The 1964 song Jimmy Page called “one of the best” ever made
Rock and roll seemed to be changing one month at a time in the 1960s, and Jimmy Page loved every minute of it.
He had already started woodshedding his craft as one of the greatest session players of his generation, but when you look through a lot of his best stuff with Zeppelin, a lot of his proficiency came from him learning from every single rock and roll song that he played and whatever caught his ear on the radio. He was drawn to songs that sounded a little bit strange to him, but that didn’t mean that every one of his favourites got the kind of respect that they deserved on the radio.
Granted, since when did anyone in Zeppelin really care about radio play? They were an albums band every single time they put out a record, and even if they weren’t always known for making the catchiest tunes in the world, their music took you on a journey that you would never forget once you picked up Physical Graffiti. And that’s half the reason why Page was championing his favourite bands as well.
Some of the biggest signings for the band’s Swan Song label were all about trying to expose people to different styles of music, and while Bad Company was certainly straight-ahead rock and roll, there were a dozen other bands trying out something slightly off the beaten track. Page might not have understood it at the time, but a lot of his favourites seemed to be on the cutting edge of what would become progressive music as well.
None of them had the massive song structures of a band like Genesis or the dabblings in classical music like Emerson, Lake and Palmer, but they certainly weren’t pop-friendly, either. Page knew that his mission was to champion music that carried on what bands like The Beatles had started back in the day, and a band like The Pretty Things were ready to spread their wings by the time they got on his roster.
They were already known for making some of the best pop rock of the time, and Page signed them solely on the strength of ‘Rosalyn’, saying, “The Pretty Things were a band that were really changing their music and had done so because they probably did one of the best singles way back in the day with ‘Rosalyn’, that’s wild! That’s serious! And then they had gone through SF Sorrow, and the music that they were doing on Swan Song was incredible.”
If you talk about the legacy of The Pretty Things, though, SF Sorrow feels much closer to what they were always destined to be. The conceptual part of rock and roll was just beginning to show its face, and while they weren’t looking to give Pete Townshend a run for his money with their story-driven album, the fact that they were making these strides was everything that Page could have asked for.
It also helped that the band had the same common ground that Page had always worked with. They had been through the wringer and played the same kinds of gigs that Page played while he was still in The Yardbirds, so he knew that they were the kind of band that wasn’t going to take any second of attention that they had for granted whenever they started putting something a little bit more cerebral.
Their music was still outside the norm, but it was still about trying to put their best foot forward so that the fans would be left stunned by what they had just heard. It wasn’t going to be easy for any band to walk out of Zeppelin’s shadow, but The Pretty Things always felt like the kind of band that was always destined for greatness but never seemed to pull it off like they were supposed to.
