James Patrick "Jimmy" Page, OBE (born January 9, 1944) is an English multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and record producer. He began his career as a studio session guitarist in London and was subsequently a member of The Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968, after which he founded the English rock band Led Zeppelin.
Often viewed by critics and fans alike as one of the most influential and important guitarists and songwriters ever in rock music,[1][2][3] Rolling Stone magazine has described him as "the pontiff of power riffing & probably the most digitally sampled artist in pop today after James Brown."[4] In 2010, Jimmy Page was ranked #2 in Gibson's list of "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time"[5] and, in 2007, #4 on Classic Rock Magazine's "100 Wildest Guitar Heroes".[6] Page was ranked ninth in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" in 2003.[7] He has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice; once as a member of The Yardbirds (1992),[8] and once as a member of Led Zeppelin (1995).[9]
Jimmy Page was born to parents James and Patricia Page in the West London suburb of Heston, which today forms part of the London Borough of Hounslow. His father was an industrial personnel manager and his mother was a doctor's secretary. In 1952 they moved to Feltham, and later again to Miles Road, Epsom in Surrey, which is where Page came across his first guitar. "I don't know whether [the guitar] was left behind by the people [in the house] before [us], or whether it was a friend of the family's — nobody seemed to know why it was there."[10] First playing the instrument at the age of twelve years,[11] he took a few lessons in nearby Kingston, but was largely self-taught:
Page's musical tastes included skiffle (a popular English music genre of the time) and acoustic folk playing, particularly that of Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, and the blues sounds of Elmore James, B.B. King, Willie Dixon, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Freddie King and Hubert Sumlin.[15] "Basically, that was the start: a mixture between rock and blues."[13]
At the age of 13, Page appeared on Huw Wheldon's All Your Own talent quest programme in a skiffle quartet, one performance of which aired on BBC TV in 1957. The group played "Mama Don't Want To Skiffle Anymore" and another very American-flavoured song, "In Them Ol' Cottonfields Back Home". Televised Contest. When asked by Wheldon what he wanted to do after schooling, Page said, "I want to do biological research" to find a cure for "cancer, if it isn't discovered by then".
In an interview with Guitar Player magazine, Page stated that "there was a lot of busking in the early days, but as they say, I had to come to grips with it, and it was a good schooling."[13] Page would take a guitar to school each day and have it confiscated and handed back to him at 4:00 P.M.[16] Although he had an interview for a job as a laboratory assistant, he ultimately chose to leave Danetree Secondary School, West Ewell, to pursue music instead.[16]
Initially, Page had difficulty finding other musicians with whom he could play on a regular basis. "It wasn't as though there was an abundance. I used to play in many groups... anyone who could get a gig together, really."[14] Following stints backing recitals by Beat poet Royston Ellis at the Mermaid Theatre between 1960–61,[17] and singer Red E. Lewis, he was asked by singer Neil Christian to join his band, The Crusaders, after Christian had seen a fifteen-year-old Page playing in a local hall.[14] Page toured with Christian for approximately two years and later played on several of his records, including the November 1962 single, "The Road to Love".
During his stint with Christian, Page fell seriously ill with glandular fever (infectious mononucleosis) and couldn't continue touring.[14] While recovering, he decided to put his musical career on hold and concentrate on his other love, painting, and enrolled at Sutton Art College in Surrey.[3] As he explained in 1975:
After brief stints with Carter-Lewis and the Southerners, Mike Hurst and the Method, and Mickey Finn and the Blue Men, Page committed himself to full-time session work. As a session guitarist he was known as 'Little Jim' so there was no confusion with other noted British session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan. Page was mainly called in to sessions as "insurance" in instances when a replacement or second guitarist was required by the recording artist. "It was usually myself and a drummer", he explained, "though they never mention the drummer these days, just me ... Anyone needing a guitarist either went to Big Jim [Sullivan] or myself."[14] He has also stated that "In the initial stages they just said, play what you want, cos at that time I couldn't read music or anything."[18]
Page was the favoured session guitarist of producer Shel Talmy, and therefore he ended up doing session work on songs for The Who and The Kinks as a direct result of the Talmy connection.[19] Page's studio output in 1964 included Marianne Faithfull's "As Tears Go By", The Nashville Teens' "Tobacco Road", The Rolling Stones' "Heart of Stone" (released on Metamorphosis), Van Morrison & Them's "Baby Please Don't Go" and "Here Comes the Night", Dave Berry's "The Crying Game" and "My Baby Left Me", Brenda Lee's "Is It True," & and Petula Clark's "Downtown." Under the auspices of producer Talmy, Page contributed to The Kinks' 1964 debut album and he played six-string rhythm guitar on the sessions for The Who's first single "I Can't Explain"[18] (although Pete Townshend was reluctant to allow Page's contribution on the final recording, Page also played lead guitar on the B-side "Bald Headed Woman").[20]
In 1965 Page was hired by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham to act as house producer and A&R man for the newly-formed Immediate Records label, which also allowed him to play on and/or produce tracks by John Mayall, Nico, Chris Farlowe, Twice as Much and Eric Clapton. Page also formed a brief songwriting partnership with then romantic interest, Jackie DeShannon. He also composed and recorded songs for the John Williams (not the classical guitarist) album The Maureeny Wishful Album with Big Jim Sullivan. Page worked as session musician on Donovan Leitch's Sunshine Superman 1966 & the Johnny Hallyday albums "Jeune Homme" (1968) and "Je Suis Né Dans La Rue" (1969), the Al Stewart album Love Chronicles in 1969, and played guitar on five tracks of Joe Cocker's debut album, With a Little Help from My Friends.
When questioned about which songs he played on, especially ones where there exists some controversy as to what his exact role was, Page often points out that it is hard to remember exactly what he did given the huge number of sessions he was playing at the time.[18][19] In a radio interview he explained that "I was doing three sessions a day, fifteen sessions a week. Sometimes I would be playing with a group, sometimes I could be doing film music, it could be a folk session ... I was able to fit all these different roles."[12] Although Page recorded with many notable musicians, many of these early tracks are only available through bootlegged copies, several of which were released by the Led Zeppelin fan club in the late 1970s. One of the rarest of these is the early jam session featuring Jimmy Page playing with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, featuring a cover of "Little Queen of Spades" by Robert Johnson. Several songs which featured Page's involvement were compiled on the twin album release: Jimmy Page: Session Man Vol. 1 and Jimmy Page: Session Man Vol. 2.
Page decided to leave studio work when the increasing influence of Stax Records on popular music led to the greater incorporation of brass and orchestral arrangements into recordings at the expense of guitars.[13] However, he has stated that his time as a session player served as extremely good schooling for his development as a musician:
The Yardbirds, 1967. Clockwise from left: Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Keith Relf, Jim McCarty, and Chris Dreja.
In late 1964, Page was approached about the possibility of replacing Eric Clapton in The Yardbirds, but he declined the offer out of loyalty to his friend.[14]
In February 1965 Clapton quit the Yardbirds, and Page was formally
offered Clapton's spot, but because he was unwilling to give up his
lucrative career as a session musician, and because he was still worried
about his health under touring conditions, he suggested his friend,
Jeff Beck.[21] On 16 May 1966, drummer Keith Moon, bass player John Paul Jones, keyboardist Nicky Hopkins, Jeff Beck and Page recorded "Beck's Bolero" in London's IBC Studios. The experience gave Page an idea to form a new supergroup featuring Beck, along with The Who's John Entwistle on bass and Keith Moon on drums.[14]
However, the lack of a quality vocalist and contractual problems
prevented the project from getting off the ground. During this time,
Moon suggested the name "Lead Zeppelin" for the first time, after Entwistle commented that the proceedings would take to the air like a lead balloon.
Within weeks, Page attended a Yardbirds concert at Oxford. After the show he went backstage where Paul Samwell-Smith announced that he was leaving the group.[13] Page offered to replace Samwell-Smith and this was accepted by the group. He initially played electric bass with the Yardbirds before finally switching to twin lead guitar with Beck when Chris Dreja moved to bass. The musical potential of the line-up was scuttled, however, by interpersonal conflicts caused by constant touring and a lack of commercial success, although they released one single, "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago". (While Page and Jeff Beck played together in The Yardbirds, the trio of Page, Beck and Clapton never played in the original group at the same time. The three guitarists did appear on stage together at the ARMS charity concerts in 1983.)
After Beck's departure, the Yardbirds remained a quartet. They recorded one album with Page on lead guitar, Little Games. The album received indifferent reviews and was not a commercial success, peaking at only number 80 on the Billboard Music Charts. Though their studio sound was fairly commercial at the time, the band's live performances were just the opposite, becoming heavier and more experimental. These concerts featured musical aspects that Page would later perfect with Led Zeppelin, most notably performances of "Dazed and Confused".
After the departure of Keith Relf and Jim McCarty in 1968, Page reconfigured the group with a new line-up to fulfill unfinished tour dates in Scandinavia. As he said:
Often viewed by critics and fans alike as one of the most influential and important guitarists and songwriters ever in rock music,[1][2][3] Rolling Stone magazine has described him as "the pontiff of power riffing & probably the most digitally sampled artist in pop today after James Brown."[4] In 2010, Jimmy Page was ranked #2 in Gibson's list of "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time"[5] and, in 2007, #4 on Classic Rock Magazine's "100 Wildest Guitar Heroes".[6] Page was ranked ninth in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" in 2003.[7] He has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice; once as a member of The Yardbirds (1992),[8] and once as a member of Led Zeppelin (1995).[9]
Jimmy Page was born to parents James and Patricia Page in the West London suburb of Heston, which today forms part of the London Borough of Hounslow. His father was an industrial personnel manager and his mother was a doctor's secretary. In 1952 they moved to Feltham, and later again to Miles Road, Epsom in Surrey, which is where Page came across his first guitar. "I don't know whether [the guitar] was left behind by the people [in the house] before [us], or whether it was a friend of the family's — nobody seemed to know why it was there."[10] First playing the instrument at the age of twelve years,[11] he took a few lessons in nearby Kingston, but was largely self-taught:
When I grew up there weren't many other guitarists ... There was one other guitarist in my school who actually showed me the first chords that I learned, and I went on from there. I was bored so I taught myself the guitar from listening to records. So obviously it was a very personal thing.[12]Among Page's early influences were rockabilly guitarists Scotty Moore and James Burton, who both played on recordings made by Elvis Presley. Hearing the Elvis Presley song "Baby Let's Play House" is cited by Page as being his inspiration to take up playing the guitar.[13] Although he appears on BBC1 in 1957 with another guitar, Page states that his first guitar was a second-hand 1959 Futurama Grazioso, which was later replaced by a Telecaster.[13][14]
Page's musical tastes included skiffle (a popular English music genre of the time) and acoustic folk playing, particularly that of Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, and the blues sounds of Elmore James, B.B. King, Willie Dixon, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Freddie King and Hubert Sumlin.[15] "Basically, that was the start: a mixture between rock and blues."[13]
At the age of 13, Page appeared on Huw Wheldon's All Your Own talent quest programme in a skiffle quartet, one performance of which aired on BBC TV in 1957. The group played "Mama Don't Want To Skiffle Anymore" and another very American-flavoured song, "In Them Ol' Cottonfields Back Home". Televised Contest. When asked by Wheldon what he wanted to do after schooling, Page said, "I want to do biological research" to find a cure for "cancer, if it isn't discovered by then".
In an interview with Guitar Player magazine, Page stated that "there was a lot of busking in the early days, but as they say, I had to come to grips with it, and it was a good schooling."[13] Page would take a guitar to school each day and have it confiscated and handed back to him at 4:00 P.M.[16] Although he had an interview for a job as a laboratory assistant, he ultimately chose to leave Danetree Secondary School, West Ewell, to pursue music instead.[16]
Initially, Page had difficulty finding other musicians with whom he could play on a regular basis. "It wasn't as though there was an abundance. I used to play in many groups... anyone who could get a gig together, really."[14] Following stints backing recitals by Beat poet Royston Ellis at the Mermaid Theatre between 1960–61,[17] and singer Red E. Lewis, he was asked by singer Neil Christian to join his band, The Crusaders, after Christian had seen a fifteen-year-old Page playing in a local hall.[14] Page toured with Christian for approximately two years and later played on several of his records, including the November 1962 single, "The Road to Love".
During his stint with Christian, Page fell seriously ill with glandular fever (infectious mononucleosis) and couldn't continue touring.[14] While recovering, he decided to put his musical career on hold and concentrate on his other love, painting, and enrolled at Sutton Art College in Surrey.[3] As he explained in 1975:
[I was] travelling around all the time in a bus. I did that for two years after I left school, to the point where I was starting to get really good bread. But I was getting ill. So I went back to art college. And that was a total change in direction. That's why I say it's possible to do. As dedicated as I was to playing the guitar, I knew doing it that way was doing me in forever. Every two months I had glandular fever. So for the next 18 months I was living on ten dollars a week and getting my strength up. But I was still playing.[11]
[edit] Session musician
While still a student, Page would often jam on stage at The Marquee with bands such as Cyril Davies' All Stars, Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated and with guitarists Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. He was spotted one night by John Gibb of Brian Howard & The Silhouettes, who asked him to help record a number of singles for Columbia Graphophone Company, including "The Worrying Kind". It wasn't until an offer from Mike Leander of Decca Records that Page was to receive regular studio work. His first session for the label was the recording "Diamonds" by Jet Harris and Tony Meehan, which went to Number 1 on the singles chart in early 1963.[14]After brief stints with Carter-Lewis and the Southerners, Mike Hurst and the Method, and Mickey Finn and the Blue Men, Page committed himself to full-time session work. As a session guitarist he was known as 'Little Jim' so there was no confusion with other noted British session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan. Page was mainly called in to sessions as "insurance" in instances when a replacement or second guitarist was required by the recording artist. "It was usually myself and a drummer", he explained, "though they never mention the drummer these days, just me ... Anyone needing a guitarist either went to Big Jim [Sullivan] or myself."[14] He has also stated that "In the initial stages they just said, play what you want, cos at that time I couldn't read music or anything."[18]
Page was the favoured session guitarist of producer Shel Talmy, and therefore he ended up doing session work on songs for The Who and The Kinks as a direct result of the Talmy connection.[19] Page's studio output in 1964 included Marianne Faithfull's "As Tears Go By", The Nashville Teens' "Tobacco Road", The Rolling Stones' "Heart of Stone" (released on Metamorphosis), Van Morrison & Them's "Baby Please Don't Go" and "Here Comes the Night", Dave Berry's "The Crying Game" and "My Baby Left Me", Brenda Lee's "Is It True," & and Petula Clark's "Downtown." Under the auspices of producer Talmy, Page contributed to The Kinks' 1964 debut album and he played six-string rhythm guitar on the sessions for The Who's first single "I Can't Explain"[18] (although Pete Townshend was reluctant to allow Page's contribution on the final recording, Page also played lead guitar on the B-side "Bald Headed Woman").[20]
In 1965 Page was hired by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham to act as house producer and A&R man for the newly-formed Immediate Records label, which also allowed him to play on and/or produce tracks by John Mayall, Nico, Chris Farlowe, Twice as Much and Eric Clapton. Page also formed a brief songwriting partnership with then romantic interest, Jackie DeShannon. He also composed and recorded songs for the John Williams (not the classical guitarist) album The Maureeny Wishful Album with Big Jim Sullivan. Page worked as session musician on Donovan Leitch's Sunshine Superman 1966 & the Johnny Hallyday albums "Jeune Homme" (1968) and "Je Suis Né Dans La Rue" (1969), the Al Stewart album Love Chronicles in 1969, and played guitar on five tracks of Joe Cocker's debut album, With a Little Help from My Friends.
When questioned about which songs he played on, especially ones where there exists some controversy as to what his exact role was, Page often points out that it is hard to remember exactly what he did given the huge number of sessions he was playing at the time.[18][19] In a radio interview he explained that "I was doing three sessions a day, fifteen sessions a week. Sometimes I would be playing with a group, sometimes I could be doing film music, it could be a folk session ... I was able to fit all these different roles."[12] Although Page recorded with many notable musicians, many of these early tracks are only available through bootlegged copies, several of which were released by the Led Zeppelin fan club in the late 1970s. One of the rarest of these is the early jam session featuring Jimmy Page playing with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, featuring a cover of "Little Queen of Spades" by Robert Johnson. Several songs which featured Page's involvement were compiled on the twin album release: Jimmy Page: Session Man Vol. 1 and Jimmy Page: Session Man Vol. 2.
Page decided to leave studio work when the increasing influence of Stax Records on popular music led to the greater incorporation of brass and orchestral arrangements into recordings at the expense of guitars.[13] However, he has stated that his time as a session player served as extremely good schooling for his development as a musician:
My session work was invaluable. At one point I was playing at least three sessions a day, six days a week! And I rarely ever knew in advance what I was going to be playing. But I learned things even on my worst sessions -- and believe me, I played on some horrendous things. I finally called it quits after I started getting calls to do Muzak. I decided I couldn't live that life anymore; it was getting too silly. I guess it was destiny that a week after I quit doing sessions Paul Samwell-Smith left The Yardbirds, and I was able to take his place. But being a session musician was good fun in the beginning -- the studio discipline was great. They'd just count the song off, and you couldn't make any mistakes.[15]
[edit] The Yardbirds
Main article: The Yardbirds
Within weeks, Page attended a Yardbirds concert at Oxford. After the show he went backstage where Paul Samwell-Smith announced that he was leaving the group.[13] Page offered to replace Samwell-Smith and this was accepted by the group. He initially played electric bass with the Yardbirds before finally switching to twin lead guitar with Beck when Chris Dreja moved to bass. The musical potential of the line-up was scuttled, however, by interpersonal conflicts caused by constant touring and a lack of commercial success, although they released one single, "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago". (While Page and Jeff Beck played together in The Yardbirds, the trio of Page, Beck and Clapton never played in the original group at the same time. The three guitarists did appear on stage together at the ARMS charity concerts in 1983.)
After Beck's departure, the Yardbirds remained a quartet. They recorded one album with Page on lead guitar, Little Games. The album received indifferent reviews and was not a commercial success, peaking at only number 80 on the Billboard Music Charts. Though their studio sound was fairly commercial at the time, the band's live performances were just the opposite, becoming heavier and more experimental. These concerts featured musical aspects that Page would later perfect with Led Zeppelin, most notably performances of "Dazed and Confused".
After the departure of Keith Relf and Jim McCarty in 1968, Page reconfigured the group with a new line-up to fulfill unfinished tour dates in Scandinavia. As he said:
To this end, Page recruited vocalist Robert Plant and drummer John Bonham, and he was also contacted by John Paul Jones who asked to join.[23] During the Scandinavian tour the new group appeared as "The New Yardbirds", but soon recalled the old joke by Keith Moon and John Entwistle. Page stuck with that name to use for his new band. Peter Grant changed it to "Led Zeppelin", to avoid a mispronunciation of "Leed Zeppelin."[24]Once [the other Yardbirds] decided not to continue, then I was going to continue. And shift the whole thing up a notch ... The whole thing was putting a group together and actually being able to play together. There were a lot of virtuoso musicians around at the time who didn't gel as a band. That was the key: to find a band that was going to fire on all cylinders.[22]
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