Led Zeppelin at the Dawn of the Swinging Sixties
Z WikiSennik
The early 1950s in Britain had been grim dull years but by the time the decade ended, musicians had been getting heard because the dawn chorus of the Swinging Sixties.
In Britain there were no coffee bras, no commercial tv stations, no jukeboxes, and no teenage pop stars. The young people today of your 1950s were the same as they had been for generations preceding. They were quiet, ordinary embryo adults plodding without having interference to maturity.
Their spare time was spent on sport, ballroom dancing, or on visits to the cinema. Slumped within the stalls of your local "fleapit" they came face to face with celluloid glamour transporting them to the fantasies of filmdom. Their early idols had been US film stars, not record stars.
Bill Haley and Elvis Presley changed that in Britain and then home-grown pop stars like Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard attracted the fans.
The abolition in 1960 in Britain on the compulsory two years military National Service for 18-year-olds had a liberating impact on teenagers. It was a taste of freedom; the excesses that resulted in the Swinging Sixties stemmed from that liberty.
It was these early years that spawned Led Zeppelin.
The cult of your teenager in Britain could be dated from the finish of conscription. There was no far more forced discipline; little ones were in a position to do what they wanted, unchecked by the call of military service that moulded previous teenagers into obedient, conventional, young adults.
A large number of teenagers took up the guitar in the hope of emulating their idols and to play the music they loved. It was a kind of rebellion.
One boy, 16-year-old Jimmy Page from Epsom, near London, joined a group that called themselves 1st the Red Caps and then, as that sounded rather square -- it was the name of a brand of milk -- the Red Cats.
In 1960, I met Jimmy Page and we became pals. I was applying unique musicians to back me for my performances of poetry read to rock and roll accompaniment, which I known as Rocketry.
Jimmy was playing guitar within a London-based group managed by Chris Tidmarsh, who later transformed himself in towards the Swinging Sixties pop star, Neil Christian.
In the time I was writing a book concerning the huge beat scene and introduced Jimmy to numerous on the stars featured in the book. I was living within a rented cottage in Watchbell Street, Rye, and Jimmy along with the Red Cats used to keep there too.
Radcliffe Hall, the lesbian author of "The Nicely of Loneliness" had the moment lived next door. I acquired her topcoat and there exists a photograph of me wearing it at a rocketry performance at Cambridge University when a young Jimmy Page giggles in the background.
Jimmy backed me on a lot of stage and tv performances, with our last appearance with each other becoming inside a show at London's Mermaid Theatre in July 1961.
By that time I was 20 and no longer a teenager. My book was published and it seemed time to move on. I left England and escaped the Swinging Sixties.
Jimmy, having said that, stayed and absorbed every thing that was going on in the youth and music scene. Because of this, in 1968 his power, encounter and talent gave the globe the extraordinary Led Zeppelin.
From being picked as a teenage guitarist to play backing music for a beat poet, he became the terrific music icon he remains these days.
