The day Jeff Beck believed Jimmy Page ripped him off: “More than inspired”
One of the most common arguments in music is nature vs nurture. If you’re not naturally musically gifted but are willing to work hard and practice, could you one day be one of the greats? Or do the greats have to have some kind of natural musical inkling that ushers them forward? It’s hard to tell with Jimmy Page, as we can’t hear his early music, but given the amount of time that he was playing and practising, he had put himself in a good position to be a success.
Page started playing guitar at 12 years old, and he was always keen on thinking outside the box and creating somewhat unconventional music. He didn’t take lessons and instead opted to teach himself. He would spend the majority of his time learning different chords, licks, and riffs, and he became inseparable from his guitar, to the extent that he would take it to school with him.
Also going to the same school was Jeff Beck’s sister, who ended up introducing the two guitarists who would eventually become friends. “My sister knew Jimmy from Epsom Art School,” said Beck, “She came to my room one day and said, ‘There’s a weirdo at school, he’s got a weird guitar like yours’, and then slammed the door.”
Beck was still in the process of learning how to play the guitar, so he intended on learning how to play with Page so that the two could make each other better musicians. “I ran after her saying, ‘Where is he’,” recalled Beck, “She said, ‘I’ll take you over there because I’d like to see him play. I don’t believe he can play’.”
The two helped each other learn to play. Not only did they jam with one another, but Page also had a tape recorder, so they would record each other playing and get an idea for how to record music and play for a recording. This would benefit both of them in the future, as they made a name for themselves in the studio, recording complex and layered songs that the public adored.
“We went over there, he opened the door and we got tea and cake,” said Beck, “We visited regularly from then on. His mum had bought him a really good quality tape recorder, so we’d record there. I don’t know where those tapes are now but there’s some rare stuff on them.”
The two worked together intrinsically. They were making music together from a young age, and both had stints in The Yardbirds. As such, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that their music ended up being somewhat comparable. However, Beck thought that Page took the influence a step too far. While some overlap was to be expected, Beck felt as though there was too much, to the extent that Page was borderline copying him.
“When I first heard what he’s done with Led Zeppelin I thought ‘That’s a little bit more than inspired by the Truth album,” he said, claiming that Page had taken too much from one of his projects. However, it seems that this influence went both ways, as upon listening to and watching Led Zeppelin, it became clear to Beck that he might need a singer akin to Robert Plant.
“When I finally got over that I realized I needed more than I had,” he said, “I needed a frontman with girly appeal. Plant certainly had that in abundance – the bare chest, golden locks, and all that. We [the Jeff Beck Group] had Rod Stewart. [Laughs].”
