Revisit Jimmy Page’s pre-Led Zeppelin single ‘She Just Satisfies’
By 1965, Jimmy Page was one of the most sought-after session guitarists in London. With impressive versatility and a willingness to play with just about anybody, Page was the first call with everything from The Kinks and The Who to Marianne Faithful and Petula Clark.
Page found his niche within the world of rock music, but as he began to find his own distinctive style on the guitar, he still had to play session music that he disliked. The straw that broke the camel’s back was a session that would be the antithesis of the hard rock and heavy impact that Page would become known for.
“I finally called it quits after I started getting calls to do Muzak,” Page told Guitar World in 1993. “I decided I couldn’t live that life anymore; it was getting too silly. I guess it was destiny that a week after I quit doing sessions Paul Samwell-Smith left the Yardbirds and I was able to take his place. But being a session musician was good fun in the beginning – the studio discipline was great. They’d just count the song off and you couldn’t make any mistakes.”
After numerous offers, Page finally accepted an invitation to join The Yardbirds in 1966. In the time between his decision to stop playing sessions and his joining The Yardbirds, Page briefly entertained the idea of kickstarting a solo career. Briefly, as in Page produced one single as a singer: ‘She Just Satisfies’.
Encouraged by his then-girlfriend, singer Jackie DeShannon, Page stepped behind the vocal microphone for what would be the first and last time. With an arrangement heavily indebted to The Kinks’ style of proto-punk, Page recorded all of the instrumental parts, minus the drums. “There’s nothing to be said for that record except it was very tongue-in-cheek at the time,” Page later observed in an interview with Creem. “I played all the instruments on it except for the drums and sang on it too, which is quite, uh … unique. ‘She Just Satisfies,’ that’s what it was called. It’s better forgotten.”
It didn’t take long for Page to decide that he wasn’t cut out for a solo career. Thankfully for him, The Yardbirds were out a bass player not long after ‘She Just Satisfies’ came and went from record stores. Page’s next solo effort wouldn’t be until two decades later, when the guitarist released his only studio album to date, 1988’s Outrider.
Check out ‘She Just Satisfies’ down below.
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