Led Zeppelin at the Dawn of the Swinging Sixties

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

In Britain there were no coffee bras, no commercial tv stations, no jukeboxes, and no teenage pop stars. The young folks in the 1950s were the identical as they had been for generations earlier. They had been quiet, ordinary embryo adults plodding without interference to maturity.

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

[http://www.legalsoundz.com Bill Haley ] and Elvis Presley changed that in Britain and then 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 inside the  [http://www.legalsoundz.com Swinging Sixties]  stemmed from that liberty.

The cult of the teenager in Britain can be dated from the end of conscription. There was no far more forced discipline; children were in a position to do what they wanted, unchecked by the call of military service that moulded preceding teenagers into obedient, conventional, young adults.

Thousands of teenagers took up the guitar in the hope of emulating their idols and to play the music they loved. It was a type of rebellion.

One particular 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 good friends. I was making use of distinctive 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 to the Swinging Sixties pop star, Neil Christian.

At the time I was writing a book about the large beat scene and introduced Jimmy to numerous of your stars featured within the book. I was living within a rented cottage in Watchbell Street, Rye, and Jimmy plus the Red Cats utilized to keep there as well.

Radcliffe Hall, the lesbian author of "The Nicely of Loneliness" had once lived next door. I acquired her topcoat and there exists a photograph of me wearing it at a rocketry efficiency at Cambridge University while a young Jimmy Page giggles in the background.

Jimmy backed me on lots of stage and tv performances, with our last appearance together becoming within a show at London's Mermaid Theatre in July 1961.

Jimmy, however, stayed and absorbed almost everything that was going on inside the youth and music scene. As a result, in 1968 his power, experience and talent gave the planet the remarkable Led Zeppelin.

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

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