Jimmy Page on the band that made him a better artist: “They were such great musicians”
For someone who is as omnipresent in rock and roll as Jimmy Page is, it’s easy for someone to rest on their laurels after a while. No one is asking him to make another version of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ or ‘Whole Lotta Love,’ and whenever he got out onstage to play one of his Zeppelin classics, people were more than happy to sit back and hear the hits. But Page was always exploring new textures, and when he came face-to-face with artists much better than him, he knew that he needed to level up his game if he wanted to hold onto his guitar hero status.
Then again, there was a certain spontaneity with Zeppelin that helped make them the powerhouse they are. Even though every member has done great things following John Bonham’s death, it was almost understood that they worked better together, especially when Bonzo leaned into the backbeat and Page kept pushing everything forward when he played his solos.
Since Bonham and Page had an almost symbiotic relationship when performing, it would have been understandable if he never wanted to get onstage again. The Firm may have been a nice musical incubator for Page to recuperate after the drummer’s death, but there came a point where everyone in the band was going to need to go back to their own group.
While Outrider was a decent detour into solo territory for Page, he seemed better suited to playing off of someone rather than being the leader. And despite having some great returns to his glory days by working with David Coverdale of Whitesnake or reuniting with Robert Plant in the 1990s, there has always been a question of what could have been when he was working with the supergroup XYZ in the 1980s.
Page might have already earned his guitar hero status, but bringing in prog legends from Yes was always going to throw him for a loop. Sure, the guitarist had made riffs in odd metres, but when placing him next to people who could build on different themes and stretch things out for 20 minutes at a time, it was clear that he was going to have to do some serious musical homework before jamming with them.
Although Page admitted that he could be on the same level as his colleagues, he remembered the sessions helping him concentrate more as a musician, saying, “They were such great musicians that it really did me a world of good. I had to be on exactly the same level as they were, so the level of concentration and commitment to it was really great. But what I don’t know is what bits and pieces they brought to the party that may have ended up on Yes records.”
While all we have to go on is different rehearsal tapes, the raw riffs sound like the project would have been great. After all, Page was already used to spreading out songs towards the end of Zeppelin’s run with ‘Achilles Last Stand,’ so what was stopping him from making something even more grandiose now that he had bandmates who actually knew how to flesh out his ideas properly?
Even though XYZ is known more as a rock and roll curiosity these days, it’s still interesting to see pieces of those rehearsals out in the wild. Because while some of the songs have been recorded as Yes material later down the road, those tapes feel like a long-lost piece of ephemeral that somehow never left the vaults.
