“Genius”: the 1965 concert that changed Jimmy Page’s life
There are certain concerts that you attend, maybe only once in your lifetime, that make you leave the venue a different person than the one who entered that very same building mere hours earlier.
Admittedly, it does sound hyperbolic to claim that 90-minutes of music can alter an audience member’s outlook on life, but it truly can give them a new sense of optimism that makes them want to take on the world. With Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page has had that precise effect on countless people, including some who have used it as fuel to establish themselves as rock ‘n’ roll greats in their own right, such as Rush’s Geddy Lee.
Just months after Led Zeppelin released their debut album in 1969, they played the intimate Rockpile in Toronto, which lit something inside of Lee, who later recalled, “I saw them at a little place called the Rockpile. We were in the second row, and when they played ‘How Many More Times’, it just blew me away. It reaffirmed for me all the creative potential in blending hard rock with progressive music.”
He powerfully added, “To young guys, young musicians, that was just kind of a magical night. One of my favourite concert memories too.” Just four years earlier, it was Page who was feeling that exact same sensation as an audience member rather than being the one delivering the sermon from the stage. On May 9th and 10th, 1965, the Royal Albert Hall would welcome Bob Dylan for the first time. Since then, he’s returned to London’s most prestigious venue on many more occasions, even as recently as 2024.
However, back then, Dylan was still incredibly mysterious and new. He’d performed in London several times over the preceding years, but had only played one big headline show, the Royal Festival Hall in 1964, prior to his 1965 tour, which took him across the entirety of the UK for the first time. For Page, it was akin to being confronted with a mythical beast, and it surpassed his wildest expectations, giving him a whole new level of respect for Dylan, whom he viewed as a God among men.
Many decades later, Page took to Instagram to reflect on the concert on the night that changed his life, writing, “In May 1965, I experienced the genius of Bob Dylan at the Royal Albert Hall in London. He accompanied himself on acoustic guitar and cascaded images from such songs as ‘It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’, ‘Chimes Of Freedom’ and ‘She Belongs To Me’ to a mesmerised audience. It was life-changing.”
By this point in Page’s life, he was already a prominent name on the music scene thanks to his handiwork as a session musician, which would lead him to join The Yardbirds. With that in mind, he wasn’t prepared to change his artistry to become Dylan 2.0, unlike many others who saw Bob perform back then, but it did teach him a valuable lesson.
Dylan, who performed a solo acoustic set, had 5,000 patrons at the Royal Albert Hall cast under a spell without needing the support of anybody else. It was an inspiring sight for Page to see an artist being so unflinchingly themselves rather than compromise, which instilled within him a belief that it was possible to forge a unique path, too.
While Led Zeppelin sounded nothing like Bob Dylan, similarly to him, they ripped up the rulebook countless times. Whether this be their resistance to releasing singles or refusing to bow down to radio demands by releasing eight-and-a-half- minute songs like ‘Stairway to Heaven’, Led Zeppelin did as they pleased.
Little did Page know it when he saw Dylan perform at the Royal Albert Hall, but the singer-songwriter’s most daring move awaited just around the corner at Newport Folk Festival that July, when he shocked the world by reinventing himself all over again and going electric. Even now, Dylan remains unpredictable and an unparalleled enigma that beats solely to the sound of his own drum.
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