Wonderful new video posted by Mark Zep on August 11, 2022 - in other words, on the anniversary of Led Zeppelin's appearance at Knebworth on August 11, 1979.
Beautiful dual acoustic performance of Roy Harper's Same old Rock. Nice to see Jimmy Page playing well and looking healthier in this one. The audience must have been stoked to see the pair of them together.
You know, if I were whoever is webmaster at jimmypage.com, I would be kicking myself for having programmed the front page picture for November 16th to be this one:
(It says, "On this day, 16th November 1984, I appeared with Roy Harper on the Old Grey Whistle Test.")
Why?
Because this was the major music headline for November 15th:
Roy Harper, of County Cork, Ireland, is due to appear at Hereford Magistrates' Court on Monday accused of nine sexual offences charges in total, West Mercia Police said.
A spokesman for the force said: "The summons relates to two counts of unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl under 13, three counts of indecent assault on a girl under 14 and four counts of gross indecency with a girl under 14.
"The charges are in connection with offences alleged to have taken place in Herefordshire between 1975 and 1977 and relate to one victim."
I managed to miss the 40th anniversary of Led Zeppelin IV (or whatever your personal pet name for that album may be). It was released forty years ago, on November 8th, 1971.
It was the first Led Zeppelin album I 'just missed' and bought after-the-fact. I remember walking to my local record shop and placing a pre-order for Houses of the Holy, the fifth album. and talking with the record clerk there. "Not putting their name on the last album cost them a lot of sales," she said. When I looked skeptical, she added, "A lot of people just browse the stacks. If they don't see a name on the LP, they don't consider buying it." Well, it certainly didn't do too badly, earning six time platinum in the UK and 23 times platinum in the US. (And only five of those sales have been me buying it in new formats every few years.)
The album has managed to gain a lot of notoriety one way or another. Do the words to Stairway to Heaven say Satanic things when played backwards? (No.) If you hold up the inner sleeve to a mirror, can you see a black dog looking back out at you? (Yes.) What do those four mysterious symbols mean? (Who cares in the 21st century, when Wikipedia will tell you something fans argued over and researched exhaustively for 30 years?) If you want to read about listening (and holding sleeves up to the mirror) I recommend Erik Davis' small but perfectly formed tome, which is titled with the four symbols...so just let's call it Led Zeppelin IV.
Jimmy Page, who hasn't done much in twenty years, decided to come out of his shell this month and accompany his friend, Roy Harper, at Roy's 70th birthday concert. It's hard to imagine (Hats off to) Harper as a seventy year old, but as they say it beats the alternative. Jimmy came out and played Same Old Rock with his friend, with that same skill and that wonderful tone he gets from his acoustic guitar. You'll have to pardon a bit of political posturing at the beginning of this; it's the best filmed YouTube clip I could find.
This didn't involve any pissing on sheep, for which I'm sure the sheep are truly grateful.
Roy Harper with Jimmy Page - The Same Old Rock - Royal Festival Hall 05/11/2011
I've posted these videos before, and I'll post them again. This time, with much added information.
There are three lovely videos of Jimmy Page and Roy Harper singing and playing Same Old Rock and Hangman, along with an interview by baby-faced Old Grey Whistle Test cutie Mark Ellen. Mark gets short shrift from our musical friends who seem alternately irritated and amused by him. The OGWT was originally broadcast November 1984.
The group is walking on the border of Langdale, where it goes into Blea Tarn. This is near Scafell Pike, England's highest mountain.
These photos are reputed to be from this shoot, but having found them on the internet I can't either vouch for them or credit them. They certainly look right.
The first video is Same Old Rock
The interview
And the third video is Hangman
Here's a higher quality, but possibly edited, version of the videos:
Got it? The details will become important later. There will be questions.
In a recent (January 2009) web supplement to Uncut magazine, Roy Harper said this about that day:
I was down at Jimmy’s place in Windsor and I’d got naked for Sundays. I’d got my girl with me, you know, we were enjoying it. Then suddenly I’m getting bitten by gnats, as we were by the water. I didn’t think much of it, so we got dressed and everything. Two days later, Jimmy and I are doing TV up in the Lakes, for Whistle Test. By then, I’d come up in eggs all over my arms and legs. It was my first allergic reaction to some pathogen I hadn’t come across before. So at lunchtime, I went into Jimmy’s room. The previous night, we’d been pissing around with the TV crew. We had some white snuff, which they thought was cocaine. It was comical.
So when I went into Jimmy’s room on the day of the shoot, I showed him these eggs and he said “Ah, I’ve got something for that”, and he gave me some antihistamines. We were due to film a couple of hours later, but just as we get up there, I decided to drink a can of Holsten. But it reacted with the antihistamine and I couldn’t play. I realized really quickly what was happening, so asked my girlfriend to run down to the stream with an empty water bottle and fill it up for me, so I could wash it all out of my system. But it didn’t wash out in time, so the TV people, of course, thought that Jimmy and I were both completely stoned. That we were being rock’n’roll crazies and were totally out of it. And they decided they weren’t going to have anything to do with us. It was a virtual write-off. I tried to say tell producer Trevor Dann that we should give it an hour, because then I’d be able to play again. It was just the antihistamines, but they didn’t believe us. They told Jimmy and I they had a dinner party to go to in London. And the dinner party won.
But it was a terrible thing, a real catalogue of errors. Talk about bad luck. It’s a strange memory, but a really good memory.
For a change of narrative pace, here is Jon Holmes, extracted from his book Rock Star Babylon - Outrageous Rumors, Legends & Raucous TRUE TALES of Rock & Roll Icons.
Time now for a recipe for disaster. In the very early morning, take one out-of-it and not-slept-all-night Roy Harper and Jimmy Page and add one mountain. Then take a small film crew and drop in a plan to record the hairy legends playing an acoustic version Harper's `Me and My Woman', on a hillside, for broadcast on BBC2's whispery show The Old Grey Whistle Test. Stir until thoroughly mixed up.
[...]The plan is to climb England's highest peak, Scafell Pike, early in the misty morn and shoot the piece against a background of a mysterious mountain. The first thing then is that Jimmy ignores the 5 a.m. wake-up call to his hotel room. This is because he hasn't been to bed yet and thus doesn't technically need to wake up. Instead of getting slumberous respite from the tribulations of being a Rock God, Mr. Page has chosen to stay up all night imbibing a cocktail of hotel minibar miniatures, a somewhat powdery `sharpener' and a young female acquaintance of unknown origin.
He goes on to say that eventually Jimmy was persuaded away from his young woman's arms, and the pair of them were marched up the mountain by the film crew. The young lady accompanied them on their climb. Since the film rolls were ten minutes long, the song should be ten minutes long also. This was explained to them.
They were handed their guitars and the camera began to roll. Nine minutes and 30 seconds later they still hadn't reached the chorus. The director called, `Cut,' explained to the boys that the ten-minute rule wasn't a joke but a fact and could they please try to concentrate because they needed the song, start to finish, to fit exactly on one roll of film. Roy and Jimmy continued staring at the grass.
The camera rolled again. It was then that Jimmy got up, mumbling something about `going for a piss.' The camera stopped. Jimmy wandered over to a nearby drystone wall with some sheep on the other side, taking his hitherto spectating young female acquaintance with him. Without words he indicated that she should help him with his ablutions. The camera began to roll again. She then undid his trousers and took out his penis. There then followed a fantastic few moments where she, with the practiced skill of a veteran, directed the piss of Page, hoselike, wherever and at whatever he indicated, including the wall, the sheep, a bush, herself and finally his shoes. When he was sated, she shook him dry and tucked it back inside his leather trousers. They wandered back, Jimmy picked up his guitar and he and Roy performed an awesome version of `Me and My Woman' start to finish, note-perfect, within the allotted time.
One wonders where Mr. Holmes got his information – presumably from one of the camera crew. It doesn't quite match Roy Harper's recollections - or the video's songs, or Jimmy's footwear on the video - but it sure makes a helluva story. Do film crews really only run one camera at once without a covering shot? Do they really forget to film untoward incidents like sheep-soaking? Oh well, it could be true.
But the Scafell Story is marvelous, isn't it? Do you think it's true? I've read a few tales in this book and I have to say they go from the hackneyed (The Spaghetti Incident; The Shark Incident) to the not-very-outrageous. If you like this sort of thing it's the sort of thing you'll like.
For those wanting to hear more, there's an audio file of the studio version song mentioned above, Me and My Woman at YouTube. And Roy Harper's records are available from Roy himself at http://www.royharper.com/
Ol' Roy Harper - hats off to him - is on a bit of a publicity push at the moment. I've been listening to his stuff recently, and even - gasp! - buying some! Yes, in the 21st Century I've paid money for music! Via his web site so he actually gets some of it!
While Harper's musical style and lyrics may account for the lack of greater mainstream acceptance, his name and voice are probably familiar to rock fans. Led Zeppelin recorded the song 'Hats Off to (Roy) Harper' from 1970's 'Led Zeppelin III,' and Harper sang lead on 'Have a Cigar' from Pink Floyd's 1975album 'Wish You Were Here.' Now his distinct music is being reintroduced to Americans through the recent reissues of his earlier studio albums: 'Flat Baroque and Berserk' (1970), 'Stormcock' (1971) and 'What Ever Happened to Jugula?' (a collaborative album with Jimmy Page, 1985).
It says he's in his seventies and was born in 1941, so it must be being published in the future... or my math is crap. It's a full career retrospective and includes a little on my heroes, e.g.
Yet while Harper never achieved mega-rock star status, the people he hung out with did. Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, David Gilmour all were close long-time friends. In 1970, Led Zeppelin recorded the tribute “Hats Off to Roy Harper” and put it on the folk-leaning, III. Harper remembers how he heard about the song.
“I went up to see them in their office, and Jimmy handed me the record, and I was like ‘Oh, new record ...’ and twirled it around a bit and said, ‘Yeah, that’s great.’ And I gave it back,” he says. “[Jimmy] he handed it back to me, and said, ‘Well, look at it then.’ And I sort of realized I should be looking at something else. And then, of course, I saw it, and I said, ‘Oh, dear ...’”
Harper says he’s still in touch with friends from the old days, and had just attended Robert Plant’s 60th birthday. Still the gap between their success and his was large. Was that ever difficult?
“Well, you can imagine, being a multimillionaire and all of that ... the level on which I operate is nowhere near that,” he admits. “Automatically, they have completely different lives from me. Although I must say that particularly Robert does his absolutely level best to keep his feet on the ground and stay in touch, constantly. Robert actually does his best all the time. Not that the others don’t. But after so many years, after so much life experience, people do become separated, you know?”
I can imagine that. I've lost touch with a lot of friends from the seventies, and I don't even have the being-a-multi-millionaire excuse.
The long article is well worth a read.
If you feel an inkling to buy Roy Harper albums, do visit his own website, www.royharper.com . You can buy the them there and have the satisfaction of knowing he'll see the sales and not just a royalty check 18 months down the road.
YouTube has a new and exceptionally lovable 30 minute interview/busk with Roy Harper and Jimmy Page. It's from the OGWT, 1984.
They are, apparently, 2000 ft up in Langdale overlooking Blea Tarn. That's here.
The first video is the two of them talking to the Cheekie Chappie from OGWT whose name escapes me. Jimmy is extraordinarily candid, possibly because the air is too thin for him to oxygenate and smoke at the same time.
The second video is them playing Same Old Rock from Stormcock.
The third video is them playing Hangman from Jugula.
I sometimes mention a product on this blog, and I give a URL to Amazon or similar sites. Just to reassure you, I don't get paid to advertise anything here and I don't get any money from your clicks. Everything I say here is because I feel like saying it.
