The guitarist Jimmy Page said “everybody respects” in rock music
There are very few artists, if any, who do not divide opinion in some way. Even bands as widely beloved as The Beatles have their share of contrarians claiming they dislike them.
However, respect is a completely different matter. You might not personally enjoy the prog-rock sound of Rush, for example, while still recognising them as one of the most technically proficient bands in rock history.
Jimmy Page is another figure who is difficult to criticise when considering his immense contributions to music. He has been part of the industry since the 1960s, first working as a session musician before joining The Yardbirds and later securing his place in history with Led Zeppelin. As a result, when it comes to discussing the guitar, very few opinions carry more weight than his.
However, according to Page, he’s not quite on the level of the late Jeff Beck, a figure he once said had the support of the entire musical fraternity. While the music industry is a famously catty business, once artists get a taste of success, dissenting voices usually spring out of the woodwork and attack like hyenas. However, Beck was an exception to the rule.
Page and Beck grew up in Surrey, knowing each other since they were students, before worldwide domination in the rock business ensued. Their stories intertwined when Page, who handed Beck his first break after Eric Clapton had quit The Yardbirds, recommended his friend for the role after turning down the gig in favour of more lucrative session work.
Later, Page joined the group, and for a brief time, the line-up included both him and Beck before the latter departed. It remains to this day one of the most devastatingly talented line-ups of guitarists ever constructed. While their trajectories changed, as they both went on to put their own unique stamp on the world of music, their friendship lasted through it all.
When Led Zeppelin’s career came to a tragic end following the death of John Bonham, it was Beck who was on hand to support his friend, with Page making his live comeback at the Hammersmith Odeon alongside his former Yardbirds bandmate. That moment epitomises their relationship, with Beck being there for Page when he needed him most. In the Led Zeppelin guitarist’s mind, Beck was just on another level as both a human and a musician.
Page opened up about his admiration of Beck in the 2018 documentary, Still On The Run: The Jeff Beck Story, dotingly saying of the virtuoso, “Everybody respects Jeff. He’s an extraordinary musician, and he’s developed a technique which is so complex, it’s just a beauty to behold and hear and to feel his playing.”
“He’s having a conversation with you when he’s playing. It’s just he’s not singing.”
Ramping up the praise further, Page added: “The good thing about guitarists is everyone’s got their own character playing, you know, that’s something which we all do understand. But we could all go, we could be talking for hours and hours and years and years, decades and decades.”
Then, he highlighted “the most important thing” about Beck’s skillset, one that is so strong that he admitted “you can’t actually put into words”, which “is what you actually hear in that music.”
Page continued, “And that is the key to all of this, of Jeff’s playing and why Jeff is so brilliant because it’s what he manages to convey with his guitar, so, no, that has to be heard to be believed.”
It takes a special kind of individual to leave Page, a musician who has seen and heard it all countless times, speechless. Yet despite being friends with Beck since before they were famous, he was still bowled over each and every time that he heard him play.
It’s now been several years since Beck sadly departed the world, leaving a gaping hole that looks like it’ll never be filled. Following his passing, everyone shared their thoughts and feelings, but nobody quite captured the sentiment as well as Page, who mourned, “The six-stringed Warrior is no longer here for us to admire the spell he could weave around our mortal emotions. Jeff could channel music from the ethereal. His technique unique. His imaginations apparently limitless. Jeff, I will miss you along with your millions of fans.”
While Beck made anything seem possible when he had a guitar in his hand, it wasn’t his technical skills that left such an impression on Page; instead, he remains forever indebted to the feeling inside of him that could only come from his late friend’s fingers.
