The this part of our four-part series on Led Zeppelin is an interview with the man who made it all possible in the beginning, guitarist extraordinary Jimmy Page.

RY: WHERE DO YOU THINK YOUR FOLLOWING LIES?

JP: It’s hard to pinpoint really. At the beginning it was the underground clubs because that’s where we started. Obviously it’s spread by the amounts of people who come to our concerts. People are coming all over from schools and I don’t know where. The turnout is getting so big you wonder where everybody does come from. I suppose basically it was from the underground thing.

RY: THERE SEEMS TO BE A LOT OF YOUNG PEOPLE INTO YOUR MUSIC NOW?

JP: I don’t really know why this happens, specially for our sort of music. But I do know that when the Cream did the Madison Square Garden concert there were people of nine and eleven in there. This is really quite amazing. I’m not really quite sure of their motives.

I’m sure they can’t really be into the music – they can’t understand it. But then again, you find in England, kids (I don’t like to call them that), people of thirteen are buying underground music and apparently know what’s going on in the music.

I know a source, a fellow who runs a record store near where I live who keeps me up to date on who’s buying what… the English charts are so strange, such weird things get in, it often amazes me who buys what. So I do a bit of research and yes, 13 year olds do buy these records.

RY: DID YOU HAVE ANY IDEA OF WHERE YOU WERE GOING A YEAR AGO?

JP: Yes, the whole thing at the times was hard rock core which you can hear on the first album cos it’s basically what it is. Obviously, there’s a couple of blues as well – hard rock and blues, the whole thing.

That was the whole idea od it and it still is really. But now we’ve had more acceptance, we can open up on other things which we probably wouldn’t have done to start with. Things like “Thank You.” Really there’s so much we can do, it’s just a matter of time getting it all out.

RY: WERE YOU SURPRISED AT YOUR TREMENDOUS SUCCESS?

JP: Oh yeah. The Yardbirds at the end were getting probably $2,500 a night and I though LZ would probably start of at $1,500 and work our way up to that and have a good time. But that was all I expected. It’s really frightening actually the way it has snowballed.

SECOND ALBUM

The record sales of the second album… it really surprises me, it’s beyond my comprehension that things should go this well. Because it wasn’t a contrived thing. Obviously, it was time for our sort of group, what with the Cream breakup and Hendrix hadn’t been doing much. They had been the two real big ones at that time so I think it was just good luck that our timing was right. And in we came with the hard rock as well.

RY: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE AMERICAN POP SCENE?

JP: Well, one always gets inspiration from people like Love, but I believe they’ve broken up, which is unfortunate ‘cos Arthur Lee was a tremendous writer. And of course Buffalo Springfield and all the offshoots of these things will be and are great. There are groups over here doing really good things.

Blood, Sweat and Tears aren’t my cup of tea. Spirit do some really nice things on albums. They give a really nice atmosphere when they play and I always enjoy seeing them.

RY: HOW ABOUT THE DOORS?

JP: Actually, I was surprised after hearing a lot about the Doors and we got a lot of advance publicity in England about how sexy Jim Morrison was, how virile and whatever. I was surprised to see how static he was live on stage. I admire his writing ability and when he gets it together in a studio, he really does. But on stage, he’s not really for me.

He doesn’t really come across in any way I’d like to see. Being dressed in black leather can only go so far but standing there like my father would on stage doesn’t really come across for me.

RY: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE OPINION THAT ROBERT PLANT COPIES JIM?

JP: How could he have done? They’re completely different. If you want to relate Robert to a sexual image, and a lot of people are doing that, he’s all those things one would associate with it. He’s good looking (I’m not saying Jim isn’t), he’s got the virile image, he moves very well on stage and he looks right and he sings well – his whole thing is total sexual aggression.

As far as I could see, the Morrison thing is just an embarrassment towards the audience. He would actually insult them and swear at them and his sexual thing is more of an introvert thing – it isn’t so extroverted as Robert’s.

RY: YOU’RE DOING A LOT OF PERSONAL APPEARANCES IN NORTH AMERICA NOW. HOW DID IT ALL START?

JP: We started off at less than $1,500 a night actually. WE played for $200 one day but it was worth it because we didn’t care, we just wanted to come over and play the music. In England, we had such a bad time and bookers were saying “LZ used to be the Yardbirds, we’ll book them but we’ll put them as the new Yardbirds.” It was just a joke in England that they wouldn’t accept you. They won’t accept anything new.

Over here, we were given a chance. Bill Graham booked us in both the Fillmores and all the underground promoters like Russ Gibb and these people all booked us and gave us a great start and it was on our own shoulders. You know, come over here, work as hard as you can, give them all you can and if it doesn’t work, go back to England and start again. But obviously no one would have had us back if we had died. It was just up to us.

RY: YOU’RE EARNING FANTASTIC MONEY NOW. WHAT’S THE MOST YOU’VE EVER MADE?

JP: In Boston we got $45,000 for one gig which was just incredible. It just depends now – the artistic side can go so far, then the managers take over on the business and you start working on percentages above guarantees and it obviously depends on how big the place is and that was the biggest place we played. There were about 17,000 people.

RY: SOME CRITICS THINK YOUR VIOLIN BIT IS GIMMICKY.

JP: It’s important to me, actually. Unfortunately, it does look gimmicky with the visual thing of the violin bow but, in fact, good things can be done with it. It’s pretty hard to do. It’s not as easy as it looks in actual fact. I would still include it whether people hated it or not.

RY: DO YOU THINK YOU’VE IMPROVED YOUR GUITAR PLAYING SINCE JOINING LZ?

JP: I don’t know about LZ as LZ, but playing with these people has been fantastic. I’ve never played with such good musicians before in a group and I’m sure everyone’s improved within themselves.

RY: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF JEFF BECK?

JP: I think he’s great. When he’s having a shining night, he’s really fantastic. He plays things of sheer genius.

RY: I’VE HEARD THAT THE VANILLA FUDGE IS JOINING HIM?

JP: Yes, I’ve heard that. I don’t know how it’ll go temperament-wise. He’s got a funny temperament.

ERIC CLAPTON?

RY: ERIC?

JP: He’s a very tasteful player. I haven’t seen him play since John Mayall days. I didn’t see Cream, I didn’t see Blind Faith shows. That day is over isn’t it? Everybody says so.

RY: WHAT BANDS DO YOU LIKE?

JP: Unfortunately, I haven’t seen all the bands I’d like to see. I’d like to see Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young group. I really would. There’s a friend of mine, matter of fact he got my guitar for me, called Joe Walsh, who’s got a group going around the Cleveland area called the James Gang. I head them and they were very good and went down well. I expect we’ll hear more of them.

RY: WHO HAS INSPIRED YOU?

JP: Even now I don’t listen to current guitarists… Whether that sounds right or not. I was really listening to the old blues people. I though, “Well, they’ve got their thing out of it, I’ll get my thing out of it too.” I thought that if I started to listen to everybody else like Eric (Clapton) and Jimi (Hendrix) then I’d get bogged down with their ideas and start nicking their phrases which I probably did do subconsciously and I think everybody does.

You can hear Eric’s phrases coming out on Jimi’s albums and you can hear Hendrix phrases coming out on Eric’s records. I was really listening to acoustic guitarists like Bert Jansch. He’s my alltime favourite. I was listening to that more than anything and that’s what I play a lot of at home. I would really like to develop the acoustic guitar into something much better. The finger style not like C.S. & N.

RY: HOW ABOUT BLUES GUITARISTS?

JP: They’re great. They’re all got their trademarks. It’s so easy when you’re learning guitar to get all your trademarks off them and suddenly a style of your own develops out of this. I still listen a lot to Otis Rush more than any of the others. And a guitarist who came to England called Matt Murphy. Buddy Guy, of course. I could relate to them more than B.B. King at that time. Now I think that B.B. is very up-to-the-moment.

At that time, his records were recorded in the 30’s and it was hard to relate to them. Yet, I knew that people like Rush and Guy had drawn from them buy that was today’s statement of that thing. And it wasn’t till B.B. King became more well-known and more records became available that one was able to say that B.B. King is there as well.

RY: JOHNNY WINTER?

JP: I like his steel playing very much. His bottleneck Robert Johnson things. He’s really got those things off to a tee.

RY: SOME PEOPLE ACCUSE YOU OF HAVING NO TASTE?

JP: Maybe I haven’t. I don’t know. I Just play how I feel. If I feel tasteless, I play tasteless. I’ve heard every guitarist attacked that way – it depends on what they must have been as nervous as hell can do. If I say down with a guitar I could probably play a lot of things that a lot of other people couldn’t play – you know, classical things and people might say, “That’s really tasteful, man.”

RY: HOW ABOUT THE STONES?

JP: I don’t know really. Did you see that Hyde Park film? Some of it started off really good, but then they got into things like Satisfaction and it sounded pretty weak. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because they hadn’t played for so long – it was such a big ordeal playing for so many people, they must have been as nervous as hell. I think it will be good because Jagger is so fantastic, and his songwriting – the words are incredible.

Beatles?

RY: AND THE BEATLES?

JP: They just turn it out, don’t they? It’s always good and always sounds fresh whether it is or isn’t. They’ve done some good things. It’s amazing the way their guitar styles come into it.

RY: WHAT ABOUT GEORGE’S PLAYING ON “ABBEY ROAD?”

JP: Was it really George? It might have been Paul. It’s nice actually.

RY: IN WHAT DIRECTION ARE YOU GOING?

JP: It sound corny, but we’ve got something we want to try out but I don’t want to tell you about it in case it doesn’t come off. It’s an idea for a really long track on the next album. In so much that “Dazed” and “Confused” and all those things went into sections – well, we want to try something new with the organ and acoustic guitar building up and building up to the electric thing.

RY: WHAT DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE SECOND ALBUM?

JP: It took such a long time to do… on and off – having no time and having to write numbers in hotel rooms. And hearing the initial numbers we did so many times playing them to different people by the time the album came out I was really fed up with It. That’s why I had lost confidence in it by the time it came out. People were saying it’s great and I though “Oh good.”

RY: DO YOU LIKE BEING THE PRODUCER?

JP: Writing a lot of it, as it’s only album tracks, it’s nice to have a free hand in what you’ve written. A producer, in fact, would probably say, “Well, I like that idea but why don’t you try this?” and he’s start taking over. So it would be a bit of a battle if you’d written it yourself. It would be different on a single because I guess the producer would know.

That’s why I’ve been the producer most of the time because the songs have been either written by me and Robert, or the rest of the boys. It’s more personal really.

A SINGLE?

RY: DO YOU HAVE ANY PLANS FOR A SINGLE?

JP: Yeah, when we get back. We’ve got two ideas but then I say ideas, an idea usually amounts to a chorus or a couple of versus or a few riffs. It’s just a matter now of going back, have a week off or so and everyone’s going to think about singles and ideas for such.

Then we’re going to come together and amalgamate all the ideas to see what comes out of it. I should think.

RY: I HEAR THAT YOU REALLY CAN’T TOLERATE STRAIGHTS.

JP: Oh yeah, I really hate all of that narrow-mindedness. But I think anyone does with long hair, or anyone with genuine feeling. Even if they’re not, even if they appear to be a straight person if they’re sympathetic to other people, they would be fed up with hearing people making nasty comments to them.

You’re really discriminate against all the time. If I was coloured, I’d really be able to kick up a stick and I’m not, so I really have to put up with it, And I know everyone else with long hair does. It’s a bit of a drag.

RY: ANY PARTICULAR INSTANCES?

JP: Well, restaurants where you get a bad time. Try to check into hotels where they don’t like the look of you and they don’t want you messing up the swimming pool. You know how it is. It’s just

JP:

Unfortunately I haven’t seen live in. A hostile sort of age.

SOMETHING

A tribute from King Curtis is no insignificant gesture. He is widely regarded as the pop world’s No. 1 tenor sax man.

He has played on each of the historic, sales-spiralling recording sessions of Aretha Franklin, and it was he who arranged, and blew sax, on Aretha’s classic version of Respect.

King is appearing at the Coq D’Or for two weeks, taking a strong claim as the foremost blues bandleader on the circuit today.

On uptempo numbers, he would make a touch-typist envious as he punches on the saxophone keys with amazing speed and dexterity.

He holds a blue note for so long that one begins to wonder if he has an auxiliary air tank hidden away on his bulky frame. He plays with unquestionable enthusiasm, dynamic drive, and sensitive persuasion.

PISTON

Curtis and the Kingpins are as tight as a hot rod piston, with comparable power. The group comprises Jimmy Smith on electric piano, Mervyn Bronson on bass, Al Thompson on drums, and Stirling McGee on guitar, all first- class sidemen.

Curtis also introduced a young female vocalist, one Ruby Michelle, who contributed more than adequate workouts on current contemporary favorites like Chain of Fools.

The music is down to earth. The group is the equal of anything, anywhere. Curtis is King for those who like good music well played.

In Toronto, I rapped .with each member of Led Zeppelin and compiled a four-part profile- through-interview report on the group. We start with bass player, John Paul-Jones, one of the finest technicians in the field.

JPJ: I don t’ know anything about him.

LONDON – (UPI-AP) – Scotland Yard, acting on ground of obscenity, yesterday closed a John Lennon art show depicting his sex life with wife Yoko Ono.

But Beatle Lennon, grinning broadly, said in Copenhagen: “I don’t care what they do. It’s all a big laugh.”

The exhibition, which opened on Thursday, consisted of 14 lithographs by Lennon portraying the couple unclothed in various love-making poses.

The sketches, on sale for $100 each, were viewed by more than 7,500 people.

Police entered the exclusive Bond Street gallery, hurried out the spectators and set up guard at the doors to hold back the crowds — long-haired youths, businessmen and middle-aged ladies — clamoring to get a glimpse of the pictures before they were confiscated.

Teenyboppers and Beatle fans raised cries of “Police state!” and “why pick on the Beatles?” as detectives milled inside the gallery taking pictures of the lithographs and questioning gallery officials.

“They confiscated all our photographs, catalogues, order books and other documents pertaining to the exhibition,” said Eugene Schuster, owner and director of London Arts, which tours universities, art centres and museums throughout Canada, the United States and Europe.

He said 20 sets of the prints had been sold, at $1,320 each.

The pictures will go on show in New York at the end of this month. Paris in the spring and possibly later in Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

LONDON (UPI) — Police today raided and shut down an exhibition of 14 lithographs by Beatle John Lennon that depicted his love life with his wife Yoko Ono.

Robert Harland, a director of the London Arts Galleries in New Bond St. said six Scotland Yard detectives arrived shortly before noon in search of “offensive material.”

They closed the gallery and ordered the lithographs taken down. Harland said.

The lithographs were for sale at $100 each or $1,400 for the set. At least 15 full sets were sold Tuesday, the exhibit’s opening day.

About 5,000 persons viewed the lithographs yesterday. Harland said another 2,500 had seen them today before police arrived.

“It seems to us it was well known to anyone even before they entered the gallery that the lithographs showed Mr. and Mrs. Lennon to be naked and in loving positions,” Taylor said.

“We live within the laws of the land and to the best we can. So do the police. They have their job to do and I understand they have been very courteous.”

MOSPORT — Four weeks after Beatle John Lennon held a press conference in Toronto to announce plans for a Peace Festival here July 3-5, members of Clarke Township Council say all they know about the event is what they’ve read in the press. And they are not amused.

The councillors said yesterday that since Lennon first described plans for the rock festival Dec. 18 and the sponsors talked of crowds of 250,000, township residents have been phoning to voice objections to the festival with fears that such large crowds would bring chaos.

But Reeve John Stone and the four other members of Council say they haven’t been approached by either the festival’s sponsors or the owners of Mosport track. They are unanimous in the opinion that Council should have some say as to whether the event takes place as planned.

Reeve Stone said the matter hasn’t yet been raised in Council but if the sponsors or track owners don’t approach the township on their own they will be invited to do so.

Horace Best, township bylaw officer, suggested yesterday that Council could prevent the festival being held at Mosport because the track area is zoned exclusively for agricultural, auto-racing and ancillary uses.

“If Mosport track is to be used for a rock festival I don’t think this in any way could be called an accessory to auto racing.’’

Reeve Stone said his primary interest was “in the safety of the people of Clarke Township.” He agreed with his bylaw officer that the festival would be a contravention of the zoning bylaw.

However, he stressed that the Mosport owners “have been quite considerate and reasonable, especially in the last couple of years. We’ve had no trouble with them at all.”

Some of his fellow councillors were less optimistic. Deputy Reeve Earl Walkey said he didn’t want to see any event come into the township which might detract from Clarke’s growing reputation as a year-round sports area.

Councillor Frank Gray said he had received complaints “even before I’d heard about it being planned . . . Some of these rallies get out of control, you know.’’

Meanwhile, Gordon Wright, co-ordinator for the Northum- berland-Durham Emergency Measures Organization, said the organization will be making plans to help police in such matters as crowd control and first aid, provided help is requested by local authorities.

A spokesman for the provincial police said one officer has been designated to draw up plans for traffic and crowd control. He said that for such events the normal rule of thumb calls for provision of one police officer for every 750 to 1,000 people.

“We’ve already begun looking at the possibility of cancelling leaves for that weekend.’’

Special to The Globe and Mail

I think the 60s have had more ugly news headlines than any decade in my lifetime, excluding the war years. It’s not a pleasant thought that we might be going backward instead of forward in making our world a better place to live in.

If we could weigh the good and the bad in the past 10 years, I wonder which way the scales would tip.

I’m going along with John Lennon and Yoko in believing that it is only when everyone — and it has to be everyone — does something about it, that big issues can be changed.

War and the economy of the country depend on the ordinary man in the street. It’s our husbands and sons that make up the ranks of the army in the fighting field, and its our tax payments that make it possible to run the country.

We elect the people to make decisions for us. but when something as big as putting an end to war is at stake, then we should all make our voices heard.

I am referring in particular to the Vietnam War and the fighting in Nigeria and Biafra.

I listened to John Lennon on TV the other night and he certainly spoke with a great deal of sense, and I wish God speed to his and his wife’s campaign for Peace.

It was back to the cow palace last night, when The Who presented its pop opera, Tommy, in the CNE Coliseum before about 4,000 fans. Most of the audience sat in sawdust and suffered a sound system that could not have been worse if the show had been presented in the washrooms at Nathan Phillips Square.

As The Who’s Pete Townshend said on stage: “We regret having to play in this garbage can, for your sake more than ours.” Nevertheless it was an exciting concert, made so by the sheer forcefulness of The Who.

I doubt if there is a group anywhere—the MC5 included —which could have topped the pungent, piercing rock which this English quartet offered. The Who possess most of the things which have been lacking in much of pop lately—hard-hitting drive, a sense of theatrics, a purpose in deliver. The pop opera, Tommy, the group’s tour de force and something of a landmark in pop was offered in its entirety; the performers acting out the roles as they played. It was quite a sight, even if there was a lot missing acoustically after the raw twangs and cymbal crashes had been filtered through a fumble 0f beams and poles.

Visually The Who’s concert came close to topping the last Led Zeppelin appearance, and was far superior to Blind Faith. Two things emerged from the concert. The first is that Tommy may well be the most important pop musical operatic attempt since George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. The other point concerns Toronto’s serious lack of good places for pop groups to play. Last night’s Coliseum farce made it clear just how much the local rock scene misses the Rock Pile.

LONDON — Abbey Road is a short street in North London with only one distinctive feature; it houses the studios of EMI, a record company. In the next few weeks, however, it seems certain that Abbey Road will become as well known internationally as Portobello Road, Petticoat Lane and Carnaby Street.

The reason for this is that the new Beatles’ album—the group’s 19th—has been named after it because all of the Beatles’ hits were recorded in the Abbey Road studios. The toils of the Beatles in this very ordinary thoroughfare have accounted for the sale of 290 million records, a fact which makes even a normally grim-faced man such as Harold Wilson break into a grin.

Abbey Road will be released in North America next Monday. In London last week, at the group’s Apple headquarters in Savile Row, George Harrison—who is reputed to be the sanest and least weird Beatle—discussed the new album:

“Come Together, the first track on side one, was one of the last tracks to be recorded. John wrote it a month ago, just after his car accident. It’s one of the nicest things we’ve done musically. Rin- go’s drumming is great (Ringo, sitting across the room, grinned). It’s an upbeat, rock-a-beat-a-boogie, with very Lennon lyrics.

“Something is a song of mine. I wrote it just as we were finishing the last album, the white one. But it was never finished. I could never think of the right words for it. Joe Cocker has done a version too, and there’s talk of it beings the next Beatles’ single. When I recorded it, I imagined somebody like Ray Charles doing it, that was the feel I thought it should have. But because I’m not Ray Charles we just did what we could. It’s nice though, probably the nicest melody I’ve ever written.

“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer is just something of Paul’s. We spent a hell of a lot of time recording this one. It’s one of those instant, whistle-along tunes which some people will hate and others will love. It’s like ‘Honey Pie’, a fun sort of song, but probably sick as well because the guy keeps killing everybody. We used my Moog Synthesiser on this track, and I think it came out effectively.

“Oh! Darling is another of Paul’s songs which is typical 1950-1960 sort of period in its chord structure. It’s a typical 1955 song which thousands of groups used to make—the Moonglows, the Paragons, the Shells and so on. We do a few ooh-oohs in the background, very quietly, but mainly it’s Paul shouting.

“Octopus’s Garden is Ringo’s song, the second he’s written. It’s lovely.

“Ringo gets very bored playing the drums, so at home he plays the piano. But he only knows about three chords. And he knows about the same on guitar. He mainly likes country music.

“I Want You (She’s So Heavy) is very heavy. It has John playing lead guitar and singing the same as he plays. This is good because the riff he sings is basically a blues.

It’s a very original Lennon-like song . . . The middle bit is great . . . John has an amazing thing with his timing.

“Here Comes the Sun, the first cut on side two, is the other song I wrote for the album. It was written on a very nice sunny day in Eric Clapton’s garden. We’d been through real hell with business, and it was all very heavy. Being in Eric’s garden felt like playing hooky from school. I found some sort of release and the song just came. It’s a bit like If I Needed Someone with that basic riff running through it. But it is very simple, really.

“Because is one of the most beautiful things we’ve ever done. It has three-part harmony— John, Paul and George. John wrote the song, and the backing is a bit like Beethoven. It does resemble Paul’s writing style, but only because of the sweetness it has. Paul usually writes the sweet things and John does the rave-ups and freakier things. But every now and then, John just wants to write a simple 12-bar thing.

“I think this is the tune that will impress most people. Hip people will dig it and the straight people and serious music critics will too. It’s really good.

“Then begins the medley of Paul and John songs all shoved together. It’s hard to describe them unless you hear them at the same time. You Never Give Me Your Money is like two songs, the bridge of it is like a completely different song. You whip out of that and into Sun King, which John wrote. He originally called it Los Paranois.

“Mean Mr. Mustard and Polythene Pam are two short songs which John wrote in India 18 months ago.

“She Came In Through the Bathroom Window is a very good song of Paul’s with great lyrics. Golden Slumbers is another very melodic song by Paul which links up.

“Carry That Weight keeps coming in and out of the medley all the way through.

“The End is just that, a little sequence which ends it all.”

August 14, 1969, Globe and Mail

Page had flown in from Salt Lake City, and he would be returning to the airport in an hour to catch a flight to Los Angeles. It had been a long day, but the 24-year-old-guitarist was in lively spirits.

The track he was mixing (called “Bring It On Home”) sounded like Sonny Boy Williamson mixed with Jimmy Page. Actually, it was Led Zeppelin’s lead singer, Robert Plant, trying to sound like Williamson and doing a pretty fine job of it.

Page was racing against time to get this, the band’s second album, out by the end of the month. Led Zeppelin’s first album, released last January, has sold 500,000 copies and earned a gold record. And so Page felt the time had come for a new album.

“We’ve been so busy,” he said, “that we just weren’t able to go into the studio and polish the album off. It’s become sort of ridiculous. I mean, we’d put down a rhythm track in London, add the voice in New York, put in harmonica in Vancouver, then come back to New York to do the mixing.

“When we got together last November, we never expected to be as big as this. We just wanted to be able to come over here to work a couple of times a year. But it’s almost got out of hand.”

In the past couple of months Led Zeppelin has emerged as the most important English group working in North America.

The quartet’s second tour, which brings it to Toronto for two shows with Edward Bear at the Rock Pile on Monday, has been breaking attendance records with amazing ease. More than 10,000 people in Dallas, 10,000 in Chicago, 10,000 in Los Angeles; an incredible 8,000 at Santa Barbara against Blood, Sweat & Tears and Johnny Winter at a nearby location the same night. There can be little doubt that Led Zeppelin is the English band of the moment, including Blind Faith.

One reason is the emergence of singer Robert Plant as the most significant sex idol since Jim Morrison. Initially, Led Zeppelin was all Page but now, with Plant doing a great job of turning on the girls, the band has found a much wider acceptance.

Despite all the raves and monetary return (the band will earn more than $350,000 on this tour) that have come Led Zeppelin’s way, Page has remained remarkably modest and honest: “There are so many guitarists around who are better than me. Everywhere I go I hear some cat who sounds better than I do. That’s the trouble: everyone’s good these days.”

Early next month Page is taking a month off to relax. He intends to travel through Morocco and Spain. Then the band returns to North America for a short tour, which is kicked off by two concerts at Carnegie Hall. They were sold out weeks ago.

“This tour has been fantastic, but you can never be too sure. We’ve got to work even harder now. You can’t rest on your laurels. It’s easy to go down just as fast as you went up. I think what did it for us was the stage thing. We came here unknown on the first tour, did our number, and the word got out that we were worth seeing. We tried as hard as we could on stage and it worked.”

January 11, 1969, Globe and Mail

Much to their surprise—and delight—record companies have discovered that they can sell stacks of albums without getting once-vital radio exposure. They have even found that they can sell a groups LP even if it has never made a record.

The truth of this unlikely situation is borne out by the orders for the first album by Led Zeppelin, a new English group headed by guitarist Jimmy Page.

Although the LP is still more than four weeks away from its release date in the United States, it reportedly is much in demand in California, with orders for more than 50,000 copies.

How can a group command this kind of attention when most people have not even heard of the album? The answer seems to lie with the popularity of individual musicians.

In the case of the Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page is the attraction. The 23-year-old former art student is known for his stints as bass guitarist with the Yardbirds, and later as the groups lead guitarist.

Although the Yardbirds have split up, their influence continues. Between the Yardbirds’ breakup and the formation of Led Zeppelin in October, Page worked as a recording session musician. One of his more memorable efforts was the guitar gymnastics on Joe Cocker’s single “With A Little Help From My Friends”

“I only did a few session, because I didn’t want to fall into the trap of playing on every disc coming out in England,” Page said from Los Angeles, where the group has started a North American tour.

“Since I split from the Yardies, I’ve been searching around for some guys for a new group, the right group.” The standing ovations received by Led Zeppelin at the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles indicate that Page’s search may be over.

Led Zeppelin’s other members are: John Paul Jones, 23, on bass, organ, and piano; drummer John Bonham, 20, who played with Tim Rose; singer, Robert Plant, 21, a former member of the Band of Joy.

It’s a mixture of heavy, earthy blues (“I learned a lot from B. B. King, Otis Rush, and Buddy Guy: I used to listen to their records over and over, and then try to play exactly like that”) and wailing psychedelia.

It’s not quite as free-flowing as Cream, but in the process of adding more instrumentation and vocal harmonies, Led Zeppelin has emerged with a positive, driving, distinctive sound.

Pages guitarwork skims across the melody with a simple joy. Jones’s organ rhythms are forceful and invigorating. The whole is a rare pop experience. Unlike many groups, Led Zeppelin has managed to maintain simplicity while striving for depth.

I find this the best debut album by a group since the 1967 release of Are You Experienced? by the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

“I’m really happy to be back into it,” said Page. “There’s room for everything on the scene; you don’t have to follow any bandwagons. You just get out there and do your own thing.

“It’s a good period for guitarists. I think every good guitarist has something unique to say musically. My only ambition now is to keep a consistent record product coming out.

“Too many groups sit back after the first album, and the second one is a down trip. I want every new album to reach out farther. That’s what I’m doing here.”