Jimmy Page at Rock Fest
The British School, Urca, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Saturday 28th November 2009
Mr Mark Archer, Science teacher, Urca Site

The British School’s Urca site hosted and co-organised with Task Brasil a fundraising concert for Casa Jimmy. This is a house for abandoned street children and pregnant teenagers situated in the Santa Teresa neighbourhood of Rio. Jimmy Page was the guest of honour at the concert and he watched performances by bands made up of students, ex-students and teachers of The British School and also performances by Brazilian musicians, Pepeu Gomes the guitarist formerly of the legendary group, Novos Baianos and George Israel of Kid Abelha.

The purpose of the show was not only to raise money (R$ 38.000,00 was the final figure) for Casa Jimmy but also to raise awareness of the charity’s achievements to date. The school had already been raising money for Task Brasil for a couple of years via non-uniform days and Urca students have visited Casa Jimmy in the past.

The sold-out concert was held in the school’s cosy auditorium to an audience of about 270 people consisting primarily of the students, staff, parents and friends of The British School. Excitement had been building all week amongst the students as many are huge Led Zeppelin fans and the realisation that, yes, the Jimmy Page was visiting their school was met with almost disbelief!

Having received a short introduction from Mr. Wiseman, Jimmy walked onstage just before 3 pm to introduce the concert, casually dressed in blue jeans and a short-sleeved black shirt. He introduced the concert after apologising for his ‘minimal’ Portuguese. The Task Brasil staff and some of the kids then introduced themselves and thanked everyone for their support.

At the outset a rather fired-up member of the audience was shouting out, ‘play one for us Jimmy`. Page responded by doing an air-guitar flurry of notes and received a big cheer. Then he went back to the mic and announced that he didn’t have his guitar with him and gave us another quick air-guitar performance. Looking at the video of this now, he is remarkably relaxed and good-humoured.

The concert started with The Yardbirds version of Heart Full Of Soul shown on a big screen and when the screen was pulled up it revealed a band of the British School music teachers playing a bossa nova version of the same song. It was a great beginning and Jimmy obviously loved this surprising start to the show.

The next band onstage was made up of students on guitar, bass and drums and teacher, Mr. Flavio on vocals. They played a Led Zeppelin tune, ‘Heartbreaker’ and our resident 14-year old student guitar hero, Rodrigo Grabowsky really ripped that famous solo with great accuracy and Page grinned with delight and gave him a round of applause. Throughout the concert, Jimmy was completely attentive, concentrating on the music and was not distracted by the fuss around him. He was obviously listening intently.

Throughout the day further old footage of a younger Mr. Page was shown on the big screen. Later Jimmy joked about his rather different appearance nowadays, ‘I just wanted to say for anyone who’s seen some of these clips of me…or the poster, that on this special occasion I’ve dyed my hair silver.’

In the second interval Jimmy went back up onstage as the Task Brasil people were making some announcements and this time said, ‘I’m not quite sure what I came up onstage here to do but at least I can introduce you to the guys here, Mr. Israel and his sons…’ He shook hands with them all and then came back up to the balcony of the auditorium, as they tore into an excellent version of ‘Fire’ by Jimi Hendrix. Once again Jimmy was a model of concentration.

As the concert continued the various student bands played rock songs like Wish You Were Here, Train Kept ‘A Rollin’, Sweet Home Alabama and The Show Must Go On. Jimmy Page watched all of these performances and he seemed to really be enjoying the show, tapping his foot, nodding his head, cheering in all the right places and occasionally giving the thumbs-up to star-struck fans downstairs.

Towards the end of the show, while Pepeu Gomes, George Israel and their band were playing The Beatles classic, While My Guitar Gently Weeps live onstage, Jimmy was in the tiny green room chatting to the students and signing their backstage passes, a photocopy of an old Zep poster, a tambourine and bits of scrap paper. He then walked back onstage with the Task people for the third and final time of the day with the Head of the Urca Site, Mr Blanch to do the auction and to say goodbye. Jimmy told the audience that although he couldn’t give everyone an autograph, he would personally address the posters, designed by Ms. Leah Wilks, the Head of Art, to the highest bidders. After some frantic bidding, two of the posters went for R$2000. Early in the day during three raffles a further 15 signed posters were distributed to lucky ticket holders.

Jimmy Page made a good impression on the students and staff of The British School in the corridors and backstage, and he was happy to sign their stuff too with comments like, ‘Whole Lotta Love’, ‘Rock On!’ and ‘Happy 15 Years’, for a lucky student whose birthday it was that very same day. Students later said that Jimmy had praised their musical ability, their positive attitude and even their Led Zeppelin T-shirts.

To make a donation to Task Brasil visit their website at www.taskbrasil.org.uk/donations/

 Rock Fest 28th November 2 - 4 pm

At The British School, Urca site

Jimmy Page and RockFest
Congratulations to everyone involved, it was a huge success and we should be proud of what we can achieve in 9 working days when we work together. The Administrative staff were outstanding in their support. We believe we have raised in excess of R$30.000,00 for Task Brasil and Casa Jimmy. Special mention has to go to Mr Julio Costa for being the brains behind the organisation of the event.

In support of Task Brasil and in aid of Casa Jimmy supported by George Israel and Pepeu Gomes and The British School.

Various performances and tributes to Jimmy Page by Rock Bands from The British School.

George Israel and Pepeu Gomes performing together all in the presence of Rock Legend Jimmy Page!

Read on……..