Here are three photos and videos from OpenCulture.com that will amuse you if you’re into old rock. Captions from that site are indented.
1. Here’s Jimmy Page (now OBE) at 13; note that in the post-song interview he says he wants to do biological research!
Let’s rewind the video tape to 1957. A very young Jimmy Page appears on a BBC children’s talent show [JAC: the Huw Wheldon Show] to play some skiffle. Mixing together strands of American blues, jazz, country and folk music, this style of music became all the rage in the UK during the 1950s. Lonnie Donegan got the craze going. And it wasn’t long before John Lennon formed his own skiffle band – The Quarry Men
2. The Beatles as teenagers:
We take you back to The Beatles (who were still The Quarrymen) in 1957. George Harrison is 14, John Lennon is 16, and Paul McCartney is 15. Ringo is not yet in the picture.
What gets me is the phrase “George Harrison is 14.”
3. Mick Jagger, 15, shows off his climbing shoes on television.
In the 1950s, Mick Jagger (then still called “Mike Jagger”) was a middle class kid growing up in Dartford, Kent, England. His mother, Eva, was a hairdresser; his father, Joe, a PE teacher. Together, they lived in a nice, orderly home, with more than enough money to pay the bills. (His neighbor, Keith Richards, couldn’t say the same.) In 1957, the elder Jagger began consulting on a weekly TV show called Seeing Sport, which promoted the virtues of sports to British children. During the coming years, Mick and his brother Chris made regular appearances on the show, showing viewers how to build a tent, or master various canoeing skills. In the 1959 clip above, Mick shows off the footwear needed for rock climbing. Nothing too fancy. No mountaineering boots or anything like that. Just a pair of “ordinary gym shoes … like the kind Mike is wearing.” The episode was shot in a spot called “High Rocks,” near Tunbridge Wells. This background info comes to us via Philip Norman’s 2012 biography of Mick Jagger.
Looks like Sir Paul couldn’t afford a left-handed guitar back then – he just had to make do with a re-strung right-hander.
Which is why he has a guitar with a symmetric body. Might have been the same reason he liked the Hofner basses in the early days, though it would seem the controls would be in an inconvenient place on a righty Hofner. Paul switched to a custom built lefty Rick later on.
That’s his first ever guitar a Framus Zenith Model 17 acoustic which he still owns. It cost his dad fifteen squid in 1956.
DETAILS HERE worth a read ~ talks about him not realising about left/right stringing until after he got the thing home 🙂
Love it, thank you. Jimmy Page is probably my favorite guitarist.
The interesting thing is that they are all British artists.
I assumed that late 1950’s early 60’s that American media was much further developed the the British media, maybe I was wrong.
Fun post! I met Jimmy Page once when he was touring with his post-Zeppelin band The Firm. I delivered his room service orders when I worked a resort job in AZ.I remember him as a kind and gracious guest.
Thanks so much for posting those videos and info. My son is 15 and a Beatles fan and it’s fascinating to see the Beatles et all at that age.
Vaal
George [b 25 Feb. 1943] didn’t join the Quarrymen until shortly after his 15th birthday. This ties in with the above Quarrymen photo [taken by Mike McCartney] as being dated mid-to-late 1958.
N.B. I’ve taken the below info from page 65 of
this Bonham’s auction pop memorabilia catalogue:- The chap drinking stout [?] on the right of the photo with the wicked cardigan is Dennis Littler.
This is McCartney in 2012:- “I well remember the parties at my Auntie Jin’s house where we would often bring our guitars and play. Dennis would often join in and on the occasions when we forgot to bring our own guitars, Dennis would kindly lend us his to play on”
Dennis Littler was the best friend of Ian Harris, whose mother was the McCartney’s Aunt Ginny [immortalised in Paul’s song, Let ‘Em In].
Dennis had his own group at the time & recalled:- “…When Paul, John & George started
rehearsing their own group at Aunty Ginny’s they actually looked up to us. They even pleaded to join us. We turned them down flat too young & too inexperienced. They were all still at school. We were slightly older, we had been going longer than them… they all wanted to take it in turn to borrow my guitar. John had paid 30 bob [£1.50] for his battered guitar.
Mine had cost £19 on hire purchase, which in those days was a fortune. In three weeks, Paul was playing better than I could ever hope to. It didn’t make any difference to him that he was left-handed and my guitar was not. He could play anything. After a few spins of Little Richard’s Long Tall Sally record he could knock out the right chords on the piano and make it sound right…”
Copenhagen, DK. [TV Byen / Danmarks Radio]
Superb black & white 31-minute live studio clip of Page from May 1969 with his little band from that era. The first album had only just come out in Europe ~ the Danish audience have never seen or heard anything like this before…
SET LIST:-
Communication Breakdown
Dazed and Confused
Babe I’m Gonna Leave You
How Many More Times
This is before the stadiums & adulation ~ highly accomplished, controlled yet frenetic blues rock
I seem to remember mention of High Rocks in a number of climbers’ biographies, but not in connection with Mick Jagger. Oddly, I was thinking about Mick just today. Wishing I still had hair like his, as a matter of fact.
Question, is Mick the longest-lasting performer in rock?
Not by a long chalk, depending how you want to define “rock”! I’ve listed four performers below who pre-date the Stones ~ all of whom STILL perform today
My criteria is the release date of first recording. Thus we have the Rolling Stones, “The Rolling Stones [EP]” Jan 1964 as a baseline.
B.B. King, “Miss Martha King” (Bullet)
1949
Chuck Berry,”Maybellene”
Jul 1955
Bob Dylan, “Bob Dylan”
Mar 1962
Steve Cropper [while with Booker T. & the M.G.s], “Green Onions”
Oct 1962
I assume there must be scores of recorded performers [esp. session musicians] who still play away from the headlines & who pre-date the Stones.
Yeah, well rock climbing shoes have always been light weight twisty things with a sole much thinner than tennis shoes. Hiking boots are not rock climbing shoes. Mick showed what was in use then and what is still in use to this day, for rock climbing.
Mark