4 vocalists that Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page praised

Before being a member of The Yardbirds and then a fundamental part of Led Zeppelin, the guitarist Jimmy Page had the chance to work with countless legendary musicians in the studio, since before all that he was a really respected session musician in England. So he was part of many famous recordings by other artists especially in the early 60s and shared the room with incredible vocalists.

Besides Robert Plant, he praised many other singers over the decades and Rock and Roll Garage selected four that he really likes.

4 vocalists that Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page praised

Paul Rodgers (Free, Bad Company, The Firm)

The first one is the Free and Bad Company vocalist Paul Rodgers, with whom Jimmy Page had the chance to work with when they were bandmates in the supergroup The Firm in the 80s. He has always been a fan of his singing and he even said that never saw Rodgers sing a wrong note.

“Well of course it is (different working with Paul). After you’ve been with someone, Zeppelin and Robert, for that amount of years. I don’t know how many years it was now, you get to know each other in a band very, very well. It can almost be an ESP type of thing.”

“With Paul, his phrasing is totally different (from Robert’s). I would think that Robert was like a vocal gymnast. And Paul, I’ve never heard him sing a wrong note; he’s such a technical singer. He really is. And yet he has a quality within his voice that on the ballads he does is really caressing. And yet it’s really vibrant in a way,” Jimmy Page told Guitar World.

Bad Company were also managed by Peter Grant and signed with the Swan Song

Curiously, when Paul Rodgers and the Free drummer Simon Kirke formed Bad Company, Led Zeppelin and their manager Peter Grant signed them with Swan Song, which was Zeppelin’s own record label. “Bad Company… Bad Company was more Peter Grant’s (Led Zeppelin’s manager) thing, Peter had the Bad Company thing and put that together. That was really a great band to have on there because of Paul Rodgers, he’s phenomenal. He was then and still is,” Jimmy Page told Uncut magazine.

Rodgers is five years younger than Jimmy and was born in Middlesbrough, England in 1949. He started his musical career in 1968, which was the year Led Zeppelin was formed. Besides being part of Free, Bad Company and The Firm, Rodgers also recorded an album with Queen’s Brian May and Roger Taylor.

Jeff Buckley

The second vocalist that was praised by Jimmy Page multiple times was the late Jeff Buckley. He was only 30 years-old when he tragically passed away in Memphis, where he decided to go swimming in the Wolf River Harbor, fully dressed, reportedly singing the chorus of “Whole Lotta Love”. It was the wake of a tugboat that swept him away and under water. His body was found only a week later.

Jimmy had the chance to see Jeff playing live and they were good friends. “I was really affected by Jeff Buckley when I heard him perform. I heard one of his last concerts in Australia, penultimate concert. It was just absolutely staggering, he was absolutely… I mean, he just touched every emotion in you, you know. He was really superb and a total class of his own as you know. Because you’ve heard so many singers and you know that they got that from Jeff Buckley.”

“He is iconic and really just in a total class of his own as I say. So I was really deeply affected by his music and I thought he was a master. It was tragic to hear that he died. But there was a weird irony when somebody said, I’ve heard that, that he was singing ‘Whole Lotta Love’. He had sort of said, that was in Australia, that would be really good if we’d done something together. Can you imagine how I would have loved to have done that with him? But he started doing a second album and then (stopped) and started up again. It’s a tragic loss, my God he was good.” Jimmy Page said that in an interview with RTL2 Station in 2014 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

Page said Buckley was a Wizard

Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were really mesmerized with Buckley’s talent and the guitarist even said it was actually scary to see him playing live, because it really showed how amazing he was. “He was the best singer that had appeared probably. I’ve not been too liberal about this if I say the past two decades. (..) I started to play ‘Grace’ constantly. The more I listened to the album, the more I heard, the more I appreciated Jeff, Jeff’s talents and Jeff’s technical ability to which he was just a wizard. It was close to being my favorite album of the decades. (…) We (Me and Plant) actually made a point of going to hear him play and sing, it was absolutely scary.”

“One of the things (that was) a little frightening was that I was convinced that he probably did things in tuning and he didn’t. He was doing things in standard tunings and I thought: ‘Oh dear, he really is clever, isn’t he? (…) He quite clearly had his feet on the ground and his head and his imagination was flying way, way, way out there beyond.” Jimmy Page said that in the documentary “Jeff Buckley: Everybody Here Wants You” (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

Jeff was a huge fan of Led Zeppelin and one of his close friends said once that the musician cried when he had the chance to meet Page. Jeff was the son of Tim Buckley, the influential musician who was active from 1966 until 1975 when he sadly passed away at the age of 28.

Chris Cornell (Soundgarden, Audioslave)

Another singer that Jimmy Page praised and that also tragically died was Chris Cornell. He was only 52 when he decided to take his own life in 2017 and Page lamented Chris’ death at the time, saying: “RIP Chris Cornell, incredibly talented, incredibly young, incredibly missed.”

They had the time to spend some time together a few years before when Cornell interviewed Page for a Rock and Roll magazine. In 2019, when Soundgarden arranged a tribute show for Cornell, Jimmy was not able to be there but sent a message that was played. He said: “Hello, I’m Jimmy Page and I’m actually over here in London sending this video link to Matt, Kim, Ben. I’m sorry I can’t be with you there this evening, But, believe me, I’m there in spirit.”

“I want to congratulate you for having got this event together to celebrate Chris’ music. I also want to say that the input that you put into Soundgarden, from the records. Because I got hooked on your music from the first album. But I also came to hear you play, you guys. I was always astonished at the way you all glued together. I mean, it was just really what, for me, bands are all about.. Yeah, have a great evening, have a wonderful evening, this celebration of Chris’ music,” Jimmy Page said.

The Soundgarden and Audioslave frontman covered Led Zeppelin songs multiple times during his career and fans were always impressed by his versions. He even said once that if Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones had asked him to tour performing Led Zeppelin songs he would totally accept the invitation.

Keith Relf (The Yardbirds)

The final vocalist praised by Jimmy Page that Rock and Roll Garage selected was Keith Relf, the late Yardbirds vocalist. Page had the chance to record and play live with him for a couple of years, from 1966 to 1968. Asked by Uncut magazine in 2017 if he would like to play with The Yardbirds again, he said: “But who would sing? Keith Relf died all those many years ago. He’d done a couple of other things, Renascence and Medicine Head. Keith Relf was really damn good,” Jimmy Page said.

At the time, the band’s only one original member was the drummer Jim McCarty. Relf died in 1976 at the age of 33 and the story goes that he passed away in his basement from electrocution while playing an electric guitar. But he also had a lot of health problems like emphysema and asthma. So those conditions might have contributed to his inability to survive the shock.

When The Yardbirds was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, during his speech, Page mentioned Relf’s relatives who were there that night. The Led Zeppelin guitar player said: “Before I came here I though ‘Well, I’ll keep short. So I’m gonna keep it short. But before we go any further there is one person who can’t be with us tonight and that’s Keith Relf. So I’d like to introduce you to his wife April and his son Jason,” Jimmy Page said.

Relf’s career after The Yardbirds

Relf was a co-founder of The Yardbirds, being part of the band from 1963 to 1968 when they broke-up. During the next years he was part of an acoustic duo called Together with the drummer Jim McCarty. Later on he formed Renaissance, which also had his sister Jane Relf. Then in the early 70s he also worked as a producer for other artists and in 1974 formed the Progressive Rock band Armageddon.