Ry Cooder: The slide guitarist Dave Grohl thinks rivals Jimmy Page
It’s no secret that Dave Grohl is a huge Jimmy Page fan. It’s tough to find a rock musician who isn’t as the Led Zeppelin guitarist’s contributions are undeniable and huge, whether you even like the band’s music or not. But that’s what makes it even higher praise when the Foo Fighters leader puts someone else on Page’s level.
For Grohl, Page exists on the god tier. He deemed him a “genius possessed”, stating, “People had their asses blown out by Hendrix and Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton, but Page took it to a whole new level, and he did it in such a beautifully human and imperfect way.”
If anyone one person epitomises what it means to be a rockstar, and to be an artist, to Grohl, it’s Page. “He plays the guitar like an old bluesman on acid,” he gushed about the player. “When I listen to Zeppelin bootlegs, his solos can make me laugh or they can make me tear up. Any live version of ‘Since I Been Loving You’ will bring you to tears and fill you with joy all at once. Page doesn’t just use his guitar as an instrument. For him, it’s like some sort of emotional translator.”
But up there alongside Page in Grohl’s personal God tier is a more unlikely and undervalued name; Ry Cooder.
The man who rivals Page to the post of Grohl’s all-time favourite musicians is one that has always lived in the shadows and on the sidelines. He put out plenty of solo albums throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, but mostly, Cooder is known through his work for others. In his years, he’s played with the likes of John Lee Hooker, the Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Neil Young and many, many more.
He’s your favourite artist’s favourite player as he was hired time and time again by icons to play slide guitar for them. But mostly, for Grohl, it’s Cooder’s film score work that wows him.
“He scored a [1984] movie called Paris, Texas in the ’80s, and the soundtrack to that film is my favourite album of all time,” Grohl said, adding, “It sort of paints this sort of barren desert landscape, but he does it with a slide guitar. It’s just so simple and emotive, and amazing.”
As a strange tie between his two heroes, Jimmy Page also did film score work, cutting his teeth as a guitarist at first as a session musician who worked on things like ‘Goldfinger’ for the 1964 Bond film, or even the music to score The Beatles’ Hard Days Night.
Maybe that’s the trick. Maybe the way into the God tier is to prove your worth in a realm outside of rock and roll, and then the rockstars will respect you. Given Grohl’s constant side hustles in the world of film, either making documentaries or contributing to soundtracks, he seems to know that well and be keen to follow in their footsteps.
