In the early 1960s in England, a wave of young musicians inspired by American Blues began writing their own songs, often blending the style with Rock and Roll and helping to shape new subgenres. Among them was Jimmy Page, who first worked as a session guitarist before joining The Yardbirds and later founding Led Zeppelin, one of the most influential and successful bands in Rock history.
While musicians like Page pushed the Blues into heavier and more experimental territory, others players as Eric Clapton decided to remain more faithful to the roots. Over the years Page shared his thoughts on many of his peers, also giving his opinion on Clapton.
What is Jimmy Page’s opinion on Eric Clapton
Jimmy Page admires Eric Clapton’s guitar playing and already called him a tasteful player and a master of the Blues guitar. “On this day in 1965, I went to see John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers at the Pontiac Club in Putney, London. It showcased Eric Clapton’s magnificent mastery of the blues guitar. Eric came to stay at my home in Epsom that night. I had told him about the recordings and guitar sound I was getting from my Simon recorder.”
We played together and tracks surfaced on the ‘Blues Anytime’ series on Immediate Records. I went on to produce ‘I’m Your Witchdoctor’ and ‘Telephone Blues’ with Mayall and Clapton, as well as ‘Sitting on Top of the World’ and ‘Double Crossing Time,’” Jimmy Page said on a social media post in 2023.
When Page was still a kid, he moved with his family to Epsom, Surrey, England. He was close to Eric Clapton, who lived in the same county, as did their future friend Jeff Beck. As the Led Zeppelin guitarist said, he produced some Eric tracks with John Mayall and The Blues Breakers. According to him, at the time the engineer said that Clapton was “unrecordable” because of the kind of sound of his guitar, but Page was the one who showed the engineer how to get the sound properly. He recalled that in an interview with Trouser Press in 1977.
Jimmy Page said:
“Don Peek, who toured England with the Everly Brothers. He was bloody good. He was the first guitarist to come to England who was doing finger tremolo, and all the musicians were totally knocked out. Clapton picked up on it straight away, and others followed soon after. Eric was the first one to evolve the sound with the Gibson and Marshall amps. He should have total credit for that.”
“I remember when we did ‘I’m Your Witchdoctor’, he had all that sound down. The engineer, who was cooperating to that point (I was producing, don’t forget), but was used to doing orchestras and big bands. (He) suddenly turned off the machine and said, ‘This guitarist is unrecordable!’ I told him to just record it and I’d take full responsibility.”
“The guy just couldn’t believe that someone was getting that kind of sound from a guitar on purpose. Feedback, tremolo, he’d never heard anything like it,” Jimmy Page said. Page had the chance to see Clapton playing with The Yardbirds and with John Mayall. But the musician already recalled he didn’t have the chance to watch him in Cream and Blind Faith.
Jimmy Page said Eric Clapton was a Blues purist
Many British bands that were inspired by the Blues incorporated that influence into other kinds of music. But there were artists who wanted to play only the Blues like Clapton and that’s why he decided to leave The Yardbirds when they tried to record more Pop songs. Page recalled that in an interview featured in the Brad Tolinski book “Light & Shade Conversations with Jimmy Page”.
“Jeff (Beck) and I had a broader view of music. But I never saw it as a battle with more traditional blues players. I admired what purists like Clapton were doing, and there were plenty of others who were equally brilliant. Personally, I don’t think you’re going to find a better example of British blues than the original Fleetwood Mac. (The era) with Jeremy Spencer and Peter Green,” he said.
Jimmy Page thought The Yardbirds era with Clapton was great
When Eric Clapton decided to leave The Yardbirds, Jimmy Page was invited to replace him. But declined out of respect for the guitarist, who was already his friend at the time. Instead, he recommended Jeff Beck for the spot, a position Page himself would take later on. The Led Zeppelin founder already admired Clapton’s work with The Yardbirds saying he had the touch as player.
“He’s definitely got the touch, you know. ‘I Ain’t Got You,’ with the Yardbirds, was really, really great. And his work is still top-notch. The touch is still there. (…) I thought they were great, and I saw them a couple of times at the Marquee. One thing that gets overlooked when Eric was in the band was their extreme good taste when it came to choosing blues songs to cover.”
“In those days it wasn’t a good idea to do numbers that the Stones were doing. They staked out their own territory and performed the songs extremely well. For example, the band’s arrangement of ‘I Ain’t Got You’ is terrific. Eric’s solo is a classic,” Jimmy Page said in an interview featured in the Brad Tolinski book.
Eric Clapton said Led Zeppelin was “unnecessarily loud”
In an interview featured in the book “Led Zeppelin: The Definitive Biography”, Eric Clapton recalled his first impression of the band, saying: “They were very loud. I thought it was unnecessarily loud. I liked some of it; I really did like some of it. But a lot of it was just too much. They overemphasized whatever point they were making, I thought,” he said. Clapton’s quote is interesting since Jimmy Page labeled him as a Blues purist and the kind of music Led Zeppelin was doing, Hard Rock, was a heavier kind of Blues. So it was something different from the pure state of that music genre.
They first met in the early 1960s when Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies organized Blues jams at the famous Marquee Club in London on Thursday nights. The sessions became very popular, and many musicians used to appear because it was the only place in town for that kind of music at the time. In addition to Clapton, Page also met some members of The Rolling Stones there.
Over the decades, Page joined Clapton on stage many times, usually performing songs from Eric’s career or classic blues tunes. Both were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as members of The Yardbirds in 1992. A couple of years later, along with Jeff Beck and Brian May, they met Queen Elizabeth II after receiving honors from the Crown.