The performance Jimmy Page impressed himself with: “The melodic lines are pretty incredible”
Anyone who tries to talk up their music as the best thing in the world is already playing with fire. Most rockstars have their fair share of experience going through the promotional circuit, but the minute they start mentioning themselves in the same breath as the biggest acts of all time is when most fans either draw a line in the sand or sit back, waiting for them to prove their worth. It might not have taken for Jimmy Page to blow people away with Led Zeppelin, but it was going to take something a bit more special for the guitarist to stand up and take notice.
After all, the whole reason why Zeppelin formed was because he wanted to hear something different than the same old blues format. That kind of mentality had worked within the confines of The Yardbirds, but since half of the biggest names in England were also playing straight-ahead blues rock, Page knew that he had to make himself stand out more than having the same old bag of licks.
But if The Yardbirds was the calm before the storm, people weren’t fully prepared for what Led Zeppelin had to offer. Even if some of the tunes were familiar to people working the London club scene, no one was going to hear them with the deafening sounds of John Bonham’s drum kit or listening to Robert Plant wail like a disembodied spirit on tracks like ‘Dazed and Confused’ or ‘Good Times Bad Times’.
And despite Page’s uncomfortability with the word, this is the true precursor to what metal would sound like later. Bands like The Stooges and Black Sabbath may have had heavier tendencies throughout their career, but given how much Tony Iommi said he was indebted to Zeppelin, it’s hard not to see something like ‘NIB’ or ‘Paranoid’ as an extension of a song like ‘Communication Breakdown.’
There is a core difference between hard rock and metal, though. Some of the best names in metal these days are about getting everything eerily precise whenever they play, and when listening to how Zeppelin groove, the entire appeal is the imperfections, like Page playing slightly in front of the beat while Bonham was always slightly behind the beat on their classic songs.
When listening back to their debut album, though, Page knew they had something special on their hands the minute he heard the riff in ‘How Many More Times,’ saying, “That has the kitchen sink on it, doesn’t it? I think some of the melodic lines are pretty incredible. I remember being really surprised with it when I heard it play back. I thought, ‘Boy, that really was an innovation that meant something.’”
Even if there are some borrowed pieces of the song, there aren’t many other rock bands from around this time who could claim to rock this hard. The lion’s share of the riff comes back to the interplay between Page and Bonham, but even for a straight-ahead blues jam, the whole thing feels like a musical journey, especially towards the end, where it breaks down to Plant singing before everyone comes storming back in.
But this kind of innovation wasn’t a happy accident on the part of Page. He always wanted to make something that stood out more than what he was hearing on the radio, and considering his background as a session musician, this is the sound of a guitarist being told that he can do whatever he wanted once he reached the studio.
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