(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
The rock and roll attitude has always been about having absolutely no fear whenever you get onstage. It might not seem all that dangerous going onstage and playing music for people, but if you have tofill someone else’s shoes and continue to add your own stamp to everything, it’s easy for anyone to have nerves get the better of them whenever they have the houselights turned on them for the first time. If there’s one person who has known the ins and outs of being onstage, though, it should be Jimmy Page.
Despite his reputation as this enigmatic figure leading Led Zeppelin in the early days, Page was always like a fish in water when he played every concert. Most session players that he played with may have been too scared to fly blind with a set band onstage, but since Page had everything mapped out in his head before any of his songs were pressed to vinyl, he knew that the concert was the place for him to expand his horizons.
There are only so many things that can be done in the studio, but once people start improvising, anything’s possible, and Page wanted to test that out every chance he could. ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and ‘Dazed and Confused’ sounded fantastic in the conext of the records they were a part of, but the midsection of the former was practically an invitation for Page to get weird, whether that was creating white noise or bringing out the theremin onstage to create the sound of organised chaos.
But that kind of creative ingenuity wouldn’t have come without joining The Yardbirds first. Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton had made their living out of testing the boundaries of what their instruments could do, and for as much talent is Jimmy freakin’ Page had on his guitar, it said a lot about his bandmates’ talents that he was relegated to bass on the first handful of Yardbirds recordings.
“When I joined The Yardbirds on bass – coming in for Paul Samwell-Smith – that was serious boots to fill, because I was pretty much in awe of his bass playing.”
Jimmy Page
Then again, filling the shoes of original bassist Paul Samwell-Smith was no easy feat, either, with Page recalling, “When I joined The Yardbirds on bass – coming in for Paul Samwell-Smith – that was serious boots to fill, because I was pretty much in awe of his bass playing. I didn’t know anybody else who could play like that. You’d hear these really fast pulsing bass riffs and go, what the hell was that? The energy of those records with Eric, like Five Live Yardbirds, you want to check out what Paul Samwell-Smith was doing. And all of a sudden I was trying to emulate it.”
While a lot of what Samwell-Smith does might be seen as not too hard nowadays, it was practically the equivalent of a Dream Theater song back in the day. No one had thought of playing chords on the bass or having riffs that a lead guitarist might rip out, but when you’re playing next to someone like Clapton, you have to find a way to stand out, and Samwell-Smith did it by bringing muscle to the low end.
Page was certainly no slouch with any stringed instrument in his hand, but it was clear that he felt much more at home playing a guitar behind the scenes. And once he finally had the freedom to do what he wanted, Zeppelin was the result of him knowing every facet of the mix and being able to have more control over what he wanted. When stacking him next to John Paul Jones, though, it’s not like he couldn’t be given a run for his money, either.
But the fact that Page felt intimidated at all is almost comforting for anyone starting out. He’s still among one of the greatest guitarists in the world, but it’s nice to think back on a time when he was in the same shoes as every other guitarist slowly waiting for the moment when they become great.
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