Jimmy Page interview, Beat Instrumental, April 1976, by Gary Cooper
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Jimmy Page enters Swan Song Record's comfortable if sparsely furnished office looking quite disconcertingly youthful. Despite a sleepless night there's an air of light humour hovering about him—albeit tinged with that unfathomable mystique that Zeppelin have had since day one of their travels through the rock and roll desert. He lowers himself into a chair takes a sip of beer and grins. It's probably his first interview in a long while and he somehow feels restless to get it rolling. It's not a desire to get it out of the way though, he just seems full of ideas ripe for communication. I return the grin, fiddle with the tape machine (uttering a silent invocation to the gods of electronics that the conversation gets properly recorded) and launch off. It's a long long while since Beat spoke last with him so I launch right back to the very beginning.
Jimmy, why play guitar at all? What started it?
Well, when I got turned onto Rock music in the early days it was very much a subculture thing. The one record that really turned me on to want to play the guitar was Baby, Let's Play House, a Presley / Scotty Moore thing—it sounded so full. Even now, although it possibly sounds very simple, it has a definite essence to it. All those early Presley records had it, in fact all those early rock and roll records had it. They knew that they were breaking barriers and it really was something new, it was going like a bloody great avalanche.
Anyway, I had an old Spanish guitar that was given to the family and no-one had ever touched it but I think I managed to find someone to help me play. In those days it was really bad for a beginner. Whenever a guitar was seen at school it just kept getting taken away but I wanted to take mine with me everywhere so that I could have the time to learn how to play.
So, although you began like everyone else, when did your style become Jimmy Page?
I guess it must have come when I was doing recording sessions really, although it's hard to say, but I was making up riffs and things and ended up playing solos that I guess were really just a conglomeration of everything I'd ever learned all mixed-up and put through the mincer. One's automatically got an identity and I've always felt that other good guitarists could tell, I mean you can read an identity, like a psychiatrist could, read all about someone from their playing.
Still staying in the past, I remember that when I first saw Zeppelin, in a pub in Welwyn Garden City, that you had some really weird Rickenbacker amps. Where did they come from and what became of them?
Yeah, I remember that gig too, we were late! Those amps were something we managed to connive out of Rickenbacker in the Yardbirds. We had these cabinets and the amps were terrible, they kept blowing-up and farting—really dreadful, but the cabinets had these really good JBL speakers in them so I got rid of these transistorised amps—I hate transistor amps anyway, they've got no meat in them.
Can I quote you on that?
Yeah! Electricians say that it's because they don't use good quality transistors that they sound so flat but I don't believe that. I just don't think they can get it—you've got to have something burning, something moving, I mean you can see that movement, that bloody power! You whack a chord and you can see them all light up. I mean, with a transistor it just doesn't happen does it? You can really recognize a transistor amp. Personally, I still use Marshalls on stage doctored up with KT 88's and they really put it out. In the studio I've been more or less using AC 30's and this old amp I've got called a Supro which again is an old valve amp. I used that one all the way through the first album and I nearly always end up doing solos on it and sticking Robert's harps through it.
On the subject of gear, what happened to that old Telecaster that you used to use?
Jeff (Beck) gave it to me as a present—it was a beautiful gesture if you think about it. As you know I was asked to join the Yardbirds and said no, but I recommended them to ring Jeff. Anyway, they did and were knocked out. So he came round one day, knocked on the door and said, "It's yours" and it was a really beautiful instrument. The trouble is it got buggered-up. I was away on tour and a friend of mine painted the guitar and knocked a wire off which he tried to put back on again. All you could get when you switched the pickups was the neck one. I couldn't work out what was wrong so we took it along to a certain shop in the West End with the faults written down on paper but when it came back they'd re-wired both pick-ups. It was finished. That was it, the neck's still fine but I just couldn't bring myself to play it again. You could really play that guitar, it worked with you. It was wiped-out by some idiot.
So is that what brought you onto the Les Paul?
No, it was just that the group was getting louder, the drum kit started to increase in size—not getting more drums, but just the drums getting bigger and louder. Bonzo's amazing like that, he doesn't really thrash the drums and if you watch him you'll hardly see his arms move at all but he's got so much attack from the wrist. Anyway, this poor old Telecaster was beginning to start screaming with feedback as I moved the volume up. So I thought I'd just have to go over to a Gibson where at least you could control the feedback.
Do you prefer the Gibson to the Fender?
They're just totally different, one a very clean guitar with what I'd call a very glassy sound, whereas the Gibson's got a fat sound. I don't have a preference, it's just horses for courses. I mean, all those country licks that you can get out of a Telecaster, you just can't get them to sound right with a Les Paul.
Are there any special Jimmy Page playing techniques that you could talk about?
Well, I suppose my whole approach to the guitar is hardly technical in relation to, say, classical guitar. I mean I'm using my thumb and this sort of thing which is right out technically and that's just a minor thing. Really there are just loads of little things which you come across when you're playing. If it works and if you use it at the right time then it's valid. I've never had a very good technique and I've always felt that it was very sloppy playing really, but then people tell me I'm too self-critical but that's just the way it is.
Who do you listen to these days?
Well, I don't really listen to that many things at all. In fact I stopped listening to anybody for about 18 months because I didn't want to start picking-up on other people's things. In the early days of Zeppelin I was still listening to a lot of people like Bert Jansch because I thought that he was such an innovator. Nowadays I listen to a lot of folk music, street music really, and try to adapt their scales and rhythms to what I'm doing rather than listen to other rock and roll guitarists because I reckon that I've got a pretty good knowledge of straight rock and roll and now I just want to keep extending in lots of different areas not just trying one style. Even though I might not be able to play all the things really well. I'd rather be able to dabble at everything, if you can appreciate different ideas in music then you can find something for every mood.
Are you still searching round through Indian music?
I really got so enveloped on the technical side of that. The fact that they measured their quarter and eight tones with so many intervals, I think about eleven, and I found the fact that they could measure and work with these amazing. At the time that I was really getting into that I was doing session work and the people there are very staid in their approach to theoretical music. And when I said to them that you just can't write this stuff in your system they said "Well, it doesn't matter anyway".
Where do you go from here with the guitar?
I've got this whole guitar orchestration instrumental which brings in many different sections of guitar and that was going on the last L.P. but as we didn't have enough time to record it I decided to save it. I really think that a good guitar orchestration has yet to come. The way I've discussed it with Robert it will have just four short sections of vocals on it, he's really very keen on it.
In the booklet that was on sale at the Earls Court gigs last year there was a description of you sitting there with your guitar in your hands just waiting for something to come through. How true a picture was that?
Very true really. One minute your sitting there with the guitar, then you're playing and you realise that something has come through. It's like guitar solos—I'll get warmed up and knock-off three and one of them, with any luck, will be all right, but I didn't plan it that way, it just came through. On stage, for example, I'm really trying to open-up, open myself and clear my mind out. It sounds awfully pretentious but I'm sorry that's how it is. Half the time I don't know what I'm playing and I know that could be made into a huge kind of a joke—don't even print it if it doesn't read right, but that's how it is. I'll go into the studio one night and come out in the morning and the whole thing's done but when I went in I went in with nothing.
There are limits to just how good a scribe you are though, otherwise we'd have people who are as great as the great lyrical composers—I mean, who's going to come through with the strength of a Wagner? That's where you have to own up and admit that it is just a music of the streets and it only goes so far. O.K., it's important sociologically, but culturally, watch out! No matter how much people like to waffle about it I really think that it's just a folk music reflecting the sociological condition of today.
If you're saying that we lack really great composers of the stature of people like Wagner, isn't that as true of all art it is of music? I mean, it's missing from graphic art too isn't it?
Yes, you're right. When I was at art college the whole thing was gimmickry and I said it's got to go back to realism. I mean I was interested in the Pre-Raphaelites and they laughed. There is eventually going to be some sort of rennaissance and it will be a sort of heavy intellectual romantic thing which will really stir people with its intensity.
Will it come from established musicians like yourself?
Judging by what I see coming from the younger musicians now there doesn't seem to be that much going on but there could be something lingering on there that could be a fight against all that nonsense. I'm just a musician of the day though I'm not saying that I could do it but I know it's going to happen.
It's an obvious question, but do you practice much these days?
No, not like I ought to. Not unless there's something that I've got in my head that is difficult to play. Obviously, I work out harmonic things but not solos. Now when I went to India I met this guy and he made me feel quite ashamed. He'd never met a Western guitarist but he'd got it all sussed-out. He had his guitar properly strung and he'd got his approach right. This chap had only learned by people sending him out the occasional Guitar Player mag and probably yours too. He'd been a sitarist for seven years and he asked me that very question so I said, oh, about an hour a day and he said "Well, I always get to play for at least eight hours a day". Here was a chap who was really struggling and quite probably would never get to be heard but he was putting so much work into it. It did make me think was I putting enough effort into what I was doing?
Time was against us running through more questions although Jimmy seemed willing enough to go on talking all day. It's only when I think back to the conversation that I realise just how much more I could have asked and just how deeply immersed in his role as some sort of musical scribe Jimmy is. The wider ramifications of being a rock and roll superstar are there in his mind in terms of the power he can tap when he's on stage. But it's a power taken from the audiences and used to bring something back that can be heard in his writing and playing. Just the ancient role of the artist and scribe . . . perhaps re-vitalised in an age when such things are not widely recognized but are still there nevertheless.