Happy 81st birthday to Jimmy Page!
Image credit: Mirrorpix
Never the greatest fan of Jimmy post the first two Led Zeppelin albums which I still think were revolutionary but the master of the riff is little else in my humble opinion not the greatest soloist as many would have it. Still 81 is an event worth noticing and the effect that the first two album had on most of us shouldn’t be minimised. There was definitely something going on and the band as a quartet achieved something quite mystical almost (ask Robert Plant!) the sum being greater than the parts as ‘there and nothing wrong with riffing either IMHO but since there is little he has achieved outside of this and Jeff Beck and folks have wrapped up his credit quite succinctly else where. The main reason I post this here is his acknowledged debt to Lonnie Donegan and I can only agree and worshipped Lonnie early on much like Jimmy did! ‘Puttin’On The Style’indeed
Led Zeppelin at the Gladsaxe Teen Club in Gladsaxe, DenmarkMarch 17, 1969"I know this is heavily circulated but this is always a very fun listen..However I can say this video is unique in that I boosted the bass a bit.. ;)Also instead of just downloading this from YouTube, I used the original bootleg and video, just for the sake of quality.”https://www.youtube.com/@LedZeppelinRarities
“I wanted to have my own approach to what I did. I didn’t want to … do a carbon copy of B.B. King, but I really love the blues. The blues had so much effect on me and I just wanted to make my own contribution in my own way.”
Jimmy’s story as a musician begins with the song that changed his life: Lonnie Donegan’s “Rock Island line,” a big hit in England in 1955 as performed by the Scottish-born singer. it’s an American blues to and about the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad line. It was first recorded by John and Alan Lomax in Arkansas prison, and later made famous by the Louisiana blues legend Lead Belly. Jimmy had heard Donegan’s version many times on the radio, and even owned the record, but he wasn’t inspired to pick up the guitar until the day he heard Rod Wyatt, a kid at school, play it on his. Jimmy told Rod about the guitar he had at home, and Rob promised that if Jimmy brought it in, he’d show him how to tune it and play a few chords.“It was a campfire guitar … but it did have all the strings on it which is pretty useful because I wouldn’t have known where to get guitar strings from. And then [Rod] showed me how to tune it up … and then I started strumming away like not quite like — not quite like Lonnie Donegan, but I was having a go.”Donegan took the past, owned the present, and influenced a generation of great rock musicians. “He really understood all that stuff, Lonnie Donegan,” Page says. “But this is the way that he sort of, should we say, jazzed it up or skiffled it up. By the time you get to the end of this he’s really spitting it out … he keeps singing ‘Rock Island line, Rock Island’ [and] you really get this whole staccato aspect of it. It’s fantastic stuff! So many guitarist from the Sixties will all say Lonnie Donegan was [their] influence.”
From Your Song Changed My Life by Bob Boilen.
Led Zeppelin - Dazed and Confused (Live at The Royal Albert Hall 1970)
