Why Jimmy Page almost turned down The Yardbirds
Looking back on rock history, The Yardbirds may be one of the most underrated rock bands of all time. Taking the basics of rock and roll and marrying it with a healthy dose of blues, the band featured some of the biggest rising stars behind the fretboard that the rock world had ever seen, with everyone from Jeff Beck to Eric Clapton playing the searing leads on their greatest albums. Although the band had another guitar hero in Jimmy Page, there was one moment when the budding guitarist considered not taking the job at all.
Before Page had become known as the resident guitar genius of the 1970s, he was already making a mark on the English rock scene as a session player. Known for having one of the best guitar tones in the business, Page was the one to call when looking for the distorted guitar tone for a record, working his magic for artists as varied as The Who and Donovan.
When the call came for Page to join The Yardbirds, though, he was initially reluctant to take the job. Since he had already been making decent money as a session musician working off seasoned veterans of the scene, Page was wondering what he could have gained by joining a travelling group, especially when filling the role that Eric Clapton had left open.
In hindsight, Page remembered how he was feeling about departing from the studio scene, saying, “I was a session musician and I had done sessions for this fellow named George Ogamelski, who was the manager of The Yardbirds and he’d asked me to join. I didn’t really feel comfortable about it because I knew Eric [Clapton] didn’t know about it”.
While Page may have been minding his discretion when working alongside one of the greatest guitarists on the scene, he started to reconsider when it came up again, explaining, “Then it came up another time, and by that time, I was a producer, and I’d worked my way up”. Instead of spending his time making magic in the studio, though, Page would turn the entire music scene inside out when he stepped onstage.
Coming in the middle of the psychedelic movement, Page’s approach to the electric guitar resulted in some of the most ferocious songs that the band ever had, contributing the signature guitar figure that kicked off the song ‘Heart Full of Soul’. After Clapton had gone on to work in the supergroup Cream, Beck joined in his place, which led to Page switching to bass for a handful of gigs.
By the time Page began to tire of playing the same kind of blues progressions over and over again, he started to get inspiration for a new band when he reconnected with one of his fellow veterans from the session scene, John Paul Jones. Looking to put a new version of The Yardbirds together, Page struck out on his own alongside Jones, after which Robert Plant and John Bonham were brought into the mix to fill out the lineup.
With this new vehicle, Page had the tools to make his masterpieces, using his strengths as both a guitar and a producer to create stunning musical works of art on records like ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and ‘Dazed and Confused’. The Yardbirds may not have been where Page was meant to stay, but the lessons he learned from that time had an incredible impact on what his musical palette would turn into.
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