Jimmy Page Behind the Desk: Led Zeppelin Studio Secrets Revealed

Jimmy Page stands among the heaviest of six-string heavyweights, and most often with one of his iconic Gibson Les Pauls slung around his shoulders. But Page’s sonic genius extends well beyond the fretboard and composition, and into the studio.

Page was one of the greatest record producers of the 1960s and ’70s – a sonic innovator and perfectionist whose vision made Led Zeppelin albums vivid listening experiences, rather than simple recordings. Compare the six discs Led Zeppelin made from 1969 through 1975 with other classic titles from the period: King Crimson’s initial releases, the Jeff Beck Group’s LPs, Blind Faith, The Rolling Stones, pre-Dark Side Pink Floyd. Sonically, Page’s work with Led Zeppelin put his band’s studio albums on an entirely higher sonic plane.

Initially, it was a matter of observation. During his pre-Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin years, Page was a session musician and had the opportunity to watch many producers and engineers in close quarters. As a guitarist, miking technique caught his interest early on. Later he would apply ambient miking to the small amps that were essential to his sound in Led Zeppelin. But he was especially interested in the drum sounds that came out of ’60s studios. Drummers were often put in small booths at the time, to isolate them from the band while basics were being cut, or out of sheer habit. Either way, the results were tinny and dismal. So when Page took the helm of Led Zeppelin in the studio, he made sure John Bonham’s kit and its peripherals were always given plenty of space in a large, bright, live-sounding room.

Page based his ambient miking of guitar amps on what he’d learned listening to classic recordings of blues and emerging rock on the Sun and Chess labels, where one microphone often sufficed to cut an entire band live – but the guitar sounds nonetheless killed.

Page applied the old engineer’s axiom that distance equals depth, so when it came time to track guitars he’d place one microphone up close and one or more additional mikes at distances from the amp of up to 20 feet. That let Page capture the full sonic effect of an amplifier filling a room, and allowed him to make the small amplifiers he recorded with, like the Supro Lightning Bolt he used on Led Zeppelin, sound huge. Many other British producers followed his lead before the practice trickled to the States.

Reverse echo was another trick Page developed. He first applied the maneuver to a 1967 Yardbirds’ single, “Ten Little Indians.” It involved initially recording the guitar on two tracks – one dappled liberally with echo. Then the tape was turned over so the sound of the echo would proceed the actually notes it made “wet.” The same technique has been applied to cymbals as well, to great psychedelic effect.

Page changed engineers between albums on purpose, to make it clear that it was his production – not the methodology of outsiders – that made Led Zeppelin’s albums sound so dynamic.

Of course, any great recipe starts with fine ingredients, and the array of guitars – particularly Gibsons – he used on Led Zeppelin’s classic recordings were superb. The best known are his revered “Number One” and “Number Two” Les Paul Standards. “Number One” was acquired from Joe Walsh while Led Zeppelin was touring the States. The Gibson Custom Shop reproduced the 1959 instrument, with a shaved neck and a push-pull pot that takes the humbuckers out of phase in the middle position, in a limited edition in 2004. The Custom Shop also recreated “Number Two,” a second 1959 Standard with a neck shaved to match “Number One” and an additional four push-pull pots to coil-split the pickups. “Number Two” is still in the Gibson catalog.

The other truly iconic Gibson in Page’s rack is the EDS-1275 double-neck he famously employed in playing “Stairway to Heaven,” “The Song Remains the Same” and “Celebration Day.” He lost a 1960 Black Beauty Les Paul Custom with a Bigsby tremolo arm to theft in 1970 while on tour, but it was nonetheless recreated by the Gibson Custom Shop in 2008 in a limited run, with 25 signed by Page. The 1969 Les Paul Standard seen in the concert film The Song Remains the Same is still in his collection, on call for special appearances like 2007’s stunning reunion of the remaining members of Les Zeppelin at London’s immense O2 Arena.

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Led Zeppelin to Play Olympics?

Led Zeppelin has been rumored to be planning a reunion at next year’s opening ceremonies for the Olympics. So will it happen? Probably not, according to Jason Bonham, son of original drummer John Bonham, who subbed for his late father when Led Zeppelin played a one-off reunion show at London’s O2 in 2007.

Speaking to U.K. newspaper The Sun about Olympics rumors, Bonham said it was unlikely that Zeppelin would perform at the ceremony in London next summer. “I haven’t spoken to Robert [Plant] for about six months but he is really enjoying himself,” he said.

“For me, you can never say never. If you ask me today is it gonna happen immediately, well no, there is no talk of it. But if you said to me in 2007 I would play with Led Zeppelin in December that year I would say you’re nuts, so you never know.”

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Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Karen O Cover Led Zeppelin

Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs has recorded a new version of a Led Zeppelin song, according to NME.

The trailer for the U.S version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo movie features a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” sung by Karen O and produced by Trent Reznor.

Soundtrack details have not been confirmed but NME reports that Karen O has previous experience with movies, having written the score for the 2009 movie Where The Wild Things Are. Reznor won an Oscar for his music for The Social Network, directed by David Fincher (Fincher is also the director of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo).

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This Day in Music Spotlight: Led Zeppelin Hold Court in London

Special thanks to ThisDayinMusic.com.

Led Zeppelin were on a roll in 1972. Their newly released album, unofficially titled Led Zeppelin IV, was selling like hotcakes, and history would eventually prove it to be one of the biggest-selling albums ever with, to date, over 23 million copies sold worldwide (and counting). The band decided to leave the album nameless – they didn’t even put their band name on it – to thumb their collective noses at a generally less-than-adoring press who enjoyed lobbing “over-rated” and “hyped” mud pies at the band. As always, Led Zeppelin got the last laugh, especially when IV solidified their superstar status, thanks in no small part to the track “Stairway to Heaven,” which, though never released as a single, to this day remains a perennial #1 entry on countless “All-Time Best Rock Song” and “Best Guitar Solo” lists.

In March of ’73, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page held an acoustic performance in Hamburg, Germany, just ahead of the release of Zeppelin’s fifth album, Houses of the Holy. The album showed the band expanding their sonic universe even more, including incorporating a heavier dose of synthesizers and some serious Mellotron love. Ironically, the song “Houses of the Holy,” which was recorded during the Houses of the Holy sessions, didn’t actually make it to vinyl until Zeppelin’s ’75 album Physical Graffiti.

Controversy hounded Houses of the Holy because of the album’s cover, which depicted nude children, photographed from behind, making their way up the Giant’s Causeway in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. The album was banned in many places, including Spain and all over America’s Bible Belt. Of course, what they say about publicity – bad or good – held true, and the album shot to the top of the charts. The resulting tour was colossal. Zeppelin packed 56,800 fans in Tampa Stadium, shattering the previous record set by The Beatles during their 1965 Shea Stadium scream-fest, and they easily sold out Madison Square Garden for three consecutive nights, and event that was filmed and eventually released as the motion picture The Song Remains the Same.

Zeppelin took a well-deserved break from the road for much of 1974. During their time off, they launched their own record label, dubbing it Swan Song – the name was derived from the title of one of the just five songs the band recorded but never released to the public. (Jimmy Page would eventually modify and re-record the tune for his band, The Firm’s, debut album Midnight Moonlight.) In addition to promoting Led Zeppelin’s albums, the Swan Song label also signed a number of acts, most notably Dave Edmunds, Bad Company, The Pretty Things, Midnight Flyer and Maggie Bell. The label, however, went belly-up three years after drummer John Bonham’s death and the band’s resulting split.

Off the road in ’74, Zeppelin stayed busy in the studio, working and recording songs for their sixth studio album (and the first on the Swan Song label). A few weeks after playing a show at Chicago Stadium in January of ’75, Zeppelin released the ambitious double-album Physical Graffiti. Composed of 15 songs, including eight brand-new ones and seven that were already recorded but left off of previous albums, Physical Graffiti was the set that finally prompted critics to come around. Billboard gave it five stars, calling the album “…a tour de force,” while Rolling Stone acknowledged that Led Zeppelin now ranked up there with The Who and the Stones as one of the best rock bands on the planet.

Physical Graffiti was such a critical and commercial success that shortly after its release, all five of Zeppelin’s previous albums shot back into Billboard’s Top 200 album chart. Another massive record-breaking tour ensued, and on this day in May 1975, Led Zeppelin played the first of three sold-out concerts the Earl’s Court Arena in London, which at the time was the largest indoor venue in all of Great Britain.

The band then went on a brief hiatus to rest up for a big North American summer tour, but the tour was immediately scrapped when Robert Plant and his wife, Maureen, were involved in a serious automobile accident. Plant broke his ankle, while Maureen suffered serious but non-fatal internal injuries. Page and Bonham joined Plant during his recuperation on the Channel Island in New Jersey, then later in Malibu, and it was during this stretch that they laid much of the groundwork for what would become their seventh studio album, Presence.

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New Mastodon Album ‘Like a Really Super-Heavy Led Zeppelin’

The 2009 album, Crack the Skye, set the bar pretty high for Atlanta-based metal outfit Mastodon, but the group seem up to the task of repeating the feat. Currently, the members of Mastodon are hard at work writing a follow-up to their modern metal classic.

Drummer Brann Dailor told Noisecreep.com, “We've got a ProTools rig set up and [guitarist] Bill [Kelliher's] been learning how to use that. We're recording bits and pieces and stringing up three or four riffs together and testing them out. It's super-heavy and it sounds killer, so it’s doing what it's supposed to do. It's doing what every other Mastodon song has done for us. We really just try to play music that we dig and that's bad-ass. Our approach has always been exactly the same, and we've learned that we need to do it that way. Otherwise, it's just not right."

Dailor added, “We've got tons of stuff… too much stuff. We go in there every day and just work on it. It's coming out great. Bill's got a lot of cool riffs, too. There are so many, it's hard to know which ones we're gonna use. But we go in and jam all the time and record stuff. Then we sort it out later.”

Mastodon have earned a rep for being at the “prog” end of metal, but it sounds like their new material is more straight-ahead.

“It seems more riff-oriented. It seems a little more stripped-down,” said the drummer. “[2004 album] Leviathan was a little more stripped down, and it feels like that to me… At the moment it seems like a really super-heavy Led Zeppelin or something. It has a lot of that Bonham-esque groove to it, but really heavy and dark.”

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