Page Places: St. Mark's Place, New York City

"Physical Graffiti"

In my travels I've tried to search out various locations that relate somehow to Jimmy Page. I intend this to be the first in a series of posts known as "Page Places" to highlight the places I've been, and keep a sort of record of them. Some are well known, others less so, but hopefully through my travels you can find out cool little spots that had some meaning the history of the life of Jimmy Page.

The above picture is of Led Zeppelin's sixth studio album "Physical Graffiti". It was recorded at multiple intervals from 1970 until its release in 1975. A mixture of old tracks that had lingered since the band recorded at Headley Grange and new material, the band decided to clean out the backlog and release it as a dual album set. The cover is of an old brownstone building located in the East Village.

In 2008, I found myself in New York City and visited numerous cool sites that are noteworthy in the annals of Rock and Roll - I will shed light on some of those pilgrimages later on - but at the top of my list was this place. I took a cab from my hotel uptown and set off. It didn't take me all that long to get there and I immediately hopped out to gaze at this seminal location. I even asked the cab driver to take my picture (I'm the small figure in the brown leather jacket):

At the time I went the lower basement area was occupied by a massage parlor of all things, but today is funnily enough a tea shop called "Physical Graffitea". I lingered for a while then being satisfied to see the place in real life, hopped back into my cab to explore further locations. Here's another picture of the whole building that I took:

So if you ever find yourself in New York City go ahead and check this place out, it's actually a pretty cool.