Jimmy Page on Jimmy Page - two 2014 interviews

I was going to post this on Jimmy Page's birthday, but...

Here are two interviews with Jimmy Page from December.

The first one is an hour-and-a-half long video interview by the Guardian based on his book, called (dramatic chords!) Jimmy Page by Jimmy Page. This has the advantage of being ninety minutes of Jimmy Page talking, and the disadvantage of taking ninety minutes out of your life to get to the end of it. I'm a big fan of transcripts myself. (A new Google that made video as searchable and indexable as text might well save all these fascinating video clips from ending up as useless bits in the giant bit bucket of history.)

The second fascinating thing about this interview is that Jimmy's book is a photo book. It doesn't have many words in it. The interviewer has selected several photos to discuss in detail. Jimmy and the interviewer point to a screen showing the photo Jimmy is talking about but the screen is rarely shown, and even when it is it's too dim to make out. This would seem to be a disadvantage, as even if you own the book (which I do) it's difficult to flip through it to find which one he's talking about. However, I prefer to think of it as an exercise in creativity. Listen to Jimmy describe something from his past you can't see, and draw what you think the picture should look like. Or select a gif or meme that matches.

On the other hand, this is the only discussion of a photo book that you can put on while you're chopping vegetables or changing the oil filter.



Second up, a fascinating interview by Chuck Klosterman in GQ Magazine. (Jimmy is one of their men of the year for 2014. No idea why - the Led Zeppelin remasters? Important to some of us but hardly world-shattering.)


Grouses of the Holy by Chuck Klosterman

The exciting part of this interview is seeing how Klosterman consistently and knowingly needles Jimmy all the way through by asking questions he's made clear he's not going to answer for literally the past fifty (50) years.  Klosterman is all upset that he got snapped at by a rock god, like a little puppy who doesn't realize why he's in the naughty corner.