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38th out of 41 books
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1 voter
Light and Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page
This “oral autobiography” of Jimmy Page, the intensely private mastermind behind Led Zeppelin—one of the most enduring bands in rock history—is the most complete and revelatory portrait of the legendary guitarist ever published.
More than 30 years after disbanding in 1980, Led Zeppelin continues to be celebrated for its artistic achievements, broad musical influence, and co...more
More than 30 years after disbanding in 1980, Led Zeppelin continues to be celebrated for its artistic achievements, broad musical influence, and co...more
Hardcover, 320 pages
Published
October 23rd 2012
by Crown
(first published October 1st 2012)
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I love Jimmy Page. His influence in rock and roll is simply staggering, and aside from a bit of drug abuse and a silly curiosity about the occult (ahem, probably not uncorrelated to the drugs), he's managed to conduct himself with a surprising amount of grace. I am just a huge, huge fan, and so was really looking forward to this book.
The good: in these interviews, he is clearly both aware of and proud of his achievements, but he is incredibly generous with his praise of others. He comes across a...more
The good: in these interviews, he is clearly both aware of and proud of his achievements, but he is incredibly generous with his praise of others. He comes across a...more
This book is a joy to read for anyone that enjoys rock guitar whether as a player or a listener. A must read! This book goes way beyond anything that has been written about the reclusive Jimmy Page.
Brad Tolinski was able to get close to Jimmy Page and got him to talk about his music. This book has all the details that any musician or music lover could wish for. Page talks to Tolinski about guitars, tunings, chords, and amps. They talk about how Page was able to get a specific sound on an individ...more
Brad Tolinski was able to get close to Jimmy Page and got him to talk about his music. This book has all the details that any musician or music lover could wish for. Page talks to Tolinski about guitars, tunings, chords, and amps. They talk about how Page was able to get a specific sound on an individ...more
While fans of Led Zeppelin will get a lot out of this book, this series of interviews are a joy to read for anyone. Brad Tolinski is the editor of Guitar World, and he has brought to this book a technical sensibility missing in most other Zeppelin texts. Readers looking for scandalous rock exploits and tour horror-stories are advised to look elsewhere; Light and Shade is a book focussing first and foremost on Jimmy Page's craft and career.
Music buffs are bound to get a lot of enjoyment from Toli...more
Music buffs are bound to get a lot of enjoyment from Toli...more
3 likes · like · see review
answers the most important question to me? if you have been jimmy page yourself musically, what would that entail in terms of time, effort - what would you need to know, want to know? what would you learn and how would you learn it? what you do that made you go in a different direction from beck, clapton, hendrix, peter green, etc? what made a style?
celtic & moroccan influence meets hard driving blues?
when in doubt write hypnotic riffs?
this book is great on guitar info. i thought page used a...more
celtic & moroccan influence meets hard driving blues?
when in doubt write hypnotic riffs?
this book is great on guitar info. i thought page used a...more
Not far off four stars. 'Light & Shade' really does feel like a cozy fireside chat with Jimmy Page. Brad Tolinski's 'conversations' with the Led Zep span his musical career from 1958 all the way to the publication year of 2012. As Tolinski is Editorial Director of 'Guitar World' mag, and has interviewed our axe hero many times over the previous twenty years, this is a very informative book, that makes a refreshing change from the usual format of rock biography.
Young Jimmy's discovery of a di...more
Young Jimmy's discovery of a di...more
I really enjoyed this small tome on Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page. Brad Tolinski has created a sympathetic but not overly sentimental picture of Page. While he is obviously a big fan it was always going to be a challenge to coax the very reticent Jimmy Page into opening up. In his depth of knowledge about Page the musician and his body of work, he found the key to that. The journey from session musician, to the Yardbirds, to Led Zeppelin and beyond is simply fascinating. We get an in depth look at P...more
I have mixed emotions about this book. The author’s hero-worship, fanboy leading questions turned me off in most places, it was more technical than I expected, but yet I think I came away with a greater appreciation of Led Zeppelin’s music, and for Jimmy Page’s prowess as a musician artist and producer.
For me, the highlights were the direct quotes and interviews, particularly during the interviews from the earliest days and the post-Zeppelin days. There wasn’t really anything new in this book, t...more
For me, the highlights were the direct quotes and interviews, particularly during the interviews from the earliest days and the post-Zeppelin days. There wasn’t really anything new in this book, t...more
Obviously if you read this book you have to be a Led Zepplin fan at the least but more importantly a Jimmy Page Fan. Which means you are probably a musician and specifically a guitarist. So from that perspective, which is mine, I have to say the author Brad Tolinski did an incredible job in avoiding the sensationalism of Jimmy's serious involvment in Magic, the Bachanalia lifestyle of Led Zepplin and Jimmy's drug use. These subjects were all covered in other books. The author went directly to th...more
I admit it. Jimmy Page is an idol of mine. I saw him play live once...in 1995 or 1996, along with Robert Plant on the Page/Plant Unledded tour. I bought scalp tickets minutes before the event, obtaining seats on the side of the stage with nothing between us and the band. Only about 20 feet of air separated me from the guitar player.
At some point during the show, Jimmy and I had a moment. Our eyes locked in a "we get it" instant. It was, shall we say, pretty transcendent.
So now that I have establ...more
At some point during the show, Jimmy and I had a moment. Our eyes locked in a "we get it" instant. It was, shall we say, pretty transcendent.
So now that I have establ...more
Light & Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page by Brad Tolinski is a non-fiction book which is a compilation of interviews the author did with the famed and private guitarist. Mr. Tolinski is the editorial director of Guitar World, Revolver and Guitar Aficionado magazines.
Light & Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page by Brad Tolinski shades some light (pun intended) on Jimmy Page, mostly known as Led Zeppelin’s guitarist, his career, life and profession. Through hou...more
Light & Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page by Brad Tolinski shades some light (pun intended) on Jimmy Page, mostly known as Led Zeppelin’s guitarist, his career, life and profession. Through hou...more
You know, this is a good book for some people. I just don't think I'm one of them. My interest in Jimmy Page is casual. This book is not for the person with a casual interest. The history and detail is amazing, if you're interested in that level of insider baseball. If you're not, like me, you might find yourself skimming paragraphs and skipping pages. Not because you're not interested, but because the level of knowledge you have to bring to this book to understand the conversation can be daunti...more
I absolutely loved this book! Even though I have been playing guitar or many years and was a fair-weather Led Zeppelin fan, I picked up this book after being just amazed from watching the "Celebration Day" DVD. After reading this book, I can say that I have new found respect for the man as a musician, businessman, and especially a producer.
This book tells a great story of how hard work, determination, creating a brand, and building the proper team can create an extremely successful venture. I h...more
This book tells a great story of how hard work, determination, creating a brand, and building the proper team can create an extremely successful venture. I h...more
An outstanding must read for Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin fans. The author conducted a series of compelling, in-depth interviews with Jimmy Page, with stress placed on how the Led Zep albums were created, constructed, produced.
What amazes me is that within their first 18 months, Zeppelin toured the U.S. five times, played over 200 shows and wrote, recorded, released two hit, big selling albums.
Additional interviews, insights, anecdotes from John Paul Jones, Jeff Beck, Chris Dreja, Paul Rogers.
If you...more
What amazes me is that within their first 18 months, Zeppelin toured the U.S. five times, played over 200 shows and wrote, recorded, released two hit, big selling albums.
Additional interviews, insights, anecdotes from John Paul Jones, Jeff Beck, Chris Dreja, Paul Rogers.
If you...more
This series of interviews with Jimmy Page focuses almost entirely on the actual music of Led Zeppelin, both live & in the studio, with hardly anything about personal life or the various legendary excesses of Zep's members during tour days. It made for very interesting reading, even to someone whose days as an actual practicing musician are long over.
Any truly committed Led Zeppelin fan will devour Page's reflections on most of the band's legendary catalog & how the songs, cadences, sound...more
Any truly committed Led Zeppelin fan will devour Page's reflections on most of the band's legendary catalog & how the songs, cadences, sound...more
Light and Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page by Brad Tolinski (Crown Publishers 2012) (780.92)is a book of interviews with Jimmy Page and essays or interviews with others concerning Led Zeppelin, which was the most famous hard rock band of the 1970's. Jimmy Page is thought by some to be the greatest rock guitarist of the era. Topics covered include the formation of the group, the creation of the various songs and albums, and many of the technical aspects concerning the hardware and the recordi...more
Not sure I'm quite as enamored as everyone else. This is really a collection of interviews previously printed. It's a nice collection and it's great to read some of the interviews you may have missed but you won't really get any new information. The last two chapters (which are original) can be skipped as they have nothing to do with Page's guitar work, instead focusing on his place in fashion and his astrological signs. That said I read the book cover to cover, reading about Page is always a pl...more
The focus on Page's musicianship is a refreshing break from the usual approach to Led Zeppelin -- if you want stories about mud sharks and John Bonham's drunken rampages, go read Hammer of the Gods or Stairway to Heaven. I would have preferred a more challenging and probing approach vis a vis Zep's penchant for borrowing a little too heavily from other musicians, but Page's total control over the interviews precluded that. For musicians, music buffs, and hardcore Ledheads.
Sometimes you just want a reverential interviewer to lob softball questions to a rock music idol. The resulting guilty pleasure may be slight, but reading it makes you feel good. Like all rock bios, skipping the last couple chapters featuring irrelevant late-career comebacks is a must, but there's enough meat in the first part of the book to make for worthwhile reading (if you were a big Zeppelin fan, as I was). This book won't rock your world, but it still rocks.
Although I stumbled a little through this one due to the fact that I'm not a musician as I got a little lost in some of the guitar lingo, I found it to be a very fun & insightful look at a pure legend. The attention of detail in each of the questions by Tolinski was not only enthusiastic through the pages, but also exploratory on a level I don't think many authors could have engaged Page in--he's a tough nut to crack. Learned some really cool new things and it has forced me to go and revisit...more
Tolinski wrote a fascinating book that centers around Jimmy Page the musician/artist/performer and left out all speculation on Page's personal life. The only thing that could have made this audio book better for me is if song clips/entire songs would have been included. When Tolinski, Page, the other musicians, etc., start explaining what tunings, guitars, amps and the like were used and what the results were, it would have been great to actually hear an example of these things being used. I thi...more
Not your typical rock star biography. This is all about the music, how it evolved, his early days touring the hard way, as a studio set man, with the Yardbirds, the forming of Zeppelin, how Page, Plant, Bonham, and Jones meshed and became, as Page puts it, "Four elements that made up a fifth," and his philosophy and goals post Zeppelin. Good stuff.
this is a great series of interviews with Jimmy Page dealing with a lot of the issues behind the music. So much better to read something like this than a"tell all" by someone who is bitter about his former band mates which some band histories tend towards. Although I liked them a lot, I wasn't a true fan; and now I regret never seeing them live, never buying their music. I guess you could say I wasn't ready for them until now...forty years later! I Highly recommend this for real fans, especially...more
An important conversation with truly remarkable and historic figure. The huge take away; Led Zepplin was no fluke. The band was in fact a collection of master artists who controlled their own destiny, sound and story. The record company followed Jimmy's lead, all to rare in the music business it seems.
About as intimate a book as one will find about Jimmy Page.Fairly informative,it's a story that's been told a few times,so if you're familiar with the Zeppelin legend there's not a lot to be gained,but there are little nuggets here and there.I learned a little more about Jimmy's post-Zeppelin days.
Far too many repetitions, a few inaccuracies (was the Sunburst bought from Joe Walsh or given to him by Walsh) and the book lacks one last interview: more of Page’s words should have been shed on more recent projects. The book should end with that, not some nonsense about fashion and astrology.
As a huge Jimmy Page fan, I was very impressed with Brad Tolinlki's presentation of Page as a musician. By concentrating on Page's musical career, he eschews the typical "distractions" of other books and keeps the focus clearly on Page's development as a musician and producer. Outstanding information and interesting insights throughout. A MUST for the Page or Led Zeppelin aficionado.
If you are a Led Zeppelin/Jimmy Page buy this book. It stays away from the stories of rock group debauchery and speaks volumes about the stories behind the songs. An absolute wonderful read.
I didn't finish this book so maybe the 2 star rating is unfair. I am not a musician, nor do I know anything about guitars so I found it to drone on and on and on. Perhaps if there were some Led Zeppelin secrets or gossip it would be entertaining, but I learned nothing new in the pages I did read.
This is the 3rd biography of great guitarists that I have recently enjoyed. And much like the others, this one focused more on the technical aspects of playing guitar and some great innovations. I found this very insightful regarding the craft of playing guitar.
Enjoyable set of interviews conducted at various times over the last 20 years give some interesting insight into the reclusive, brilliant Jimmy Page.
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Dec 30, 2012 05:14am