Jimmy Page in Brazil

‘LED ZEPPELIN IN BRAZIL? YES, IT’S ALMOST CONFIRMED!’

James Patrick Page is born in the suburbs of London, England, on January 9, 1944. Still a little boy he becomes interested in American rock, picks up a guitar that is leaning in a corner of his house and starts practicing solos.

His first band comes at 17, The Crusaders, then he joins Eric Clapton’s former band, The Yardbirds, with another six-string hero, Jeff Beck. In the midst of all this, Jimmy becomes the guy everyone wants on the guitar, and works as a sought-after studio musician recording with The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks, Donovan and Joe Cocker among others. A fundamental experience for the success of his next project - his own band.

When he gets Led Zeppelin together in 1968, he is already a very skilled and original guitarist, genius in chords, using various techniques - including playing the guitar with a violin bow - and he is also very experienced about studio recordings. Led Zeppelin, their first record, is like a diamond cut by Jimmy Page, a studio master. It sets a standard: the band’s rhythm session, ragged voice and the combinations of acoustic textures along with breathtaking riffs and solos coming out of the excellently demolishing guitars superbly mixed. Not to mention the richness of the tones where Page seems to chew the strings hungrily. Although he is a very influential musician, it is not easy to follow his style - you can even copy his solos, but the creativity and the paths he chooses are unmistakable marks.

Jimmy Page (guitar), Robert Plant (vocals), John Paul Jones (bass and keyboard) and John Bonham (drums) had been together throughout the group’s 12-year career until 1980 when the drummer’s death decrees an early end. Much more than just being the creators of heavy metal, each album is an evolution of rock, blues, folk, soul, reggae, ballads, psychedelia, classical and Indian music.

It’s really hard to say something like that and not sound arrogant, but over the years, many other musicians have told me they thought we were the best, says the guitar player in an interview to the British magazine Uncut in 2019.

In 1975 Led Zeppelin releases their sixth album, Physical graffiti, with the famous classic Kashmir. The double LP, considered by many the best of the band, also sells very well in Brazil. The group is at their peak performing around the world in big stadiums. It is at this time when they are warned to live as tax exiles because of England’s high taxes. So they begin planning a world tour to occupy the period. They wish to play in South America. And in Brazil. In June Led Zeppelin’s manager Peter Grant comes to Rio de Janeiro where he spends a week.

Grant gives an interview to Pop, a Brazilian magazine specialized in rock and the behavior of youngsters, where he assures that the arrival of Zeppelin in Brazil is almost confirmed, passing through Rio (Maracanãzinho Gymnasium), São Paulo (Anhembi Park), Brasília (location not specified) and perhaps other capitals in October 1975.

If there was no interest in bringing the group, I would not be in Brazil. I wouldn’t go on such a long trip for nothing, says the businessman to journalist, musician and producer Eduardo Athayde. The interview takes place in Leme Palace Hotel presidential suite in Copacabana Beach.

"There was an interest from the record companies for Pop to interview their artists, just as there was an expectation for a Led Zeppelin show here. And in those days these great artists were not that inaccessible, says Athayde, still scared today: I remember this meeting when I found Grant as big as hell!".

No wonder! Peter Grant’s fame is of an affable but angry fellow as a professional, the kind that speaks softly, listens more than speaks but whoever messes with Led Zeppelin may be punched. The journalist describes him in the interview as a guy almost six feet tall, wearing huge blue rings and bracelets, faded jeans, nice and cheerful brown long neck boots.

As a guitarist, my trick for interviewing these guys was to talk about bossa nova, about harmony, recalls Athayde, the guitar player on the first recording of Tom Jobim’s classic Águas de março, with whom he has been working for years, including producing the album Matita Perê. Then I would break the ice, and they would get very interested in the conversation. And Grant was incredibly kind to me.

The businessman also says that he came to personally check the capacity of the stadiums where we should perform. The sound and light system that the group use in 1975 is high-tech, including a screen raised above the stage to show close-ups - one of the first times such a feature is used in a rock concert. Although for many people their most important work is in the studio, Led Zeppelin is one of the bands responsible for the entry of rock in the era of megashows, with tons of equipment, big special effects, smoke, laser beams and a millionaire production.

We’ll use a giant screen for movie projection, slides, laser effects, thunder, Grant details. We will not come to Brazil to cheat the kids and put money in our pockets. We don’t need this kind of stuff.

Can you possibly imagine what it is to take such a circus to distant places like Brazil in those times? And, in the 1970s and 1980s, many people did not come to South America for fear of not receiving their money.

Since many promoters were bandits, you could end up not being paid, reports The Rolling Stones guitarist Ron Wood in his autobiography [3].

It is true to say that, while active, Led Zeppelin is a band more known in Brazil among rockers by word of mouth than by the general public. It doesn’t often appear on TV or pay to played on radios. But still many Brazilians know - and love! - the group.

In 1974 Alice Cooper plays in Brazil. Santana does too a little earlier in the two first major international rock concerts in the country - kind of guinea pigs for other artists to think about coming to Brazil too. In the same year, Mick Jagger tells the international press that The Rolling Stones intend to play in South America. People involved with the English band staff come to Brazil in March and in April 1975 to discuss their possible performances. Discreet notes in Brazilian press give away the likely going of the Stones and Led Zeppelin.

Journalist Eduardo Athayde asks Grant what the possible shows in Brazil will be like and hw says: What I can say is that they will be sensational.

But they do not come - nor do The Rolling Stones [4].

When Led Zeppelin was active, Brazilian businessmen never made a good offer, resigns Jimmy Page [5].

Added to this, Robert Plant and his family suffer a very severe car accident in Greece in late 1975, which led the group to cancel several prearranged trips.

Peter Grant na revista Pop, 1975

THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME

In 1977, a new world tour is planned and once again Brazil may enter the band’s route, but doesn’t. Right then Robert Plant is hit by another tragedy - this time even worse! His five-year-old son Karac suddenly dies of a severe virus. For this reason, to see the group live only in the cinema. The film starring Led Zeppelin The song remains the same comes to Brazil and is named Rock é rock mesmo, ‘Rock is really rock’ in English, featuring recordings of performances a few years earlier at New York Madison Square Garden, backstage footage, the musicians’ daily life as well as video clips of each band member, including manager Peter Grant, playing different characters for fun.

In August Pop magazine publishes an article about the movie saying: Rocker’s souls go into orbit when the first image appears on the screen. And they just stop spinning many days later. When Robert Plant’s voice explodes on screen, in duet with Jimmy Page’s guitar, the whole movie theater starts shaking.

But critics generally speak badly about the end result, which does not prevent audience success for one simple reason: it is the first and only (so far [6]) official visual recording of one of the greatest bands in rock history. The experience of seeing an entire Led show moves the crowd and a lot of big Brazilian cinemas become rock temples - and this happens long before they are bought by evangelical churches! And register that this also happens before the event of the VCR, the DVD and the internet. And Rock é rock mesmo becomes a cult hit - something the band is remembered by to this day. So very sensorial! Watching it is a unique experience, the kind of movie that can change a person’s life, especially when they are in their teens.

No band had such an impact on my adolescence as Led Zeppelin, confirms Paulo Ricardo, vocal leader of RPM, a very popular Brazilian band in the 1980s. "The Beatles no longer existed and The Stones were not in the spotlight when the movie Rock é rock mesmo exploded in the cinema, making those historic nights at Madison Square Garden available to everyone. It is important to remember that until then there had never been an international rock show like that in Brazil. So fans of good rock lived on a cinema to cinema pilgrimage, looking for a bloody film session that turned into real shows. Crazy!".

"I saw Rock é rock mesmo in Ricamar cinema where Sala Baden Powell is today in Copacabana, recalls musician of Kid Abelha band George Israel. We didn’t have access to international shows. It was absolute madness, people went crazy, watched several times, one session after the other".

Herbert Vianna, the leader of the Brazilian band Paralamas do Sucesso, says he learned how to play the guitar by listening to Led Zeppelin records and watching their movie about twenty of times.

And over the next few years, throughout the 1980s, from time to time Rock é rock mesmo comes back on the screen, gathering hairy heads puffing some grass smell in the air. People waited for the movie to be released again in the cinema because it used to happen now and then, says Carlos Coelho, guitarist of the band Biquini Cavadão. It wasn’t like today when you turn on your computer and watch a show of the guys. And people smoked cigarettes in the cinema, so for someone to light a joint it was no hassle!.

Led Zeppelin na revista Pop, 1977

BRAZILIAN VACATION

In August 1979 Led Zeppelin performs two major shows in Knebworth just outside London and soon afterwards they release In through the out door. The new album features All my love, a romantic ballad far from the band’s typical heavy sound that becomes a hit on Brazilian FM radios. The song is a Robert Plant and John Paul Jones’ partnership and it curiously is one of the rare compositions of the group without Jimmy Page’s signature. Fool in the rain by Page, Plant and Jones turns into a carnival mood in the middle of it, a kind of samba rhythm that they try to emulate with timbales and agogô played by John Bonham [7].

Two months later, a young acquaintance of Jimmy Page who was a photographer dies of an overdose at the guitarist’s home. After that, Page is the only band member who does not attend a ceremony of the English newspaper Melody Maker to receive several awards, including Best Album of the Year. Everybody comments that he is on vacation in Barbados, in the Caribbean region.

It is in the wake of these events when Jimmy finally arrives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, late 1979, spends New Year’s Eve and stays until early 1980s. He is accompanied by his wife, the French model Charlotte Martin, and their nine years old daughter Scarlet.

Rita Lee, a legendary Brazilian pop singer and composer, writes in her 2016 autobiography that she met Jimmy Page in Bahia in 1972 and gave him a Brazilian guitar called craviola. It is true those were days of a lot of rock and roll when memories may fail:

But I don’t remember going to Brazil before our 1979 trip, recalls Charlotte Martin in 2019, 40 years later [8].

Page & family stay at Copacabana Palace Hotel,