Jimmy Page was born on January 9, 1944, in the Heston suburb of West London. Jimmy first played the guitar at the age of 13, although the youth took a few lessons, he was largely self taught. He picked up the guitar after hearing Elvis Presley’s song “Baby Let’s Play House” and was highly influenced by lead guitarists who played for Presley, Scotty Moore and James Burton. Page also found great inspiration playing along with the recordings of American blues artists such as B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Freddie King, and Muddy Waters. When Page was growing up, it was hard to find recordings by American bluesman, but the music had a cult following among would be guitarists in England at the time.
When Page was still only 13 years of age, he appeared on a television talent program called “All Your Own.” Page was part of a quartet which played skiffle music, a type of folk music that merges jazz, blues and country. His quartet played two songs, “Mama Don’t Want To Skiffle Anymore” and “In Them Ol’ Cottonfields Back Home”. When the host, Huw Wheldon, asked young Page what he wanted to do when he grew up, he responded that he would like to find a cure for cancer, “if it isn’t discovered by then”.
In the early days, Jimmy did a lot of busking, and found it hard to find bands to play with. Every so often when someone could get a gig together, Jimmy would find a band to play in, but his first long term gig came in 1962. Page was asked by Neil Christian to join his band, The Crusaders. Neil had been impressed with Jimmy’s playing after having seen the boy play a local venue. Page spent two years touring with The Crusaders and played on several of the band’s recordings. Page had to leave the band after developing glandular fever. He took a break from touring for a while to pursue painting, a second love. He explained his decision in a 1975 interview, “[I was] travelling around all the time in a bus. I did that for two years after I left school, to the point where I was starting to get really good bread. But I was getting ill. So I went back to art college. And that was a total change in direction. That’s why I say it’s possible to do. As dedicated as I was to playing the guitar, I knew doing it that way was doing me in forever. Every two months I had glandular fever. So for the next 18 months I was living on ten dollars a week and getting my strength up. But I was still playing.”
Page was still a student when he began taking work as a session musician. He quickly became the favored session man for producer Shel Talmy. The relationship with Talmy led to Page sitting in on sessions with some of the biggest names in music, The Who, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Dave Berry, and Brenda Lee, among others.
Page was offered a spot with The Yardbirds when Eric Clapton left them, but turned it down initially because he had developed a lucrative session career and still worried about the health effects that touring had previously taken on him. He eventually did join the band however, first as a bass player, and later on guitar. The group recorded the album “Little Games” with Page on lead guitar. The band’s studio recordings were very pop sounding but they began to developer a heavier edge to their live shows.
The band fell apart in 1968, but Page wanted to fulfill concert obligations in Scandinavia. The only remaining member, Page had to put together a whole new band. He recruited Robert Plant on vocals and John Bonham on drums. Page was contacted by John Paul Jones, a bass player whom had played with Jimmy on a track with Jeff Beck. Jones asked to join the band and Page agreed. The quartet finished the tour as The New Yardbirds, but eventually came to be known as Led Zeppelin.
Page, having formed the band, had a very specific goal for the band, “I had a lot of ideas from my days with The Yardbirds. The Yardbirds allowed me to improvise a lot in live performance and I started building a textbook of ideas that I eventually used in Zeppelin. In addition to those ideas, I wanted to add acoustic textures. Ultimately, I wanted Zeppelin to be a marriage of blues, hard rock and acoustic music topped with heavy choruses — a combination that had never been done before. Lots of light and shade in the music.”
Led Zeppelin went on to become one of the most influential rock bands of all time. The group is credited with being one of only a handful of bands that led to the birth of heavy metal. The band remained one of the most popular acts in popular music for over a decade, stopped only by the death of drummer John Bonham.