Jimmy Page: The Rolling Stone Interview

What are your earliest rock & roll memories? Britain was still recovering from World War II when the music landed there in the Fifties.
I haven’t read Keith Richards’ book. But from how other people have described it, my experience was exactly the same: listening to these records, learning from them. This was the first generation that wasn’t being conscripted into the army. It was a generation that was going to shape things with this freedom.

You had the freedom but not the prosperity.
We didn’t need it, apart from the fact that we needed some to acquire a guitar. Getting a guitar was like dreaming about a Cadillac. It was something you would see on albums by Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps and Buddy Holly.

Buddy Holly came over here [in 1958]. I couldn’t afford to see him. I would have learned so much, in one evening. I did see Jerry Lee Lewis. That was tribal. He wasn’t a guitarist — he was a pianist. But it was what he represented.

You are an only child. Your father was a personnel manager, and your mother was a secretary. What were their ambitions for you?
I investigated biochemistry. But I had a voracious appetite for all things guitar. When we moved to Epsom, there was one in the house. It was like divine intervention. There weren’t that many guitarists in the area, but there was one guy at school who said, “Bring it along. I’ll tune it up and show you some chords.” I probably played three chords for the next year. I took over my parents’ living room as my music studio. At 15, I was playing in a band. I had been headhunted out of Epsom and was playing gigs in London.

It’s amazing that Britain’s founding guitar heroes — Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and yourself — grew up at the same time in the same London suburb, Surrey, and played, at different times, in the same band, the Yardbirds.
I didn’t meet Eric until later, when I was doing sessions. Jeffs sister was going to art college and heard about this freak playing guitar. Her brother was a freak playing guitar as well. She thought they should get together, and she was right. Jeff came ’round with a homemade guitar, and we had all sorts of discussions about the solo on “My Babe.” [Roy Buchanan played the break on Dale Hawkins’ 1958 single.]

Later, you produced Claptons great 1965 single with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, “I’m Your Witchdoctor.” What impressed you about Clapton?
His solo in [the Yardbirds’] “I Ain’t Got You” is something else. And he got the feeling of tremolo before anyone else over here. He had such an understanding of the blues. It was paramount — he was a purist. But he did it so well — beautiful, lyrical.

Do you have any idea how many records you played on as a session guitarist in the mid-Sixties?
No. When it was a novelty, I’d pick up the singles. I’ve got copies of the very early stuff I did. But after a while, it wasn’t cost-effective. I’d be pulled in to play with bands or other session musicians who were trying to re-create what was on the charts, especially when people started doing Chess-R&B-style records. I’d been playing and living that.

What do you play on the Who’s “I Can’t Explain”?
I don’t know, really, why I was brought in. I’m playing the riff, in the background — behind Pete Townshend. I didn’t need to be there. You can barely hear me. But it was magical to be in the control room, listening back. You can’t be more privileged than that.

You played on a rare solo project by Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones — his soundtrack to the 1967 film “A Degree of Murder.” How well did you know the Stones then?
I met Mick [Jagger] and Keith in the back of a van, going to a blues festival in Birmingham. I went because I really wanted to see John Lee Hooker. We ended up at a blues collector’s house, who had the Howlin’ Wolf record with the rocking chair on the cover [1962’s Howlin Wolf]. It had just been imported.

I didn’t know Mick and Keith as well as I knew Jeff. But I’d seen Brian at the Ealing Jazz Club. I saw him play bottleneck guitar. I was struggling with the Elmore James stuff. Suddenly, it clicked. It was in the tuning. He was doing it.

What state was Jones in at that session? It was only a couple of years before his death.
It might have been Stu [Stones roadie-pianist Ian Stewart] who called me. Brian knew what he was doing. It was quite beautiful. Some of it was made up at the time; some of it was stuff I was augmenting with him. I know I was definitely playing with the [violin] bow. Brian had this guitar that had a volume pedal — he could get gunshots with it. There was a Mellotron there. He was moving forward with ideas.

I was surprised when you mentioned, the other day, that you never met Jimi Hendrix or saw him perform. You must be the only British guitarist who didn’t see Hendrix — and get blown away — after he got there in 1966.
It wasn’t a lack of will. I wanted to see him. But I was doing studio dates and touring with the Yardbirds. Jeff came ’round and was telling me about how this guy got up at London Polytechnic, jammed and taken them all by surprise. I remember I was back in London after a Zeppelin tour, and Hendrix was playing the next night at the Royal Albert Hall. I was pretty shot and thought, “I’d really like to see him.” But I’d heard all these wonderful stories of him playing in clubs: “I’ll wait and see him next time ’round.” For me, there wasn’t going to be a next time.

The only time I actually saw him was at a club called Salvation in New York. He was across the room from where I was sitting with some friends. I was going to go over and say, “I’m sorry I missed the London concert.” Then he was leaving with the people who were with him. And he looked a little worse for wear. I thought, “There will be a more favorable time.” In the end, there wasn’t.

One of your rarest records is “Live Yard-birds!” a 1971 release of a ’68 performance by the Yardbirds in New York. You forced the label to withdraw it. Will you ever reissue it?
I’ve been going through my personal archives over the last few years. And I found the tapes. At the time, I was looking forward to going into the studio and doing proper recording with the Yardbirds. We were moving in the right direction, in some of the things we were doing in our live set.

But the label made this recording, and overdubbed this stuff that sounded like people at a cocktail bar, cheers you get when someone hits a home run. Then once Led Zeppelin became popular, they put it out. It would be good to put it out again. It would certainly involve a remix, to get rid of the cocktail bar noise. Because it wasn’t there. If you think of the responses to some of Led Zeppelin’s early concerts, like the applause on the Danish TV footage, people weren’t screaming and shouting. It was a polite, respectful applause. You can hear people reacting to things.

How much was your time in the Yardbirds — with Beck, then after he left — a trial run for the ideas you eventually pursued with Led Zeppelin? There’s a 1968 Yardbirds B side, “Think About It,” that sounds like an outtake from the first Zeppelin album.
The solo from that is almost identical to the ones in “Dazed and Confused” and “Communication Breakdown.” That’s just the way I played — this ferocious episode, real fast.

What I did in the Yardbirds was bring out some of the ideas and textures that I hadn’t been able to do in sessions. Some of it was successful. Some of it wasn’t. We had one song, “Drinking Muddy Water” [on 1967’s Little Games]. I asked Stu to play piano with us. We figured out an arrangement, got one complete take, and [producer] Mickie Most said, “Next!” Stu was in shock — the Stones took a lot longer than that. And attention was paid to every track.

I learned a lot in those days, how to approach recording. It wasn’t looking at your watch but investing your time well. That’s quite clear by the time you get to the first Zeppelin album, because you’ve got the musicians to do it.

In fact, the Who’s drummer, Keith Moon, came up with the name Led Zeppelin at a 1966 session you produced for Jeff Beck, “Beck’s Bolero.” And it was supposed to be for an entirely different band.
The band was John Paul Jones on bass, Keith Moon, Nicky Hopkins on piano, and myself and Jeff on guitars. This session was absolutely magnificent, like a force of nature. Keith was having troubles in the Who. He’s going, “We should form a band with this.” Singers were put forth. Steve Winwood was one.

It might have been Keith who approached Steve Marriott of the Small Faces. That filtered back to [that band’s fearsome manager] Don Arden. The response, to Keith, was “How would you like to play in a band with broken fingers?” The enthusiasm dissolved overnight.

Keith came up with the name: “We can call it Led Zeppelin, because it can only go down, like a lead balloon.” I thought it was a great name, and I didn’t forget it. Jeff could just as easily have called his band Led Zeppelin. We could have called ours Carrots, and it wouldn’t have made any difference. It still would have done what it did.