That was thirty-eight years ago. The restaurant, jukebox and hippies are long gone. The only thing that has remained unchanged from those days is my memory of the electrifying excitement and eerie wonderment I first heard in Led Zeppelin’s music.
How could I have known then that I would come to spend over 18,000 hours researching Led Zeppelin’s music and legacy? The experience has brought me countless hours of enjoyment and I want nothing more than to take others down that research path of discovery.
Sonic Boom: The Impact of Led Zeppelin. Volume 1 – Break & Enter, is the first of three planned publications celebrating Led Zeppelin’s 40th anniversary. I conducted over forty primary source interviews to find out the “where, when, how and why” Led Zeppelin became a pioneer in the world of popular music. Many of these people were on the scene to help the band “break and enter” in 1968. Their knowledge, expertise and personal recollections will provide fascinating information you’ve never seen in print before. If you’re ready to rock, let’s roll!
Frank Reddon, Author
June 2008/updated September 2011
Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada
A Primer on Jimmy Page
Many of you will already be familiar with the background of Led Zeppelin’s founding member, Jimmy Page. For those of you who are just learning about rock’n’roll’s premier super group, it’s helpful to understand where and how it all began.
James Patrick Page was born on January 9, 1944 in Heston, Middlesex, England. His father was a personnel officer. The Page family lived in the bucolic English countryside where Jimmy enjoyed his rural, outdoor life. When he was eight years old, his family moved to Epsom, a suburb of London close to Heathrow Airport.
Jimmy sang in a choir and was only mildly interested in music until the age of twelve, when someone gave the Page family a Spanish guitar. At first, the instrument was virtually ignored. Then one day Jimmy heard a record that caught his ear. It was Elvis Presley’s song Baby Let’s Play House. Released in 1955, it was The King’s fourth single for the Sun Records label of Memphis, Tennessee. Someone at school showed him some chords and he took it from there on his own.
The boy was hooked! He even had the guitar taken away from him at school, he was so into it. The instrument was returned to him at the end of classes and he’d go right back at it. From then on, music was to be a big part of his life.
He formed a band with three other teens. The James Page Skiffle Group consisted of Jimmy and another lad on dual lead guitars, a stand-up bass player who built his own string bass and a drummer. Jimmy sang back-up for his friend on guitar who also sang lead vocals.
In the 1950s, there was a television variety show on BBC-TV called All Your Own. Hosted by Huw Wheldon, the program showcased different kinds of talent. The James Page Skiffle Group performed on the show April 6, 1958. After having performed two skiffle songs, the band members were interviewed by Wheldon. Jimmy Page revealed his ambition to do biological research, possibly into cancer.
As we all know now, the only research Jimmy got into was the musical kind. His parents indulged and cultivated their son’s passion for music. Jimmy would invite his guitar-crazy friends, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, to his parents’ home on weekends to jam.
At the age of fifteen, Jimmy Page decided to join a London area band called Neil Christian and The Crusaders. Touring proved to be too much for his fragile health and he frequently suffered bouts of glandular fever. Around this time, he began jamming at London’s famous music club, The Marquee, with musicians like Eric Clapton.
Page decided to attend art college and get involved in studio session work instead of touring. He was already playing guitar well enough for such demanding work. He had the talent to make a comfortable living at it and he could avoid the health problems he’d had on the road. A short time later, Jimmy Page was one of the most respected and sought-after session musicians in England.
He worked on hundreds of recording studio sessions, playing everything from elevator music to songs by The Who, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones and a host of other artists. It was a well known fact that, if a producer wanted it done right on guitar in the studio, Page could do it.
While his session work was paying the bills, and rather well, Jimmy’s creativity and musical growth were being stunted by the long hours and monotony of the studio. He had the vision to see that the guitar was gradually losing its prominence, too. He longed to spread his wings and fly once again. His initial touring and playing experience with Neil Christian and the Crusaders, coupled with his invaluable studio expertise would serve him well in the days ahead.
Rock’n’roll would never be the same.
The Yardbirds:
Jimmy Page’s Musical Migration
In June of 1966, The Yardbirds’ bass guitarist, Paul Samwell-Smith, quit the group. Jimmy Page was eager to join The Yardbirds as his replacement on bass guitar. The fact that he’d never even played bass guitar didn’t faze him at all! He adapted and quickly learned to do it. He had already missed an earlier opportunity when his friend, Eric Clapton, had left the group and Jeff Beck had signed on. He wasn’t about to miss his second chance.
The future Led Zeppelin’s lead guitarist soon switched from bass guitar to lead and, for a short but very impressive period, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck both played lead guitar on several Yardbirds numbers. Late in 1966, Jeff Beck left The Yardbirds to pursue an independent career. Page took over the lead guitar spot and Chris Dreja joined to replace Page on bass guitar. Jimmy Page played on songs that The Yardbirds recorded such as Happenings Ten Years Time Ago and Psycho Daisies.
The Yardbirds’ popularity grew into 1968 with Page playing lead guitar. At the height of the group’s career, an album was recorded live in New York City in March 1968. It was understood beforehand that, if The Yardbirds did not like Live at the Anderson Theatre, Epic Records would not release it. The record label agreed. As it turned out, The Yardbirds weren’t satisfied with the quality of the live recording and asked that it not be released. Epic Records agreed and they shelved it. However, in 1971, the album was released to capitalize on Jimmy Page’s new-found success with Led Zeppelin. Page quickly slapped a court injunction on its release and Epic Records quickly ceased selling the album. As a result, The Yardbirds: Live At The Anderson Theatre has become a highly-sought after collector’s item.
The Yardbirds continued their U.S. Tour in April, May and early June of 1968. But despite the group’s success and growing popularity in the summer of ’68, personal and career ambitions made some of the band members want to leave the nest. Jimmy Page tried desperately to keep the flock together but to no avail. Everyone seemed to want to fly off in different directions. The Yardbirds’ last-ever performance was on July 7, 1968 at Luton Technical College in Bedfordshire, England.
The Yardbirds are widely recognized for having made a significant contribution to popular music. From the start, the group was heavily influenced by the blues. Songs such as I’m A Man and New York City Blues are two examples in their repertoire. But their technical prowess extended well beyond their blues roots. They were innovators who used fuzz effects, Page’s violin bowing and advancements in amplification. They pioneered the artful use of feedback and distortion in both live performances and recordings and used backwards echo in their recordings.
The Yardbirds also treated “pop songs” in their own special way, infusing them with a decided mystique that was largely psychedelic in nature. Watching the group over forty years later, especially in the days of Page and Beck together, the band had an incredible aura of “cool” that was much greater than most of its contemporaries.
Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page pioneered the Yardbirds’ concept of dual lead guitars, which would