‘Mean Business’: The album Jimmy Page thought didn’t age well
One of the biggest hurdles that every artist has to face is the passage of time. None of the biggest stars in the world are getting any younger, and it’s up to them to stay true to their roots and risk looking like yesterday’s news or try to adapt to the times when they make a record. While Jimmy Page made a guitar sound that’s most likely never going to age, he had enough self-awareness to realise when things sounded a bit off.
Then again, there’s already been a bit of a crystal sheen put around all of Led Zeppelin’s best works. Even though the band have been broken up for almost half a century, hearing the fuzzy tone of ‘Ramble On’ or the opening lick of ‘Black Dog’ are still some of the most irresistible sounds of rock and roll, if only for the fact that every band afterwards has tried to copy it in some capacity.
Once the band called it quits following John Bonham’s passing, though, no one took it harder than Page. He had watched Led Zeppelin grow from a baby band to one of the biggest acts in the world, and even if he wasn’t joined at the hip with Bonham the same way Robert Plant was when they started off, he had lost a dear friend and the will to keep making music. If there was one person to pull him out of the doldrums, though, it was bound to be Paul Rodgers.
The vocalist had already started taking a break from Bad Company, but his decision to join Page for the supergroup The Firm felt more like an incubation group for Page. He wasn’t quite ready to spread his wings as a solo artist, but it was better for him to keep himself busy rather than sit around at home and wonder where everything went wrong.
And it’s not like they didn’t have songs to back it up. ‘Radioactive’ is still a decent track from the early 1980s, and even when Rodgers is singing his heart out on some of the glossy ballads from this time, Page still found ways to use strange techniques, like breaking out the bow for a handful of tunes. If the first record had a few production screwups, though, Mean Business was when everyone realised there wasn’t as much staying power as they thought.
Even if some of the songs sounded fine in the rehearsal room, Page thought that the album never sounded right to his ears, saying, “I enjoyed what I did with those albums. Paul is such a great singer. But I think, unfortunately, that The Firm’s second album (Mean Business) was one of those things recorded in the 80s that suffered a bit from the sounds of that time. The band was really good, but with that album, you don’t get the full meat and potatoes.”
While it’s not as egregious as what ‘Percy’ had done on an album like Shaken n’ Stirred, it’s easy to see where Page is coming from. A lot of the performances sound solid, but with some of the new production tricks going on, it feels like the band are being kept at a distance with a little too much reverb on everything.
If anything, the fact that Coverdale/Page managed to sound so different feels like a direct reaction to what The Firm sounded like by the end. Page never wanted to find himself riding trends, and if he had the 1980s production to deal with on Mean Business, his next album would hit listeners like a slap in the face.
