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| Sunday, September 24, 2006 |
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Jimmy Page's Old Bass Player
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Wow, it's been much less than two weeks, and I'm already back with another blog! This one will appeal to the two or three hard rock fans in the crowd...maybe...
Remember the Firm? That was Jimmy Page's band after Led Zeppelin. Tony Franklin was the bass player who delivered the pretty memorable fretless bass hook at the beginning of their hit "Radioactive." On my day off I was walking around the Marietta Square when I ran into an old friend I hadn't seen in a year or two, and he said Franklin was giving a free bass workshop at a music store around the corner. As a fan of anything Jimmy Page-related I quickly made the decision to attend.
What I found quite funny about the evening was the crowd. It really brought home how lame the citizens of my corner of suburbia are. This particular music store doesn't play to the 20 year old rock-n-roll crowd, but more to the high school marching band and church band crowd. The audience of about 40 was largely comprised of a lot of "praise band" types in their late 40's and up. I felt a bit sorry for Franklin as he attempted to amuse this small group of Atlanta-style right-wing sorts. The comic high point was when some guy in a rugby shirt and tube socks, who no doubt could play some mean Jars of Clay and Stryper basslines, raised his hand to say, "How about, for the young guys, you talk a little bit about how they shouldn't get into drugs and need to get plenty of sleep?"
I could've died. What a hoot! The guest speaker had never said whether he was or wasn't on drugs and the general talk about bass amps and old memories hadn't veered anywhere near substance abuse, but this guy in his rugby shirt and tube socks had decided we needed a "Just Say No" sermon sandwiched in. Tony Franklin obliged and said he had, in fact, had to clean up at one point in his life. He also added, though, that he's now a vegan, drinks only water and meditates at least twice a day, sometimes for an hour at a time. I'm sure the answer of this English session musician living in Los Angeles was about as distasteful to Mr. Tube Socks as if he had advised the kids to start the day with a hefty snort of cocaine. "Meditation? Ain't that somethin' those Buddhists that follow O-sama Bin Laid-in are into? That's a bunch of freaky hippie shit! I haven't ever read of Jesus meditating! You must be into Satanism!"
Franklin said that at his peak he played Madison Square Garden with the Firm, then called up Jimmy Page and told him Jaco Pastorius was in town (Page didn't know who that was), and they saw Pastorius in an almost-empty club and Page and Chris Slade (now drums with AC/DC) got up to jam with him.
Shortly after, however, he said he moved to Los Angeles and presumed, with his time in the Firm and another late-80's band called Blue Murder with Carmen Appice, that his phone would be ringing off the hook. Instead he said, "Nobody knew my phone number! So I was hanging drywall and pulling weeds, and the guy I was doing this for was letting me do it as a favor because he knew I needed the money!"
These days he's still doing tours with this act and that (Whitesnake was one of the bigger names he's been involved with, as well as David Gilmour) and he's working with Fender on a line of his own basses and some amps called...SWR, I think. If I had gone from Madison Square Garden to drywall hanging I'm not sure I would have had the fortitude to spring myself back up to those heights; I might have thought, "What in the hell happened?" Hats off to Tony Franklin for climbing the ladder twice.
And by the way, kids, don't do drugs and make sure you get plenty of sleep. That's what all the biggest rock stars have always done. And be sure to wear rugby shirts and tube socks with your praise band. |
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Posted by Art | 6:37 PM EST |
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I remember a "Where are they now?" special about 80's bands and they interviewed the former guitarist for Kix, a one-hit-wonder. He was painting over billboards for a living. You could tell from the look on his face that he wished he'd finished high school.
It's good he's back in the music business.
Didn't Paul Rodgers sing for the firm? He's got a pretty good gig now, portraying the straight Freddie Mercury. I wish HE was hanging drywall.
That was probably the best lesson that guy had for the "young guys": even if you're at Madison Square Garden with Jimmy Page and Paul Rodgers (yeah, he was in The Firm) one night there is STILL a path that leads back to drywall. Save your money!