Pageia Obscura: Hardly Managable

Who would manage a guy like this?!?

As every good artist knows, ya gotta have good management to make it in the entertainment business. Jimmy knew this and had a slew of managers in the early days and I'd like to discuss those men today.

Jimmy's first manager was a man by the name of Giorgio Gomelsky. Gomelsky was a Georgian born (Russia not America) immigrant to England owned the Crawdaddy club in swinging London and tried to make a name for himself by discovering and managing The Rolling Stones. Once the Stones left his care, Gomelsky turned his eye to another pop band featuring the hot guitar playing of a young man from Ripley named Eric Clapton, they called themselves The Yardbirds.

Giorgio Gomelsky with a young Eric Clapton

Jimmy never found himself being managed by Gomelsky while a member of the Yardbirds, but rather in his early days as a session musician. Jimmy would go on to leave Gomelsky's care for the same man who took The Rolling Stones from him, a young mogul by the name of Andrew Loog Oldham. Gomelsky would go on to to involve himself in the Progressive Jazz genre of music, and open up a recording studio in the Chelsea area of New York City which he still operates to this day.

Andrew Loog Oldham, was one of the most powerful individuals in pop music around London in the early 1960's. He began as a publicist working to publicize Bob Dylan's trip to the U.K., and working to hype the Beatles under Brian Epstein in 1963. After seeing The Rolling Stones at Giorgio Gomelsky's Crawdaddy Club, though only a teenager at the time, he partnered with Eric Easton and began to manage the group.

Andrew Loog Oldham

Oldham worked tirelessly to make the group into stars. He enlisted John Lennon and Paul McCartney to write a song for the group, "I Wanna Be Your Man" which the Stones recorded and released as their second single. He also locked Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in a room alone together and refused to let them out until they had completed writing a song, thus forging one of the most indelible writing partnerships in Rock and Roll.

With his success and financial fortunes rising with the Rolling Stones, Oldham decided to open up a record label. Immediate Records opened in 1965 and was one of the first independent labels in England. The label itself focused primarily on using acts found around the London based Rhythm and Blues scene.

As Oldham signed more and more acts to the label he realized he needed a steady stable of session musicians around to make it work; enter Jimmy Page and his guitar. Jimmy would end up doing alot of work for Immediate Records in his days leading up to his stint in the Yardbirds. Anytime a new act with a less than stellar guitarist entered the studio, Jimmy could always expect to hear a call from Oldham. Andrew Loog Oldham would drop out of the London scene in the 1970's for America where he went on to work for Colombia Records, and work on a radio show for Sirius XM. Immediate Records would fold in 1970.

When Jimmy left the confines of the studio to join the Yardbirds, he immediately fell under the management of upstart producer Simon Napier-Bell. Bell had started off as a film editor who eventually gravitated toward music. He had written previously written the song "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" for Dusty Springfield which became her first number one.

Simon Napier-Bell

Soon after that, Bell got involved in producing and put together an act that became the first inter-racial group in England, a man from London, and a girl from the West Indies; Scott and Ferraz. Upon seeing all the publicity Bell was getting from this, he was asked by The Yardbirds to take over the reins of management over them from Giorgio Gomelsky to which he agreed, and to which he was doing when Jimmy joined the band. Soon after however, Bell sold his interest in the group to another producer and would go on to discover and manage the pop group "Wham!" in the 1980's.

The man who bought the Yardbirds from Simon Napier-Bell was an individual who had already had much success with pop groups in England and who already knew Jimmy Page from his session days, his name was Mickie Most. Born Michael Hayes, Mickie Most had already had much success in the world of Pop music in England working with "The Animals" and "Herman's Hermits".

Mickie Most (in the middle)

Mickie Most had an ear for singles, and really pushed them on the Yardbirds, which irked Jimmy as he wanted to the group to focus its efforts on the more free-form albums. In the Most era, the group release "Ha Ha Said The Clown" (on which only Keith Relf the lead singer actually performed), and a cover of Harry Nilson's  "Ten Little Indians". The band also recorded their final studio album "Little Games" which was released in July of 1967.

After failing to make the group more successful, and butting heads repeatedly with the Yardbirds strong headed guitarist, Jimmy Page, Most decided to extract himself as manager of the group and gave up control to a business partner of his. Mickie Most would go on to produce several more bands in his life, until sadly he died in 2003 at the age of 64. As for the man Most sold the Yardbirds to, well that man's name was Peter Grant, and he would go on to be known as the "Man who lead Zeppelin" and along with Jimmy Page, would change the way rock and roll groups were managed and represented, and turn the business of popular music on its head.

Peter Grant with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant