The guitarist Jimmy Page thought had the ultimate attitude
Popular music’s rapacious evolution from its rock ‘n’ roll birth in the mid-1950s to the AOR maturity by the early 1970s is astonishing in its breathless pace of change; the artists that forged the ’60s revolution shaped by a musical climate that by then was from a different universe.
Before The Fool’s psychedelic ubiquity and any notion of AOR, the whole Rolling Stone generation was feverishly hooked on the rockabilly and R&B that scored their adolescence. In Britain, America’s musical export was a technicolour window amid a sea of grey, post-war austerity.
When considering the apex of ’70s rock stature, there’s no question that stadium monsters Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones grace the top tier of the era’s most beloved acts. Sharing a string of releases from 1969’s self-titled debut through to 1975’s Physical Graffiti, each of Zeppelin’s records was made for the album era, LPs that existed like cultural artefacts to be poured over by their dedicated fans. While frontman Robert Plant’s powerhouse vocals and charismatic presence were a significant asset to their success, guitarist Jimmy Page’s virtuoso, double-necked fret skills were just as essential.
Cutting his teeth as a session guitarist for a myriad of bands, including The Who and The Kinks, and featured on Shirley Bassey’s Goldfinger theme, Page was already a seriously accomplished musician by the time he joined The Yardbirds. Following the successive departures of Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, Page provided lead guitar on the 1967 album Little Games and notably played Jake Holmes’ ‘Dazed and Confused’, a track which would be reworked to greater acclaim on Led Zeppelin’s debut LP. Page’s melding of blues-infused hard rock and acoustic folk with heavy choruses for Zeppelin thrust Page to the paragons of guitar greats, but there’s one artist that even the master bows down to.
In the 2008 documentary, It Might Get Loud, Page makes his admiration for swamp rock icon Link Wray clear enough. While playing his own 7″ of Wray’s defining instrumental ‘Rumble‘, Page engages in some giddy air-guitar sporting a joyful grin, still deriving glee from a single even 50 years later. Educating the crew on Wrays’s pioneering use of the vibrato, ‘Rumble’ is a track that Page has studied well. He would later tell Rolling Stone: “But the first time I heard ‘The Rumble,’ it was like … that’s something that had so much profound attitude… it’s the sort of thing that is so apparent when you hear ‘Rumble’ by Link Wray; it’s just total attitude, isn’t it?”
Attitude certainly defined Wray. Born in poverty in 1929 and facing discrimination as the son of Shawnee Native Americans, seeing action in the Korean War, and losing a lung to tuberculosis, his early surf-rock hits are fuelled with dark and alluring energy, a world away from the clean-cut rock and rollers jivin’ in the charts at the latter end of the ’50s. ‘Rumble’ feels crafted by an artist with a life lived, a street-wise strut on the wrong side of town so provocative it was banned from many American radio stations.
Page wasn’t the only artist to bestow praise, with Pete Townsend crediting ‘Rumble’ with his picking up of the guitar, and Iggy Pop confessing to Stephen Colbert: “I left school emotionally the moment I heard it.”
At the 2023 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame event, Page celebrated Wray’s induction with a surprise performance, recruiting jazz bass player Tim Givens and drummer Anton Fig, who had played with Wray years before and played ‘Rumble’ to the delight of the crowd. Whether it’s the Led Zeppelin guitarist or a kid first picking up their guitar, ‘Rumble’ will always hold a deep affection for a long while yet.
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