“Into a new realm”: The band Jimmy Page thought pushed rock forward
Rock music was never meant to be stagnant. For every great artist coaxed by nostalgia, there are different artists who push the envelope every chance they get just to see what they can get away with. Although Jimmy Page is one of the few artists who managed to have one foot in both worlds throughout his career, he felt everything exciting going on with modern rock could be found in Royal Blood.
Because looking at the early part of Page’s career, it was all about relying on the greatest music ever made from generations before. Looking at his time as a session musician, some of the artists on his resume don’t really read like the guy who would one day write ‘Kashmir’ or ‘Stairway to Heaven’. There was room to grow, and after leaving The Yardbirds for something different, Led Zeppelin was his vehicle to do whatever he wanted.
While they started off with the blues that everyone started with around that time, the more ambitious side of Zeppelin was about taking that template and moving it into areas that no one had ever considered. Suddenly, it wasn’t out of the question to use strange tunings like were found in ‘The Rain Song’ or their wealth of acoustic material on tracks like ‘Thank You’ and ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’.
Royal Blood certainly had the same kind of mentality of starting out with classic rock, but their limitations have always defined them. Given that all rock music centres around the guitar, having an entire group where it’s just a rhythm section means that the groove is never lost for a second, especially when they started working on tracks like ‘Figure It Out’ and ‘Lights Out’.
Then again, there’s also a good chance that Page caught a few whiffs of Jack White sprinkled in there as well. The White Stripes had always been used to taking their sound in different directions with just the bare essentials, and since Page already worked with him on It Might Get Loud, this may as well have been the next stage of that mentality going forward.
Although Page never claimed to be in touch with all things modern rock, he knew that the genre was at least in good hands with Royal Blood on the charts, saying, “Their album has taken the genre up a serious few notches. It’s so refreshing to hear, because they play with the spirit of the things that have preceded them, but you can hear they’re going to take rock into a new realm – if they’re not already doing that.”
And while Royal Blood still has a signature sound to them, their later material has shown them scratching that much more. In a genre that seems populated with one too many Black Keys wannabes, albums like Typhoons at least showed them able to work in the realm of danceable rock as well.
So, as they go forward, we’ll only have to see what the future has in store for Royal Blood, but the whole point is to not anticipate anything. Because if you know anything about these kinds of mavericks, it’s that they should never be counted on to put out the same record all over again.
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