Jimmy Page & Robert Plant - Interview, Mattrock Show 1998 (MTV) 1080p HD
Category
🎵
MusicTranscript
00:00The release of Led Zeppelin in 1969 forever changed the face of rock and roll.
00:10And it continues to be that Led Zeppelin is the standard by which all hard rock bands are judged.
00:20As the 30th anniversary of the band's debut approaches, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant return to form on Walking Into Clarksdale,
00:28a collection of songs as diverse and expansive as the music that made them legends.
00:33Here is our exclusive conversation with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.
00:36I'm here with the legendary Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, still making great music, and an excellent new album called Walking Into Clarksdale.
00:43Good to have you guys here on the show.
00:44Thanks. Yeah, cheers.
00:45You know, one of the things I noticed that I love about this new album is that, you know, for years you've always had a real, I mean, worldly sound to all the music you do.
00:54Always going back to, like, Black Mountain side of things, you know, on the very first album in 69, you've always experimented with sounds.
00:59Even the keyboards on the first record with the intro, Your Time Is Gonna Come, you know, there was a different use of keyboards.
01:05It was gothic. There were things that were done.
01:07And this record, I love you, you're still going in that world music direction.
01:10You're kind of creating your own niche with that.
01:12And you look at Cashmere over the years.
01:18It's all playing with sounds.
01:20Is that something that you've always remained very interested in?
01:23I think that's been an influence of ours way, way back.
01:25I mean, even before we joined up and became, you know, Led Zeppelin.
01:29I mean, individually we were really into it.
01:31What kind of things were you into?
01:32Well, I was living in a city in the middle of England, which had a huge Asian population.
01:39So I was surrounded always by these amazing orchestras.
01:43Indian film music, you know, the kind of, all that kind of really colorful, in-your-face music.
01:49With really high whining vocals.
01:52I mean, a lot of it was quite laughable.
01:55Very tongue-in-cheek.
01:57Or rather, it became tongue-in-cheek later on.
02:00But I mean, I was constantly surrounded by the life and the music and the smells and the look of Asia.
02:07When I was working for a living, there was tarmac in the roads, you know.
02:11And a lot of the guys I worked with were West Indians.
02:15And they were into that early reggae, what we used to call blue-beat, the ska.
02:19So, although there was English, indigenous music and also the stuff from America coming through.
02:26I mean, it was there all the time. Surrounded by it.
02:28It didn't, in the end, it doesn't seem to me to be world music.
02:32It just seems to be, for me, just two particular areas of this planet where music makes me feel good.
02:38And that's North Africa and India.
02:41Jimmy, for you, was it the same kind of thing?
02:43When did your interest start in a lot of the world music there?
02:45I think, basically, listening to BBC radio.
02:50I mean, I heard they used to play a lot of music from around the world.
02:54And I mean, that's where I first heard Ravi Shankar.
02:57But I was still at school, you know.
02:59My father worked at a factory that had a number of Asians working there as a personnel manager.
03:07And I said, here, Dad, do you think you could chat with one of your guys there and see if we can get a sit-down organised?
03:14And I did. And I had that before the Beatles had theirs.
03:18So, I mean, I went way, way back.
03:21And as far as the North African, I mean, again, you could just tune in and hear that.
03:27I think America had a little sort of, well, it had an influence on me, too.
03:31But it had an influence on me, too, because I liked the way that the San Francisco bands, the L.A. bands at that time,
03:38weaved a kind of Asian thread through that psychedelic pop.
03:48Speaking of things you've been influenced by, I mean, working with Steve Albini on this record,
03:51Steve's been known for not only stripping sounds down, but he also, you know, uses a lot of noise factor.
03:58And obviously influenced by things as far back as Velvet Underground.
04:01Was that one of the reasons why you chose to work with him, to record the record,
04:06because of some of those things that he'd worked on before or some of his ideas?
04:11Basically, it's the fact that he likes to capture the sound of a group, of a live performance.
04:23I think more the stuff that he did with Polly Harvey.
04:29He sent us an amazing list of principles and do's and don'ts of how he goes about making a record.
04:37And we were really surprised by his total attention to detail. It was perfect.
04:45The song about Most High, which you did the video for, that's a great track.
04:50Was this a song that you chose, you said, this would be the first track that we should do a video for?
04:56Was it a single, was it my favorite of yours on the record?
04:58Yeah, it just seems to be pretty kind of punchy, you know, like up and...
05:07And I don't know, there's something hypnotic about it.
05:09I think it's pretty good, it's representative of the way that Jimmy and I write songs
05:15and the way we combine the kind of great sound of that guitar and me willowing away on top.
05:26I think it's a good, it's a really good example of how we are when we're really coming.
05:32Yeah, when we're in a group together.
05:34How did you like making the video with Flora's Sickest Monday?
05:37There's a lot of quick imagery in it, let's talk a bit about that.
05:40Well, we had a meeting with her beforehand and she came along with all these storyboards
05:45and she always had a very, very clear picture in her head as to how she was going to do it, you know.
05:50But we were only there for one day, doing our bit and then all the other, you know,
05:55all the other stuff we shot after that while we were doing press and all the rest of it, you know.
05:59When we got the rough cut of it, it was great, fantastic.
06:03And, well, so is the finished version too, yeah.
06:06Yeah, excellent. Let's check that out right now from Page and Plan.
06:09This is Most High on Matt Rock.
06:11Tell me a bit about the significance behind that title.
06:13Clarksdale is a small town on the side of the Mississippi.
06:16It was a delta town that was really one of the big centers of blues music
06:23and the recording of blues artists from, you know, all the smaller towns around the area.
06:29People who were kind of casual labor on them.
06:32Cottonfields or whatever they were doing there, if they got a guitar and they could play,
06:36guys used to come through with their mobile recording equipment.
06:39They used to find these guys and record them.
06:42And it became like a center, like a kind of a place that people would flock to almost,
06:47like to look for the talent scouts, one of the centers.
06:51And a lot of people were happening there.
06:55A lot of people were recorded there.
06:57It was renowned.
06:58And as time went on and the automation of the cotton picking with all the big machines came along,
07:06then the audience that was there and the clientele and the artists and stuff
07:11moved north to Chicago and Detroit and to the steel towns.
07:16And this whole area became depopulated
07:20and the whole onus and the intensity of the blues idiom changed
07:25because when people got to Chicago,
07:27suddenly people were turning on the amplifiers and Howlin' Wolf was moving up
07:33and Muddy Waters was coming from Stouffville's plantation,
07:37where it was first recorded in the early 40s,
07:40up to Chicago and this whole thing just got sort of washed away, this whole energy center.
07:46And when I went there a couple of times, I could feel, when I was a kid,
07:50how I always dreamt about Clarksdale.
07:53The times I'd heard songs about it.
07:56And I got there and it was this sort of place where you knew something had happened way back.
08:01There was a movement of energy that had gone through there and there was nothing left.
08:06So they re-released BBC Sessions, by the way, in the last year or so,
08:09which, I mean, this stuff sounds amazing if you listen to Goin' to California.
08:12Goin' to California with an AKM in my heart
08:18Which, I mean, just to listen to your voice and that and just the playing.
08:22And a lot of stuff was new, obviously, in this BBC Sessions, newly introduced.
08:25People always make a comment about the fact that it's the first time they've ever,
08:28or the only time in their life they've ever heard Stairway to Heaven
08:31where there's nobody freaking out about how they hear the first note of the guitar.
08:37Well, it hadn't been released.
08:39Right. And it was interesting.
08:41Yeah, the fourth album hadn't been released when we did the Sessions.
08:44So all that material that we did like, Goin' to California, is all fresh now.
08:47There is.
08:49Plus, they were pretty polite, those audiences, anyway.
08:52Yeah. Weird.
08:55I mean, even now there are places in Sweden where you can play
08:59and at the end of the show you can wake everybody up.
09:02You actually can.
09:04A whole lot of love from BBC Sessions. Let's have one. I'm Matt Rock.