Speaker 1: Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is a
Speaker 1: story about a house, about hallways that whisper in staircases
Speaker 1: that creak under footsteps that aren't yours. It's about a
Speaker 1: fire that burns in her hearth while something unseen breathes
Speaker 1: in the shadows. It's also a story about a band,
Speaker 1: about a guitarist with a taste for the occult and
Speaker 1: a drummer too frightened to sleep at night. It's about
Speaker 1: the biggest rock and roll group in the world whose
Speaker 1: members went into something supposedly haunted and emerged with multiple masterpieces.
Speaker 1: And since this story is about led Zeppelin, and this
Speaker 1: is also a story about great music, unlike that music
Speaker 1: I played for you at the top of the show
Speaker 1: that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop for
Speaker 1: my melotron called Big Snakes in Big Lakes MK. Two.
Speaker 1: I played you that loop because I can't afford the
Speaker 1: rights to Maggie May by Rod Stewart. And why would
Speaker 1: I play you that specific slice of May December Cheese?
Speaker 1: Could I afford it? Because that was the number one
Speaker 1: song in America on November eighth, nineteen seventy one, and
Speaker 1: that was the day that led Zeppelin released their fourth
Speaker 1: and biggest album to date, an album that may have
Speaker 1: cast its own spell on the surroundings in which it
Speaker 1: was made. On this episode, pentagrams chalk circles, strange noises,
Speaker 1: a gray man on the stairs an old house called
Speaker 1: Headley Grange. And this our part two episode on led Zeppelin.
Speaker 2: I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland.
Speaker 1: Nineteen seventy twenty six year old Malcolm Debt aimed as
Speaker 1: flashlight at the front door of the imposing eighteenth century manner.
Speaker 1: There in the light, he inserted an old key into
Speaker 1: the lock. He heard the volt retract and pushed the
Speaker 1: door open. It made a long, creaking sound, as if
Speaker 1: it had been closed for years, a deep, eerie moan
Speaker 1: that echoed inside the darkened foyer, And then he stepped
Speaker 1: into the house just as a cold wind kicked up
Speaker 1: from nearby lockness. Malcolm was here on behalf of led
Speaker 1: Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, who had hired him as caretaker
Speaker 1: upon his purchase of what was known as Bolskinhouse, formerly
Speaker 1: owned by one of the Scottish Highland's most notorious residents,
Speaker 1: the famed occultist Aleister Crowley. It was Jimmy's growing fascination
Speaker 1: some would say obsession with Crowley that led to this purchase. Sure,
Speaker 1: the Beatles had included Crowley's face on the collage cover
Speaker 1: art of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band, but Jimmy
Speaker 1: Page went one step further. As Jimmy did when it
Speaker 1: came to his obsessions. He bought the creepy dude's thirty
Speaker 1: five acre estate. And now Malcolm here didn't share Jimmy's
Speaker 1: belief in the power of Alistair Crowley or it is
Speaker 1: so called magic, and that's magic with a K understand,
Speaker 1: and so none of that David Copperfield bullshit again magic K.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the real stuff, the dark stuff, the
Speaker 1: stuff that can change your life if you harness it correctly,
Speaker 1: or so the thinking one. And at first when Malcolm
Speaker 1: walked inside, he wasn't stealing himself for things that went
Speaker 1: bump in the night. He was six foot something, a
Speaker 1: rough hewn London boy. He could hold his own. A
Speaker 1: no bald bow tide long dead boogeyman was going to
Speaker 1: rattle him. Malcolm was just a skeptic fumbling his way
Speaker 1: through the dark. And I mean that literally, because there
Speaker 1: was no working electricity at Bolskine House. In fact, the
Speaker 1: whole place was dilapidated and looked like he could fall
Speaker 1: down at any moment. Malcolm pointed his flashlight to the
Speaker 1: right as another gust rattled the windows. A long, empty
Speaker 1: hallway waited his footsteps, and so he walked until he
Speaker 1: came upon a large dining room, and as he used
Speaker 1: his flashlight to look around, he saw something he'd never
Speaker 1: seen before, at least not in the flesh. There on
Speaker 1: the floor was a large pentagram, hand drawn or maybe
Speaker 1: even carved into the hardwood and enclosed inside a circle
Speaker 1: with a makeshift altar at the center. Malcolm suddenly get
Speaker 1: a feeling he never experienced before. He was confused and
Speaker 1: ill at the same time. It was a feeling of dread.
Speaker 1: His hands began to shake, and then suddenly his flashlight
Speaker 1: went dead. Fucking hell, he muttered, slapping the side of
Speaker 1: the metal casing with the palm of his hand. The
Speaker 1: flashlight sputtered back to life. As it did, Malcolm could
Speaker 1: hear something coming from elsewhere in the house, heavy belabored breathing,
Speaker 1: panting almost and then the panting turned into something else, grawl,
Speaker 1: a snarl, low, and a horse, and then came a
Speaker 1: scratching sound, long nails like talons running up and down
Speaker 1: the length of a wall. Malcolm scanned the room and
Speaker 1: there was nothing else, no one, no one that he
Speaker 1: could see. That is, something was lingering here and he
Speaker 1: certainly couldn't ask Jimmy Page where it was. The city
Speaker 1: of Inverness was over five hundred miles from London, so
Speaker 1: it's not like the guitarist just popped in whenever he
Speaker 1: felt like it. Jimmy bought this place to buy the
Speaker 1: place to feed his obsession, not to live there. And
Speaker 1: again no electricity. There wasn't even a telephone. Damn man.
Speaker 1: Malcolm thought, if only Jimmy were here, he'd be asking
Speaker 1: his boss a lot of questions, because as the scratching
Speaker 1: sound grew louder and closer, Malcolm was beginning to question
Speaker 1: everything he thought he knew. Forty miles south of London,
Speaker 1: in Hampshire, a big, boxy silver van rumbled slowly up
Speaker 1: a the colic country road before coming to a stop
Speaker 1: in front of a large, three story stone building. The
Speaker 1: van housed the Rolling Stone's mobile recording studio, trailing behind
Speaker 1: a few more cars carrying Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John
Speaker 1: Paul Jones and John Bonham, collectively the group known as
Speaker 1: led Zeppelin. The members of the biggest band in the world,
Speaker 1: stepped from the vehicles, all four of them sporting newly
Speaker 1: grown beards, and gazed up at the impressive English manner
Speaker 1: known as Headley Grange. The place was being swallowed by
Speaker 1: lush green vines, snaking and slithering like the rings of
Speaker 1: a tree. The overgrowth told of Hedley's history, the backbreaking
Speaker 1: toil of the workers who built the house years ago
Speaker 1: in seventeen ninety five, the hordes of the sick and
Speaker 1: the old, for whom it was built, poppers and orphans,
Speaker 1: motherless bastards and other dickenzie and unfortunates who once came
Speaker 1: here seeking refuge, then died here, died as unknowns, as
Speaker 1: the forgotten, the ones who had been cast from society
Speaker 1: and life and now were cursed to hump. Or perhaps
Speaker 1: it was just Jimmy Page who is now thinking of
Speaker 1: these things. Because Jimmy Page got good and giddy when
Speaker 1: he looked up at this place and all it's ruinous glory.
Speaker 1: He could think of nothing more exciting than unleashing his
Speaker 1: band inside such a historic structure, overrun with ghosts of
Speaker 1: centuries past, and that was exactly the plan. Here inside
Speaker 1: the walls of Headley Grange, Zeppelin would rehearse and possibly
Speaker 1: even record songs for their new album, led Zeppelin three.
Speaker 1: You Know, if the Walls could talk and all that.
Speaker 1: Earlier in the year, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant had
Speaker 1: decamped to a place called Bronrh, a remote cottage outside
Speaker 1: a small market town in Wales where Robert used to
Speaker 1: vacation as a child with his family. Inspired by their
Speaker 1: surroundings and far away from the metallic grind of the city,
Speaker 1: this was where Jimmy and Robert first pivoted from the
Speaker 1: heaviness they trafficked in to a more pastoral acoustic sound.
Speaker 1: This is where they wrote many of the songs that
Speaker 1: would make up led Zeppelin III, songs like Friends, Tangerine,
Speaker 1: That's the Way and Naturally veran Rastam. It's also where
Speaker 1: they began to work on songs that would come out
Speaker 1: on future albums, like Over the Hills and Far Away,
Speaker 1: Down by the Seaside and the Rover. They enjoyed it
Speaker 1: so much that they wanted to actually record there with
Speaker 1: the band, but it was too small, So the goal
Speaker 1: became to find a place that could accommodate them all
Speaker 1: but still retain that very specific vibe, and thus, with
Speaker 1: the help of their manager, Peter Grant's secretary, it happened
Speaker 1: upon Henley Grange. Now leaving the white walled, sterile environment
Speaker 1: of a professionals studio for a house in the countryside
Speaker 1: wasn't a new concept for rock bands ever since the
Speaker 1: band hit the scene two years earlier in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: eight with music from Big Pink, the world of rock
Speaker 1: and roll had pivoted toward a more homegrown, earth bound model.
Speaker 1: But Jimmy Page and Robert Plant and led Zeppelin had
Speaker 1: their own way of doing things. They weren't going on
Speaker 1: a pilgrimage to Woodstock, as George Harrison had, hunting down
Speaker 1: the Bam like a lost soul seeking the hermit's guidance
Speaker 1: on the mountaintop. Jimmy, for one, served as own master.
Speaker 1: Jimmy did what thou wilt. Besides, when it came to
Speaker 1: George Harrison and the Beatles, they were yesterday's news. Led
Speaker 1: Zeppelin had just topped the reader's poll in the UK's
Speaker 1: very influential Melody Maker magazine, the first band in eight
Speaker 1: years to push the Fab four from the number one spot.
Speaker 1: Jimmy threw open Headley's front door almost instantly, he was
Speaker 1: hit with a potent stench, like something at the fermenting
Speaker 1: for decades, and theodor went to Jimmy's head. He was
Speaker 1: drunk on it. Robert ambled in behind him, arching his
Speaker 1: neck and looking to the high ceiling that stretched all
Speaker 1: the way up the winding three floor staircase. With his
Speaker 1: raggedy beard and now this castle of a home to
Speaker 1: make music in, he felt like a character right out
Speaker 1: of Tolkien's Middle Earth. Robert was followed by a Zeppelin's
Speaker 1: rhythm section. Jonesy and Bonzo walked in with these puzzled
Speaker 1: looks on their faces, like here, this is where we're
Speaker 1: going to be hanging out for the next few weeks.
Speaker 1: The place was damp, It was dank. It was lacking
Speaker 1: all the creature comforts that a band like led Zeppelin
Speaker 1: figured they should be indulging in. Bonso had twenty one
Speaker 1: cars for Christ's sakes. For him and for Jonesy, Headly
Speaker 1: looked like some dump you'd squat in when you were
Speaker 1: barely getting by on the come up. But Jimmy Page
Speaker 1: obviously saw something else in the place. He just smiled
Speaker 1: and said, let's get the work voice. Robert nodded, Jonesy
Speaker 1: and Bonzo shrugged their shoulders. Little did any of them
Speaker 1: know that when Jimmy talked about work, he was talking
Speaker 1: about more than just making music. He was talking about
Speaker 1: reviving a spirit that laid dormant inside these walls. Jimmy
Speaker 1: Page was talking about waking something up. The notion of
Speaker 1: a stately house or sprawling manner in the English countryside
Speaker 1: which is very very old, and which also happens to
Speaker 1: be very very haunted, is hardly a novel. One do
Speaker 1: a quick Google search and you'll find more samples of
Speaker 1: haunted houses in the UK. Then you'll know what to
Speaker 1: do with and better yette. I'll just give you a
Speaker 1: few examples. There's Blickling Hall in Norfolk, built in sixteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: where Anne Boleyn, one time Queen of England and the
Speaker 1: second wife of Henry the eighth, still walks around with
Speaker 1: her severed head in her hands. And there's Temple Newsoman
Speaker 1: in West Yorkshire, where he can still hear the screams
Speaker 1: of a nursemaid who was suffocated to death by a
Speaker 1: fellow servant in seventeen oh four. And then there's Little
Speaker 1: Cot House in Berkshire, where a midwife witnessed the murder
Speaker 1: of a baby in fifteen seventy five, and where that
Speaker 1: same midwife can now be seen as a phantom who
Speaker 1: sits in the corner of one of the house's bedrooms,
Speaker 1: rocking an infant against her breasts. This was the tradition
Speaker 1: Jimmy Page was buying into when he moved his band
Speaker 1: out to Headley Grange for sessions in the middle of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy, and while Jonesy and Bonzo never really warmed
Speaker 1: up to the place, Headley's charms did factor into the
Speaker 1: early stages of great new songs like Immigrant Song, Gallows
Speaker 1: Pole and Out on the Tiles, just to name a
Speaker 1: few of the things they started working on there. But
Speaker 1: before long the urban heads prevailed and the band quickly
Speaker 1: returned to London, where they finished making the album at
Speaker 1: a studio on Basing Street owned by Island Records. When
Speaker 1: Led Zeppelin three was released in October of nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: many Zeppelin fans focused on Jimmy Page's wizard like production techniques,
Speaker 1: which now included experimental bits of tape echo fly on
Speaker 1: the Wall segues between songs in a blend of electric
Speaker 1: and acoustic instrumentation that masterfully fused the darkness with the light.
Speaker 1: But just as many complained that beyond Immigrant Song, the
Speaker 1: record was lacking in the kind of meat and potato
Speaker 1: rock and roll that their first two albums served up,
Speaker 1: that the boys had gone soft with all that bearded
Speaker 1: folky bullshit. Jimmy Page, on the other hand, saw Zeppelin
Speaker 1: three as a creative success. It proved that in the
Speaker 1: right environment, Led Zeppelin could pull powerful music out of
Speaker 1: thin air. To his ears, the new song sounded better
Speaker 1: than anything they'd ever recorded in a London studio alone,
Speaker 1: and so just a few months later, Jimmy Page convinced
Speaker 1: the band to return to Headley Grange, where he was
Speaker 1: convinced they would make the biggest, most impactful musical statement
Speaker 1: of their career. January nineteen seventy one, at least a
Speaker 1: dozen cables streamed out of the Rolling Stones mobile recording van.
Speaker 1: They threaded across the ground and snaked through one of
Speaker 1: Headley Grange's open windows. All the way into the lobby
Speaker 1: where John Bonham's drum kit was set up. Outside it
Speaker 1: was cold. Inside Headley it was cold, and inside the
Speaker 1: rolling Stones van was also cold. Audio engineer Andy john
Speaker 1: sat in the back of the van, shivering, trying in
Speaker 1: vain to stay warm, while listening on a pair of
Speaker 1: headphones to John Bonham laying down the drum track to
Speaker 1: when the levee breaks. Beginning in Headley's lobby, a large
Speaker 1: staircase wrapped all the way up to the third floor,
Speaker 1: which meant that the ceiling of this particular part of
Speaker 1: the house was three stories high. When a musician says
Speaker 1: that a room has great acoustics, this is the kind
Speaker 1: of thing they're talking about. Two microphones hung from the
Speaker 1: railing on the second floor, dangling above Bonzo's kit. The
Speaker 1: sound of the drums was huge. Back in the van,
Speaker 1: Andy Johns gave that sound a boost. He ran the
Speaker 1: signal through a Binson echo wreck, an old delay effects unit,
Speaker 1: and this is what gives Bonzos drums that slapback sound
Speaker 1: on when the levee breaks. But the fatality of this
Speaker 1: sound of one of the greatest drum tracks of all
Speaker 1: time the environment in which it was recorded, and how
Speaker 1: it was recorded. You couldn't replicate that in some antiseptic
Speaker 1: recording studio back in London. You had to create it
Speaker 1: here in a busted old building that was cold and
Speaker 1: damp and creepy. And that night Andy John's got his
Speaker 1: first taste of creepy. The day's session had gone extremely well,
Speaker 1: and by the looks of the empty bottles littered all
Speaker 1: over the floor, the after party had gone well too.
Speaker 1: In just a few hours, the sun would be up. Andy,
Speaker 1: like everyone else, was dead asleep in one of the
Speaker 1: bedrooms until he was jolted awake by a loud dud.
Speaker 1: He propped himself up on his elbows, his hair a mess,
Speaker 1: his eyelids weighing a ton, and then he heard it.
Speaker 1: The sound of furniture moved around the room directly above him,
Speaker 1: heavy furniture, slow deliberate scrapes. Then the sound stopped. Andy
Speaker 1: sat up straight, and for a moment all he could
Speaker 1: hear was the ringing in his ears from that day's
Speaker 1: recording session. And suddenly the noise upstairs started again, and
Speaker 1: this time louder and faster than before. Andy shot out
Speaker 1: of bed, ran out of his room and bounded up
Speaker 1: the stairs, busting through the door of the room directly
Speaker 1: above his hand. Nothing. The room was completely empty, no furniture,
Speaker 1: not even a single chair. The next morning, over cups
Speaker 1: of hot tea, Andy told the band about the strange
Speaker 1: sounds he'd heard in the middle of the night. Robert
Speaker 1: listened with great interest, and Jonesy was silent, taking it
Speaker 1: all in, and Jimmy just sat back, smiling and nodding
Speaker 1: his head. But John Bonham was aside himself because he'd
Speaker 1: hurt things too. Someone breathing in the corner of his room,
Speaker 1: and no, it wasn't the creaking of an old house
Speaker 1: or the wind or whatever the fuck. Instead, all night
Speaker 1: long there was this deep inhale exhale of another person,
Speaker 1: but there was no one there, and it freaked Bonzo out.
Speaker 1: And Bonzo, being the hulking giant that he was, wasn't
Speaker 1: one to get freaked out easily. He was going to
Speaker 1: sleep downstairs from now on, even if that meant sleeping
Speaker 1: on the floor. Jimmy, on the other hand, wasn't interested
Speaker 1: in sleeping. Hedley didn't make him uneasy, quite the opposite. Actually,
Speaker 1: the energy here got him high. He grabbed his harmony
Speaker 1: acoustic guitar and wandered off to the quiet parts of
Speaker 1: the house. He sat cross legged in cold, unlit rooms
Speaker 1: and messed around with different tunings. He paced hallways while
Speaker 1: strumming new cord patterns. Then he listened as the sound
Speaker 1: from his instrument bounced off the walls and returned to
Speaker 1: his ears. The sounds spoke to him, And then one
Speaker 1: afternoon it happened. Jimmy was in Headley's sitting room, seated
Speaker 1: on a chair next to the fireplace. The boiler in
Speaker 1: the house no longer worked, so this was the only
Speaker 1: way to keep warm. When the fire crackled as Jimmy
Speaker 1: fingerpicked a new chord progression, it was a whining, hypnotic
Speaker 1: ladder of notes, and it inspired Robert, who was sitting
Speaker 1: next to him and began scribbling lyrics in a notebook. Later,
Speaker 1: Robert would say that it was like he wasn't writing
Speaker 1: the words himself, he was the vessel someone or something
Speaker 1: was writing through him. Right then, the fire popped, the
Speaker 1: log shifted, collapsing inward, and set the spray of red
Speaker 1: sparks into the air. Jimmy didn't look up from his guitar,
Speaker 1: and Robert kept writing and by the time the fire
Speaker 1: died down, the song Stairway to Heaven was readied. Weeks later,
Speaker 1: led Zeppelin was back at the studio in London recording
Speaker 1: some final overdubs for the album that fans would come
Speaker 1: to know as a led Zeppelin four. This included Jimmy's
Speaker 1: now iconic guitar solo for Stairway, which he played while
Speaker 1: leaning against a speaker, no headphones on, just playback at
Speaker 1: full blast, his body absorbing every sound while a cigarette
Speaker 1: smoldered in the headstalk of his Dragon telecaster. I just
Speaker 1: winged that solo, really, Jimmy said, Only Jimmy Page could
Speaker 1: wing a solo like that, A solo that unfolded like
Speaker 1: a good book or a good movie, one that had
Speaker 1: a beginning, a middle, and an end, very definitive, super dramatic,
Speaker 1: far out and locked in at the same time, one
Speaker 1: that sounded like it had lived inside of him and
Speaker 1: then escaped and changed everything around him, just like he'd
Speaker 1: lived inside Hedley Grange and changed it. And the next
Speaker 1: time Jimmy went back to that place, it was more
Speaker 1: than obvious that the old house had changed too. In fact,
Speaker 1: it had learned something new. We'll be right back after this,
Speaker 1: We're We're Where. In November of nineteen seventy three, exactly
Speaker 1: two years after it was originally released, Led Zeppelin four,
Speaker 1: the album with Stairway to Heaven as its centerpiece, was
Speaker 1: still riding high on the charts, as was its successor,
Speaker 1: the most excellent Houses of the Holy, which had been
Speaker 1: released just months earlier in seventy three. As usual, it
Speaker 1: didn't matter if a writer for Rolling Stone called Houses
Speaker 1: of the Holy quote one of the dullest and most
Speaker 1: confusing albums I've heard this year unquote, which they one
Speaker 1: did say, can you fucking believe that the song remains
Speaker 1: the same the rain song, over the freakin' hills and
Speaker 1: far away? Dull and confusing? None of it mattered because
Speaker 1: Led Zeppelin were untouchable. Zeppelin where Reggie Jackson and Pete
Speaker 1: Rose combined, untouchable, and to continue with the sports metaphor,
Speaker 1: the same year, they played shows in ballparks and football
Speaker 1: stadiums on a godlike scale. I'm talking about shows like
Speaker 1: the one in Tampa, Florida, where they played for over
Speaker 1: fifty six thousand people and raked in over three hundred grand,
Speaker 1: which at the time was the single most profitable performance
Speaker 1: in the history of show business, steamrolling a record previously
Speaker 1: held by the Beatles, and were rock and roll gods,
Speaker 1: and they were bringing the hammer down night after night.
Speaker 1: And a big part of this unprecedented success, as Jimmy
Speaker 1: Page saw it, was their unorthodox decision to continue to
Speaker 1: go back to the well at Headley Grange. But when
Speaker 1: they returned in the spring of nineteen seventy four to
Speaker 1: begin work on their sixth studio album, none of them
Speaker 1: knew it would be their final visit. Robert, Jonesy and
Speaker 1: Bonzo did know that this time would be different, and
Speaker 1: then all three of them refused to stay at Headley
Speaker 1: Grange anymore. The place was deteriorating worse than ever, and
Speaker 1: the vines outside were thicker. The dampness was now wetness.
Speaker 1: It smelled of slimy stone and rotten and plus Bonzo
Speaker 1: wasn't fucking around anymore with disembodied breathing. So while the
Speaker 1: three of them checked into the Posh Friends and Pond
Speaker 1: Hotel and spa three mile up the road, Jimmy held
Speaker 1: down the ford at Headley alone, and by day the
Speaker 1: quartet tracked the new record by tapping into that magic
Speaker 1: magic were the k the telepathic bond that made them
Speaker 1: who they were, that made them better and more successful
Speaker 1: than all the rest of the bands, a bond strengthened
Speaker 1: and driven by whatever spirit Jimmy Page had revived up
Speaker 1: there at Headley Grange. The songs kept coming. Custard Pie
Speaker 1: in the Light, trampled under foot, Cashmere and by night
Speaker 1: Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham. They packed up,
Speaker 1: leaving Jimmy Page to his own devices at Headley, and
Speaker 1: that's when the house really started to come alive. You
Speaker 1: hear it first on the wind, not unlike the wind
Speaker 1: that blows in off lockness at your placed in the
Speaker 1: Scottish Highlands, where Malcolm Dent is learning to live with
Speaker 1: the things that the naked eye can't see. Long, low
Speaker 1: moans drift from the hall upstairs, and then you hear
Speaker 1: footsteps and they're slow, pacing back and forth, like someone
Speaker 1: is walking a guard shift. You grab not a flashlight
Speaker 1: but a candle, because it fits your mood, it fits
Speaker 1: Headly's mood. You light it and walk, guided by the
Speaker 1: flickering light, from the sitting room over to the lobby
Speaker 1: to that big winding staircase once you heard Bonzo playing
Speaker 1: the shit out of the drums right here, and now
Speaker 1: you just hear the house. Then up ahead, look there,
Speaker 1: going up the stairs to the second floor, you see it,
Speaker 1: a tall, thin figure, a gray man, shimmering and translucent.
Speaker 1: You can feel it beckoning you, calling to you. If
Speaker 1: it's speaking, it's not a language that you can understand,
Speaker 1: but you can make out the intent. It's set telepathy
Speaker 1: magic with that big king. He pulls you and you follow,
Speaker 1: the flame on top of your candle, nearly extinguishing as
Speaker 1: you hustle up the first flight of stairs. You get
Speaker 1: to the top and keep following the gray man ahead,
Speaker 1: coming in and out of focus, stucking into that room
Speaker 1: that Andy John's investigated years ago, the one from which
Speaker 1: loud noises arose in the middle of the night, but
Speaker 1: where there was nothing, well, one man's nothing being another
Speaker 1: man's everything. You follow in the gray man's footsteps, and
Speaker 1: the flame in your hand burning brighter and hotter now,
Speaker 1: and then as you pass through the threshold, the door
Speaker 1: slams shut behind you. Audio engineer ron Nevison arrived at
Speaker 1: Headley Grange early the next morning outside the mobile recording
Speaker 1: van owned by Ronnie Lane, former bass player for the
Speaker 1: Small Faces, and then just the Faces was ready to
Speaker 1: roll tape. The rest of the band wasn't due in
Speaker 1: for a little longer, so Ron found Jimmy still alone,
Speaker 1: moving microphones around in the dining room. Ron greeted Jimmy
Speaker 1: good morning, and then his attention was driven to the floor,
Speaker 1: where he could see the chalk markings geometric, deliberate circles
Speaker 1: and intersecting lines. What's that, Ron asked, pointing at the
Speaker 1: spot on the floor. Jimmy grinned Mike placement. He said,
Speaker 1: gotta it sound right, Mike placement. Ron thought patterns seemed
Speaker 1: too intricate for that sort of thing, too intentional. Weeks later,
Speaker 1: Ron had forgotten all about it. Led Zeppelin packed up
Speaker 1: and left with eight songs in the can for what
Speaker 1: would become their fifteen track double album, Physical Graffiti. And
Speaker 1: as I said earlier, they never went to Headley Grange again.
Speaker 1: But the ghost stories didn't stop. In fact, they multiplied,
Speaker 1: and the question became not is Headley Grange haunted? The
Speaker 1: question was Headley Grange was haunted by what? Before we
Speaker 1: get into the rest of this Headley Grange story earlier
Speaker 1: in this episode, you might have heard me talking about
Speaker 1: Malcolm Dent, the caretaker for Jimmy Page's Bolskinhouse in Scotland.
Speaker 1: We included that scene here to set up the general
Speaker 1: themes in our bigger story in this full episode that
Speaker 1: you're listening to now about Headley Grange. However, if you
Speaker 1: want to hear more on this, if you want to
Speaker 1: hear the rest of the creepy story about what Malcolm
Speaker 1: Dent saw and heard during his time at Jimmy Page's Bolskinhouse,
Speaker 1: the place formerly owned by occultist Alistair Crawley, you can
Speaker 1: hear that entire story in a brand new mini episode
Speaker 1: of Disgraceland, which is easily available for our All Access
Speaker 1: members to go to disgrace sampod dot com slash membership
Speaker 1: to sign up with Patreon or Apple Podcasts. That's to
Speaker 1: hear the rest of that led Zeppelin, Malcolm Dent, Alistair
Speaker 1: Crowley Bullskinhouse story. All right, however, this story about led
Speaker 1: Zeppelin and Headley Grange, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to.
Speaker 3: Fast forward now and you can kind of get a
Speaker 3: feel for the song. Very mellow, you know, almost pretty
Speaker 3: very interesting guitar.
Speaker 1: I noticed one little phrase here, because you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: words have two meanings.
Speaker 3: That's in the second verse there that really caught my
Speaker 3: and I thank you. You know, we've proved that tonight
Speaker 3: Revolution number nine, number nine has sisterning on dead man backwards,
Speaker 3: two meanings. Other pieces in here. There's a feeling I
Speaker 3: get when I look to the west, and in medieval times,
Speaker 3: the west was the direction of hell.
Speaker 1: All right, now play this backwards, right, I've.
Speaker 3: Actually taken the exact piece of tape that you just
Speaker 3: heard it off of. I reverse thread the machine and
Speaker 3: I'm gonna play that exact piece of tape backwards. Now, yeah, Bana,
Speaker 3: you've done it.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll get it. That was him. You're here, ns.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm here as they're play putting in Acia.
Speaker 1: What you just heard was actual audio from Christian televangelists
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty two, who painstakingly proved to their own
Speaker 1: satisfaction at least, that, when played backwards, led Zeppelin's Stairway
Speaker 1: to Heaven revealed hidden Satanic messages, most striking among them
Speaker 1: being the phrase my sweet seat. Of course, this is
Speaker 1: utterly preposterous. The only thing that playing Stairway backwards truly
Speaker 1: reveals is that Jimmy Page's guitar solo was fucking badass,
Speaker 1: even in reverse. But it's objectively laughable to think that
Speaker 1: led Zeppelin planned out all this subversive backwards speak on
Speaker 1: one of their biggest hits. However, I am also in
Speaker 1: no way saying that Jimmy Page was not creating music
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies while under the spell of some
Speaker 1: weird occult shit, because well, just ask Kenneth Anger and
Speaker 1: he'll do the debunking for us now. Kenneth Anger, an
Speaker 1: alevant garde filmmaker and fellow Alistair Crowley Obsessive, a guy
Speaker 1: who had Lucifer tattooed across his chest, once said this
Speaker 1: about Jimmy Page and the occult, and I quote, Jimmy
Speaker 1: was just a dabbler, a rich kid who liked to
Speaker 1: play dress up, and hey, what do you know, Jimmy
Speaker 1: Page agreed. In twenty seventeen, during a live Q and
Speaker 1: A at the Oxford Union, a student asked Jimmy about
Speaker 1: his involvement in the occult, and Jimmy's response downplayed the
Speaker 1: whole thing. He said he was merely interested in Eastern
Speaker 1: and Western mysticism as a young man and so he
Speaker 1: read a couple books about it, No big Deal, which
Speaker 1: is a slightly calmer reaction to that question. Then he
Speaker 1: gave to the writer Chuck Klosterman, who profiled Jimmy for
Speaker 1: GQ magazine three years earlier in twenty fourteen, clostera quote,
Speaker 1: was your interest in the occult authentic? Did you ever
Speaker 1: actually attempt magic? Jimmy, Well, we can finish the interview
Speaker 1: with me saying I won't answer that question. So that
Speaker 1: brings me to another quote, this one by journalist Nick Kent,
Speaker 1: who once said Jimmy Page is very contained. He's always
Speaker 1: editing himself, and inevitably most of what comes out of
Speaker 1: his mouth is very guarded, like he's got something to hide.
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen seventy four, after Zeppelin vacated the premises
Speaker 1: to Headley Grange, the band Genesis moved in. This was
Speaker 1: when Peter Gabriel was still the lead singer with the
Speaker 1: weird reverse mohawk, and Phil Collins was still only the drummer,
Speaker 1: and they were there to rehearse material for what would
Speaker 1: become their classic prog rock double album, The Lamb Lies
Speaker 1: Down on Broadway at Headley Grange, Phil Collins couldn't sleep
Speaker 1: a wink all night long. He'd listened to the footsteps
Speaker 1: of people who weren't there, and he smoked so much
Speaker 1: he refused to close his eyes. I don't know, Maybe
Speaker 1: drummers are easily freaked out or something. Anyway, Peter Gabriel
Speaker 1: heard those footsteps too, and whenever he'd leave a room
Speaker 1: and then return a short time later, he'd find that
Speaker 1: the furniture had all been rearranged. Now before arriving there,
Speaker 1: Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins and the Guys and Genesis
Speaker 1: had been told that the place was haunted after all.
Speaker 1: This was part of its charm, so to speak. But
Speaker 1: Peter Gabriel, like Jimmy Page before him, was in a
Speaker 1: different state of mind from everyone else in his group.
Speaker 1: At the time. He was in direct communication with the
Speaker 1: director William Friedkin, who was seriously pursuing Peter Gabriel to
Speaker 1: write the screenplay for his upcoming adaptation of the Exorcist novel,
Speaker 1: and through this lens of demonic possession in the occult,
Speaker 1: Peter Gabriel believed that the haunting of Hedley Grange had
Speaker 1: only begun a few years prior upon the arrival of
Speaker 1: Led Zeppelin in nineteen seventy. According to Peter Gabriel, Headley
Speaker 1: Grange was quote partly haunted by Jimmy Page's black magic experiments.
Speaker 1: If correct, that would mean the Headley Grange wasn't haunted
Speaker 1: like all those other old English estates. That would mean
Speaker 1: Headley Grange wasn't haunted before led Zeppelin. Headley Grange was
Speaker 1: haunted by led Zepplins. I'm Jake Brennan and this Disgraceland.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks for hanging out with me, guys on
Speaker 1: this special spooky edition of Disgraceland. Listen, question of the
Speaker 1: week for you here on led Zeppelin. I want to
Speaker 1: hear your haunted house stories, your spooky stories that time
Speaker 1: you were hanging out, whether it was in your house,
Speaker 1: someone else's house, recording studio, wherever, whatever the structure, when
Speaker 1: things got a little weird six one seven nine oh
Speaker 1: six six six three eight. You don't have to be
Speaker 1: Jimmy Page to have experienced some sort of haunting. Get
Speaker 1: at us on voicemail and text and let us know,
Speaker 1: and you might hear your answer on the next after
Speaker 1: party coming up after this disgrace lampod on the Socials
Speaker 1: Disgrace lampod at gmail dot com to send me an
Speaker 1: email If you guys want to hear that mini episode.
Speaker 1: Become an All Access member today. Go to disgrace lampod
Speaker 1: dot com slash membership to sign up. You'll get a
Speaker 1: little more led Zeppelin this week in your feed. I
Speaker 1: get to get out of here. Here comes some credits.
Speaker 1: Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and is produced in
Speaker 1: partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be
Speaker 1: found on the show notes page at disgracelampod dot com.
Speaker 1: If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank
Speaker 1: you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And
Speaker 1: if not, you can become a member right now by
Speaker 1: going to disgracelampod dot com slash membership, Rate and review
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Speaker 1: slash at disgracelanmpod, rock a rolla, He's a Land