How Joe Walsh saved Led Zeppelin with an act of charity: “The Les Paul he calls Number One”
Great music isn’t just the byproduct of great musicians, but also the technology they have available. Jimmy Page is a testament to this.
Far too many rock stars will saunter up to a recording studio with a riff and a solo in mind but no idea how they’re actually going to bring a song to life. Jimmy Page never had this issue, as he spent years working as a session musician before he played with either The Yardbirds or Led Zeppelin.
The result was that he developed an in-depth understanding not only of the guitar and how it could be played, but also of the studio. A lot of the bizarre recording techniques that Led Zeppelin used were the result of tips and tricks that Page had picked up working for other artists. He made a great living playing as a session musician and learning all about the recording process, so much so that John Paul Jones was surprised when he decided to pack it in and start a band.
When talking about the kind of work both he and Page would do as session musicians, he said how surprised he was when the guitarist decided to pack it in. “All sorts of styles, country in the evening, swing from eight to nine; from nine to ten we’d do two commercials,” he said, “Page got out earlier and joined the Yardbirds. I thought he was completely crazy. I couldn’t spend all the money.”
His knowledge of different recording techniques meant that Page was able to use the right effects and instruments to get the best possible sound out of Led Zeppelin. However, sometimes you can have too much knowledge, to the extent that you become plagued by it. This is what happened, as after recording Led Zeppelin’s debut album, Page knew that he was playing the wrong guitar. The standard instrument at the time was the Fender Telecaster, and this had worked fine for the guitarist in The Yardbirds, but when writing heavier music for Zeppelin, he knew it wouldn’t do.
This is where Joe Walsh came in. In the UK, Gibson Les Pauls were pretty hard to get, but in America, they were commonplace. After watching Zeppelin perform in Cleveland one night, Walsh found himself talking to the guitar extraordinaire, and Page let the Eagles member in on his six-string conundrum.
“Jimmy said to me, ‘Look, The Yardbirds is great and I played on so many records…’ He played on so many sessions! If you look up what he played on, you’ll be amazed,” recalled Walsh, “But he said, ‘This Telecaster ain’t cutting it for Led Zeppelin. And I don’t know what to do.’ Now, Les Pauls virtually didn’t exist in England at the time. They didn’t hit popularity yet. They were pretty easy to find because they hadn’t been discovered – and they didn’t cost very much.”
Turns out Walsh had two Les Pauls. The first of which he had found in a basement at Ohio University. It was a solid guitar, and had a tone which he knew would have been much better suited to the kind of music that Jimmy Page was making with Led Zeppelin at the time. He also had a second, which he had acquired through a friend. As an act of kind-hearted charity, Walsh gifted one of the guitars to Page, and the rest is history.
“I found another one through a friend, I traded him some stuff for one,” said Page, “So, one I really liked and one I just was saving for a rainy day. So I gave Jimmy that one. (That’s the) Les Paul he calls Number One. The body of Led Zeppelin music is that Les Paul that I gave him.”
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