The singer that Jimmy Page said never sang a wrong note

After starting his musical career in the late 50s, Jimmy Page quickly became one of the most respected session guitarists in England, being invited to play in the recording of many famous records. In the following years he had the experience of being a member of The Yardbirds and then to become the guitarist and producer of Led Zeppelin, which became one of the best-selling bands of all time.

He is certainly a music genius and we can say he is really an expert when it comes to music. During his career he always praised the artists who he believes are good and he even said that there is one singer that he never saw singing a wrong note. No, it’s not Robert Plant, but he had the opportunity to play with that vocalist a few years after Led Zeppelin came to an end.

The singer that Jimmy Page said never sang a wrong note

That singer is Paul Rodgers, with whom Jimmy Page had the opportunity to play for a few years in the supergroup The Firm formed by both of them in 1984. The band also had the drummer Chris Slade and the bassist Tony Franklin and they only released two albums, the self-titled in 1985 and “Mean Business” in 1986.

Page knew Rodgers for a long time and had the opportunity to get closer to him in the 70s when Bad Company was part of Zeppelin’s label “Swan Song”. At the time, Rodgers’ band was also managed by Zeppelin’s legendary manager Peter Grant, who initially didn’t like their name.

But it was in an interview with Guitar World in 1986, that Page talked about Rodgers and praised him, saying he never sang a wrong note. He said that after being asked what was the difference between working with Robert Plant and Paul Rodgers.

“Well of course it is (different). 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.”

He continued:

“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 said.

During that same conversation, he noted that besides Bad Company, he also liked Rodgers’ previous band Free.

Page’s admiration for Paul didn’t change a bit over the decades, since he said in an interview with Uncut magazine in 2017 that the vocalist was phenomenal and insisted in saying that “he was then and still is”.

Living in London and being such a legendary artist, Jimmy Page can really go to see any band that is playing in town. So once in a while he goes to a concert to see bands he likes and old friends. As he remembers every year on his social media, he went to see Bad Company playing at Wembley in 2010. He praised not only the vocalist, but also the drummer Simon Kirke and the guitarist Mick Ralphs.

“On this day in 2010, I saw Bad Company at Wembley and I went with original drummer Simon Kirke and guitarist Mick Ralphs. It was really good to hear those guys going through their paces and Paul Rodgers’ performance was high class. He hasn’t lost his magic,” Jimmy Page said.