“The greatest”: the band break-up that devastated Jimmy Page
There are some band break-ups that fans simply never get over; that’s a fact that the former members of Led Zeppelin have had to get used to over the years. No matter what Jimmy Page or Robert Plant achieve in a solo capacity, there will still be an insatiable appetite to see those two rock icons united onstage once again.
To their credit, Zeppelin have never succumbed to the allure of a big-budget, high-profile reunion tour, aside from a handful of reformed performances here and there over the years. Their initial break-up in 1980, sparked by the tragic passing of drummer John Bonham, left a gaping hole in the rock landscape which the band had themselves defined over the course of their illustrious discography. Unsurprisingly, then, Led Zeppelin’s death is still mourned to this day.
Although Jimmy Page and the gang have never bowed to the demands of fans, braying for a reunion, the guitarist knows what it feels like to miss a band. After all, before Page was the guitar hero behind a rock revolution, he was a devoted music fan and an obsessive.
From his pre-teen years, worshipping the emerging realm of skiffle, to his youthful days spent as a session musician in the heart of London’s musical explosion in the 1960s, he crossed paths with a wealth of different artists, and some never left his mind.
One such band was, of course, The Beatles. Redefining music itself, the colossal empire that the Fab Four amassed didn’t come out of nowhere. For many people, particularly in Jimmy Page’s generation, the band provided a blueprint for songwriting, performance, and, crucially, innovation. In fact, it is not overly egregious to suggest that Led Zeppelin might never have formed were it not for The Beatles, and they wouldn’t have been the only beloved band never to exist, either.
Aside from a few tenuous links, such as playing rhythm guitar on the instrumental ‘Ringo’s Theme’, from A Hard Day’s Night, Page had little physical connection to the band, but that didn’t stop him from taking in every scrap of material that they released during their painfully short tenure.
Even though Page was deep into his newfound lifestyle of rock hedonism by the time that The Beatles split up in 1970, it took quite a while for him to fully get over that devastating break-up.
“They are great,” the guitarist is quoted as saying in a 1972 edition of The Bombay Times. “In fact, they are the greatest… We felt sorry when they broke up, because together they produced the most fantastic music.” Elsewhere, the guitarist also heaped praise onto the breaking down of social class barriers enacted by The Beatles, but it was their musical innovation and songwriting prowess which really excited Page and his Led Zeppelin comrades.
It would be easy, and rather redundant, to make the link between a song like ‘Helter Skelter’ and the hard rock mastery of Led Zeppelin’s material, but more important than that heavy connection was the penchant for experimenting that The Beatles bestowed upon Page, whose work has never stopped evolving.
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