These days, most of our pop stars seem to come pre-print­ed from child-star fac­to­ries, their looks and sound care­ful­ly craft­ed for max­i­mum appeal. But every gen­er­a­tion has its child stars, espe­cial­ly since the advent of radio and tele­vi­sion, and many greats of the past got their start as kids, even if they made their way in a more indi­vid­u­al­ized fash­ion. Elvis made his first pub­lic appear­ance onstage at a state fair at ten years of age, fol­lowed by a local radio appear­ance when he was twelve. Ste­vie Won­der made his pub­lic debut on TV at age twelve, show­ing off his har­mon­i­ca skills at the Apol­lo the­ater and on the Ed Sul­li­van Show. And Jim­my Page—he of Yard­birds and Led Zep­pelin fame—first caught the public’s eye as the thir­teen-year old mem­ber of a skif­fle band on the BBC’s All Your Own in 1957. See the shy, fresh-faced young “James Page” above.

Page dis­cuss­es with the show’s host Huw Whel­don not just his musi­cal ambi­tions, but his aca­d­e­m­ic ones, specif­i­cal­ly his inter­est in find­ing a cure for can­cer, “if it isn’t cov­ered by then.” Page stuck with his bio­log­i­cal research, for a while, then went to art school for two years. But through it all there was the gui­tar, his true pas­sion and life’s work. By 1963, Page was work­ing full time as a ses­sion gui­tarist and seemed eager to dis­cuss his new career in the recent­ly re-dis­cov­ered tele­vi­sion inter­view above. It was at this point, as he recount­ed to jour­nal­ist Steven Rosen in 1977, that he reached a “cross­roads,” as he called it: “is it an art career or is it going to be music?”

Page obvi­ous­ly sort­ed out it out quick­ly. He may not have cured can­cer, but he did re-invent rock and roll. Last year saw the pub­li­ca­tion of Jim­my Page by Jim­my Page, a 512-page auto­bi­og­ra­phy in pho­tographs, each one cho­sen by Page him­self. His ear­ly teenage skif­fle and ses­sion years are cov­ered, all the way through his 2012 recep­tion at the White House, and every­thing in-between. In Novem­ber of 2014, Page sat down with super­star pop artist Jeff Koons at New York’s 92nd Street Y to dis­cuss the book and his life­long love of the gui­tar, includ­ing that “very embar­rass­ing” 1957 TV appear­ance. “When you’ve had a whole life­time full of music,” Page says, “there are cer­tain things that sort of come up and haunt you, and that is one of them… but it’s got a charm about it.” Indeed it does, and there are cer­tain­ly worse things that could haunt an artist of Page’s stature. See Page and Koons’ full con­ver­sa­tion above, and watch Page dis­cuss his “auto­bi­og­ra­phy with pho­tographs” below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim­my Page Tells the Sto­ry of “Stair­way to Heav­en”: How the Most Played Rock Song Came To Be

Jim­my Page Gives Com­mence­ment Address at Berklee; Stu­dents Per­form Led Zep Clas­sics for Him

Jim­my Page and Robert Plant Reunite in Exot­ic Mar­rakesh, 1994

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

In 2012, the Japan­ese-Ger­man clas­si­cal musi­cian Kimiko Ishiza­ka made avail­able to the world an open ver­sion of J.S. Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions per­formed on a Bösendor­fer 290 Impe­r­i­al piano in Berlin. Fund­ed by a Kick­starter cam­paign, the record­ing was released under a Cre­ative Com­mons Zero license, which essen­tial­ly put the music straight into the pub­lic domain.

Yes­ter­day we dis­cov­ered, thanks to one of our read­ers, Ishiza­ka’s fol­low-up to The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions — The Open Well-Tem­pered Clavier, Book 1.  Also Kick­starter-fund­ed and released under a Cre­ative Com­mons license, her new pro­duc­tion puts 48 Pre­ludes and Fugues into the com­mons. Explain­ing the impor­tance of The Well-Tem­pered Clavier, Alexan­dre Prok­ou­dine writes over at Libre Graph­ics World:

Among clas­si­cal music con­nois­seurs, the Well-Tem­pered Clavier Book 1 (WTC, or “the 48” for short) is wide­ly regard­ed as one of the most influ­en­tial works by J.S. Bach. Here is why.

For a long time instru­ments used to be tuned in such inter­vals between notes that trans­po­si­tion (play­ing a melody in a key dif­fer­ent from the orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed one) usu­al­ly pro­duced a melody that was clear­ly out of tune. Find­ing the right inter­vals was an inter­est­ing math­e­mat­i­cal prob­lem to solve, and it was done in the 17th cen­tu­ry by Andreas Wer­ck­meis­ter.

So while J.S. Bach did­n’t invent well-tem­pered tun­ing, the 48 was his major, if not defin­ing con­tri­bu­tion to mak­ing it pop­u­lar, as the 48 was pret­ty much The Music The­o­ry Bible for gen­er­a­tions of com­posers…

His­tor­i­cal val­ue aside, the 48 is sim­ply beau­ti­ful and ele­gant­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed music (with score laid out in up to four voic­es, yet played by a sin­gle musi­cian). If this is the first time you are lis­ten­ing to WTC, I offi­cial­ly envy you, because are about to dis­cov­er some­thing very spe­cial.

You can get the Open Well-Tem­pered Clavier as a free down­load here (please read the instruc­tions on the page), or stream it above. You can also sup­port the artist and pur­chase the down­load for a fee of your choice, or buy a CD ver­sion over on Ama­zon.

As for what you can expect from Kimiko Ishiza­ka next, look out for a record­ing of the Chopin Préludes on a Pleyel piano — the same piano Chopin played him­self all those years ago.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load the Com­plete Organ Works of J.S. Bach for Free

The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions: J.S. Bach’s Mas­ter­piece Free to Down­load

Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach (1962)

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

JS Bach’s The Well-Tem­pered Clavier Artis­ti­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed with Puls­ing Neon Lights