual casualty of a tragic accident while he slept.
The guitarist didn’t drive, so he often...
- 4/16/2023
- by Jason Rossi
- Showbiz Cheat Sheet
Jimmy Page with a guitar in his hands comes off as one of the most confident musicians ever. How confident? Enough to quit his lucrative session musician job and finally join the Yardbirds. Still, Page said recording with the Yardbirds was terrifying, and we understand why.
Jimmy Page and the Yardbirds in 1967 | Ivan Keeman/Redferns Jimmy Page got a ‘terrifying’ response while recording with the Yardbirds
Page made a good living as a session guitarist, but the grind wore on him. He initially had creative freedom to play whatever riffs fit the song, but then producers increasingly told him what to play note-for-note. Plus, he was performing more muzak and less music on the job.
So when the Yardbirds came calling a third time, he jumped at the chance to join.
Page and friend (and fellow guitar maestro) Jeff Beck briefly overlapped in the Yardbirds. When Beck quit, his pal...
Jimmy Page and the Yardbirds in 1967 | Ivan Keeman/Redferns Jimmy Page got a ‘terrifying’ response while recording with the Yardbirds
Page made a good living as a session guitarist, but the grind wore on him. He initially had creative freedom to play whatever riffs fit the song, but then producers increasingly told him what to play note-for-note. Plus, he was performing more muzak and less music on the job.
So when the Yardbirds came calling a third time, he jumped at the chance to join.
Page and friend (and fellow guitar maestro) Jeff Beck briefly overlapped in the Yardbirds. When Beck quit, his pal...
- 3/30/2023
- by Jason Rossi
- Showbiz Cheat Sheet
During the 1960s, American music was taken over by artists from the U.K. This era became known as the British Invasion, with U.K. pop and rock artists dominating the American charts. Many of these artists came and went, but others were wildly successful and remain in the pop culture zeitgeist today.
Here are the 5 best rock bands during the British Invasion 1. The Yardbirds The Yardbirds | Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
The Yardbirds are arguably more famous for who was in the band than their music. The band started with Eric Clapton as its lead guitarist. Once Clapton departed, the band was joined by Jeff Beck and future Led Zeppelin member Jimmy Page. The Yardbirds had three legendary guitarists on their roster, and their songs always had impeccable instrumentals.
While The Yardbirds only lasted for five years, they did have a few hit songs, including “For Your Love”, “Heart...
Here are the 5 best rock bands during the British Invasion 1. The Yardbirds The Yardbirds | Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
The Yardbirds are arguably more famous for who was in the band than their music. The band started with Eric Clapton as its lead guitarist. Once Clapton departed, the band was joined by Jeff Beck and future Led Zeppelin member Jimmy Page. The Yardbirds had three legendary guitarists on their roster, and their songs always had impeccable instrumentals.
While The Yardbirds only lasted for five years, they did have a few hit songs, including “For Your Love”, “Heart...
- 3/20/2023
- by Ross Tanenbaum
- Showbiz Cheat Sheet
This article contains spoilers for Poker Face episode 4.
With a charged reference to the 1976 death of The Yardbirds singer Keith Relf, Peacock’s Poker Face teaches a valuable music industry lesson: Song pluggers should check their cables before plugging in. Especially drummers, surrounded by metallic conductors, trying to break out original material. When they do, as Phil Collins of Genesis or Don Brewer of Grand Funk Railroad can attest, those songs can change the group dynamic and take center stage. Electricity like that should be channeled.
Which is why the human lie-detector goes metal detector in Charlie Cale’s (Natasha Lyonne) case-of-the-week, “Rest in Metal.” The signature hit song for Robin Ruin’s (Chloe Sevigny) metal band Doxxxology, “Staplehead,” was written by the drummer. Said drummer moved on, and not only is the band now stuck with it as the closing song for every show, but they have to pay...
With a charged reference to the 1976 death of The Yardbirds singer Keith Relf, Peacock’s Poker Face teaches a valuable music industry lesson: Song pluggers should check their cables before plugging in. Especially drummers, surrounded by metallic conductors, trying to break out original material. When they do, as Phil Collins of Genesis or Don Brewer of Grand Funk Railroad can attest, those songs can change the group dynamic and take center stage. Electricity like that should be channeled.
Which is why the human lie-detector goes metal detector in Charlie Cale’s (Natasha Lyonne) case-of-the-week, “Rest in Metal.” The signature hit song for Robin Ruin’s (Chloe Sevigny) metal band Doxxxology, “Staplehead,” was written by the drummer. Said drummer moved on, and not only is the band now stuck with it as the closing song for every show, but they have to pay...
- 1/27/2023
- by Alec Bojalad
- Den of Geek
He never had a signature song the way his peers and sometime bandmates Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton did, but the genres that Jeff Beck explored throughout his career chart the changes in rock — and rock guitar — over decades. One of rock’s most physical technicians, seeming to enjoy wrestling with his instrument, Beck made his name with British Invasion pop. But not content to stay there, he moved into the in-vogue blues-rock of the late Sixties and then the harder boogie and fusion of the next decade. The settings changed,...
- 1/12/2023
- by Angie Martoccio, Brian Hiatt, Andy Greene and David Browne
- Rollingstone.com
Jeff Beck, the blues-rock innovator and two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee who revolutionized how the guitar is played, died Tuesday at the age of 78.
Beck’s family confirmed the former Yardbirds guitarist’s death Wednesday. “On behalf of his family, it is with deep and profound sadness that we share the news of Jeff Beck’s passing,” Beck’s family said in a statement. “After suddenly contracting bacterial meningitis, he peacefully passed away yesterday. His family asks for privacy while they process this tremendous loss.”
Beck, an eight-time Grammy winner,...
Beck’s family confirmed the former Yardbirds guitarist’s death Wednesday. “On behalf of his family, it is with deep and profound sadness that we share the news of Jeff Beck’s passing,” Beck’s family said in a statement. “After suddenly contracting bacterial meningitis, he peacefully passed away yesterday. His family asks for privacy while they process this tremendous loss.”
Beck, an eight-time Grammy winner,...
- 1/11/2023
- by Daniel Kreps and Kory Grow
- Rollingstone.com
In 1971, the Cannes Film Festival opened with a screening of Gimme Shelter by Albert and David Maysles, an immersive, vérité depiction of two weeks in the touring life of the Rolling Stones. If that was all it did, it might have been forgotten by now. But by a terrible freak of chance, the filmmakers followed the band to the most notorious concert of their entire career — the Altamont Speedway Free Festival in Livermore, CA, where the Stones, along with Santana, Jefferson Airplane, The Flying Burrito Brothers and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, were set to perform a free concert for 300,000 people on Dec. 6, 1969. “We didn’t know what it was going to be,” Albert said later. “We just had a childish faith that having seen the Stones and getting along with them, there might be a feature film there.”
At the apparent suggestion of Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead (who...
At the apparent suggestion of Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead (who...
- 5/17/2022
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
Bernard MacMahon assumes we know a lot about Led Zeppelin. He’d guess that most fans have listened to the riffs and record sides thousands of times, tracked down the bootlegs, scoured YouTube for clips, read Hammer of the Gods and can recite the anecdotes of backstage debauchery (whether or not they involve deep-sea predators and/or the occult), concur that the stairways to heaven have now all been bought. The documentarian takes it for granted that even those who don’t know that words sometimes have two meanings are...
- 9/5/2021
- by David Fear
- Rollingstone.com
As a supplement to our Recommended Discs weekly feature, Peter Labuza regularly highlights notable recent home-video releases with expanded reviews. See this week’s selections below.
In 1987, Agnès Varda, one of the few female directors to emerge from the French New Wave, began a friendship with English superstar and model Jane Birkin. While Birkin had appeared as a cinematic object of desire as far back as Antonioni’s Blow-Up, Varda had no interest in continuing this trend. Instead, she listened. The resulting two films — one a documentary-like fiction, the other a fiction-like documentary — are signs of two major feminist icons of very different sorts finding ways to explore their own stories.
Their first collaboration might win an award for the most surprising title, given the subject matter, but Kung-Fu Master! does aptly describe one of the central metaphors in this gender-flipped Lolita narrative. Birkin plays a single mother named Mary-Jane...
In 1987, Agnès Varda, one of the few female directors to emerge from the French New Wave, began a friendship with English superstar and model Jane Birkin. While Birkin had appeared as a cinematic object of desire as far back as Antonioni’s Blow-Up, Varda had no interest in continuing this trend. Instead, she listened. The resulting two films — one a documentary-like fiction, the other a fiction-like documentary — are signs of two major feminist icons of very different sorts finding ways to explore their own stories.
Their first collaboration might win an award for the most surprising title, given the subject matter, but Kung-Fu Master! does aptly describe one of the central metaphors in this gender-flipped Lolita narrative. Birkin plays a single mother named Mary-Jane...
- 3/10/2016
- by Peter Labuza
- The Film Stage
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