The five musicians who inspired Led Zeppelin’ Jimmy Page the most
Jimmy Page has been an ever-present cultural figure for the best part of 60 years. He’s enjoyed a highly successful career that has seen him hailed as one of the greatest rock guitarists and songwriters. Most of his greatest exploits came in Led Zeppelin, with their sound so potent that they even eclipsed The Beatles as the biggest band on earth.
His story is a well-known one, and almost from the outset, it seemed that Page was set to live an extraordinary life. Growing up in the suburbs of Hounslow, London, Page came across his first guitar by chance in the Epsom house his family moved into when he was a child, which promptly kicked off his love affair with the instrument. Largely self-taught, he was shown bits by an older friend at school and took to the six-string quickly.
Inspired by rockabilly and skiffle, at just 13, Page appeared on Huw Wheldon’s All Your Own talent show as part of a skiffle quartet, which aired on BBC1 in 1957. After his first taste of the major leagues, Page continued to cut his teeth by busking, a decision which led him down a long road to becoming one of the most in-demand session guitarists in London. Appearing on early records by The Who, The Rolling Stones and Donovan, by the mid-1960s, the young musician had wholly refined his craft.
Alongside Jeff Beck in 1966, Page recorded the pioneering instrumental ‘Beck’s Bolero’, which paved the way for his short but impactful stint in The Yardbirds. After The Yardbirds imploded in 1968, he formed ‘The New Yardbirds’, who eventually became Led Zeppelin thanks to a suggestion from The Who’s drummer, Keith Moon. By the dawn of 1970, they were the hottest band on earth; and the rest was history.
Given that Jimmy Page’s work is so significant, today we’ve listed the five musicians who inspired him the most. Expect to see some heroes.
Five musicians who inspired Jimmy Page the most:
Elvis Presley
You’d be hard-pressed not to find a rocker of Jimmy Page’s generation who doesn’t cite Elvis Presley as a major influence. Affectionately dubbed ‘The King of Rock’ n’ Roll’, the moniker effectively displays how essential Presley was in developing the genre. From his cover of ‘Hound Dog’ to ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, his oeuvre boasts a myriad of classics.
In a 2019 Instagram post, Page recalled playing in Elvis’s hometown of Tupelo, Tennessee: “In 1998, I played at Tupelo, where Elvis was born and raised, when there were no local attractions apart from the cotton fields or getting to Memphis.”
He then discussed how Elvis crossed America’s racial divide and changed the world in the process: “When Elvis grew up it must have been pretty bleak but the white and black picked the cotton side by side and the local indigenous music provided the soundtrack to this tough environment. So it took the visionary genius of Elvis to blend those musical sources and change the world.”
Gene Vincent
The leather jacket-donning Gene Vincent was a rockabilly pioneer, with his 1956 hit with The Blue Caps, ‘Be-Bop-a-Lula’ deemed one of the most important early examples of the genre. Labelled ‘The Screaming End’ by fans, he brought an edge to rock ‘n’ roll that inspired everyone from Jimmy Page to Ian Dury.
When interviewed for the 2018 documentary Still On The Run: The Jeff Beck Story, Page recalled how impactful Vincent was on he and Jeff Beck dedicating themselves to the guitar: “We were really, really keen on exactly the same things with the Gene Vincent records and Ricky Nelson records. There were all these fine guitar solos by James Burton and one of the things that we would ask of each other was ‘What’s your version of My Babe?’ ‘OK, what’s your version?’ That sort of seemed to be a common ground between most guitarists around that time, to see how well other guys could cut this solo.”
Elmore James
It is no secret that American blues guitarist Elmore James had a tremendous impact on the young Jimmy Page, which he had discussed on numerous occasions throughout his career. Notably, James’ slide guitar work was so game-changing that he was dubbed ‘The King of the Slide Guitar’, with tracks such as ‘Dust My Broom’ and ‘I Can’t Hold Out’, two highlights. Page is so heavily indebted to James that he covered ‘Shake Your Money Maker’ with The Black Crowes in 1999.
When speaking to Rolling Stone in 2012, he admitted that he struggled to learn James’ songs before discovering his “secret” after watching The Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones perform: “I didn’t know Mick and Keith as well as I knew Jeff. But I’d seen Brian at the Ealing Jazz Club. I saw him play bottleneck guitar. So I was struggling with the Elmore James stuff. Suddenly, it clicked. It was in the tuning. He was doing it.”
Muddy Waters
Although Robert Johnson is hailed as the man who impacted the blues most, Muddy Waters also makes a strong claim for the title. The father of the Chicago arm of the genre, Waters’ electrifying form of playing set the scene for the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page, fusing blistering energy with raw emotion. ‘Mannish Boy’, ‘I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man’ and ‘Got My Mojo Working’ are three of his most famous cuts.
Speaking to Reuters, Page said of Waters: “As far as the blues, it just captured them hearing Chicago blues. When The Stones first started they were doing really good interpretations of Muddy Waters songs and all that Chess catalogue.”
Page loved Waters so much that it is claimed that Led Zeppelin’s ‘You Shook Me’ is stolen from the late blues musician.
Scotty Moore
American guitarist Scotty Moore made his name in Elvis Presley’s backing band and The Blue Moon Boys, with his work so important that nearly every guitarist of Page’s generation cites him as an influence, including Keith Richards and George Harrison. Credited with being the creator of the power chord, ‘Jailhouse Rock’ and ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ are two of his finest moments.
Page said: “Scotty Moore’s guitar playing [with Elvis Presley], Cliff Gallup [with Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps]… all of these people, they gave me the inspiration… If you heard them you were infected by them, if you listened to it, then you were just seduced by it. That was what was going to write the whole of the manual for use as much as anything else.”
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