Led Zeppelin at the Dawn of the Swinging Sixties

The early 1950s in Britain had been grim dull years but by the time the decade ended, musicians had been getting heard as the dawn chorus on the Swinging Sixties.

In Britain there had been no coffee bras, no commercial television stations, no jukeboxes, and no teenage pop stars. The young folks in the 1950s were the same as they had been for generations previous. They had been quiet, ordinary embryo adults plodding with out interference to maturity.

Their spare time was spent on sport, ballroom dancing, or on visits towards the cinema. Slumped in the stalls with the neighborhood "fleapit" they came face to face with celluloid glamour transporting them towards the fantasies of filmdom. Their early idols had been US film stars, not record stars.

[http://www.legalsoundz.com Bill Haley ] and Elvis Presley changed that in Britain and after that home-grown pop stars like  [http://www.legalsoundz.com Tommy Steele]  and Cliff Richard attracted the fans.

The abolition in 1960 in Britain with 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  [http://www.legalsoundz.com Swinging Sixties]  stemmed from that liberty.

The cult of your teenager in Britain may be dated from the end of conscription. There was no extra forced discipline; kids had been in a position to do what they wanted, unchecked by the call of military service that moulded preceding teenagers into obedient, standard, young adults.

A large number of teenagers took up the guitar within the hope of emulating their idols and to play the music they loved. It was a kind of rebellion.

One particular boy, 16-year-old Jimmy Page from Epsom, near London, joined a group that known as themselves very first 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 good friends. I was employing different musicians to back me for my performances of poetry read to rock and roll accompaniment, which I named Rocketry.

Jimmy was playing guitar within a London-based group managed by Chris Tidmarsh, who later transformed himself in to the Swinging Sixties pop star, Neil Christian.

In the time I was writing a book concerning the massive beat scene and introduced Jimmy to several with the stars featured in the book. I was living in a rented cottage in Watchbell Street, Rye, and Jimmy as well as the Red Cats applied to remain there too.

Radcliffe Hall, the lesbian author of "The Well of Loneliness" had as soon as lived subsequent door. I acquired her topcoat and there exists a photograph of me wearing it at a rocketry overall performance at Cambridge University although a young Jimmy Page giggles inside the background.

Jimmy backed me on many stage and television performances, with our last look together becoming inside a show at London's Mermaid Theatre in July 1961.

Jimmy, even so, stayed and absorbed everything that was going on inside the youth and music scene. Consequently, in 1968 his power, expertise and talent gave the world the remarkable Led Zeppelin.

From being picked as a teenage guitarist to play backing music for a beat poet, he became the good music icon he remains nowadays.

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