The song that made Jimmy Page want to play guitar: “I wanted to be a part of it”
Almost every generation of rock guitar players since the 1970s has tried their hand at playing Jimmy Page licks at some point. Even if you didn’t care for Led Zeppelin’s way of talking about mystical lands or the more-than-questionable lyrical content of their sexual songs, the power behind Page’s licks was too good to ignore half the time. Page didn’t just get the idea of playing those riffs out of thin air, and when he just got a guitar, he got the itch to actually learn it when listening to Elvis Presley.
Because before there was The British Invasion, Presley really was the main face behind everything that rock and roll stood for. Sure, he used his guitar as a prop most of the time, but his interpretations of everyone from Chuck Berry to Little Richard made it okay for a lot of young upstarts to take those dusty six-strings out of the closet and actually learn how to play them.
Although he stood for everything that rock and roll should be, ‘Baby Let’s Play House’ actually veers slightly towards country in the guitar phrasing. Presley had some of the best in the business working for him, and when Scotty Moore hopped on this song, hearing him play those bending licks could please both the Johnny Cash and Chuck Berry fans in equal measure.
More than anything, Page loved it because it was so dangerous to listen to, telling Trouser Press, “I’ve read about many records which are supposed to have turned me on to want to play, but it was ‘Baby, Let’s Play House’ by Elvis Presley. I heard that record, and I wanted to be part of it; I knew something was going on. I heard the acoustic guitar, slap bass, and electric guitar – three instruments and a voice – and they generated so much energy I had to be part of it.”
Once Page got his first guitar, it was all that different from what Presley was doing overseas. The majority of Page’s first songs saw him listening to skiffle music and trying to emulate, which wasn’t far away from the bluesy fills that The Yardbirds had gotten into back in London. While Page strayed far from the bluesy roots of his style, you can still hear influences of Presley if you know where to look.
While we will gracefully ignore the infamous song ‘Hot Dog’, a lot of the greatest Page licks came from riffing on old rock and roll tropes, like the bending lick in ‘Whole Lotta Love’ or the Little Richard send-up, ‘Rock and Roll’. If they decided to tone things down, there are still some country and folk influences.
Regardless of what genre you want to call it, you can’t listen to a song like ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’ or the solo in ‘All My Love’ and not say it came from the kind of tasteful playing that Moore put on much of Presley’s best records. While Page eventually got in trouble with a few of his fellow artists, accusing him of ripping them off, this was never about trying to pull a quick one on rock legends.
It was about paying homage to the kind of music that helped shape Page before he even had an electric guitar to his name. After all, rock and roll has been passed down from generation to generation, just like the blues, so why not give a tip of the hat to the greats when you can?
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