Saturday 4 January 2014

Jimmy Page at 70

The 9th January will mark the 70th birthday of Jimmy Page. His importance in music can't be overestimated. Following the success and subsequent demise of the Beatles, the baton which had started with Elvis Presley in 1955 was once more up for grabs. The music world watched to see who would take up that baton. Jimmy Page was the man who did.

The sixties was the decade when rock and roll grew up. Bob Dylan wrote the soundtrack which would influence just about everybody who followed. The Beatles headed the British response and the Americans gave us the Byrds and the Beach Boys. The early sixties saw the growth of blues orientated music. Championed by the Rolling Stones, The Who and The Animals, the blues drew on the early bluesmen of the late 1920s and the 1930s. The guitar arrived as the tool of choice to showcase the blues. While Jimi Hendrix was the star player of that instrument, the band which became most associated with it was The Yardbirds. Their first guitar man left to form Cream, arguably the first of the so called supergroups. Eric Clapton was the man who first took the guitar to a new level in the '60s. His departure paved the way for the mercurial Jeff Beck. When Beck was good, he was very, very good but he also had off days and proved a rather unpredictable performer. It is grossly unfair that many British listeners continue to remember him for the gruesome "Hi Ho Silver Lining".

The Yardbirds bass player Paul Samwell Smith departed and the best session guitarist form the vibrant London scene jumped at the chance to join. It says a lot about Jimmy Page that he chose the Yardbirds because he could have walked in to any group he liked. He appreciated their reputation for guitar players and the vacant bass guitar role was a potential passport to lead guitar with the Yardbirds. He was right because he was soon playing dual lead guitars with Jeff Beck. The subsequent departure of Beck left Page with the lead guitar all to himself in the group most synonymous with it.

After just album, the singer Keith Relf and drummer Jim McCarty left and Page resolved to honour the existing tour arrangements with new personnel. The rest is history. Initially, they were billed as the New Yardbirds to cash in on the familiar Yardbirds name. That name had to be dropped for legal reasons and, in the month of my birth, the manager, Peter Grant, secured a record deal with Atlantic for the newly named Led Zeppelin. Music was never the same after that.

If the Beatles had dominated the '60s, the '70s belonged to Led Zeppelin from the moment that first album was released in 1968. Their sound was vibrant, dynamic and completely original. It spawned the heavy metal genre and while many sought to emulate,  Led Zeppelin reigned supreme. The personnel in the new band gelled from the word go and under the direction of Page, their guitar orientated rock was received with open arms by the youth of America. In John Bonham, he recruited probably the finest drummer of them all. Their ability to fluctuate between light and heavy was largely down to the skill of their percussion man. To complete their rhythm section, Page turned to a fellow session man in John Paul Jones. Only John Entwistle of The Who was a finer player. It was ironically a joke shared between Entwistle and Keith Moon which provided Led Zeppelin with their name. Finally, he took on a young singer who nobody had heard of. In a short time, the name of Robert Plant was know to just about everyone.

Their first two albums were released in 1968 and 1969 respectively and were like a blitzkrieg. Neither album showed a glimmer of weakness and the songs were soon inspiring a completely new genre. Off the first album, "Dazed and Confused", "Communication Breakdown" and "Babe I'm gonna leave you" were unlike anything heard before. The second album just got better with songs like "Whole lotta love", "Heartbreaker" and "Livin' lovin' maid". Amazingly, the third album was considered a disappointment by the critics. More acoustic than the first two, it reflected the music scene at that time and still stands up as a magnificent collection. After the fourth album, superstardom was beyond question. For most people, this was the best and once again, a succession of incredible tracks jumped out.

Three days after my third birthday, Led Zepellin released their fourth album in three years. The first side alone is a like a resume of rock's finest tracks. "Black Dog" was followed by "Rock and Roll", "The Battle of Evermore" and the peerless "Stairway to Heaven".

Although they continued to record until the death of Bonham in 1980, by the end of 1973, their reputation was assured. In so doing, Jimmy Page had become the most influential guitar player of them all. Riff after riff bore testimony to his originality and skill. His legacy is undeniable and it's hard to think of a more influential musician of the last 45 years. Happy birthday to the master of the riff and the power chord, James Patrick Page.  

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