Interview: Brad Tolinski

Brad Tolinski is the Editor in Chief of three of the most successful music publications in the world, Guitar World Magazine, Revolver and Guitar Aficianado. His latest effort is the new book titled Light & Shade: Conversation with Jimmy Page, a semi-oral biography of the notoriously media shy Led Zeppelin guitarist. Tolinski has had the opportunity to interview and interact with Page on a number of occasions over the years and has used the content from those interviews as well as his own personal insights to compile a fantastic work that comes closer than anything else out there to revealing the man behind the mystique. I recently had the privilege of speaking with Mr. Tolinksi about the book, his own thoughts about his subject and the ever-changing landscape of music journalism.

CR: You’ve interviewed a number of great musicians and guitarist over the years in your capacity as editor in chief of Guitar World Magazine, what made you choose Jimmy Page as the subject for your latest book?

BT: I think when it comes to Led Zeppelin and Jimmy’s work in particular you find that there’s a disservice to it in the music journalism community. It seems that all of the focus has been on the exploits of the band and the more sensational aspects of their life. I mean, Led Zeppelin is the second largest rock band of all time in terms of sales, only behind The Beatles, and it really bothered me that no one was paying attention to how important and how interesting the music was. I don’t want to be a spoil-sport or anything, I think that telling a good rock story is fun and it’s interesting, but I think that there needed to be some sort of balance in the marketplace where you had a book that talked about the serious musical contribution of someone like Jimmy Page.

CR: What has Jimmy Page meant to you personally as both a fan of music and as a guitar player?

BT: Gee, that’s a complicated question but it’s a good question…nobody has really asked me that. I think what impresses me about Jimmy is that he does everything well. When you look at somebody like Eddie Van Halen, who you see a person who is an incredibly accomplished guitar player and very innovative which of course Jimmy Page is as well, however he’s also a lot more. Jimmy is a really great producer, his compositions are incredibly interesting and complex and as a performer and as somebody who went down to the details of taking care of what the band would look like visually and artistically, I don’t think there has ever been a more well rounded guitar player in rock history than Jimmy.

CR: What made you decide to structure the book in the way you did with narrative text and interviews and how difficult was it to strike a balance between the two?

BT: I definitely wanted the book to be in Jimmy’s words as much as possible because I really see this as a historical document. Hopefully fifty years from now when people are listening to Led Zeppelin and enter this music they are going to wonder how it was made and how it was created and I felt that they wouldn’t want to read a journalist’s analysis when the real thing was available. On the other hand, I tend to find some of these oral histories a bit boring and one-dimensional and I really wanted to keep the book lively so I decided to introduce different voices. On top of that for as much as Jimmy has revealed to me, which is quite a bit, he tends to play his cards close to his chest so I thought it was important to get some other flavors.

CR: How many conversations have you had with Jimmy Page over the years?

BT: I don’t know the exact number, somewhere between twelve or fifteen different occasions over the years. We’ve also seen each other and chatted outside of the book a number of times as well.

CR: Can you take us through the process of interviewing Jimmy Page, what its actually like to be in the room with him and trying to pull information out of him?

BT: Well the way to Jimmy’s heart, if you’re a journalist anyway, is through the music. If you get your facts wrong and your research wrong he turns off in a second so it’s a real trick and you really have to do your homework; he really holds your toes to the fire. He also hates open-ended questions; he really wants you to ask specific things, which of course makes it a little harder on the interviewer, but in the end it yields very rich material. He never ducks a question if they are ambiguous, he may say no sometimes [laughs], but if the question is well formed and well defined he’s great. Jimmy has always treated interviews in a really professional sort of way, but afterwards he can be cool with you and genuinely warm. We’ve hung out a few times, had a couple drinks and talked music and girls all that stuff.

CR: I have to ask, what is it like to just hang out with Jimmy Page? He just seems like such a stratospheric figure.

BT: It’s gotten better over the years, but you’re right it is a little complicated. When you talk to him you tend to wonder whether your own life is exciting enough to interest him [laughs]. There’s always a little of that feeling in the back of your mind, but through the years we’ve broken down a lot of barriers and he’s capable of great warmth. When it comes to the interviews themselves however, he takes them very seriously. I think he’s grown to trust that I’m going to convey his ideas clearly as well.

CR: Was there ever an urge when asking him more technical questions about the guitar or the music to just say, hey how about you plug in that ’59 Les Paul and show me what you mean?

BT: That actually did happen once in one of the interviews that I did with him. I didn’t include it in the book because it just got too deep into guitar nerd territory and I thought it might just put off a general reader. Anyway, at first I pulled out a guitar and said, ‘Why don’t you show me how to play such and such?’ and at first he was like, ‘No, I’m not going to do that.’ So then I said to him, ‘Don’t you play “The Rain Song” like this?’ and he saw that I was doing it wrong [laughs] and he got so mad that he grabbed it and said ‘No! This is the way it goes.’ I’ve found that the best way to get Jimmy to show you how to do things is to just play it wrong and then invite him to show you the right way to do it.

CR: Speaking of his guitars, were you ever able to examine them up close? Number One of the double-neck for instance?

BT: Here’s a funny story for you actually. A couple years ago I did a pretty lengthy interview with him that appears in the book about the recording of Led Zeppelin III and he brought along his Harmony acoustic guitar that he used on the album and is featured on “Stairway to Heaven” and a lot of the other acoustic Led Zeppelin songs. So there it is, the famous “Stairway to Heaven” Harmony guitar so I asked him, ‘Jimmy, would you mind if I were to strum out a few chords, maybe play on it a little bit?’ and he was like, ‘Oh yeah, go ahead’. Of course the temptation was to play the opening riff to “Stairway to Heaven”, I mean how great is that? You could dine out on that story forever! In the end though I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, I could just imagine that he would roll his eyes or something like that. I will say though, it really is a very nice sounding guitar.

CR: Jimmy Page is notoriously press shy, how were you able to gain so much access to him?

BT: As a child of the seventies I grew up with Page’s work with The Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin and it became deeply embedded in my DNA and I’ve always admired his innovations as a guitarist, a composer and as an arranger. As a producer I thought he ranked right up there alongside Phil Spector and George Martin, those types of people. So as a journalist I had always wondered why no one had ever asked him about that stuff and I discovered that Jimmy had been wondering the same thing. That’s what I wanted to read about and that’s what I wanted to write about so Light and Shade is an extension of that. Essentially I got to Jimmy by talking to him specifically about the music and I was able to have that discussion in a relatively sophisticated way. As a guy who felt like he’d been misunderstood, I think he found it liberating that he could talk to somebody and tell them what he was up to creatively and they would get it. So through that, through the music, we were able to touch on some of the more sensational aspects of what he was doing, or what had been going on in his life, or what was going on in the band.

CR: In the book you quote Francis Bacon saying, “the job of the artist is to always deepen the mystery”. Jimmy is clearly a master of that concept but in your opinion how much of that aura of mystery is a conscious choice, how much of that is resentment toward the media, and how much is just outright shyness?

BT: Well a magician never reveals his tricks [laughs]. I don't think he’s shy, I don’t see that, but he’s very particular and with most of my interviews I’d have to almost approach the situation like a trial lawyer. I think he’s just a guy who likes things a certain way and I’ve had several people say, ‘Come on tell me about the real Jimmy Page, is he just a regular guy?’ The truth though is that he really isn’t. He’s an eccentric; he’s an artist on the highest level so why would you expect him to respond like an average guy? But none of us really wants that, none of us want him to be an average guy.

CR: It seems as if Led Zeppelin are as, if not more popular today as they were in their heyday, what would you attribute that to?

BT: There are a lot of reasons for that, and again…see here’s the problem, the music critical community tends to focus on lyrics; I sort of believe this, which is why in my opinion people like Dylan or Neil Young are so revered and understood. So with Led Zeppelin it really is a sound and if you are not a musician you probably don’t really understand the depths of the music to some degree. This of course won’t prevent you from enjoying it, but you might not understand it. There is just a ton of depth in the music of Led Zeppelin. I mean I still like to listen to Houses of the Holy and to this day I will hear something that I hadn’t heard before in spite of the fact that I’ve listened to that record a zillion times. It’s that kind of depth that keeps people coming back year after year. Then of course you have to look at the way it was recorded and Jimmy’s production techniques, which I think still sound modern and different even today. In the end, the question you are asking is the question I am trying to answer with this book, like, why do we care? And the reason we care isn’t just because they had sex with groupies and threw televisions out the window it’s because of the genius of the musicians involved and the lengths that they went to capture what was in their mind.

CR: Jimmy has stated that he would never release a full on autobiography in his lifetime leaving your book pretty much the closest thing to something like that. Do you have any thoughts about that, and what that means to you?

BT: You know about ten years ago when I had already interviewed Jimmy a few times, I started realizing what I had. With that realization in mind I went about the business of every time I engaged him to try and pull out another level because I did start seeing that what I had was different from anything anyone else had. Not only that, I felt that what I had carried historical value. We tend in our society to have a hard time to really pat our rock gods on the back to some degree because rock and roll sort of dissuades you from taking things too seriously; it’s sort of built into its definition. I think it is really time to start looking at some of these musicians and treat them in the same way that they might treat Muddy Waters, Duke Ellington or any of these other people that we celebrate. I began to understand what I feel is the historical importance of the discussions I’ve had with Jimmy and I knew that due to his nature that he would probably never write an autobiography and it has meant a lot to me to write this book. I really really hope that this book does sort of stand as a record of music that I think is very important.

CR: Jimmy has been promising to deliver new material for quite some time, and has stated that we might see something next year, what is your take on this, should fans be hopeful?

BT: Yes I do think that they should be hopeful. It’s funny because I’ve seen the process a couple of different times and every time he’s sort of really gets on a roll putting something together, some sort of Led Zeppelin business comes up and derails him. That’s happened a couple of times, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you see something come out next year. I know he’s been working on some new things for a while and the ideas are really cool and I know he’s gone quite a bit of way to realize them. I think we may see something next year and it will be really cool. It will surprise you.

CR: Can we maybe expect to see him on the road touring? He has mentioned several times that he’d like to tour as well?

BT: I don’t know, I would imagine that he would. I know that he loves to play live and that he loves to tour so I would think that he would. He’s certainly playing very well, anyone who has seen Celebration Day can see that he’s playing as well as he has in years and years and years.

CR: What did you think of the film Celebration Day and the reunion gig itself?

BT: Well I was at the reunion gig so I saw the actual show, and I’ve seen the movie a few times at different theaters and I thought it was great. I think that the performance itself is probably more focused than the one on The Song Remains the Same. I thought the movie was very good, maybe cut a little too fast for my taste; I wish they would have lingered a little bit more and focused on the chemistry within the band.

CR: Going back to your book, if readers were only able to take one thing away from Light and Shade, one idea or one facet of Jimmy Page, what would you like them to know about him?

BT: Well you know there’s a quote from Jimmy in the book after I had asked him how he’d like to be remembered and he said, ‘Many people just think of me as a riff guitarist, but I think of myself in broader terms. As a musician, I think my greatest achievement has been to create unexpected melodies and harmonies within a rock and roll framework. And as a producer, I would like to be remembered as someone who was able to sustain a band of unquestionable individual talent and push it to the forefront during its working career. I think I really captured the best of our output, growth, change and maturity on tape – the multifaceted gem that is Led Zeppelin.’ I think that that sort of says it all. I’m sort of hoping to get people to think of Jimmy not so much as a cartoon character but rather as a true musical genius who affected the course of music in the 20th century as much as someone like Louis Armstrong or Charlie Parker did.

CR: As the Editor in Chief of Guitar World, Revolver and Guitar Aficionado Magazine I think its safe to say that you’ve reached the pinnacle of music journalism universe, what advice would you give to young up and coming music journalist out there trying to break into the field?

BT: Well the landscape is changing radically, I mean even I’m having a hard time keeping up with the world. My publisher for this book even told me while I was writing it that in a couple more years you’ll have to think about this entire process in a completely different way. So if I were starting out from scratch right now it certainly wouldn’t be print that I’d be pursuing. I would try to analyze the potential of eBooks and I would consider creating video components to go along with my writing. I think there are a lot of great opportunities out there and the great thing about doing it online is that you don’t have the same costs that you would if you were doing it in print.

I think if I were Jann Wenner (Editor in Chief of Rolling Stone Magazine) or Brad Tolinski twenty years ago I would gather a group of likeminded technicians, photographers and writers and I would try and put together a sort of Huffington Post for rock music journalism. I know none of that sounds particularly easy, it’s much nicer if an editor comes along and says, ‘hey go out and interview so and so and bring it back to me,’ but you know that's going to become more and more rare. It’s harder for me dealing with our budgets and everything to give more work to anybody really. That being said I think that rather than mourning the death of print, its better if you were a child of the sixties you would say, ‘Fuck the establishment, I’m going to do my own thing and go my own way.’

CR: Thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me today. It’s been a real pleasure speaking with you today.

BT: No problem, thank you.