How The West Was Won
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jammybastard
"I'm losing my edge, but I was there..."
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HTWWW is a compilation and heavily produced. There are soundboard bootlegs from those shows and his guitar tone is different.
Read this for details:
http://www.thegardentapes.co.uk/htwww.html
My point is that don't judge Page's guitar tone on a "live" album that's had lot of surgery done to it. Listen to the bootlegs for the accurate sound.
Read this for details:
http://www.thegardentapes.co.uk/htwww.html
My point is that don't judge Page's guitar tone on a "live" album that's had lot of surgery done to it. Listen to the bootlegs for the accurate sound.
fishleehooker
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Me thinks more people should be " live album tinkerers" Every "shined up" live album I have ever heard stands up quite well.
monty
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Very true but like the OP I like his "live" sound better. That said, he does have some great tones on tape.
2HBStrat
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Didn't Page use a Fender Telecaster and a Supro Thunderbolt amp in the studio? I had read that he started using a Gibson Les Paul and Marshall amps for live shows because the pickups didn't hum, and he needed the extra power from the Marshall amps because of the inadequately powered sound systems in those days.
JackStraw12
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Agreed, although I wish the HTWWW overall tone and clarity would be adapted to say, TSRTS soundtrack. I have the original as well as the newer remaster but I still think there's something to be desired from an audiophile POV. I think HTWWW will be like At Fillmore East level in a few years if not already as one of those definitive live recordings. Really captures LZ at a magical moment in time.
michaelvincent
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The level of tinkering Page did is borderline insane.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
DWB1960
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Everyone knows that pretty much all live albums are messed with to clean them up and/or improve the performances. Hell, both Humble Pie and the Allman Brothers Fillmore LPs are not 100% accurate. Frampton Comes Alive has a bunch of audience noise added (Frampton wasn't yet a star when that show was recorded) and Kiss Alive has a boatload of studio overdubs added.
Pretty common practice.
If you listen to HTWWW's Long Beach tracks you'll notice the tempos are all a bit faster than normal. The band was playing quickly in order to shorten the show so they could get back to LA and party before all of the bars closed.
Pretty common practice.
If you listen to HTWWW's Long Beach tracks you'll notice the tempos are all a bit faster than normal. The band was playing quickly in order to shorten the show so they could get back to LA and party before all of the bars closed.
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rccCrawler
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Agree that all live albums are touched up - I hope so, if I'm paying money I want good product.
And if you want to hear what the true tone was..... .I'm not sure a bootleg is the best place to get that. Most bootlegs have terrible sound quality from what I have heard, including most sound board recordings, due to not being optimized for that purpose. So personally it only makes sense to me that some doctoring would be required in order to re-purpose the original recordings.
But that's just me. Album ROCKS as far as I am concerned.
And if you want to hear what the true tone was..... .I'm not sure a bootleg is the best place to get that. Most bootlegs have terrible sound quality from what I have heard, including most sound board recordings, due to not being optimized for that purpose. So personally it only makes sense to me that some doctoring would be required in order to re-purpose the original recordings.
But that's just me. Album ROCKS as far as I am concerned.
msteeln
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I was at the Long Beach show and while I can't say how much it differed from the CD it was certainly the typically classic Jimmy Page live on his Les Paul sound. Maybe there were glitchy spots that needed patching rather than the whole being tweaked.
I'll be looking for a boot of that show (yet again..) to relive it and see what you mean. At one point someone set off a red skyrocket from the back of the arena that sailed over the crowd and stage which impacted the large American flag on the arena wall. Plant was not pleased.
I found this mention of the recording interesting in particular, as Plant gave us a Perry Coma version of his historic screams at the beginning of IS and I've always figured that song came from LA or wherever, which is doubly odd because he truly excelled on everything else that night;
Immigrant Song
This is essentially from Long Beach, but Pagey has worked his magic on the vocals. The bootlegs reveal that Robert couldn't quite reach the western shore that night, but on the official release he gets there with no problems at all! What Jimmy has done is to take some sections of the vocal track from the LA recording and transplant them into the Long Beach mix. For example, Robert hits the high E on "western shore" on the first LA chorus, but not on the second LA chorus or either of the Long Beach choruses. So, those words from the first LA chorus have been used in both choruses on the official release.
Lumpy's Tone Shop
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The guitar on HTWWW was reamped by Kevin Shirley, which is why it sounds so much thicker. I'd recommend seeking out "How the West Was Redone". Much easier on the ears. 
Page didn't use a Thunderbolt. The main reason for switching to Marshalls, according to Page, was reliability as there were occasionally issues with his Hiwatts overheating. Although he was using was using Marshalls as early as March '69, they didn't become his main stage amps until '72.
Page didn't use a Thunderbolt. The main reason for switching to Marshalls, according to Page, was reliability as there were occasionally issues with his Hiwatts overheating. Although he was using was using Marshalls as early as March '69, they didn't become his main stage amps until '72.
tiktok
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Well, Celebration Day was heavily massaged also.
DWB1960
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Not so according to a few members here who were at the 2007 show. I have boots of the concert and can also attest to this.
tiktok
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http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan13/articles/it-0113.htm
Once the Garden Tapes guy weighs in, we'll have the final reckoning. That guy is crazy obsessive.
Flogger59
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Some of the vocals in Kashmir, but aside from that, no. Yhey even left the mini trainwreck coming out of the solo of Dazed And Confused.
Not sure what you mean by heavily massaged -- but I was at the show, have a ton of different bootlegs from different sources -- and I was actually very surprised how true to the real thing Celebration Day was.
About 85-90% of the "warts" of the entire set were left in Celebration Day. I was amazed Page didn't edit certain things.
Not sure about what Page did with EQ, balancing, etc on Celebration Day as I am sure it was well tinkered with, but I am being downright honest that the way you hear it on album is exactly the way I heard it live at the show. Extremely true to form, which in my opinion makes Celebration Day that much more special.
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