Before He Formed Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page Played a Prom in Ohio

Back successful 2021, I wrote an essay astir the large musicians who, surprisingly, had performed astatine my precocious school, successful Kansas City, successful the nineteen-sixties: the Crystals, the Drifters, Booker T. & the M.G.’s, Ike & Tina Turner. There were truthful galore of them that I assumed high-school dances with big-name endowment indispensable person been communal successful that era, but that turned retired not to beryllium the case. Tina Turner and Booker T. Washington some told maine that they had astir ne'er performed astatine precocious schools, adjacent erstwhile they were starting out. The lone akin illustration I recovered progressive St. Xavier High School, an all-boys Catholic prep schoolhouse successful Cincinnati. Xavier’s prom successful 1968 featured the Yardbirds, a radical that had had a singular succession of pb guitarists: Eric Clapton, followed by Jeff Beck, followed by Jimmy Page. The Xavier prom took spot astatine an inflection constituent successful the past of fashionable music: conscionable a fewer weeks later, the Yardbirds divided up, and Page formed Led Zeppelin.

I couldn’t find a mode to see Xavier’s prom successful an effort astir my ain precocious school, but I thought astir it precocious erstwhile my woman and I saw the caller documentary “Becoming Led Zeppelin.” The movie—which was directed by Bernard MacMahon and written by him and Allison McGourty—doesn’t notation the school, of course, but it perfectly describes the philharmonic and taste contexts successful which the 1968 prom took place. The time aft we saw the movie, I recovered a telephone fig for Rip Pelley, the president of Xavier’s inferior pupil assembly astatine the time. I called him, and asked him to reminisce.

“We had 2 antithetic proms, a inferior prom and a elder prom, and each of them ever had a emblematic boring orchestra,” helium said. “My thought was beauteous simple: let’s enactment the 2 proms unneurotic and get a stone band.” The juniors were much enthusiastic than the seniors, who didn’t needfully privation eleventh-grade babies spoiling their large party, but a constrictive bulk voted successful favor. On weekends, successful those days, Pelley played guitar successful a screen set that sometimes performed arsenic a section opening enactment for the Lemon Pipers, a one-hit wonderment from Oxford, Ohio, 50 miles northbound of Cincinnati. (Their 1 deed was “Green Tambourine,” which reached No. 1, for a azygous week, successful February, 1968.) Pelley’s band, Uncle Sam’s Population, had an agent, who gave him the telephone fig of a bigger agent, successful New York. “I called the guy, and we went done a database of bands that were disposable and benignant of successful our terms range,” Pelley told me. They settled connected the Grass Roots, a folk-oriented stone group, whose 2 large songs—“Let’s Live for Today” and “Midnight Confessions”—were improbable to rise alarms with the Jesuits who ran the school.

“So everything was great, and astir radical were beauteous blessed and excited,” helium continued. “But past I got a telephone from the cause successful New York. I don’t retrieve what the crushed was—someone successful the set was sick, oregon the routing didn’t work, oregon the circuit got cancelled—but, immoderate it was, the Grass Roots couldn’t marque it.” Pelley panicked. The prom was weeks away, and helium knew that if the evening fell isolated helium would beryllium blamed. “But past the cause said, ‘Hold on, clasp on. I’ve got a substitute for you, and I deliberation you’re gonna similar it.’ ”

The Yardbirds were disposable due to the fact that they were scheduled to beryllium successful Cleveland the nighttime earlier the prom, to look connected “Upbeat,” a nationally syndicated tv amusement aimed astatine teen-agers, and they had thing to bash the adjacent day. “I’m, like, beatified cow,” Pelley said. “I was jumping up and down. But I besides realized that I had a problem.” The Grass Roots were folky, and the Yardbirds were not. “They were much edgy,” Pelley said. “ ‘Edgy’ being the benignant word.”

Many Xavier students, and astir apt each of its administrators, were unfamiliar with the Yardbirds. They had had 2 songs connected Billboard’s Top Ten, “For Your Love” and “Heart Full of Soul,” but some had been released successful 1965. One of the school’s prefects walked the halls with Pelley and asked students however they felt astir the switch. Opinions were mixed, Pelley told me. “Somehow, though, I convinced everyone that we didn’t person a choice, and we got last approval.” The lone information imposed by the schoolhouse was that the programme besides had to see what Pelley described arsenic a “bubble band”—an orchestra similar the 1 that performed each week connected “The Lawrence Welk Show.” The begetter of Pelley’s girlfriend—Pattie Purdy, a sophomore astatine Regina High School—happened to beryllium the person of an ensemble that could walk for 1 of those, the Dick Purdy Orchestra. They agreed to alternate forty-five infinitesimal sets with the Yardbirds, 2 sets each.

Not agelong earlier the prom, the section typical of the Yardbirds’ label, Epic Records, called Pelley and told him she had to spell retired of town. “So she asked me, ‘Can you prime them up astatine the airport?’ ” helium said. Pelley drove a 1967 Mustang. The full set wouldn’t fit, truthful helium enlisted a mates of friends. He and Purdy took Page, who threw his guitar into the trunk and squeezed into the backmost seat. Pelley was wearing a achromatic meal jacket, and Purdy was wearing a agelong pinkish gown with abbreviated sleeves. “Jimmy’s archetypal question was, ‘Why are you dressed similar that?’ ” Pelley told me. “I said, ‘You’re playing astatine our prom.’ And helium said, ‘What the fuck is simply a prom?’ ” They got on well, though, and the set invited them up to their edifice room, and autographed their prom programs. “They were precise bully guys, precise pleasant,” Pelley said. “We hung with them for 15 oregon 20 minutes, and past we went to the normal center.” The ballroom determination had been decorated by members of the prom committee and their mothers. The taxable of the creation was “Scarborough Fair.”

“The happening I retrieve astir is that my dada was playing connected the aforesaid signifier with Jimmy Page,” Purdy told me. “And it was really, truly loud—although I was utilized to large due to the fact that I would spell to Rip’s performances.” The Yardbirds were not what anyone would telephone a creation band. Pelley said, “People were a small unsure what to do. You know, should we dance, oregon should we ticker similar we’re astatine a concert?” The Yardbirds played an aboriginal mentation of “Dazed and Confused”—later a Led Zeppelin performance staple—which Page had adapted from a akin opus of the aforesaid sanction by Jake Holmes, a folk-rock guitarist and songwriter who had opened for the Yardbirds astatine the Village Theatre, successful New York, the twelvemonth before. (Holmes yet sued Led Zeppelin for infringement, successful 2010, and received an undisclosed settlement.) During portion of that song, Page played his guitar with a violin bow, arsenic helium besides did later, with Led Zeppelin.

Page wore choky pinkish pants and a flowing shirt. He played a 1959 Fender Telecaster, which Beck had fixed him successful 1966. Page had stripped the guitar’s assemblage to the bare wood and past utilized poster overgarment to decorate it with a psychedelic representation of a dragon—a plan that Fender aboriginal replicated successful a constricted edition. When the Yardbirds had finished their archetypal set, a clergyman told Pelley that helium had a vessel of liquor, and asked, “Do you deliberation it’d beryllium O.K. if I springiness this to them?” The motion was unnecessary, due to the fact that the set had acceptable up a barroom successful their dressing country and had been drinking since earlier the prom began. At immoderate point, betwixt sets, a prom king and queen were crowned.

No 1 astatine Xavier could person known this, but, conscionable a fewer weeks earlier the prom, Jim McCarty, the Yardbirds’ drummer, and Keith Relf, the pb singer, had told Page that they wanted to quit, and not agelong aft that Chris Dreja, the bass player, said that helium wanted to quit, too. (Dreja and McCarty aboriginal played unneurotic successful respective different bands, and McCarty tours with a revived mentation of the Yardbirds, which mightiness conceivably beryllium disposable for a prom.) Dreja, McCarty, Page, and Relf’s past show arsenic the Yardbirds was astatine Luton Technical College, successful England, connected July 7th, 10 weeks aft “Scarborough Fair.”

Almost instantly aft the Yardbirds broke up—and this is simply a communicative that “Becoming Led Zeppelin” tells well—Page assembled his caller band, with John Paul Jones connected bass, Robert Plant connected vocals, and John Bonham connected drums. All 4 musicians’ beingness stories are interesting. Jones’s begetter had helped him larn the bass by telling him to ticker his near manus arsenic helium played the piano. (He and his woman were vaudeville performers.) As teen-agers, Jones and Page started moving arsenic workplace musicians and played unneurotic successful the orchestra that backed Shirley Bassey erstwhile she recorded the taxable opus of the movie “Goldfinger,” successful 1964. Plant, whose begetter wanted him to beryllium an accountant, auditioned for the set by accompanying Page connected “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You,” a people opus that Joan Baez had recorded. (Page and Plant’s mentation is the 2nd way connected their archetypal album, “Led Zeppelin.”) Plant was truthful determined that John Bonham should beryllium their drummer that helium offered to lobby Bonham’s mother. The sanction Led Zeppelin was suggested by Keith Moon, of the Who. (It was a joking notation to a fearfulness of going down adjacent worse than a pb balloon. Dropping the “a,” truthful that radical wouldn’t mispronounce it, was idiosyncratic else’s idea.)