“Perfect”: The artist Jimmy Page learned note for note
Nobody comes out of the womb naturally gifted in the art of guitar playing. Even the most skilled, iconic guitarist in rock history – the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Jimmy Page – all had to start somewhere. In some cases, these artists were taught and trained in the art of the six-string. In the case of Jimmy Page, however, the Led Zeppelin songwriter learned his craft by playing along with the early rock ‘n’ roll records of his youth and figuring things out at his own pace.
As though his fate had already been determined by a higher power, Page first picked up a guitar at the age of 12, after a Spanish guitar had been left in his childhood home – either by a previous tenant or friend of the family, Page later theorised. At the time, around 1956, there was not a great deal of exciting guitar music to be heard in England, with the budding rock and roll scene of the United States still a few months from making the trip over the Atlantic. When rock did arrive in old Blighty, Page’s mind was utterly transfixed on attempting to replicate it.
In those early days, the guitarist had found an appreciation for skiffle, a kind of DIY music style that incorporated many similar elements to US rock and roll without the dangerous edge. The benefit of skiffle was that, on the whole, its compositions were pretty simple, allowing a teenage Jimmy Page to follow along with the radio or his record collection reasonably quickly. His current position as a rock and roll guitar hero is largely thanks to these early records he would attempt to emulate, with one guitarist particularly influential on his early development.
Although Page came of age during the first wave of rock ‘n’ roll, that did not necessarily mean his listening habits were entirely limited to the sounds of Little Richard, Elvis Presley, or Jerry Lee Lewis. In fact, those records were infamously hard to come across on the radio. “You’ve got to understand that in those days ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ was a dirty word,” Page once told the Trouser Press. “It wasn’t even being played by the media. Maybe you’d hear one record a day.”
Let down by the radio, Page went in search of rock records himself, trawling the record stores of London for any hint of rock rebellion. Elvis, of course, was a particular favourite of his, but it was the guitar mastery of James Burton that first grasped the attention of the budding young guitarist. “I used to listen to Ricky Nelson records and pinch the James Burton licks, learn the note for note perfect.”
Burton’s guitar playing formed the defining sound of that early rock period, with the Louisiana guitarist lending his skill to countless performers, including Elvis Presley, The Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison, and Johnny Cash among countless others. However, he is perhaps best known for his extensive collaborations with Ricky Nelson, which helped to make Burton a colossal name within rock and roll circles.
Not only did Burton carve out the rock guitar sound through his work with Nelson and others, but he also had an undeniable influence on the early days of Jimmy Page. “I only did that for a while, though,” the Zeppelin axeman claimed, “I guess that after one writes one’s first song you tend to depart from that. It’s inevitable.” Nevertheless, the likelihood of Page getting to the point of writing his first song without the prior impact of guitarists like Burton feels fairly slim.
By the time Page formed hard rock progenitors Led Zeppelin in 1968, his playing style had developed far beyond the early sounds of James Burton. His extensive experience as a session musician, as well as his work with The Yardbirds, gave Page a profoundly individual, identifiable guitar sound of his own. Even still, the impact of Burton on the development of Page as a guitar player can certainly not be overlooked.
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