The one guitarist Jimmy Page called the most perfect: “He always played right”
Every record Jimmy Page ever worked on was meant to be a new learning experience.
Led Zeppelin didn’t want to be the kind of band that made the same song over and over again, and some of the best moments throughout their career were all about them moving on to bigger and better things every single time they made a new record. But even with the millions of musical detours that Page had to take during his career, he knew that he could always count on the blues to bring him back home whenever he got lost.
The blues were always his first love from the moment that he began working with The Yardbirds, and all of those classic tunes were practically a road map for him every single time he worked on a new record. There was no sense in him trying to copy what Eric Clapton was doing, but even when working on tunes like ‘I Can’t Quit You Baby’, you can hear him trying to play those same nasty grooves that everyone from Buddy Guy to Muddy Waters had been doing years before he played a note.
But the biggest part of blues had nothing to do with the riffs. It all came from the delivery that someone had whenever they made a new record, and you could tell that Page had the kind of charisma that every single rock and roll guitarist needed. He was a wizard with a guitar in his hand half the time, and he felt that everything that he did came from how it complemented the rest of the band.
He wasn’t looking to showboat all the time by any stretch, and when you look at some of his heroes, all of them knew the importance of subtlety as well. Link Wray may have opened up his eyes to being a little bit more brash whenever you turned up your amplifier, but when you listen to a lot of the session work that Scotty Moore did on Elvis Presley recordings, it was all about providing that nice bit of ear candy for the listener in between everything.
And especially during the old days of blues, everyone usually knew to get the hell out of the way whenever Howlin’ Wolf was singing a song. His voice was bigger than anyone else in the room whenever he walked in, but even if Hubert Sumlin wasn’t trying to one-up the frontman by any stretch, Page felt that there weren’t many artists who knew the intricacies of guitar playing as he did.
The mark of any good bandmate is being able to listen, and Page felt that Sumlin was responsible for the blues lines that no other player could figure out, saying, “I have said all of that, I am missing one important person – Hubert Sumlin. I LOVED Hubert Sumlin. And what a compliment he was to Howlin’ Wolf’s voice. He always played the right thing at the right time. Perfect.” And you can hear what Page is talking about whenever he writes his own songs for the rest of the band.
Zeppelin were a powerhouse no matter where you looked, and while Page could have put on a clinic every single time he played, he could let everyone else get time in the spotlight by hanging back. ‘Black Dog’ might have one of the best riffs they ever made, but the way they all back off during the verses so Plant can sing is the best kind of tension and release that they ever came up with.
And while Sumlin didn’t have to play some of the biggest runs that anyone had ever played, he learned one of the hardest lessons that any guitarist had to be taught. Sometimes the best thing that you can play at any given time is nothing, and even if you have a great lick, Page knew from Sumlin that it was about picking your battles whenever you performed a song.
