While visiting Bombay, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant jam at the Slip-Disc club. A few days later (Oct. 19th), they record Friends & Four Sticks with the Bombay orchestra.
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Led Zeppelin Land Briefly In Bombay
The fab Led Zeppelin during their short stay in Bombay was snapped in a quick interview by Poky.
“Music means communication to me. I say listen you people out there, listen to my music and let’s be one”, says Robert Plant. “Man it’s great to be in India for a second visit”.
The suite at the Taj was disorderly – pants, shirts and boots were strewn over chairs and sofas, and there were bottles and bottles of beer. Richard Cole, their tour manager, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were all reclining with bottles glued to their mouths. “Make yourself comfortable”, Page said. “Listen, not more than five minutes”, Cole said.
Plant: “Come on Richard, give him ten and pass him a bottle and a stick. Man, it’s great to be in India for a second visit. Listen, you know why we came? - to see if we can set up a recording studio. But the Customs regulations are tough, man, like it will take us about six months to get our equipment from Bombay Airport. This country is great and we’ll be back.”
Jimmy Page on the Beatles – “They are great. In fact, they are the greatest. We felt sorry when they broke up, because together they produced the most fantastic music.”
On themselves – “We are simple people who love to play and listen to music. We don’t even feel like pop stars. Except for the very hip crowd, nobody here even recognized us. They thought we were hippies.”
“It is a lovely thing when no one recognizes you and you can groove and do what you like. Our contract runs out with Polydor, sometime this year, and we might sign on with EMI. This is one of the reasons why we came to India.”
At Slip Disc – They came, they played and in the process blew everybody’s mind to high heavens. These gods that descended on the Slip Disc were Richard Cole (tour manager), Jimmy Page (lead guitar) and Robert Plant (lead vocalist) of Led Zeppelin. They said, “Man, this is undoubtedly the coolest place in town and compares with the best in the world.”
The three of them sat swigging bottles of beer and rapping with Ramzan (who runs Slip Disc), and hordes of girls and boys seeking kisses and autographs. When they had entered the place, there were hardly more than 20 couples, but by the time they left, the Disc was full. There was not even standing space.
Led Zeppelin came in search of a scene and they found it at Slip Disc. They laughed, they joked and told of their travels around the world and most importantly, they played music and sang in spite of the poor equipment and acoustics.
They played fans and furiously and expanded their music for those at the Disc. A musician requires contact people all the time – the human thing. Led Zeppelin were communicating to the youth, 12,000 miles away from home.
‘Led Zeppelin At Slip Disc’ will not read as the gripping headline of any newspaper nor will it generate any excitement for the underground heads in any other part of the world. But, it will remain in a special corner of the minds of Zep and their audience -of–an-evening, truly as a happening – a deep, personal re-affirmation of faith in music. [Statesman / 1972]
