A
ny photographer worth their salt will tell you
that being in the right place at the right time
is an essential part of getting a great shot and
for Jørgen Angel, the place was the Teen Club
in Gladsaxe, Denmark and the date was 7 September- Fans of Led Zeppelin will know the date and
the venue well – it was the first time that Jimmy
Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham
played together live, fulfilling an existing contractual
obligation to tour Scandinavia left over from Page’s
Yardbirds days.
When Page and co rolled into town, Angel was an
aspiring photographer who had become the Teen
Club’s in-house snapper and made a point of shooting
the many bands that came through Gladsaxe. “I’d
been looking forward to hearing The Yardbirds again,
but when I arrived I saw a handwritten poster stating
‘The New Yardbirds’!” he recalls. “Then I knew
something was wrong. Imagine that you had bought
tickets to The Beatles and then ‘The New Beatles’
turned up instead!
“Only one of the original members was left in
the band – three completely unknown musicians.
But when The New Yardbirds came on the stage
and started playing, I was happily surprised by their
energy. I was so captivated that I used a roll-and-a-
half of film on them – and that was expensive for a
school boy!”
But what Angel saw that night clearly made an
impression and the young photographer decided
that this new band would be worth documenting
further – and so that’s what he did. Through the
photography collected in a brand-new book, Led
Zeppelin, Denmark 1968-70, Angel charts the journey
of the band from that first concert to becoming the
biggest act in the world.
But Angel’s book does more than showcase the rise
of one of the greatest rock bands in history, it also
documents the evolving guitar choices of the band’s
founder, Jimmy Page.
By the time Page formed Led Zeppelin in the late
summer of 1968, he’d already been through quite
a few guitars. As a schoolboy, he’d started with the
inevitable Höfner, then moved onto a Futurama,
which he played with Neil Christian & The
JIMMY PAGEGUITAR MAGAZINE 59