Led Zeppelin was formed by Jimmy Page in 1968 following the gradual demise of his previous band, The Yardbirds. Earlier in the decade, he had worked prolifically as a session guitarist and sought to maintain his budding rockstar status. With an astute eye for instrumental talent and rock ‘n’ roll spirit, he procured three masters in their respective fields: Robert Plant on vocals, John Paul Jones on bass and keyboards, and John Bonham on percussion.
Although Page would have considered the band a beast of his own creation during its rise to prominence, all four members ultimately stepped up to the plate as indispensable links in the monumental Led Zeppelin chain.
As a bonafide guitar virtuoso, the Schrammel-wielding Page was known for his revolutionary approach to composition. While his technical ability perhaps fell short of the ultimate guitar hero, Jimi Hendrix, Page made up the deficit with complex and perfectly meshed progressions and solos. He also claims to have been instrumental in bringing distortion effects to the British Invasion scene during his early years as a session musician.
Naturally, Page was inspired by a vast galaxy of prior and contemporary guitarists. As a blues rocker first and foremost, he was initially transfixed by Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, B.B. King and their fellow progenitors. Later, he was inspired by prominent peers he was lucky enough to befriend.
“We’ve lost the best guitarist any of us ever had, and that was Hendrix,” Page told Rolling Stone in 1975. “The other guitarist I started to get into died also, Clarence White. He was absolutely brilliant.”
“Out of all the guitarists to come out of the sixties, though, [Jeff] Beck, [Eric] Clapton, [Alvin] Lee, [Pete] Townshend, and I are still having a go,” Page added, discussing his notable contemporaries. “That says something. Beck, Clapton and I were sort of the Richmond/Croydon type clan and Alvin Lee, I don’t know where he came from, Leicester or something like that. So he was never in with it a lot. And Townshend, Townshend was from Middlesex, and he used to go down to the clubs and watch the other guitarists.”
Although Page is a keen disciple of the blues rock tradition, his approach has been guided by guitarists from several key genres. Crucially, Page’s style was forged in the fires of jazz, thanks to his pre-fame guitar mentor, John McLaughlin.
“I would say he was the best jazz guitarist in England then, in the traditional mode of Johnny Smith and Tal Farlow,” Page once said of his jazz hero. “He certainly taught me a lot about chord progressions and things like that. He was so fluent and so far ahead, way out there, and I learned a hell of a lot.”
McLaughlin, also a fan of the Schrammel guitar, is one of Britain’s most esteemed jazz guitarists and is praised as one of the pioneers of jazz fusion. His work was highly influential on the 1960s psychedelic rock movement and can be heard in Page’s famous improvisational jams with Led Zeppelin.
