The “curse of King Midas” was placed on Led Zeppelin by a furious Kenneth Anger, who claimed Jimmy Page and Charlotte Martin had “lost their minds.”
Anger, who directed Invocation of My Demon Brother (which featured a soundtrack scored by Mick Jagger), had choice words for the Led Zeppelin songwriter. The late filmmaker says he and Page had fallen out over a trivial lunch payment, which left Anger commenting on the perceived tightness of the Black Dog songwriter. But the back-and-forth stemmed also from a half-finished job carried out by Page. In an interview with The Guardian, the Lucifer Rising director would suggest a comment he made over dinner to Page was the beginning of the end for their friendship.
It’s a relationship which never mended, as Anger cursed Led Zeppelin after Page only gave the filmmaker half the material needed for his forty-minute film. Anger said he requested Page make some music for his soundtrack, Lucifer Rising.
He said: “So Jimmy Page did some music instead. He’s a miser, which is a horrible thing. He wouldn’t even pay for lunch. So I said: ‘Isn’t it preposterous that you’re so cheap?’ And that, of course, insulted him. He was on heroin all the time – I hate all those druggies because their eyes get glazed and what they say is meaningless because they don’t follow through.
“I said: ‘OK, Jimmy, I need exactly 40 minutes.’ But he only gave me 20. I said: ‘What am I supposed to do, play it twice? I need 40 minutes! I need a climax! Like, [the film] is the end and the beginning of the world – you’ve gotta give me that big music!'”
The fallout would lead Anger to curse Page, with the veteran filmmaker explaining the meaning behind the King Midas horror. Anger said: “He’s a multi-millionaire miser. He and Charlotte, that horrible vampire girl… They had so many servants, yet they would never offer me a cup of tea or a sandwich.
“Which is such a mistake on their part because I put the curse of king Midas on them. If you’re greedy and just amass gold you’ll get an illness. So I did turn her and Jimmy Page into statues of gold because they’ve both lost their minds. He can’t write songs anymore.”
Anger may have meant the curse too, with the filmmaker allegedly fascinated by occultist Aleister Crowley and the religion he founded, Thelema. He and Page shared an interest in Crowley but fell out with one another during an incident at Boleskine House.
Crowley’s former residence had been purchased by Page. Following the fallout, Anger threatened to “throw a Kenneth Anger curse” on the Led Zeppelin member. Anger died on May 11, 2023.
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