Joe Walsh’s opinion on Jimmy Page

One of the most influential American guitar players of all time, Joe Walsh entered Rock history for his solo work and also for his contributions to James Gang and Eagles.

He was part of one of the most talented generations of Rock guitar players and had the chance to meet and watch many of his greatest peers perform. Over the decades, he gave his opinion on many of them, including Jimmy Page, the guitarist and producer of Led Zeppelin

What is Joe Walsh’s opinion on Jimmy Page

Joe Walsh has been a big fan of Jimmy Page since his days in The Yardbirds, a band Walsh used to see whenever he could. They first met when James Gang was the opening act for Led Zeppelin and their friendship continued over the years. The American guitarist was also crucial to their sound, since he was the one who gave Page his famous Gibson Les Paul guitar.

“Oddly enough, Jimmy Page played a Telecaster in all of The Yardbirds. The James Gang opened for Led Zeppelin when they first came to America. We opened for them, and they played four or five places – one of them was Cleveland. So I met Jimmy, and (Zeppelin’s) first album had just come out and people were just starting to discover Led Zeppelin. The word of mouth was huge. But a lot of people came to hear The Yardbirds songs because that’s all they knew.”

“So Jimmy and I became friends because pretty much that’s a three-piece band with the lead singer. Jimmy said to me, ‘Look, The Yardbirds is great and I played on so many records…’ He played on so many sessions! If you look up what he played on, you’ll be amazed. But he said, ‘This Telecaster ain’t cutting it for Led Zeppelin. And I don’t know what to do.’ Now, Les Pauls virtually didn’t exist in England at the time. They didn’t hit popularity yet. They were pretty easy to find because they hadn’t been discovered – and they didn’t cost very much.

Joe Walsh continued:

“After the fact, when that became the guitar for rock ‘n’ roll, the rest is history. But he said, ‘I got to get a double-coil situation. I’ve looked for Les Paul, there aren’t any in England. Do you know any way you could help me get one? Because Led Zeppelin ain’t making it with a Telecaster.’ And I happen to have two. I found one in the basement of a family-owned music store, I think in Athens, OH, where Ohio University is. It was just in the basement. I just walked in another garage, and it was all boxes. I said, ‘What do you got downstairs?’ And there was a Les Paul!

“And I found another one through a friend, I traded him some stuff for one. So, one I really liked and one I just was saving for a rainy day. So I gave Jimmy that one. (That’s the) Les Paul he calls Number One. The body of Led Zeppelin music is that Les Paul that I gave him. (I couldn’t imagine Led Zeppelin with a Telecaster) No, neither could I, neither could he. And he said, ‘I’m in big trouble here.’ I said, ‘Look, just try this out. I think this will solve the problem. And if you like it, we’ll talk,'” Joe Walsh said in an interview with Wrong Notes Podcast in 2021.

He also revealed that Jimmy Page eventually paid him about $1,500 for the guitar later on. It was slightly less than what he had originally paid for it, and now the instrument is worth millions of dollars.

Page is also a fan of Joe Walsh and thanked him for the guitar

Jimmy Page is also a fan of Joe Walsh and loved the music of James Gang, saying to Rolling Stone in 1975: “He has a tremendous feel for the instrument. I’ve loved his style since the early James Gang.”

In an interview with Corus Radio in 2015, Page recalled how much Walsh insisted he bought the guitar at the time. “I’ve done all the first album pretty much on the Fender Telecaster. So we promoted the first album on the road. We played in San Francisco second time round, because we played in like January 69. This is just a few months later, relatively speaking and Joe Walsh comes along with this guitar.”

“He says: ‘You’re going to buy this guitar. I’ve got a Les Paul custom, which means he had three pickups on, electric pickups and this one had two. and he said: ‘No, no’, you got to buy it and I said: ‘You know, Joe, I’m really happy with the Fender Telecaster’ and he said: ‘No, you gotta have it!’ He convinced me that I should buy it and he was right.”

He continued:

“Joe says there’s magic in guitars and I think he’s right, especially those guitars, because they all sounded very different from each other. It wasn’t (those) kind of guitars that are really consistent scientifically engineered. In those days there weren’t so much. So you could find a guitar that really had a character, that was user friendly,” he said (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

On his social media, Jimmy Page often recalls important moments from his career and memories of seeing artists he admires perform live. He has already written about going to see the American guitarist play and recalled how important the guitar Walsh gave him was. “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. He 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.”

He continued:

“I played the Les Paul on ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and ‘What Is and What Should Never Be’ and that decided it for me. It was definitely going to be the Les Paul from then on. I always wanted to make a change for each album sonically. 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.