Image by F. Antolín Hernán­dez, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Gra­ham Nash, of Cros­by, Stills, Nash & Young, has a new book out, Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life. And that means he’s doing inter­views, many inter­views. A cou­ple of weeks ago, he spent an excel­lent hour on The Howard Stern Show (seri­ous­ly). Next, it was off to chat with the more cere­bral Ter­ry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air.

In the midst of the inter­view (lis­ten online here), Gross asked Nash to talk about his friend­ship with Neil Young, a man Nash has called “the strangest of my friends.” Just what makes him strange? Nash explains:

The man is total­ly com­mit­ted to the muse of music. And he’ll do any­thing for good music. And some­times it’s very strange. I was at Neil’s ranch one day just south of San Fran­cis­co, and he has a beau­ti­ful lake with red-wing black­birds. And he asked me if I want­ed to hear his new album, “Har­vest.” And I said sure, let’s go into the stu­dio and lis­ten.

Oh, no. That’s not what Neil had in mind. He said get into the row­boat.

I said get into the row­boat? He said, yeah, we’re going to go out into the mid­dle of the lake. Now, I think he’s got a lit­tle cas­sette play­er with him or a lit­tle, you know, ear­ly dig­i­tal for­mat play­er. So I’m think­ing I’m going to wear head­phones and lis­ten in the rel­a­tive peace in the mid­dle of Neil’s lake.

Oh, no. He has his entire house as the left speak­er and his entire barn as the right speak­er. And I heard “Har­vest” com­ing out of these two incred­i­bly large loud speak­ers loud­er than hell. It was unbe­liev­able. Elliot Maz­er, who pro­duced Neil, pro­duced “Har­vest,” came down to the shore of the lake and he shout­ed out to Neil: How was that, Neil?

And I swear to god, Neil Young shout­ed back: More barn!

To that we say, more Neil Young! Find more Neil right below.

Neil Young Busk­ing in Glas­gow, 1976: The Sto­ry Behind the Footage

‘The Nee­dle and the Dam­age Done’: Neil Young Plays Two Songs on The John­ny Cash Show, 1971

The Time Neil Young Met Charles Man­son, Liked His Music, and Tried to Score Him a Record Deal

Neil Young on the Trav­es­ty of MP3s

Jim­my Page’s acoustic gui­tar:

The beau­ty of iso­lat­ed tracks is that they allow us to hear an old piece of music in a com­plete­ly new way. They give us a fresh per­spec­tive on some­thing we thought we already knew. Today we bring you a series of iso­lat­ed tracks show­ing how Led Zep­pelin pieced togeth­er one of its clas­sic ear­ly songs: “Ram­ble On.”

The song was writ­ten by Jim­my Page and Robert Plant and record­ed in New York in the spring of 1969. Led Zep­pelin was on its sec­ond tour of North Amer­i­ca. Along the way, the band popped into var­i­ous stu­dios to lay down tracks for Led Zep­pelin II. The remain­der of the album was record­ed in the same fash­ion, between shows in Europe. “We were tour­ing a lot,” bassist John Paul Jones wrote in the lin­er notes to the Led Zep­pelin boxed set. “Jim­my’s riffs were com­ing fast and furi­ous. A lot of them came from onstage espe­cial­ly dur­ing the long impro­vised sec­tion of ‘Dazed and Con­fused.’ We’d remem­ber the good stuff and dart into a stu­dio along the way.”

John Paul Jones’s bass gui­tar:

“Ram­ble On” is an ear­ly exam­ple of the Zep­pelin hall­mark of using a wide dynam­ic range with­in a sin­gle song. As the band goes back and forth between soft and loud, acoustic and elec­tric, bassist John Paul Jones lays down a crisp out­line of the song’s struc­ture.

John Bon­ham’s drums:

The pit­ter-pat­ter drum­beat by John Bon­ham dur­ing the qui­et parts of “Ram­ble On” has sparked con­sid­er­able debate among drum­mers. Some have the­o­rized that Bon­ham was hit­ting the sole of his shoe with drum sticks. Oth­ers say it was a plas­tic garbage can lid. Accord­ing to Chris Welch and Geoff Nicholls in John Bon­ham: A Thun­der of Drums, Bon­zo used his bare hands to tap out those 16th notes on an emp­ty gui­tar case.

Robert Plan­t’s main vocals:

The lyrics of “Ram­ble On” reflect Robert Plan­t’s fas­ci­na­tion with char­ac­ters and events in The Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy by J.R.R. Tolkien: “ ‘Twas in the dark­est depths of Mordor/I met a girl so fair./But Gol­lum and the evil one crept up/And slipped away with her.” Led Zep­pelin would include more ref­er­ences to Tolkien lat­er, in songs like “Misty Moun­tain Hop” and “Stair­way to Heav­en.”

Jim­my Page’s elec­tric rhythm gui­tar:

Jim­my Page’s explo­sive elec­tric gui­tar play­ing kicks in at about the 1:14 mark. The exact gui­tar used by Page on the record­ing is a mat­ter of con­tro­ver­sy. He report­ed­ly switched to his trade­mark Gib­son Les Paul while record­ing Led Zep­pelin II, but this track may have been played on the thin­ner-sound­ing Fend­er Tele­cast­er he had been using since his days with the Yard­birds.

Jim­my Page’s elec­tric lead gui­tar:

Like all the band’s albums, Led Zep­pelin II was pro­duced by Page. Although he even­tu­al­ly became known for build­ing up com­plex lay­ers of gui­tar tracks, Page kept the lead gui­tar over­dubs for “Ram­ble On” fair­ly sim­ple.

Robert Plan­t’s back­up vocals:

Plan­t’s sup­ple­men­tary vocals begin at about the 1:14 mark. Plant would lat­er say that the record­ing of the sec­ond album was when he began to feel sure of him­self with­in the band. “Led Zep­pelin II was very vir­ile,” Plant told Nigel Williamson, author of The Rough Guide to Led Zep­pelin. “That was the album that was going to dic­tate whether or not we had the stay­ing pow­er and the capac­i­ty to stim­u­late.”

Led Zep­pelin II was released in Octo­ber of 1969 and rose to num­ber one in Great Britain and Amer­i­ca. In the four decades since, the album has sold over 12 mil­lion copies. Though it was nev­er released as a sin­gle, “Ram­ble On” was ranked #444 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Great­est Songs of All Time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

Jim­my Page, 13, Plays Gui­tar on BBC Tal­ent Show (1957)

‘Stair­way to Heav­en’: Watch a Mov­ing Trib­ute to Led Zep­pelin at The Kennedy Cen­ter

John Bonham’s Iso­lat­ed Drum Track For Led Zeppelin’s ‘Fool in the Rain’

Jim­my Page Tells the Sto­ry of Kash­mir

Two weeks ago we post­ed CDZA­’s “Jour­ney of the Gui­tar Solo,” an enter­tain­ing tour of 50 years of rock and roll gui­tar play­ing. Now we’re back with the group’s fol­low-up, a fast and fun intro­duc­tion to drums. New York-based drum­mer Allan Med­nard takes us on a quick tour of the instru­ment, demon­strat­ing the basic dif­fer­ences between jazz and rock drum­ming and show­ing how they have evolved over time. CDZA, short for Col­lec­tive Caden­za, is an exper­i­men­tal music video project of a group of high­ly skilled musi­cians in New York. For more exam­ples of their work, vis­it the CDZA Web site.

Relat­ed con­tent:

John Bon­ham’s Iso­lat­ed Drum Track For Led Zep­pelin’s ‘Fool in the Rain’

Kei­th Moon, Drum­mer of The Who, Pass­es Out at 1973 Con­cert; 19-Year-Old Fan Takes Over

The Evo­lu­tion of the Rock Gui­tar Solo: 28 Solos, Span­ning 50 Years, Played in 6 Fun Min­utes

The guzheng was born in Chi­na over 2500 years ago. Orig­i­nal­ly made out of bam­boo and silk strings, the instru­ment became very pop­u­lar in the impe­r­i­al court dur­ing the Qin peri­od (221 to 206 BCE), and by the Tang Dynasty (618 CE to 907 CE), it was per­haps the most pop­u­lar instru­ment in Chi­na. Accord­ing to the San Fran­cis­co Guzheng Music Soci­ety, it remained pop­u­lar through the late Qing dynasty (1644 A.D. — 1911 A.D.) and into the 20th cen­tu­ry, when, in 1948, “the renowned musi­cian Cao Zheng estab­lished the first uni­ver­si­ty lev­el guzheng pro­gram” in the coun­try, and the “old silk strings were replaced with nylon strings, which are still being used today.”

That’s not the only thing that’s hap­pen­ing today. Young musi­cians like Michelle Kwan are tak­ing West­erns hit and per­form­ing them adept­ly on the Guzheng. Above, we have a pret­ty remark­able per­for­mance of Guns N’ Ros­es’ 1987 hit “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” It just gets bet­ter as it goes along. In the past, we’ve also fea­tured the Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments, includ­ing the Guzheng. Plus we’ve shown you Jimi Hen­drix’s “Voodoo Chile” and Ste­vie Ray Vaughan’s Ver­sion of “Lit­tle Wing”, both played on the Gayageum, a Kore­an instru­ment direct­ly relat­ed to the Guzheng. They’re all worth watch­ing.

via Devour

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