Born in Heston, Middlesex, England back in 1944, the legendary guitarist and producer Jimmy Page started his career when he was still a teenager and not much after he became one of the most respected session guitarists in England. His talent and knowledge made him first achieve success as a member of The Yardbirds and then, of course, as one of the founding members of Led Zeppelin.
But the most incredible thing is that a kind of “divine intervention” made Page have his first guitar, which would be crucial for him to learn how to play. He recalled that in an interview with Rolling Stone back in 2012.
The incredible story of the first guitar Jimmy Page ever had
Jimmy Page wasn’t from a rich family, his father was a personnel manager at a plastic-coatings plant and his mother a doctor’s secretary. So there were many things his family couldn’t afford when he was younger, like going to see Buddy Holly playing live, as he recalled many times.
But the interesting thing that he even said it was like a “divine intervention”, was that the first guitar he ever had, which was a Spanish guitar, was simply left at a house his family moved to when he was a kid.
“Getting a guitar was like dreaming about a Cadillac. It was something you would see on albums by Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps and Buddy Holly. Buddy Holly came over here (in 1958). I couldn’t afford to see him, I would have learned so much, in one evening. I did see Jerry Lee Lewis. That was tribal. He wasn’t a guitarist — he was a pianist. But it was what he represented.”
He continued:
“I investigated biochemistry (That’s what my parents wanted for me). But I had a voracious appetite for all things guitar. When we moved to Epsom, there was one in the house. It was like divine intervention. There weren’t that many guitarists in the area, but there was one guy at school who said, ‘Bring it along. I’ll tune it up and show you some chords.”
“I probably played three chords for the next year. I took over my parents’ living room as my music studio. At 15, I was playing in a band. I had been headhunted out of Epsom and was playing gigs in London,” Jimmy Page said.
He told Mojo magazine in 2004, that it was probably left behind by the people who lived in the house before them or it was a friend of the family. But according to Page, nobody seemed to know why that guitar was in there.