Book Review: Light & Shade - Conversations with Jimmy Page by Brad Tolinski

Grandma Romeo had given me some money for my birthday.  I can't recall exactly how much or even which birthday it was.  And I'm not sure if I ended up in the music section of Caldor or Bradlees, but I do remember one thing clearly.

My brother recommended using my precious funds to purchase my first record.  I probably was only five or six years old, come to think of it, so the record had been out for a few years already.  The record was Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy.

I spent the next few years enthralled by what we'd now call Classic Rock, a term I despise as it evokes a radio programming slot rather than the power it imparted to many a young mind.  The same way RunDMC would grab me a decade later, and U2 shortly after that, Led Zep, along with Aerosmith and Black Sabbath and their ilk, allowed me to dream beyond the confines of ordinary life.

As a young guy, I preferred the more poppy tunes on the album: Dancing Days, D'yer Mak'er (the title of which I didn't get for many years).  Now, the solemn, driving No Quarter and the moody Over the Hills and Far Away appeal more.  But Led Zep shine has never faded in my heart and ears though my tastes have shifted away from rock n roll as I pass from youth to middle age.

Brad Tolinski's interview-based biography of Jimmy Page was, for me, then, like drawing back the curtain on the wizard of my childhood, but, unlike Dorothy, finding that there really was a wizard back there working the controls.  Tolinski himself is an avowed fan, so if the book has any fault, it would be his unremitting praise even for some of Page's lackluster post-Zep projects, but I suppose we can forgive him that much if it buys us passages like this:

Q:  While "Immigrant Song" is built around a very straightforward, pile-driving riff, it's the subtle variations in it that make it more than just another hard-rock song.  For example, toward the very end of the song, instead of playing a straight G minor for the accents, you play this very astringent inversion of that chord that really adds some bite.  Where did that come from?
A:  It's a block chord that people never get right.  It pulls the whole tension of the piece into another area or another dimension just for that moment and a bit of backwards echo makes it a bit more complete.  It's putting all these elements together that makes the music have depth. ... So to answer your question, where did that unusual G chord come from?  I didn't have that chord when I started writing the "Immigrant Song," but it suddenly appeared while we were working together, putting on a massive brake to this machine.  You know those old brakes where you clutch them and it just pulls out again, pulling it back in - that's how I see the function of that chord.

Great to know that there really is magic in this world.