Tag: led zeppelin

theeyeofzoro:

[Top Image] Cover of GIG Magazine May 1977

I finally got in the mail today, a hard copy of an original GIG Magazine from 1977.   As the front cover suggests (Led Zeppelin, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Fleetwood Mac, and Tom Petty) this Volume 3 Number 9 edition of The Music Gig is from May, 1977.   The price was 85 cents. The Music Gig was published in New York by Editor in Chief Sam Chase, with Jean-Charles Costa serving as Editor.  The format mimics Rolling Stone, with black & white printed pages except for an occasional dash of color. The back cover ad for Camel Filters is the only page in full color. 

I’ve been long awaiting this for Chris Salewicz’s interview with Jimmy Page.   It is augmented by some distinctive illustrations of Jimmy Page by Charles Jackson Pate.  Page reflects on rehearsals for a post Presence tour, the Led Zeppelin flick, The Song Remains The Same, and his confidence in the future of his band.

Excerpts from this interview are often quoted due to it being one of the longest responses by Jimmy Page on the topic of the Occult, his position on mysticism and interest in Aleister Crowley.   I include the section from the interview on these topics below.  Enjoy.

The Gig Interview: Jimmy Page
by Chris Salewicz, GIG, May 1977

“When you’ve discovered your true will, you should just forge ahead like a steam train. If you put all your energies into it there’s no doubt you’ll succeed.”

…I understand that a changed Robert Plant who has taken to reading Nietzsche on plane journeys has emerged since the accident.  I know that you were ill for about nine months prior to joining the Yardbirds and I’ve heard you’re supposed to have spent much of that time reading. Was that when your interest in the occult began?

(Fifteen second pause) “My interest in the occult started when I was about fifteen.”

Do you agree that whereas Western society tends to see occult matters as a very dark – a very black – thing it is, in fact, a very light and enlightening thing?“

“Well, there has been a major revival, a spiritual revival, throughout the world and it reflects all over the place. Not just within the West.

“And there’s a great interest in the Celtic mysteries and the Dark Ages and the areas where a lot of these truths were just erased for the sake of the Church, you know. But I’m quite fascinated by these things.”

So obviously the folkie Traditional English side of Zeppelin all emanates from one logical area of interest, no?

“Yeah. Well, a man’s a product of his environment. It depends how much he wants to educate himself in that framework. You know, in relationship to his craft. There should be no boundaries, so just carry on as far as you can and do it.”

Page, of course, is an ardent aficionado of occultist and magician, Aleister Crowley (1875-1947). Indeed, the guitarist owns Equinox, an occult bookshop situated off London’s Kensington High Street, which has a large section devoted to Crowley’s works as well as having his birth chart pinned to one wall.  And, as already mentioned, Page spends most of his time on British shores at the home that Crowley once owned, Boleskin House.

Not unexpectedly, such matters are beginning to arouse the interests of the more sensational end of the British press.  In fact, only a few weeks ago a National Enquirer-like weekly magazine featured an aerial photograph of the house on its cover along with details of collapsing staircases and the appropriate ‘Dark Man Of Pop’ blurb about Page.

“Well,” says the guitarist, “They should have gone into the history of the house and Crowley would’ve come out like a shinning angel compared with what else went on.

"I mean, it’s had a history of suicides and con tricks. Plus the site of the house is on the site of a church and a graveyard, and the church was burnt down by an arsonist with the whole congregation in it.  So the actual foundations of the house are built on hallowed ground.

"But I’m not really interested in going on about Crowley in so much as, say, Pete Townshend does about Meher Baba.  I’m not interested in trying to turn anybody on in any way whatsoever. You know, there are a thousand paths and they can choose their own.

"All I know is that it’s a system that works. (laughs) Although, of course, there’s not much point in following a system that doesn’t work.”

But what about the hassles you’ve had with Kenneth Anger? (Page wrote the score for film-maker occultist, and author of Hollywood Babylon, Kenneth Anger’s imminent film, Lucifer Rising, but was turned down by Anger towards the end of last year and replaced by none other than Mansonite Bobby Beausoleil. Since then Anger has denounced Page on every possible occasion.)

“I think it’s more the problems he’s had with himself. All I know is that at the end of the film I promised him – as I had before – the loan of a three speed projector which makes the editing so much easier. I said to him ‘well, it’s just going to be your own time invested’. And I also told him that he must put the music on after he put the footage together so I was just waiting for him to contact me, really. He had other music that I’d done instead of the stuff that I’d delivered which he said he wanted to use.  Nevertheless, I still needed to hear from him. And I never heard anything.”

Didn’t he come down here and stick things onto the door of this record company?

“Oh, that was his curse. That was pathetic. His curse amounted to sending letters to people. Silly letters saying ‘Bugger off, Page’ and this sort of thing.

"How can you take that sort of thing seriously? (Sounds quite deeply disappointed). A man you had thought to be a genuine occultist and it turns out to be just. theatre. It’s a shame, really.”

Although it’s quite acceptable these days, do you wish your occult interests weren’t known about?

“I just don’t want it rammed down people’s throats as though I’m saying it’s the be-all and end-all and the only way you’ll be able to put things together. I’m not saying that at all. You might go off and study the Gurdjieff system and be equally.

"But what I can relate to is Crowley’s system of self-liberation. In which repression is the greatest work of sin. It’s like being in a job when you want to be doing something else. That’s the area where the true will should come forward. And when you’ve discovered your true will you should just forge ahead like a steam train. If you put all your energies into it there’s no doubt you’ll succeed. Because that’s your true will. It may take a little while to work out what that is, but when you discover it, it’s all there.

"You know, when you realize what it is you’re supposed to be here for.  I mean, everyone’s got a talent for something. Not necessarily artistic but whatever you care to say. And it’s just a process of self-liberation. I mean, I just find his writings to be twentieth century. As a lot of the others weren’t.

"And there’s really nothing more to say than that. I find him quite a curious, highly enigmatic character. Consequently I enjoy my researches into him. But it doesn’t want to be blown out of all proportion, though, because that would be. silly, you know. I’m just another artist, too.”

Yeah, it’s an interest in all things occult and, as you said, all things English or, rather, of Albion. And that’s just one area, right? “Mmmmm.”