Skiffle is a type of popular music with jazz, blues, folk, and roots influences, usually using homemade or improvised instruments. Originating as a term in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, it became popular again in the UK in the 1950s, where it was mainly associated with musician Lonnie Donegan and played a major part in beginning the careers of later eminent jazz, pop, blues, folk and rock musicians.

American skiffle[link]

Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers c. 1928

The origins of skiffle are obscure, but are generally thought to lie in African-American musical culture in the early twentieth century. Skiffle is often said to have developed from New Orleans jazz, but this claim has been disputed.^[1] Improvised jug bands playing blues and jazz were common across the American South in the early decades of the twentieth century, even if the term skiffle was not used to describe them.^[2]

They used instruments such as the washboard, jugs, tea chest bass, cigar-box fiddle, musical saw, and comb-and-paper kazoos, as well as more conventional instruments such as acoustic guitar and banjo.^[3] The term skiffle was one of many slang phrases for a rent party, a social event with a small charge designed to pay rent on a house.^[4] It was first recorded in Chicago in the 1920s, and may have been brought there as part of the African American migration to northern industrial cities.^[1]

The first use of the term on record was in 1925 in the name of Jimmy O'Bryant and his Chicago Skifflers. Most often it was used to describe country blues music records, which included the compilation "Hometown Skiffle" (1929), and "Skiffle Blues" (1946) by Dan Burley & His Skiffle Boys.^[5] It was used by Ma Rainey (1886–1939) to describe her repertoire to rural audiences.^[1] The term skiffle disappeared from American music in the 1940s.

Skiffle in Britain[link]

A relatively obscure genre, skiffle might have been largely forgotten if not for its revival in the United Kingdom in the 1950s and the success of its main proponent, Lonnie Donegan. British skiffle grew out of the developing post-war British jazz scene, which saw a move away from swing music and towards authentic trad jazz.^[1] Among these bands were Ken Colyer's Jazzmen, whose banjo player Donegan also performed skiffle music during intervals. He would sing and play guitar with accompaniment of two other members, usually on washboard and tea-chest bass. They played a variety of American folk and blues songs, particularly those derived from the recordings of Leadbelly, in a lively style that emulated American jug bands. These were listed on posters as "skiffle" breaks, a name suggested by Ken Colyer's brother Bill after recalling the Dan Burley Skiffle Group.^[6] Soon the breaks were as popular as the traditional jazz. After disagreements in 1954 Colyer left to form a new outfit, and the band became Chris Barber's Jazz Band.^[1]

The first British recordings of skiffle were carried out by Colyer's new band in 1954, but it was the release by Decca of two skiffle tracks by Barber's Jazz Band under the name of "The Lonnie Donegan Skiffle Group" in late 1955 that transformed the fortunes of skiffle.^[1] Donegan's high-tempo version of Leadbelly's "Rock Island Line", featuring a washboard (but not a tea-chest bass), with "John Henry" on the B-side, was a major hit in 1956. It spent eight months in the Top 20, peaking at #6 (and #8 in the U.S.). It was the first début record to go gold in Britain, selling over a million copies worldwide.^[1]

It was the success of this single, and the lack of a need for expensive instruments, or high levels of musicianship, that set off the British skiffle craze. A few bands enjoyed chart success in the skiffle craze, including The Chas McDevitt Group, Johnny Duncan and the Bluegrass Boys and The Vipers, but the main impact of skiffle was as a grassroots amateur movement, particularly popular among working class males, who could cheaply buy, improvise or build their own instruments and who have been seen as reacting against the drab austerity of post-war Britain.^[1][7] The craze probably reached its height with the broadcasting of the BBC TV programme Six-Five Special from 1957. It was the first British youth music programme, using a skiffle song as its title music and showcasing many skiffle acts.^[1]

It has been estimated that in the late 1950s there were 30-50,000 skiffle groups in Britain.^[6] Sales of guitars grew rapidly and other musicians were able to perform on improvised bass and percussion in venues such as church halls and cafes, and in the flourishing coffee bars of Soho, London, like The 2i's Coffee Bar, The Cat's Whisker and nightspots like Coconut Grove and Churchill's, without having to aspire to musical perfection or virtuosity.^[1] A large number of British musicians began their careers playing skiffle in this period and some became leading figures in their respective fields. These included leading Northern Irish musician Van Morrison, British blues pioneer Alexis Korner as well as Ronnie Wood, Alex Harvey and Mick Jagger; folk musicians Martin Carthy, John Renbourn and Ashley Hutchings; rock musicians Roger Daltrey, Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore, Robin Trower and David Gilmour; and popular beat music successes Graham Nash and Allan Clarke of The Hollies.^[8] Most notably The Beatles evolved from John Lennon's skiffle group The Quarrymen.^[9]

After splitting from Barber, Donegan went on to make a series of popular records as "Lonnie Donegan's Skiffle Group", with successes including "Cumberland Gap" (1957), "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour" (1958), and "My Old Man's a Dustman" (1960).^[1] However, the British rock and roll scene was starting to take off, producing home grown stars like Tommy Steele, Marty Wilde and Cliff Richard and The Shadows (themselves originally involved in skiffle). Donegan was the only skiffle act to make a serious impact on the charts and even he began to look outmoded. The skiffle craze was largely over by 1958 as its enthusiasts either abandoned music for more stable employment, or moved into some of the forms of music it had first suggested, including folk, the blues and rock and roll. As a result it has been seen as a critical stepping stone to the second British folk revival, blues boom and British Invasion.^[1]

Donegan continued his career in skiffle until his death in 2002.^[10] Several bands have taken up the form (such as The Ugly Dog Skiffle Combo, Skiffle and the Piffles, and The London Philharmonic Skiffle Orchestra) or returned to it, but attempts at a skiffle revival have failed to reach anything like the heights of the initial craze.^{[citation needed]}

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• My 20-year love affair with the joy of skiffle

Anthony James "Lonnie" Donegan MBE (29 April 1931 – 3 November 2002^[1]) was a skiffle musician, with more than 20 UK Top 30 hits to his name. He is known as the "King of Skiffle" and is often cited as a large influence on the generation of British musicians who became famous in the 1960s.^[2][3] The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles & Albums states Donegan was "Britain's most successful and influential recording artist before The Beatles. He chalked up 24 successive Top 30 hits, and was the first UK male to score two U.S. Top 10s".^[1]

Early life and trad jazz[link]

Born as Anthony James Donegan in Bridgeton, Glasgow, Scotland, the son of a professional violinist who had played with the Scottish National Orchestra, he moved with his family in 1933 to East Ham, Essex (now in Greater London).^[4]

Donegan was evacuated to Cheshire to escape the Blitz in World War II, and he attended St Ambrose College, initially at the school's original site in Dunham Road, Altrincham.

In the early 1940s he mostly listened to swing jazz and vocal acts, and became interested in the guitar.^[4] Country & western and blues records, particularly by Frank Crumit and Josh White, attracted his interest and he bought his first guitar at the age of fourteen in 1945.^[4] From listening to BBC radio broadcasts in the following years he began learning songs such as "Frankie and Johnny", "Puttin' On the Style", and "The House of the Rising Sun".^[4] By the end of the 1940s he was playing guitar around London and visiting small jazz clubs.^[5]

The first band he played in was the trad jazz band led by Chris Barber, who approached him on a train asking him if he wanted to audition for his band. Barber had heard that Donegan was a good banjo player; in fact, Donegan had never played the banjo at this point, but he bought one and tried to bluff his way through the audition. More on personality than playing, he was brought into Barber's band.^[4] His stint with the band was interrupted when he was called up for National Service in 1949, but his military service in Vienna gave him contact with American troops, and access to records as well as the opportunity to listen to the American Forces Network radio station.^[5]

In 1952 he formed his first group, the Tony Donegan Jazzband, which found some work around London. On one occasion they opened for the blues musician Lonnie Johnson at the Royal Festival Hall.^[4] Donegan was a fan of Johnson, and took his first name as a tribute to him. The story goes that the host at the concert got the musicians' names confused, calling them "Tony Johnson" and "Lonnie Donegan", and Donegan was happy to keep the name.^[6]

In 1953 cornetist Ken Colyer, enjoying hero status for having spent time in a New Orleans jail (due to a visa problem), returned to England and, when invited to play with Chris Barber's band, became a moving figure within it. With the new name, Ken Colyer's Jazzmen, the group, with Donegan, made its initial public appearance on 11 April 1953 in Copenhagen. The following day, Chris Albertson recorded the group (as well as a Monty Sunshine Trio, with Donegan and Barber) for Storyville Records. These were Donegan's first commercially released recordings.^{[citation needed]}

Skiffle[link]

While playing in Ken Colyer's Jazzmen with Chris Barber, Donegan sang and played both guitar and banjo as part of their Dixieland jazz set. He also began playing with two other band members during the intervals, to provide what was called on their posters a "skiffle" break, a name suggested by Ken Colyer's brother, Bill, after recalling the Dan Burley Skiffle Group of the 1930s.^[4] In 1954 Colyer left, and the band became Chris Barber's Jazz Band.^[5]

With a washboard, a tea-chest bass and a cheap Spanish guitar, Donegan entertained audiences with folk and blues songs by artists such as Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie.^[4] This proved so popular that in July 1954 he recorded a fast-tempoed version of Leadbelly's "Rock Island Line", featuring a washboard but not a tea-chest bass, with "John Henry" on the B-side.^[4] It was an enormous hit in 1956 (which also later inspired the creation of a full album, An Englishman Sings American Folk Songs, released in America on the Mercury label in the early 1960s) but ironically, because it was a band recording, Donegan made no money from this recording beyond his original session fee. (Nevertheless, Donegan received considerable music publishing royalties from "Rock Island" simply by claiming the British copyright on an unregistered song which was considered to be in the Public Domain. This led to the peculiar situation that any "cover" version of "Rock Island Line" which was released on record in Britain from 1956 showed the song composition credited to Lonnie Donegan.) It was the first debut record to go gold in the UK, and reached the Top Ten in the United States.^[4] His next single for Decca, "Diggin' My Potatoes", was recorded at a concert at the Royal Festival Hall on 30 October 1954.^[4] Decca dropped Donegan thereafter, but within a month he was at the Abbey Road Studios in London recording for EMI's Columbia label. He had left the Barber band by then, and by the spring of 1955, Donegan signed a recording contract with Pye. His next single "Lost John" reached #2 in the UK Singles Chart.^[4]

He travelled to the United States, where he appeared on television on both the Perry Como Show and the Paul Winchell Show.^[4] Returning to the UK, Donegan recorded his debut album, Lonnie Donegan Showcase, in the summer of 1956, which featured songs by Lead Belly and Leroy Carr, plus "I'm a Ramblin' Man" and "Wabash Cannonball". The LP was a hit, securing sales in the hundreds of thousands.^[4] The popular skiffle style encouraged amateurs to get started, and one of the many skiffle groups that followed was The Quarrymen formed in March 1957 by John Lennon. Donegan's "Gamblin' Man" / "Puttin' On the Style" single was number one on the UK chart in July 1957, when Lennon first met Paul McCartney.^[1]

Donegan went on to make a series of popular records with successes including "Cumberland Gap" and particularly "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (On The Bedpost Over Night)", his biggest hit song in the U.S., released on Dot.^[4] He turned to a music hall style with "My Old Man's a Dustman" which was not well received by skiffle fans, or in an attempted but ultimately unsuccessful American release by Atlantic in 1960, but it reached number one in the UK Singles Chart. Donegan's group had a flexible line-up, but was generally formed by Denny Wright or Les Bennetts (of Les Hobeaux and Chas McDevitt's skiffle groups) playing lead guitar and singing harmony vocals, Micky Ashman or Pete Huggett - later Steve Jones - on upright bass, Nick Nichols - later Pete Appleby and Mark Goodwin - on drums or percussion and Donegan playing acoustic guitar or banjo and singing the lead.^[4]

He continued to appear regularly in the UK charts until 1962, before succumbing to the arrival of The Beatles and beat music.^[4]

Later career[link]

Donegan recorded sporadically during the 1960s, including some sessions at Hickory Records in Nashville, Tennessee with Charlie McCoy, Floyd Cramer and The Jordanaires. After 1964, he was primarily occupied as a record producer for most of the decade at Pye Records. Among those he worked with during this period was Justin Hayward.^[4]

Donegan was unfashionable and generally ignored through the late 1960s and 1970s (although he wrote "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" for Tom Jones in 1967), and he began to play on the American cabaret circuit. A notable departure from his normal style was an a cappella recording of "The Party's Over". There was a reunion concert with the original Chris Barber band in Croydon in June 1975 - notable for a bomb scare, meaning that the recording had to be finished in the studio, though patrons were treated to an impromptu concert in the car park.^{[citation needed]} The resultant release was entitled The Great Re-Union Album.^[4]

He suffered his first heart attack in 1976 while in the United States and underwent quadruple bypass surgery. He returned to the public's attention in 1978, when he made a record of his early songs with such figures as Rory Gallagher, Ringo Starr, Elton John and Brian May called Putting on the Style.^[4] A follow-up album featuring Albert Lee saw Donegan working in a less familiar country and western vein. By 1980, he was making regular concert appearances again, and another album with Barber followed. In 1983 Donegan toured with Billie Jo Spears, and in 1984, he made his theatrical debut in a revival of the 1920 musical Mr. Cinders. More concert tours followed, along with a move from Florida to Spain. In 1992 Donegan underwent further bypass surgery following another heart attack.^[4]

In 1994, the Chris Barber band celebrated 40 years, with a tour with both bands. Pat Halcox was still on trumpet (a position he retained until July 2008). The reunion concert and the tour were recorded on CD and DVD.

Donegan experienced another late renaissance when in 2000 he appeared on Van Morrison's album The Skiffle Sessions - Live In Belfast 1998, a critically acclaimed album featuring Donegan sharing vocals with Van Morrison and also featuring Chris Barber, with a guest appearance by Dr. John. Donegan also played at the Glastonbury Festival, and was awarded the MBE in 2000.

Donegan's final CD was This Y'ere the Story

Family[link]

Donegan married three times. He had two daughters by his first wife, Maureen Tyler (divorced 1962), a son and a daughter by his second wife, Jill Westlake (divorced 1971), and three sons by his third wife, Sharon, whom he married in 1977. He was the second cousin three times removed of the Scottish Gaelic Footballer, Chris Pendergast.

Death[link]

Lonnie Donegan died in 2002, aged 71, after suffering a heart attack in Market Deeping mid-way through a UK tour and shortly before he was due to perform at a memorial concert for George Harrison with The Rolling Stones. He had suffered from cardiac problems since the 1970s and had several heart attacks in his last years.

Legacy[link]

Mark Knopfler released a tribute song to Donegan entitled "Donegan's Gone" on his 2004 album, Shangri-La, and said that he was one of his greatest musical influences.^[2] Donegan's music formed the basis for a musical starring his two sons. Lonnie D - The Musical took its name from the Chas & Dave tribute song which started the show. Subsequently, Peter Donegan formed a new band that performed his father's material and has since linked up with his father's band from the last 30 years with newcomer Eddie Masters on bass. They released an album together in 2009 entitled "Here We Go Again". Donegan's eldest son, Anthony, also formed his own band, under the name Lonnie Donegan Jnr.

On his album A Beach Full of Shells, Al Stewart paid tribute to Donegan in the song "Katherine of Oregon". Additionally, in the song "Class of '58", he describes a seminal British entertainer who is either Donegan or a composite including him.

Quotations[link]

NME - June 1956^[7]

• "In England, we were separated from our folk music tradition centuries ago and were imbued with the idea that music was for the upper classes. You had to be very clever to play music. When I came along with the old three chords, people began to think that if I could do it, so could they. It was the reintroduction of the folk music bridge which did that." — Interview, 2002.
• "He was the first person we had heard of from Britain to get to the coveted No. 1 in the charts, and we studied his records avidly. We all bought guitars to be in a skiffle group. He was the man." — Paul McCartney
• "He really was at the very cornerstone of English blues and rock." — Brian May.^[2]
• "I wanted to be Elvis Presley when I grew up, I knew that. But the man who really made me feel like I could actually go out and do it was a chap by the name of Lonnie Donegan." — Roger Daltrey
• "Remember, Lonnie Donegan started it for you." — Jack White's acceptance speech at the Brit Awards.^[8]

Discography[link]

Singles[link]

• "Rock Island Line" / "John Henry" (1955) - UK #8 †
• "Diggin' My Potatoes" / "Bury My Body" (1956) †
• "Lost John" / "Stewball" (1956) - UK #2 †
• "Bring A Little Water, Sylvie" / "Dead or Alive" (1956) ‡
• "On A Christmas Day" / "Take My Hand Precious Lord" (1956) ‡
• "Don't You Rock Me Daddy-O" (1957) - UK #4 ‡
• "Cumberland Gap" (1957) - UK #1 ‡
• "Gamblin' Man" / "Puttin' On the Style" (1957) - UK #1 ‡
• "My Dixie Darlin'" / "I'm Just a Rolling Stone" (1957) - UK #10 ‡
• "Jack O' Diamonds" / "Ham 'N' Eggs" (1957) - UK #14 ‡
• "The Grand Coulee Dam" / "Nobody Loves Like an Irishman" (1958) - UK #6 ‡
• "Midnight Special" / "When The Sun Goes Down" (1958) ‡
• "Sally Don't You Grieve" / "Betty, Betty, Betty" (1958) - UK #11 ‡
• "Lonesome Traveller" / "Times are Getting Hard Boys" (1958) - UK #28 ‡
• "Lonnie's Skiffle Party" / "Lonnie Skiffle Party Pt.2" (1958) - UK #23 ‡
• "Tom Dooley" / "Rock O' My Soul" (1958) - UK #3 ‡
• "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (On the Bedpost Overnight?)" / "Aunt Rhody" (1959) - UK #3 ‡
• "Fort Worth Jail" / "Whoa Buck" (1959) - UK #14 ‡
• "Fort Bewildered" / "Kevin Barry" / "It is No Secret" / "My Lagan Love Buck" (1959) ‡
• "Battle of New Orleans" / "Darling Corey" (1959) - UK #2 ‡
• "Sal's Got A Sugar Lip" / "Chesapeake Bay" (1959) - UK #13 ‡
• "Hold Back Tomorrow" - UK #26 ¶
• "San Miguel" / "Talking Guitar Blues" (1959) - UK #19 ‡
• "My Old Man's A Dustman" / "The Golden Vanity" (1960) - UK #1 ↑
• "I Wanna Go Home (Wreck Of the 'John B')" / "Jimmy Brown The Newsboy" (1960) - UK #5 ↓
• "Lorelei" / "In All My Wildest Dreams" (1960) - UK #10
• "Rockin' Alone" - UK #44 ♠
• "Lively" / "Black Cat (Cross My Path Today)" (1960) - UK #13 ↑
• "Virgin Mary" / "Beyond The Sunset" (1960) - UK #27
• "(Bury Me) Beneath The Willow" / "Leave My Woman Alone" (1961)
• "Have A Drink on Me" / "Seven Daffodils" (1961) - UK #8 ↑
• "Michael, Row the Boat" / "Lumbered" (1961) - UK #6 ↑
• "The Comancheros" / "Ramblin' Round" (1961) - UK #14
• "The Party's Over" / "Over the Rainbow" (1962) - UK #9
• "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" / "Keep on the Sunny Side" (1962)
• "Pick A Bale of Cotton" / "Steal Away" (1962) - UK #11 ↑
• "The Market Song" / "Tit-Bits" (1962)
• "Losing By A Hair" / "Trumpet Sounds" (1963)
• "It Was A Very Good Year" / "Rise Up" (1963)
• "Lemon Tree" / "I've Gotta Girl So Far" (1963)
• "500 Miles Away From Home" / "This Train" (1963)
• "Beans in My Ears" / "It's a Long Road to Travel" (1964)
• "Fisherman's Luck" / "There's A Big Wheel" (1964)
• "Get Out Of My Life" / "Won't You Tell Me" (1965)
• "Louisiana Man" / "Bound For Zion" (1965)
• "World Cup Willie" / "Where In This World are We Going" (1966)
• "I Wanna Go Home" / "Black Cat (Cross My Path Today)" (1966)
• "Aunt Maggie's Remedy" / "(Ah) My Sweet Marie" (1967)
• "Toys" / "Relax Your Mind" (1968)
• "My Lovely Juanita" / "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" (1969)
• "Speak To The Sky" / "Get Out of My Life" (1972)
• "Jump Down Turn Around (Pick a Bale of Cotton)" / "Lost John Blues" (1973 - Australia only release)

^[1]

Albums[link]

• Lonnie Donegan Showcase (December 1956) - UK # 2; UK #26 ‡
  • "Wabash Cannonball" / "How Long" / "How Long Blues" / "Nobody's Child" / "I Shall Not Be Moved" / "I'm Alabamy Bound" / "I'm a Rambling Man" / "Wreck of the Old 97" / "Frankie and Johnny"
• Lonnie (November 1957) - UK # 3
• Tops with Lonnie (September 1958)
• Lonnie Rides Again (May 1959)
• Does Your Chewing Gum Lose It's Flavour (On The Bedpost Overnight) (1961)
• More! Tops with Lonnie (April 1961)
• Sing Hallelujah (December 1962)
• The Lonnie Donegan Folk Album (August 1965)
• Lonniepops - Lonnie Donegan Today (1970)
• The Great Re-Union Album (1974)
• Lonnie Donegan Meets Leinemann (1974)
• Country Roads (1976)
• Puttin' on the Style (February 1978)
  • Including guest musicians Rory Gallagher, Elton John, Brian May and Ringo Starr amongst others.
• Sundown (May 1979)
• Muleskinner Blues (January 1999)
  • The song "Lost John" was used to open the John Peel tribute album
• This Y'ere The Story (2000?)
• The Skiffle Sessions - Live in Belfast (2000) - UK #14 †
  • Recorded November 1998 with Van Morrison, Chris Barber and others.
• The Last Tour (2006)

^[1]

Compilation albums[link]

• Golden Age of Donegan (1962) - UK #3
• Golden Age of Donegan Volume 2 (1963) - UK #15
• Putting On the Style (1978) - UK #51
• King of Skiffle (1998)
• Puttin' On the Style - The Greatest Hits (2003) - UK #45

^[1]

EPs[link]

• Skiffle Session (EP) (1956) - UK #20 †
  • "Railroad Bill" / "Stockalee" / "Ballad of Jesse James" / "Ol' Riley"

Billing[link]

Most of the above records were accredited to Lonnie Donegan; except, as follows:
† Billed as the Lonnie Donegan Skiffle Group
‡ Billed as Lonnie Donegan and his Skiffle Group
¶ Billed as Lonnie Donegan meets Miki & Griff with the Lonnie Donegan Group
↑ Billed as Lonnie Donegan and his Group
↓ Billed as Lonnie Donegan and Wally Stott's Orchestra
♠ Billed as Miki and Griff with the Lonnie Donegan Group

^[1]

See also[link]

• List of honorific titles in popular music

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Lonnie Donegan Discussion Forum
• Go Lonnie go – article by Billy Bragg for The Guardian
• My Memories of Lonnie Donegan by Paul Griggs
• Lonnie Donegan biography and discography
• Lonnie Donegan and his Skiffle Group
• His Old Man’s the Guv’nor – article by Alan Franks
• My twenty-year love affair with the joy of skiffle, article by Mark Kermode The Observer, 1 June 2008

Jimmy Page
Jimmy Page onstage in Chicago in 1977
Background information
Birth name	James Patrick Page
Born	(1944-01-09) 9 January 1944 (age 68) Heston, Middlesex, England
Genres	Hard rock, heavy metal, blues rock, rock and roll, folk rock
Occupations	Musician, songwriter, producer
Instruments	Guitar, mandolin, dulcimer, theremin, bass guitar, banjo, harmonica, dobro, sitar, keyboards, tambourine, tambura, hurdy gurdy, pedal steel guitar, synthesizer, vocals, guitar synthesizer, lap steel guitar, slide guitar
Years active	1957–present
Labels	Swan Song, Atlantic, Geffen, Fontana, Mercury
Associated acts	The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, The Honeydrippers, The Firm, Coverdale and Page, Page and Plant, Herman's Hermits, XYZ, Joe Cocker, The Edge, Jack White, Donovan, The Black Crowes
Website	Official website
Notable instruments
Jimmy Page Signature Les Paul Gibson EDS-1275 Fender Telecaster Danelectro 59DC Custom Manson guitars [1] Jolana Resonet[2]

James Patrick "Jimmy" Page, OBE (born 9 January 1944) is an English guitarist, 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.

Jimmy Page is viewed by critics, fans and fellow musicians alike as one of the most influential and important guitarists and songwriters in rock music.^[3][4][5] Rolling Stone magazine has described him as "the pontiff of power riffing & probably the most digitally sampled artist in pop today after James Brown."^[6] In 2010, Jimmy Page was ranked No.2 in Gibson's list of "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time"^[7] and, in 2007, No.4 on Classic Rock Magazine's "100 Wildest Guitar Heroes".^[8] Page was ranked third in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" in 2011.^[9] He has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice; once as a member of The Yardbirds (1992),^[10] and once as a member of Led Zeppelin (1995).^[11]

Early years[link]

Jimmy Page was born to James Patrick Page and Patricia Elizabeth Page (née Gaffikin)^[12][13] 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."^[14] First playing the instrument at the age of twelve years,^[15] 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.^[16]

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.^[17] 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.^[17][18]

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, Muddy Waters, Freddie King and Hubert Sumlin.^[19] "Basically, that was the start: a mixture between rock and blues."^[17]

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". 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."^[17] Page would take a guitar to school each day and have it confiscated and handed back to him at 4:00 pm^[20] 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.^[20]

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."^[18] Following stints backing recitals by Beat poet Royston Ellis at the Mermaid Theatre between 1960–61,^[21] 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.^[18] 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.^[18] 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.^[5] 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.^[15]

Session musician[link]

While still a student, Page would often perform 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". Mike Leander of Decca Records first offered Page 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.^[18]

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."^[18] 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."^[22]

Page was the favoured session guitarist of producer Shel Talmy. As a result, he secured session work on songs for The Who and The Kinks.^[23] Page is credited with playing acoustic twelve string guitar on two tracks on The Kinks' debut album "I'm a Lover Not a Fighter" and "I've Been Driving On Bald Mountain"^[24] and possibly on the b-side "I Gotta Move".^[25] He played six-string rhythm guitar on the sessions for The Who's first single "I Can't Explain"^[22] (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").^[26] 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".

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^[27] album The Maureeny Wishful Album with Big Jim Sullivan. Page worked as session musician on Donovan Leitch's Sunshine Superman (1966) and the Johnny Hallyday albums Jeune Homme (1968) and Je Suis Né Dans La Rue (1969), the Al Stewart album Love Chronicles (1969), and played guitar on five tracks of Joe Cocker's debut album, With a Little Help from My Friends. Over the years since 1970 Page has played lead guitar on 10 Roy Harper tracks, comprising 81 minutes of music.

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 enormous number of sessions he was playing at the time.^[22][23] 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."^[16]

Although Page recorded with many notable musicians, many of these early tracks are only available as bootleg recordings, 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 and Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards covering Robert Johnson's "Little Queen of Spades". Several early tracks with Page were compiled on the twin album release, Jimmy Page: Session Man.

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.^[17] 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 any more; 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.^[19]

The Yardbirds[link]

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.^[18] 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.^[28] 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.^[18] 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.^[17] 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 fulfil unfinished tour dates in Scandinavia. As he said:

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.^[29]

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.^[30] 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."^[31]

Led Zeppelin[link]

Page has explained that he had a very specific idea in mind as to what he wanted Led Zeppelin to be, from the very beginning:

I had a lot of ideas from my days with The Yardbirds. The Yardbirds allowed me to improvise a lot in live performance and I started building a textbook of ideas that I eventually used in Zeppelin. In addition to those ideas, I wanted to add acoustic textures. Ultimately, I wanted Zeppelin to be a marriage of blues, hard rock and acoustic music topped with heavy choruses – a combination that had never been done before. Lots of light and shade in the music.^[19]

Post-Led Zeppelin career[link]

Page at the Cow Palace, San Francisco, 2 December 1983

Led Zeppelin broke up in 1980 following the death of drummer John Bonham at Page's home, The Old Mill House at Clewer in Berkshire. Page refused to touch a guitar out of sadness for the loss of his friend Bonham,^[22][32] but made a return to the stage at a Jeff Beck show in March 1981 at the Hammersmith Odeon.^[33] Also in 1981 Page joined with Yes bassist Chris Squire and drummer Alan White to form a supergroup called XYZ (for ex-Yes-Zeppelin). They rehearsed several times, but the project was shelved. Demos of these sessions have turned up on bootleg and they reveal that some of the material emerged on later projects, notably The Firm's "Fortune Hunter" and Yes songs "Mind Drive" and "Can You Imagine?". Page would later join Yes on stage in 1984 at Westfalenhalle in Dortmund, Germany, playing "I'm Down".

In 1982 Page collaborated with director Michael Winner to record the Death Wish II soundtrack. This, and several subsequent Page recordings including Death Wish III soundtrack (1985), were recorded and produced at his own recording studio, The Sol in Cookham, which he had purchased from Gus Dudgeon in the early 1980s.

In 1983 Page appeared with the A.R.M.S. (Action Research for Multiple Sclerosis) charity series of concerts which honoured Small Faces bass player Ronnie Lane, who suffered from the disease. For the first shows at the Royal Albert Hall in London, Page's set consisted of songs from the Death Wish II soundtrack (with Steve Winwood on vocals) and an instrumental version of "Stairway to Heaven". A four-city tour of the United States followed, with Paul Rodgers of Bad Company replacing Winwood as vocalist. During the US tour, Page and Rodgers also performed "Midnight Moonlight" which would later be recorded for The Firm's first album. All of the shows featured an on stage jam of "Layla" that reunited Page with Yardbirds guitarists Beck and Eric Clapton. According to the book Hammer of the Gods, it was reportedly around this time that Page told friends that he'd just given up heroin after seven years of use. On 13 December 1983, Page joined Robert Plant on-stage for one encore at the Hammersmith Odeon in London.

Page next linked up with Roy Harper for the 1984 album (Whatever Happened to Jugula?) and occasional concerts, performing a predominantly acoustic set at folk festivals under various guises such as the MacGregors, and Themselves. Also in 1984 Page recorded with former Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant as The Honeydrippers on the albumThe Honeydrippers: Volume 1, and with John Paul Jones on the film soundtrack Scream for Help.

Page subsequently collaborated with Paul Rodgers to record two albums under the name The Firm. The first album, released in 1985, was the self-titled The Firm. Popular songs included "Radioactive" and "Satisfaction Guaranteed". The album peaked at number 17 on the Billboard pop albums chart and went gold in the US. It was followed by Mean Business in 1986. The band toured in support of both albums, but soon split up.

Various other projects followed, such as session work for Graham Nash, Stephen Stills and The Rolling Stones (on their 1986 single "One Hit (to the Body)"). In 1986, Page reunited temporarily with his ex-Yardbirds band members to play on several tracks of the Box of Frogs album Strange Land.^[34] Page released a solo album entitled Outrider in 1988 which featured contributions from Robert Plant, with Page contributing in turn to Plant's solo album Now and Zen, which was released the same year. Page also embarked on a collaboration with David Coverdale in 1993 entitled Coverdale Page.

Throughout these years Page also reunited with the other former members of Led Zeppelin to perform live on a few occasions, most notably in 1985 for the Live Aid concert with both Phil Collins and Tony Thompson filling drum duties. However, the band members considered this performance to be sub-standard, with Page having been let down by a poorly tuned Les Paul.^[35] Page, Plant and Jones, as well as John Bonham's son Jason, performed at the Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary show on 14 May 1988, closing the 12-hour show.^[35] In 1990, a Knebworth concert to aid the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Centre and the British School for Performing Arts and Technology saw Plant unexpectedly joined by Page to perform "Misty Mountain Hop", "Wearing and Tearing" and "Rock and Roll". Page also performed with the band's former members at various private family functions.

In 1994, Page reunited with Plant for the penultimate performance in MTV's "Unplugged" series. The 90-minute special, dubbed Unledded, premiered to the highest ratings in MTV's history. In October of the same year, the session was released as the CD No Quarter: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Unledded, and in 2004 as the DVD No Quarter Unledded. Following a highly successful mid-90s tour to support No Quarter, Page and Plant recorded 1998's Walking into Clarksdale.

Since 1990, Page has been heavily involved in remastering the entire Led Zeppelin back catalogue and is currently participating in various charity concerts and charity work, particularly the Action for Brazil's Children Trust (ABC Trust), founded by his wife Jimena Gomez-Paratcha in 1998. In the same year, Page played guitar for rap singer/producer Puff Daddy's song "Come with Me", which heavily samples Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" and was included in the soundtrack of Godzilla. The two later performed the song on Saturday Night Live.

In October 1999, Page teamed up with The Black Crowes for a two-night performance of material from the Led Zeppelin catalogue and old blues and rock standards. The concert was recorded and released as a double live album, Live at the Greek in 2000. In 2001 he made an appearance on stage with Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst and Wes Scantlin of Puddle of Mudd at the MTV Europe Video Music Awards in Frankfurt, where they performed a version of Led Zeppelin's "Thank You".^[36]

Jimmy Page performing at the Led Zeppelin reunion concert (2007)

In 2005, Page was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in recognition of his Brazilian charity work for Task Brazil and Action For Brazil's Children's Trust,^[37] made an honorary citizen of Rio de Janeiro later that year, and was awarded a Grammy award.^[38]

In November 2006, Led Zeppelin was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame. The television broadcasting of the event consisted of an introduction to the band by various famous admirers (including Roger Taylor, Slash, Joe Perry, Steven Tyler, Jack White and Tony Iommi), a presentation of an award to Jimmy Page, and then a short speech by the guitarist. After this, rock group Wolfmother played a tribute to Led Zeppelin, playing the song "Communication Breakdown".^[39][40]

In 2006, Page attended the induction of Led Zeppelin to the UK Music Hall of Fame. During an interview for the BBC for said event, he expressed plans to record new material in 2007, saying "It's an album that I really need to get out of my system... there's a good album in there and it's ready to come out" and "Also there will be some Zeppelin things on the horizon".^[41]

On 10 December 2007, the surviving members of Led Zeppelin, as well as John Bonham's son, Jason Bonham played a charity concert at the O2 Arena London.

For the 2008 Olympics, Jimmy Page, David Beckham and Leona Lewis represented Britain during the closing ceremonies on 24 August 2008. Beckham rode a double-decker bus into the stadium, and Page and Lewis performed "Whole Lotta Love".^[42]

In 2008 Page co-produced a documentary film directed by Davis Guggenheim entitled It Might Get Loud. The film examines the history of the electric guitar, focusing on the careers and styles of Page, The Edge, and Jack White. The film premiered on 5 September 2008 at the Toronto Film Festival.^[43] Page also participated in the 3 part BBC documentary London Calling: The making of the Olympic handover ceremony on 4 March 2009.^[44] On 4 April 2009, Page inducted Jeff Beck into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.^[45] Page has announced his 2010 solo tour while talking to the Sky News on 16 December 2009.^[46][47]

On 7 June 2008, Page and John Paul Jones appeared with the Foo Fighters to close out the band's concert at Wembley Stadium, performing "Rock and Roll" and "Ramble On."

In January 2010, Jimmy Page announced he is publishing an autobiography through Genesis Publications, in a hand-crafted, limited edition of 2,500 copies.^[48] Page has also been honoured with a first-ever Global Peace Award by the United Nations' Pathways to Peace organisation after confirming reports that he would be among the headliners at a planned Show of Peace Concert in Beijing, China on 10 October 2010.^[49][50]

On 3 June 2011, Jimmy Page played with Donovan "Mellow Yellow" and "Sunshine Superman" twice, live at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The concert was filmed. Page made an unannounced appearance with The Black Crowes at the Shepherd's Bush Empire in London on 13 July 2011. He also played alongside Roy Harper at Harper's 70th birthday celebratory concert, in London's Royal Festival Hall on 13 July 2011.

In November 2011, Conservative MP Louise Mensch launched a campaign to have Page knighted for his contributions to the music industry.^[51]

Legacy and influence[link]

Page's past experiences both in the studio and with the Yardbirds were very influential in contributing to the success of Led Zeppelin in the 1970s. As a producer, composer, and guitarist he helped make Led Zeppelin a prototype for countless future rock bands, and was one of the major driving forces behind the rock sound of that era, influencing a host of other guitarists.^[53] Allmusic states that "just about every rock guitarist from the late '60s/early '70s to the present day has been influenced by Page's work with Led Zeppelin".^[5] For example, Dictators bassist Andy Shernoff states that Jimmy Page's sped up, downstroke guitar riff in "Communication Breakdown", an influential song that contained elements of protopunk,^[54][55] was an inspiration for The Ramones guitarist Johnny Ramone's downstroke guitar style.^[56] Ramone, who has described Page as "probably the greatest guitarist who ever lived",^[57] stated in the documentary "Ramones:The True Story" that he improved at his down-stroke picking style by playing the song over and over again for the bulk of his early career.^[58] Brian May of Queen, who was also influenced by Page,^[59] has said "I don't think anyone has epitomised riff writing better than Jimmy Page – he's one of the great brains of rock music".^[60] Tom Scholz of Boston was heavily influenced by Jimmy Page and credits the dual guitar harmonies in Led Zeppelin's "How Many More Times" as the inspiration for Boston's distinctive sound.^[61] Page's guitar solo from the song "Heartbreaker" has been credited by Eddie Van Halen as being the inspiration for his two-hand tapping technique after he had seen Led Zeppelin perform in 1971.^[62] Similarly, Steve Vai has also commented about the song in a September 1998 Guitar World interview: "This one [Heartbreaker] had the biggest impact on me as a youth. It was defiant, bold, and edgier than hell. It really is the definitive rock guitar solo."^[63]

Page in 2008 at the Mojo Awards

Many other rock guitarists were also influenced by Jimmy Page, such as Ace Frehley,^[64] Joe Satriani,^[65] John Frusciante,^[66] James Hetfield,^[67] Kirk Hammett,^[68] Zakk Wylde,^[69] Yngwie Malmsteen,^[70] Tony Iommi,^[71] Joe Perry,^[72] Richie Sambora,^[73] Angus Young,^[74] Slash,^[75] Dave Mustaine,^[76] Mike McCready,^[77] Jerry Cantrell,^[78] Stone Gossard,^[79] Mick Mars,^[80] Paul Stanley,^[81] Alex Lifeson,^[82] and Dan Hawkins.^[83]

Page has been described by Uncut as the "rock's greatest and most mysterious guitar hero".^[84] According to msnbc.com Jimmy Page "played some of the most fundamental and memorable guitar in rock history—from the heaviest crunch to the most delicate acoustic finger picking."^[85] Page's solo in the famous epic "Stairway to Heaven" has been voted by readers of Guitar World^[86] and Total Guitar as the greatest guitar solo of all time, and he was named 'Guitarist of the Year' five times during the 1970s in Creem magazine's annual reader poll. Guitar World wrote: "Truly a guitar god, Jimmy Page is one of the most captivating soloists the rock world has ever known."^[87] In 1996 Mojo Magazine ranked him number 7 on their list of "100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time".^[88] In 2002 he was voted the second greatest guitarist of all time in a Total Guitar magazine reader poll.^[89] In 2007, Classic Rock Magazine ranked him No. 4 on their list of the "100 Wildest Guitar Heroes".^[90] Gigwise.com, an online music magazine, ranked Page No. 2 on their list of the "50 greatest guitarists ever" in 2008.^[91] In August 2009, Time Magazine ranked him the 6th greatest electric-guitar player of all time.^[92] In 2010, Jimmy Page was ranked No. 2 on Gibson's "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time".^[7] In 2011, Rolling Stone magazine named him number three on their list of the "100 greatest guitarists of all time".^[9]

David Fricke, a senior editor at Rolling Stone magazine, described Jimmy Page in 1988 as "probably the most digitally sampled artist in pop today after James Brown."^[6] Roger Daltrey of The Who has been a longtime fan of Page^[93] and expressed his desire to form a supergroup with Page in 2010 saying: "I’d love to do something, I’d love to do an album with Jimmy Page."^[94] Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones has described Jimmy Page as "one of the best guitar players I've ever known."^[95][96] Jimmy Page was the first inductee onto the British Walk of Fame in August 2004.^[97] Page was awarded "Living Legend Award" at Classic Rock Magazine Roll of Honour 2007.^[98] In June 2008, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Surrey for his services to the music industry.^[99][100] Page was inducted into Mojo Hall Of Fame at the magazine's award ceremony on 11 June 2010.^[101]

In August 2010, Auburn University graduate student Justin Havird named a new species of fish "Lepidocephalichthys zeppelini" after Led Zeppelin, because the fish's pectoral fin reminded him of the double-neck guitar used by Jimmy Page.^[102][103]

Equipment and recording techniques[link]

Page became famous for playing a double-necked Gibson EDS-1275 in concert

Guitars[link]

For the recording of most of Led Zeppelin material from Led Zeppelin's second album onwards, Page used a Gibson Les Paul guitar (sold to him by Joe Walsh) with Marshall amplification. A Harmony Sovereign H-1260 was used in-studio on Led Zeppelin III and Led Zeppelin IV and on-stage from 5 March 1971 to 28 June 1972. During the studio sessions for Led Zeppelin, and later for recording the guitar solo in "Stairway to Heaven", he used a Fender Telecaster (a gift from Jeff Beck).^[104] He also used a Danelectro 3021, tuned to DADGAD, most notably on live performances of "Kashmir".

Page also plays his guitar with a cello bow,^{[105][106][107][108]} as on the live versions of the songs "Dazed and Confused" and "How Many More Times". This was a technique he developed during his session days.^[23] On MTV's Led Zeppelin Rockumentary, Page said that he obtained the idea of playing the guitar with a bow from David McCallum, Sr. who was also a session musician. Page used his Fender Telecaster and later his Gibson Les Paul for his bow solos.^{[citation needed]}

Notable guitars[link]

• 1959 Fender Telecaster (given to Page by Jeff Beck and repainted with a psychedelic dragon design by Page) played with the Yardbirds. Used to record the first Led Zeppelin album and used on the early tours during 1968–1969. In 1971, it was used for recording the "Stairway to Heaven" solo.
• 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard (No. 1) (Given as a gift to Page by Joe Walsh) modified with a shaved neck. This guitar was also used by Gibson as the model for the company's second run of Page signature models in 2004. Produced by Gibson and aged by luthier Tom Murphy, this second generation of Page tribute models was limited to 25 guitars signed by Page himself; and only 150 guitars in total for the aged model issue.^[109][110]
• 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard (No. 2) with a shaved down neck to match the profile on his No.1; He added four push/pull pots to coil split the humbuckers as well as phase and series switches which were added under the pick guard after the break-up of Led Zeppelin.
• 1991 English luthier Roger Giffin built a guitar for Page based loosely on Page's #2. Giffin's work was later copied for Gibson's original run of Jimmy Page Signature model Les Pauls in the mid-1990s.^{[109][111][112]}
• 1971 Gibson EDS-1275 (used for playing "Stairway to Heaven", "The Song Remains the Same", "The Rain Song", "Celebration Day" during live concerts and the Knebworth, "Tangerine" at the 1975 Earls Court shows, and "Sick Again" throughout the 1977 North American tour)
• 1959 Danelectro 59-DC (tuned to DADGAD and used live for "White Summer", "Black Mountain Side", "Kashmir" and "Midnight Moonlight" with The Firm).
• Danelectro 3021 (tuned to open G and used on the Outrider tour for "In My Time Of Dying". This one has a smaller pickguard, as opposed to the large "seal" pickguard on his first Danelectro.
• 1967 Vox 12-String used during the recording for the Yardbirds Little Games album and for on-stage appearances.
• 1960 Black Gibson Les Paul Custom (with Bigsby Tremolo) – stolen in 1970. An ad was placed by Page for the return of this highly modified instrument but the guitar was never recovered. In 2008 the Gibson Custom Shop produced a limited run of 25 re-creations of the guitar, each with a Bigsby Tremolo and a new custom 6-way toggle switch.^[113]
  • Because the guitar was too heavy, one of Jimmy Page's Les Paul Custom Black Beauty guitars is now owned by Dan Hawkins of The Darkness.^[114]
• 1969 Gibson Les Paul Standard (seen in "The Song Remains The Same" during the theremin/solo section of "Whole Lotta Love" and for "Kashmir" at the O2 reunion concert. This guitar was later fitted with a Parsons-White B-string bender and used extensively by Page from the mid-to-late 1980s onward, including the Outrider tour, and the Page/Plant "Unledded" special on MTV.
• 1964 Lake Placid Blue Fender Stratocaster (Used during recording sessions for In Through the Out Door at Earls Court 1975 and in 1979 at Knebworth for In the Evening).
• 1966 Cream Fender Telecaster (Used on Physical Graffiti and on All My Love during the Tour Over Europe 1980).
• 1953 Brown Fender Telecaster featuring a Parsons and White B-string bender, and neck salvaged from the "Dragon Telecaster". Seen primarily during the 1980s The Firm and Outrider era. Also used at Knebworth in 1979, notably on "Ten Years Gone" and "Hot Dog".
• 1965 Fender Electric XII (12-String) used to record Thank You and Stairway to Heaven.
• 1972 Martin D28 used to record acoustic songs after Led Zeppelin IV, used live at Earls Court 1975
• In 1994 Andy Manson was commissioned to make another triple neck guitar for Page. It was used during the Unledded performances with Robert Plant. ^[115]

Strings[link]

• Ernie Ball Super Slinky electric guitar strings .009s-.042s^[116]

Signature models[link]

Gibson released Jimmy Page Signature Les Paul which was discontinued in 1999, then released another version in 2004, which has also been discontinued. The 2004 version included 25 guitars signed by Page, 150 aged by a former Gibson employee (an acknowledged ageing 'master'), and 840 'unlimited' production guitars. The Jimmy Page Signature EDS-1275 has been produced by Gibson. Recently, Gibson reproduced Page's 1960 Les Paul Black Beauty, the one stolen from him in 1970, with modern modifications. This guitar was sold in 2008 with a run of 25, again signed by Page, plus an additional 500 unsigned guitars.

In December 2009, Gibson released the 'Jimmy Page "Number Two" Les Paul'.^[117] This is a re-creation of Page's famous number 2 Les Paul used by him since about 1974 until present. The model includes the same pick-up switching setup as devised by Page, shaved-down neck profile, Burstbucker pick-up at neck and 'Pagebucker' at the bridge. A total of 325 were made in three finishes: 25 Aged by Gibson's Tom Murphy, signed and played by Page ($26,000), 100 aged ($16,000) and 200 with VOS finish ($12,000).

Amplifiers and effects[link]

He usually recorded in studio with a Vox AC30, Fender, and Orange amplification. The first Led Zeppelin album and the solo on "Stairway to Heaven" were played on a Fender Telecaster through a Supro amplifier.^[118]

Page used a limited number of effects, including a Maestro Echoplex,^{[118][119][120]} a Dunlop Cry Baby, an MXR Phase 90, a Vox Cry Baby Wah, a Boss CE-2 Chorus, a Yamaha CH-10Mk II Chorus, a Sola Sound Tone Bender Professional Mk II, an MXR Blue Box (distortion/octaver) and a DigiTech Whammy.^[118] Page also played a theremin.^[118]

Music production techniques[link]

Jimmy Page is credited for the innovations in sound recording he brought to the studio during the years he was a member of Led Zeppelin,^[121][122] many of which he had initially developed as a session musician:^[123]

This apprenticeship ... became a part of [learning] how things were recorded. I started to learn microphone placements and things like that, what did and what didn't work. I certainly knew what did and didn't work with drummers because they put drummers in these little sound booths that had no sound deflection at all, and the drums would just sound awful. The reality of it is the drum is a musical instrument, it relies on having a bright room and a live room ... And so bit by bit I was learning really how not to record.^[16]

He developed a reputation for employing effects in new ways and trying out different methods of using microphones and amplification. During the late 1960s, most British music producers placed microphones directly in front of amplifiers and drums, resulting in the sometimes "tinny" sound of the recordings of the era. Page commented to Guitar World magazine that he felt the drum sounds of the day in particular "sounded like cardboard boxes."^[121] Instead, Page was a fan of 1950s recording techniques, Sun Studios being a particular favourite. In the same Guitar World interview, Page remarked, "Recording used to be a science", and "[engineers] used to have a maxim: distance equals depth." Taking this maxim to heart, Page developed the idea of placing an additional microphone some distance from the amplifier (as much as twenty feet) and then recording the balance between the two. By adopting this technique, Page became one of the first British producers to record a band's "ambient sound" – the distance of a note's time-lag from one end of the room to the other.^[124]

For the recording of several Led Zeppelin tracks, such as "Whole Lotta Love" and "You Shook Me", Page additionally utilised "reverse echo" – a technique which he claims to have invented himself while with The Yardbirds (he had originally developed the method when recording the 1967 single "Ten Little Indians").^[121] This production technique involved hearing the echo before the main sound instead of after it, achieved by turning the tape over and employing the echo on a spare track, then turning the tape back over again to get the echo preceding the signal.

Page has stated that, as producer, he deliberately changed the audio engineers on Led Zeppelin albums, from Glyn Johns for the first album, to Eddie Kramer for Led Zeppelin II, to Andy Johns for Led Zeppelin III and later albums. He explained that "I consciously kept changing engineers because I didn't want people to think that they were responsible for our sound. I wanted people to know it was me."^[121]

John Paul Jones acknowledged that Page's production techniques were a key component of the success of Led Zeppelin:

The backwards echo stuff [and] a lot of the microphone techniques were just inspired. Using distance-miking... and small amplifiers. Everybody thinks we go in the studio with huge walls of amplifiers, but Page doesn’t. He uses a really small amplifier and he just mikes it up really well, so that it fits into a sonic picture.^[32]

In an interview that Page himself gave to Guitar World magazine in 1993, he remarked on his work as a producer:

Many people think of me as just a riff guitarist, but I think of myself in broader terms... As a producer I would like to be remembered as someone who was able to sustain a band of unquestionable individual talent, and push it to the forefront during its working career. I think I really captured the best of our output, growth, change and maturity on tape – the multifaceted gem that is Led Zeppelin.^[19]

Personal life[link]

French model Charlotte Martin was Page's partner from 1970 to about 1982 or 1983. Page called her 'My Lady'.Today he calls her 'my ex-wife' too.(from Guitar World magazine November issue 2010) Together they have a daughter, Scarlet Page (born in 1971), who is a photographer.

From 1986 to 1995 Page was married to Patricia Ecker, a model and waitress. They have a son, James Patrick Page III (born April 1988). Page later married Jimena Gómez-Paratcha, whom he met in Brazil on the No Quarter tour.^[125] He adopted her oldest daughter Jana (born 1994), and they have two children together: Zofia Jade (born 1997) and Ashen Josan (born 1999).^[126]

In 1972 Page bought, from Richard Harris, the home which William Burges (1827–1881) designed for himself in London, The Tower House. "I had an interest going back to my teens in the pre-Raphaelite movement and the architecture of Burges", he said. "What a wonderful world to discover." The reputation of Burges rests on his extravagant designs and his contribution to the Gothic revival in architecture in the nineteenth century.^[127]

From 1980 to 2004 Page owned The Mill House, Mill Lane, Windsor, which was formerly the home of actor Michael Caine. Fellow Led Zeppelin band member John Bonham died at the house in 1980.

From the early 1970s to the early 1990s,^[128] Page owned the Boleskine House, the former residence of occultist Aleister Crowley.^[128][129] Sections of Page's fantasy sequence in the film The Song Remains the Same were filmed at night on the mountain side directly behind Boleskine House.

According to The Sunday Times Rich List, Page's assets are worth £75 million as of 2009.^[130] He resides in Sonning, Berkshire in Deanery Garden, a house designed by Edwin Lutyens for the owner of Country Life magazine, William Hudson deanery Garden. Page also previously owned Plumpton Place, Sussex also owned by William Hudson with certain parts of the house also designed by Edwin Lutyens. This house features in the Zeppelin film "The Song Remains The Same" where Jimmy is seen sitting on the lawn playing a hurdy gurdy.

Recreational drug use[link]

Page has acknowledged heavy recreational drug use throughout the 1970s. In an interview with Guitar World magazine in 2003, he stated, "I can't speak for the [other members of the band], but for me drugs were an integral part of the whole thing, right from the beginning, right to the end."^[131] After the band's 1973 concert tour of the United States, Page told Nick Kent, "Oh, everyone went over the top a few times. I know I did and, to be honest with you, I don't really remember much of what happened."^[132]

In 1975, Page began to use heroin, a fact attributed to Richard Cole, who stated that Page (in addition to himself) was taking the drug during the recording sessions of the album Presence in that year, and that Page admitted to him shortly afterwards that he was addicted to the drug.^[133]

By Led Zeppelin's 1977 tour of the United States, Page's heroin addiction was beginning to hamper his guitar playing performances.^{[5][124][134]} By this time the guitarist had lost a noticeable amount of weight. His onstage appearance was not the only obvious change; his addiction caused Page to become so inward and isolated it altered the dynamic between him and Plant considerably.^[135] During the recording sessions for In Through the Out Door in 1978, Page's diminished influence on the album (relative to bassist John Paul Jones) is partly attributed to his heroin addiction, which resulted in his absence from the studio for long periods of time.^[136]

Page reportedly kicked his heroin habit in the early 1980s.^[137] In a 1988 interview with Musician magazine, Page took offence when the interviewer noted that heroin had been associated with his name, and insisted "Do I look as if I'm a smack addict? Well, I'm not. Thank you very much."^[138]

In an interview he gave to Q magazine in 2003, Page responded to a question as to whether he regrets getting so involved in heroin and cocaine:

I don't regret it at all because when I needed to be really focused, I was really focused. That's it. Both Presence and In Through the Out Door were only recorded in three weeks: that's really going some. You've got to be on top of it.^[139]

Interest in the occult[link]

A derivative of Page's Saturn sigil, itself derived from a 1557 source

The appearance of four symbols on the jacket of Led Zeppelin's fourth album has been linked to Page's interest in the occult.^[140] The four symbols represented each member of the band. Page's own so-called "Zoso" symbol originated in 'Ars Magica Arteficii' (1557) by Gerolamo Cardano, an old alchemical grimoire, where it has been identified as a sigil consisting of zodiac signs. The sigil is reproduced in "Dictionary of Occult, Hermetic and Alchemical Sigils" by Fred Gettings.^[141][142]

During tours and performances after the release of the fourth album, Page often had the "Zoso" symbol embroidered on his clothes, along with zodiac symbols. These were visible most notably on his "Dragon Suit", which included the signs for Capricorn, Scorpio and Cancer which are Page's Sun, Ascendant, and Moon signs, respectively.

The artwork inside the album cover of Led Zeppelin IV is from a painting by William Holman Hunt, influenced by the traditional Rider/Waite Tarot card design for the card called "The Hermit".^[140] Page transforms into this character during his fantasy sequence in Led Zeppelin's concert film The Song Remains the Same.

In the early 1970s Page owned an occult bookshop and publishing house, "The Equinox Booksellers and Publishers" in Kensington High Street, London, eventually closing it as the increasing success of Led Zeppelin resulted in his having insufficient time to devote to it. The company published a facsimile of English occultist's Aleister Crowley's 1904 edition of The Goetia.^[143] Page has maintained a strong interest in Crowley for many years. In 1978, he explained:

I feel Aleister Crowley is a misunderstood genius of the 20th century. Because his whole thing was liberation of the person, of the entity, and that restrictions would foul you up, lead to frustration which leads to violence, crime, mental breakdown, depending on what sort of makeup you have underneath. The further this age we're in now gets into technology and alienation, a lot of the points he's made seem to manifest themselves all down the line.^[144]

Page was commissioned to write the soundtrack music for the film Lucifer Rising by another occultist and Crowley admirer, underground movie director Kenneth Anger. Page ultimately produced 23 minutes of music which Anger felt was insufficient because the film ran for 28 minutes and Anger wanted the film to have a full soundtrack. Anger claimed Page took three years to deliver the music, and the final product was only 23 minutes of droning. The director also slammed the guitarist in the press by calling him a "dabbler" in the occult and an addict, and being too strung out on drugs to complete the project. Page countered that he had fulfilled all his obligations, even going so far as to lend Anger his own film editing equipment to help him finish the project.^[145]

Although Page collected works by Crowley, he has never described himself as a Thelemite nor was he ever initiated into the O.T.O. The Equinox Bookstore and Boleskine House were both sold off during the 1980s, as Page settled into family life and participated in charity work.

Discography[link]

Led Zeppelin portal

Single[link]

• "She Just Satisfies"/"Keep Moving" (February 1965)

Albums[link]

Pre-Led Zeppelin (1963–1969)[link]

Many pre-Led Zeppelin session recordings have been released on various labels and compilation packages, including:

• Mannish Boys 1965 recordings with David Bowie (then Davy Jones) & 'The Lower 3rd' group. Page was a session guitarrist for the side A of the EP, titled 'The Manish Boys'. They just recorded two tracks, 'I Pity the Fool' and 'Take my Tip'. ^[146]
• Blues Anytime 1, 2, 3 series on Immediate Records featuring the Immediate All-Stars, mid 1960s
• No Introduction Necessary (1968), Recordings feat. John Paul Jones, Albert Lee, Nicky Hopkins, Clem Cattini and Keith de Groot
• Jimmy Page and Friends – Wailing Sounds (2006). Includes Lord Sutch & Heavy Friends album (1970) + six tracks from the 1968 sessions for Keith De Groot's debut album.
• Guitar Boogie (1971) Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton compilation album from the recordings on the Blues Anytime series on Immediate Records.
• Special Early Works (1972), 1965 session recordings with Sonny Boy Williamson
• Smoke and Fire (1984), session recordings with Jeff Beck, Noel Redding and Nicky Hopkins
• Jimmy Page: Session Man Vol. 1 (1989)
• Jimmy Page: Session Man Vol. 2 (1990)
• Jimmy's Back Pages...The Early Years (1992)
• Jimmy Page and His Heavy Friends: Hip Young Guitar Slinger (2000, double cd)
• This Guitar Kills: More 60s Groups & Sessions – remastered by Jimmy Page (2007, the 2003 ed. is not remastered) (double cd)
• Jimmy Page and Friends (2006, double cd)

Please note that there are several duplicates amongst all these albums.

Post-Led Zeppelin[link]

References[link]