Before Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page played on other bands' hits
Long before he founded Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page was the guitarist producers phoned when a record needed insurance. He played as many as fifteen sessions a week, turning up on tracks by the Who, the Kinks and Marianne Faithfull, and he freely admits he cannot recall everything he played on.
Page was born in Heston, west London, on 9 January 1944. When the family moved to Epsom, a Spanish guitar was sitting in the new house and nobody knew where it had come from. He started on it at 12, learned his first chords from an older schoolboy named Rod Wyatt, and taught himself the rest by copying records, sometimes practising six or seven hours a day. Scotty Moore's playing on Elvis Presley's Baby Let's Play House was what made him want to play. His guitar went to school with him and was regularly confiscated until the final bell.
At 13 he appeared on BBC television with a skiffle group and told the host he hoped to research a cure for cancer. Instead he left school at 15, the youngest age allowed, after a fierce argument with a deputy head who scorned his plans. Touring with Neil Christian's Crusaders wore him down with repeated glandular fever, so he retreated to Sutton Art College to paint while still jamming at the Marquee Club alongside Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton.
Studio work followed. His first Decca session, Diamonds by Jet Harris and Tony Meehan, reached number one early in 1963. To avoid confusion with the other busy session player, Big Jim Sullivan, he was billed as Lil' Jim Pea, and early on he could not read music, so he simply played what he liked. The producer Shel Talmy favoured him, which led to rhythm guitar on the Who's first single, I Can't Explain, and he also added guitar to the soundtrack of A Hard Day's Night. In 1965 Andrew Loog Oldham made him house producer at Immediate Records.
He joined the Yardbirds in 1966, formed Led Zeppelin when they split in 1968 and led it until 1980. Rolling Stone ranked him third among the greatest guitarists in both 2015 and 2023, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has inducted him twice.
Source: Jimmy Page
