Jimmy Page once overdubbed 12 different guitar parts for one Led Zeppelin song
Simplicity is an art form in and of itself, and since the dawn of rock and roll back in the 1950s, some of the most infectious, revolutionary anthems have come from seemingly the simplest of compositions. Nevertheless, simplicity is not a word which can easily attach itself to the harbingers of hard rock, Led Zeppelin.
From the moment that a young Jimmy Page first got his hands on a guitar, he was rarely seen without one. Devoting himself wholly to the mastery of the six-string, Page cut his teeth in the session musician circuit of the 1960s, rubbing shoulders with everybody from The Who to obscure muzak collectives, and gaining an unparalleled education in guitar playing in the process.
So, by the time that Page joined the ranks of The Yardbirds, and formed Led Zeppelin a few years thereafter, there weren’t many guitarists in the world who could match the breadth and intensity of his talents. It would, therefore, be a crime to waste them.
Luckily, Page had no intention of letting his arsenal of otherworldly guitar skills go to waste. From the outside of Zeppelin, his hard rock riffs pioneered an entirely new world of rock and roll guitar playing, converting an entire generation of would-be rhythm guitarists into wildly expansive soloists and self-aggrandising riff-masters. Along the way, it must be said, Page did create some unsuspectingly simple riffs which have since made him the enemy of guitar shop employees across the land, but he wasn’t afraid to get complicated, either.
In fact, some of Led Zeppelin’s most beloved works were forged from endlessly complex production techniques and carving out a specific sound over a period of years – ‘Kashmir’ for instance, was being banded around the rehearsal room for three years before it was finally perfected. After all, no band amasses a reputation as all-encompassingly inventive as Led Zeppelin by doing things the easy way.
Perhaps the greatest example of Page’s penchant for doing things differently lies in the band’s 1975 masterpiece ‘Achilles Last Stand’, the expansive ten-minute opening epic of Presence. Although that album is rarely treated with the same reverence as some of the band’s earlier exploits, the opener is routinely – and rightfully – hailed among Zeppelin’s greatest achievements, owing both to its otherworldly energy and vast complexity.
As anybody who has ever tried to play the song themselves – to the detriment of their sanity – will be all too aware, ‘Achilles Last Stand’ is virtually impossible to play on your own. That results from the fact that, for the song, Page employed numerous overdubs to create the rich sonic tapestry heard in the song. In total, Page laid 12 overdubbed guitar parts over the course of the track, an incredibly daunting task which no other guitarist had ever been mad enough to try before.
Fortunately, both for Page’s sanity and the future of rock and roll experimentation, the guitarist’s tireless dedication to ‘Achilles Last Stand’ certainly paid off. Capturing both his ability to lay down timelessly brilliant riffs and his visionary artistic mind, the song and its seemingly endless overdubs is truly something that only Page could have come up with.
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