Exploring the story of Neil Young's most controversial album, 'Trans'

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The guitarist that gave Neil Young imposter syndrome: “I’m a hack compared to him”

Tue 27 May 2025 16:38, UK

Nobody is totally immune to being struck down by a bout of impostor syndrome. It doesn’t matter how accomplished somebody is at their craft, they will occasionally be humbled by the talents of a peer. Neil Young may be a veteran of the music business, who has achieved everything there is to achieve, yet he’s not unsusceptible to feeling like an amateur.

Since first emerging in the 1960s with Buffalo Springfield, Young has lived out his wildest dreams and has never lost the passion that fueled him to hit such great heights. While he does not care to reflect too greatly, his career has seen him perform with everyone from Bob Dylan to Paul McCartney, who both view him as a masterful songwriter.

The Canadian has rightly earned his position at the top of the music table and shouldn’t feel inadequate as a musician to anyone. Then again, Jimmy Page isn’t anyone; he’s a guitarist of the highest calibre who helped create the blueprint for an entire generation of rock musicians. While Young is confident in his abilities, he believes Page exists in an entirely separate conversation.

Although he’s always admired Page, it wasn’t until he performed alongside the English guitarist that he fully appreciated his brilliance. For one night only in 1995, Young lived his dream and became an honorary member of Led Zeppelin. While there was hostile tension between the three surviving members of the rock group on the night, Young was in his element and lapped up every second. Their memory of the evening contrasts with Young’s, who reportedly wanted to reunite Led Zeppelin permanently with him in the fold. The previous year, Robert Plant and Page reunited without John Paul Jones, with the latter awkwardly mentioning this during their acceptance speech, telling the crowd, “Thank you, my friends, for finally remembering my phone number”.

Thankfully, once they picked up their instruments, the anger held by Jones disappeared, and the addition of Young for ‘When The Levee Breaks’ made hairs stand up across the room. Towards the end of the song, Plant paid a glowing tribute to Young by interpolating a section of Buffalo Springfield’s ‘For What It’s Worth’. For Young, it was an out-of-body experience, and Page made him feel like an open-mic musician in comparison. He once said of the Led Zeppelin guitarist in Jimmy McDonough’s biography of him, Shakey: “I’m a hack compared to him. He can really play”.

The inspiration he felt from sharing a stage with Page stayed with Young for a considerable amount of time and led to his song, ‘Downtown’. The Grammy-nominated track was later elected as the lead single from his collaborative studio album with Pearl Jam, Mirror Ball. ‘Downtown’ is set in the utopian world of the 1960s, with a concert by Led Zeppelin taking centre stage in Young’s fantastical world. On the track, Young sings: “Jimi’s playin’ in the back room, Led Zeppelin on stage, There’s a mirror ball twirlin’, And a note from Page, Like a water-washed diamond”.

Immortalising Page in ‘Downtown’ further proves Young’s underlying respect for the Led Zeppelin guitarist. While he’s previously gone on record to state that Jimi Hendrix, also mentioned in ‘Downtown’, is the greatest to ever do it, judging from his remarks, Page is only a place beneath Hendrix in Young’s ranking. Young is far from a hack; his innovative guitar-playing style laid the foundations for the grunge movement and is uniquely spellbinding. Yet, in the lofty presence of Page, the Canadian felt like a seventh grader on their first day of school.