As the Rolling Stones release their new hit Scarlet, the song’s writer – Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page – and his girlfriend Scarlett Sabet welcome Tatler to their Gothic castle
As the Rolling Stones release a new song featuring Jimmy Page, entitled ‘Scarlet’, Tatler revisits a feature from the June 2020 issue, in which a west London street offers a portal to a private paradise. In their Gothic fortress, septuagenarian Led Zeppelin rock god Jimmy Page and luminous poet Scarlett Sabet live a saintly existence sustained mostly by love and tea, found Clare Conway
Led Zeppelin fans often stop outside the Tower House, an imposing redbrick castle in front of Holland Park, and wait, vinyl and pen in hand, for Jimmy Page to emerge. ‘To them it’s sort of like Abbey Road,’ says Scarlett Sabet, a poet, 30 years of age and Page’s girlfriend of six years. If the devotees are lucky, they might catch the man himself, the 76-year-old guitarist and founder of one of the best-selling rock groups in history, on his way out, ambling towards KFC for lunch. Page might stop and chat, but he never signs his autograph and won’t pose for selfies.
Sometimes the lurkers grow impatient. ‘Is Jimmy in?’ they call to his assistants, Natalie and Lionel, as they head up to the house. ‘He’s away,’ they shout back. ‘But’ – a fan insisted one time – ‘I just saw Jimmy in the window.’ ‘That was a cardboard cutout,’ Natalie replied solemnly. She laughs now as she tells the story.
You can spot the remarkable building from all the way down the tree-lined road off Kensington High Street – its Gothic façade, stained-glass windows and turret leap out from among the many lovely multimillion-pound mansions that surround it. It’s notable, too, for being next door to Robbie Williams’ home. A long-running dispute between the two musicians has decorated newspaper pages and kept the Kensington and Chelsea planning committee busy. The source of the trouble involves Williams’ plan for a hefty ‘iceberg’ basement extension. The work, Page has argued, could cause ‘possible structural damage’ to his Grade I-listed house. There have been insults: Robbie had to apologise for likening Page to someone with ‘a mental illness’. Today, though, Sabet explains, she can’t talk about it for legal reasons. ‘But I can say that Jimmy just wants to protect the house,’ she says.
You can see why. It’s quite some place, this heavy-metal mecca. A weighty, fortress-style wooden door leads on to a tiled porch, before another, internal door swings open to reveal such an abundance of gilding and plasterwork, such majestic walls of marble, such an extravagance of painted ceilings that it elicits a symphony of sighs. In one room, there’s a ceiling of stars, each with its own little mirror.
There have been many landmarks in the history of artificial intelligence, from the formulation of the mathematical theory that inspired neural networks back in 1943, to IBM’s famous Watson AI beating two champion Jeopardy! contestants in 2011 to win a million-dollar prize.
Future historians may look back at 2020 as a similarly important checkpoint on the road to AI dominance. Why? Because YouTuber Funk Turkey has created a new Led Zeppelin song using the power of AI.
Mr. Turkey used a set of lyrics provided by lyrics.rip – a web service that scrapes the Lyrics Genius database for a particular artist, then cleverly splices together the results using a predictive algorithm known as a Markov Chain to compose a new song – then added some music, before singing the results in the style of Robert Plant. The result? Mountain Man.
Eagle-eyed viewers may notice that the video doesn't feature any footage of Led Zeppelin, but Turkey has an explanation: "I know I usually use concert footage of the band for my videos. However, YouTube keeps yanking the video for this one so that means DEPLOY THE STOCK FOOTAGE OF ADORABLE PUPPIES."
However, the captivating canines shouldn't distract from the song, which features the kind of lyrics that once made Plant famous as a golden-haired symbol of sexual abundance.
"The lyrics.... well, it sure spit out a lot of Robert Plant-esque adlib, which I think turned out okay," says Turkey. "Towards the end with the repeating 'Nevers' in particular, which is something that Markov Chains do – repeat phrases that had been repeated once or twice, but to infinity. It actually repeated the word 'never' almost 37 times, but I had to cut it short to fit the song, and also to freaking breathe."
This isn't Funk Turkey's first experiment with AI. Back in April he came up with The Nickelbot, which used the same techniques to compose a new Nickelback song, Nobody Died Every Single Day, and he's gone on to create Great Balls, a song very much in the style of AC/DC, and Power Gravy, an AI-driven tribute to Iron Maiden.
A long-lost song the Rolling Stones recorded with Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page is to finally be released. Scarlet, thought to be named after Page's daughter, was recorded in October 1974. It is described in a press release as having "layered guitar textures" from Page, and is "as infectious and raunchy as anything the band cut in this hallowed era".
It is to be released on a deluxe edition of the Stones' 1973 album Goats Head Soup, recorded in Jamaica and containing the atypical hit single, Angie. It is generally seen as a notch below the run of albums that preceded it, including Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main St, though Mick Jagger praised it above Main St on release, saying: "I really put all I had into it."
Exclusive first play plus chat with Mick Jagger & Jimmy Page on @BBCRadio with @ZoeTheBall, tune in from 8:30 am BST July 22nd. Out everywhere at 9am BST. #experiencegoatsheadsoup
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