Pageia Obscura: Lights, Camera...Blow-Up

In 1966 Jimmy Page made his big screen theatrical debut in a little film titled "Blow Up"

Blow-up, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni was the first film that he directed in English, and went on to win the Palme D’or at the Cannes Film Festival. Essentially this film is about a photographer, David Bailey (David Hemmings) who takes a picture of two lovers in a park. After he blows up the pictures he realizes that in the background there is a dead body in one of them with someone lurking in the trees with a gun. That night he goes back to the park where he indeed finds a dead body, but gets scared off when he hears a stick cracking in the distance. When he returns to his apartment all of his negatives and prints are gone with the exception of the one blow up he made. He then wanders around London for a bit, then returns to the park, but the body is gone.

In one particular scene, David Hemmings is following Vanessa Redgrave into a club and encounters a psychedelic scene with plaster faced young people watching a live performance of a band onstage tearing through a raucous set that ends with the guitarist smashing his guitar into little pieces. This band was of course none other than The Yardbirds, with their newly hired guitarist Jimmy Page playing along with the mayhem as his cohort Jeff Beck completely loses it.

The Yardbirds weren't Antonioni's first choice for the scene. The director approached numerous other acts before finally settling on the Beck and Page led group. He first approached The Who, who turned him down, however Antonioni who was so enthralled with Pete Townshend's act of destroying a guitar onstage later forced Jeff Beck to do so for the scene. From their Antonioni asked Eric Burdon who also turned him down, then thought of using the New York based outfit The Velvet Underground, but according to Sterling Morrison, guitarist in The Velvets, "The expense of bringing the whole entourage to England proved too much for him."

After he had been turned down twice and his third option proved to be cost-ineffective, the director turned to a group known as The In Crowd fronted by Steve Howe who agreed to film the scene. As is self-evident, The In Crowd's inclusion was a short lived prospect as Howe would later recall, "We went on the set and started preparing for that guitar-smashing scene in the club. They even went as far as making up a bunch of Gibson 175 replicas ... and then we got dropped for The Yardbirds, who were a bigger name. That's why you see Jeff Beck smashing my guitar rather than his!"

Jimmy Page: "I'm ready for my close up."

 For the scene, The Yardbirds, Chris Dreja, Jimmy Page, Keith Relf, Jeff Beck & Jim McCarty decided to play a re-worked version of their hit song "Train Kept A Rolling" and titled it, "Stroll On". The song retains the same basic riffs, chords, and structure as the original track, but includes a double lead guitar break with both Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck going at it, as well as lyrics altered by lead singer Keith Relf in order to avoid having to pay any sort of royalties to the individual who held the rights to the song.

Ultimately, the gig didn't lead to much, months later Jeff Beck would be out of the group and Jimmy would take over all guitar duties in the band until their ultimate demise in 1968. However it is notable for being one of the earliest appearances of Jimmy on film, and one of the few recorded appearances of Page and Beck on record and film together during that time period. This cameo didn't blow up the Yardbirds, but it did introduce the world at large about the new kid in town.