2 American Classic Rock guitarists Jimmy Page is a fan of

One of the most complete musicians of his generation, Jimmy Page was always extremely talented, first becoming a highly respected session musician in England, later joining The Yardbirds, forming Led Zeppelin and also producing all of the band’s records.

Although he was constantly working and focused on the bands he was part of during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Page remained very aware of what was happening in Rock and Roll, not only in England but also in the United States. Over the decades, he spoke about many of the peers he admired and has already praised two American musicians he is particularly fond of.

2 American Classic Rock guitarists Jimmy Page is a fan of

Joe Walsh

Jimmy Page is not only a fan of Joe Walsh, but he also thanks him for being the one who gave him the first Les Paul guitar he ever owned. “There’s a friend of mine, matter of fact he got my guitar for me, called Joe Walsh, who’s got a group going around the Cleveland area called the James Gang: I heard them and they were very good and went down well. I expect we’ll hear more of them,” he told Rolling Stone magazine in 1970.

The Led Zeppelin guitarist recalled this incredible story on his social media when he talked about watching Joe Walsh playing live in 2001. “I was temporarily living in Miami, Florida and Joe Walsh was playing at the Gulfstream Park racetrack. Joe’s an old friend and our connection goes back to some of the American dates from Yardbirds days. He was in the James Gang, based in Cleveland, and he’d come and see us whenever we were in town. He is a really nice man and I enjoyed his company. Back then, Joe brought a Les Paul Standard along to a Fillmore East gig on the first leg of the American tour and said, ‘You’ve got to have this guitar.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t need it, Joe. I’ve got a Les Paul Custom.’”

Jimmy Page continued:

“I knew that Les Paul guitars were very user-friendly, insomuch as they put out a lot of level when you plugged them into the amplifier because they had a double-coil pickup, whereas the Telecaster had a single-coil pickup. With the sort of volume that I now needed to put out in live situations. Although I was using controlled feedback, I found that the Telecaster was starting to squeal a bit. I had to be very careful about where I was standing because of the unsympathetic feedback.”

“With the Les Paul you’d get feedback through the amp and speakers, but you could control it more easily and work with it. You could actually change the literal note and frequency that was coming back on the feedback. I just really enjoyed playing Joe’s guitar. So I agreed with him that maybe I should buy his Les Paul Standard after all. I played the Les Paul on ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and ‘What Is and What Should Never Be’ and that decided it for me.”

He continued:

“It was definitely going to be the Les Paul from then on. I always wanted to make a change for each album sonically and that was my first decision for Led Zeppelin II. Like I had built Led Zeppelin around the Fender Telecaster, I built the second album around the sonic texture of the Les Paul Standard. Neither Joe Walsh nor I realized at the time just what an important thing he had done by coming along with that Les Paul,” Jimmy Page said. Back in the ’70s, Page said that, in his opinion, Walsh had a “tremendous feel for the instrument.” According to the American guitarist, Page later paid him about $1500 for the guitar, a bit less than he had originally paid for it. Now, the instrument is worth millions of dollars.

Jimi Hendrix

The second guitarist is Jimi Hendrix, who Jimmy Page said is the best that ever existed. “We’ve lost the best guitarist any of us ever had and that was Hendrix,” he told  Rolling Stone in 1975.

The Led Zeppelin guitarist and producer not only admired Hendrix as a guitarist and singer, but also his records, which, in his opinion, were very well produced. “I thought they were excellent. Oh yeah. Jimi’s drummer, Mitch Mitchell was also a man inspired. He never played drums like that before or since. He played some incredible stuff!!” Page said in an interview with Guitar World in 1993.

The British guitarist had the chance to see Jimi Hendrix in the same room, but he didn’t approach him because he was not sober and, sadly, never had the chance to see him again. “It wasn’t a lack of will. I wanted to see him. But I was doing studio dates and touring with the Yardbirds. Jeff (Beck) came ’round. (He) was telling me about how this guy got up at London Polytechnic, jammed and taken them all by surprise. I remember I was back in London after a Zeppelin tour. Hendrix was playing the next night at the Royal Albert Hall.”

“I was pretty shot. (I) thought, ‘I’d really like to see him.’ But I’d heard all these wonderful stories of him playing in clubs. (I’ve said) ‘I’ll wait and see him next time ’round.’ For me, there wasn’t going to be a next time.”

He continued:

“The only time I actually saw him was at a club called Salvation in New York. He was across the room from where I was sitting with some friends. I was going to go over and say, ‘I’m sorry I missed the London concert.’ But then he was leaving with the people who were with him. He looked a little worse for wear. I thought, ‘There will be a more favorable time.’ In the end, there wasn’t,” Jimmy Page said in an interview with Rolling Stone in 2012.

Hendrix didn’t have the chance to see much of Led Zeppelin, but as Robert Plant said in the documentary “Led Zeppelin: Whole Lotta Rock” (2019), he and John Bonham had an encounter with Hendrix one night. According to him, the late  guitarist told Bonham that he had a “foot like a rabbit”.

A few months before his death, he praised Page as a guitarist: “I don’t think much of Led Zeppelin. I mean, I don’t think much about them. Jimmy Page is a good guitar player,” he told Melody Maker in 1970.