By Damian Fanelli
OK, it’s 2017, so I realize it’s incredibly unlikely that you’ve never seen this video. Still, on the off-chance that you have not……..
Check out this clip of a 13-year-old Jimmy Page and his band performing “Mama Don’t Want to Skiffle Anymore” (or something to that effect) on a BBC1 talent show—Huw Wheldon’s All Your Own—in the late Fifties.
When asked by Wheldon what he wants to do after schooling, Page replies, “I want to do biological research to find a cure for cancer, if it isn’t discovered by then.”
Lonnie Donegan was probably the biggest name in skiffle—a style of music that combined elements of American blues, jazz, country and folk—in the U.K. at the time (1957, although some sources say the show was filmed in 1958). In fact, John Lennon’s first band, the Quarry Men, was a skiffle group that regularly performed Donegan’s “Rock Island Line” and other now-forgotten gems.
That is, of course, Page on the left, wearing the dark sweater. Enjoy!
