Formed by guitarist Jimmy Page in 1968, Led Zeppelin is remembered as one of the most important Hard Rock bands of all time. However, many of their songs were not actually heavy, much of their later work was acoustic.
That softer side of their music tends to be overlooked and people often forget about their Folk roots, which were especially inspired by British musicians like Roy Harper. Over the decades, Jimmy Page has talked about many artists from that genre, sharing his opinions on them, including the legendary American songwriter Bob Dylan.
What is Jimmy Page’s opinion on Bob Dylan
Like Robert Plant, Jimmy Page is also a big fan of Bob Dylan and had the chance to see the legendary musician playing live for the first time in 1965. He described the American songwriter as a genius and said that seeing him live was a “life-changing” experience. “In May 1965, I experienced the genius of Bob Dylan at the Royal Albert Hall in London. He accompanied himself on acoustic guitar and cascaded images from such songs as ‘It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’, ‘Chimes Of Freedom’ and ‘She Belongs To Me’ to a mesmerised audience. It was life changing.”
“In 2013, Bob Dylan played at the Royal Albert Hall again. This was the first of three nights. When he would feature songs from his latest album ‘Tempest’ and some re-arranged earlier material including ‘She Belongs To Me’. It was intoxicating. I attended this concert with poet @scarlettzsabet (Jimmy’s girlfriend).”
He continued:
“Recently, in October 2022, I had an invitation to see Bob Dylan at the London Palladium. He played piano on this evening: really featuring his playing. Unveiling many styles of his technique and melody lines that counterpoint the vocals. He performed material from his latest album, ‘Rough And Rowdy Ways’. His voice was really strong and his phrasing was unbelievable. Midway through the show, he gave a namecheck to me from the stage which was an unexpected surprise to process from an incredible show from the incredible showman!” Jimmy Page said on a post.
Like Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin also wasn’t always well received by critics, especially at the beginning of their career. Some Rolling Stone magazine critics were known for being particularly harsh when reviewing albums by those artists. In a 2024 interview with Classic Rock, Jimmy Page was asked if reading those reviews “hurt” at the time.
He replied: “It didn’t matter. You could tell, even from the concert reviews, that they probably spent their time in the bar. They definitely hadn’t concentrated on what was going on. What was going on, right from that point in San Francisco, was that people were just flooding to see us. That never stopped.” The interviewer then gave as an example what Rolling Stone said about Dylan’s 1970 album “Self Portrait”, which began with the line, “What is this shit?” Page responded: “Yeah, well, that’s what I would say about Rolling Stone. I wouldn’t say that about Bob Dylan.”
Jimmy Page met Bob Dylan’s mom
Besides meeting Bob Dylan, the Led Zeppelin guitarist also curiously met the musician’s mother. “We met his mum once, actually. It was about the third tour and we were in Miami, and this typical Miami woman comes up with the spectacles and tinted hair bit and she says, ‘Oh, I hear you’re a group. My son’s a singer. You’ve probably heard of him – Bobby Dylan. He’s a good lad.’”
“The strangest thing she said of all was that he always goes back to his … you know, the school turn-out when they got their degrees and things. He always goes back to that … Which is obviously a side of Dylan that many people would be actually shocked about. He’s probably very orthodox in some areas where you expect him to be very bizarre and anarchistic,” Jimmy Page said as noted in the book “Jimmy Page: The Definitive Biography” by Chris Salewicz.
Bob Dylan was not only an inspiration for Jimmy Page and the other Led Zeppelin members in terms of songwriting, but also in the way they approached recording an album. Although Page was already very experienced in studio work from his time as a session musician, he felt they should do something similar to what The Band did on “Music From The Big Pink” (1968) and Dylan’s “The Basement Tapes” (1975). The point was that those albums were not entirely recorded in a traditional studio setting. So after Zeppelin’s third album, the group started to work outside the studio as well. To make that possible, they used a mobile unit to record.
The song Jimmy Page helped to write and said it was similar to what Bob Dylan used to do
Back in 1974, Jimmy Page recorded a song with The Rolling Stones called “Scarlet,” reportedly named after Page’s daughter. The track remained unreleased for nearly five decades until it finally came out in 2020 as part of the *Goats Head Soup* reissue.
In 1975, when talking about the song, Page told Cameron Crowe that he felt it sounded like the classic Dylan album “Blonde on Blonde” (1966). “I did what could possibly be the next Stones B-side. It was Ric Grech, Keith and me doing a number called ‘Scarlet’. I can’t remember the drummer. It sounded very similar in style and mood to those ‘Blonde on Blonde’ tracks, it was great, really good. We stayed up all night and went down to Island Studios where Keith put some reggae guitars over one section. I just put some solos on it. But it was eight in the morning of the next day before I did that,” he said.