“I was more into mechanics”: The only song Jimmy Page ever sang lead vocals on
There’s a common joke among every single rock and roll band that anyone not at the front of the stage tends to envy the lead singer. As much as it might be fun trying to make something musically creative, there’s always that urge to get the same amount of applause that the vocalist gets when they go on a long run of notes when they play. Then again, when there was a band like Led Zeppelin storming across the country, Jimmy Page didn’t need to worry about a thing onstage.
The whole point behind their music was to have the musical equivalent of a freight train behind them, and whenever they kicked into high gear, it almost didn’t matter what Robert Plant was singing. This was the equivalent of a group exploding with energy onstage, and a lot of that came from Page always playing as fast as possible, whether that was going slightly in front of the beat or letting his guitar do the talking when he got to the solo section of ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’.
That’s not to say that he didn’t have his moments where he could work his magic in the studio. There are often many times when he would contribute backing vocals to Led Zeppelin tunes like on ‘Communication Breakdown’ or ‘Your Time Is Gonna Come’, but when there’s someone like Robert Plant standing right next to him, was there any sense in anyone trying to outsing a rock and roll god?
Still, Page did have a lot to say behind the scenes, so it was only a matter of time before he got behind the microphone himself. But if fans had looked back further in the timeline, they would have realised that Page already had his time in the vocal spotlight and knew that it was far from his best fit.
Being a legend of the session scene, Page was already a veteran musician before Zeppelin even came together. He had done a thousand different guest spots on various albums, but when looking back on his first stabs at the big time, ‘She Just Satisfies’ was the only time that he attempted to make people’s hearts melt by singing a typical love-stricken pop song.
According to Page, though, it didn’t take him long to grow out of this phase of his career, saying, “I mean, I could sing, I did a single [‘She Just Satisfies’], but you only had to listen to my record collection to know whether I was a singer or not. I could sing enough to be able to illustrate the top lines of the songs that I wrote. I was more into the mechanics of what actually makes three instruments tick, or two instruments tick, or an orchestra tick.”
And given all of those old records that he bought, it’s safe to say that he had his fill of any desire to sing. Even when working on his solo projects, he made sure to have someone else out front whenever he got onstage, whether that was Paul Rodgers showing off his bluesy flair with The Firm or hoping to get the same whiff of Zeppelin when performing some of his tunes with The Black Crowes in the 1990s.
If anything, the fact that Page has never bothered to step in front of the microphone that often by himself makes him a rare breed in terms of lead guitar gods. Nearly everyone has a story about how someone in their band suffers from the dreaded LSD (Lead Singer Disease), so to see that Page steered clear of that deadly virus is probably what made him a better collaborator than most.
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