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Jimmy Page cites his greatest ever achievement outside of Led Zeppelin
Jimmy Page has nearly three million record sales to his name, the Queen bestowed him with an OBE, he has been made an honorary citizen of Rio de Janeiro, he won a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys, defined an era of rock, and fathered four children along the way. It’s the CV equivalent of a Marvel superhero, and apparently, he makes a pretty good Bolognese too.
However, if you were expecting that trophy cabinet of accolades to be followed by a typical flatulent celebrity white lie such as, ‘but actually my greatest achievement was the moment my daughter wanted to donate her £1 from the tooth fairy to Michael Ball’s local sanctuary for distressed donkeys’ then think again—it’s far stranger than that. Yes, the man who has performed with the great and the good of rock ‘n’ roll has claimed that his greatest achievement outside of Led Zeppelin was the bizarre moment he played ‘A Whole Lotta Love’ with Leona Lewis at the Beijing Olympic games.
If this trio was a Venn diagram, then all you would see is three separate circles. Quite what Jimmy Page, Leona Lewis and the Beijing Olympics have in common is anyone’s guess. It’s a unique triumvirate that makes you wonder whether an admin error occurred, and some plucky clerk managed to bring it to fruition as though it had all been intended in the first place. However, that doesn’t explain why Page doubled down on the self-evident mix-up and proclaimed it to be the zenith of his vaulted life.
Lewis, who won the X Factor UK back in 2006, certainly has a sweet pair of pipes on her and she has sustained a healthy career after her talent show breakthrough, but Page calling his 2008 performance alongside her the one he is most proud of is a mind-bending declaration. Lord even knows whether the performance was any good, Page is the only known human who has been able to see beyond the distracting obstacle of why the hell the whole thing ever came together in the first place. Did Alan Partridge’s parody suggestions get mixed up with genuine commissioning editor documents?
Speaking to Uncut in 2014 (NB this was six years after the performance, so the dust had obviously settled and there was no need to uphold some sort of PR bargain), Page declared: “I’d be very sincere if I said that doing the Olympics [Beijing, 2008] with Leona Lewis was phenomenal”. While he was aware that his verdict might “surprise everyone” it was a moment that has stayed with him.
He explained: “She’s really plucky, she’s superb, and she sang ‘Whole Lotta Love’ brilliantly. It was so cool the way she approached it. For that audience, and the fact we didn’t fuck it up… we’re really going to do this and we’re going to do it proud. That was important. It was a Led Zeppelin number but it took on another persona. I was proud to be able to play that riff for the handover.”
Meanwhile, the watching Chinese public marvelled at the mishmash of confused decisions that comprised the British way when it comes to the powers that be. This was compounded further still when a bumbling Boris Johnson began waffling about bringing wiff waff home with all the faux charm of the dishevelled wolf in Red Riding Hood. All that being said, hopefully, one day, we can get beyond the obfuscating oddity of it all and see the performance through Page’s eyes, because there is no doubt it must be great, mustn’t it?
