James Patrick Page (born 9 January 1944) is an English musician and producer who achieved international success as the guitarist and founder of the rock band Led Zeppelin.
Page began his career as a studio session musician in London and, by the mid-1960s, was a notable session guitarist in Britain. He was a member of the Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968. When the Yardbirds broke up, he founded Led Zeppelin, which was active from 1968 to 1980.
Following the death of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham in 1980, Page played with XYZ, the Firm, the Honeydrippers, Coverdale–Page, and Page and Plant. Page performed with many artists, both live and in studio recordings, and in a 2007 Led Zeppelin reunion that was released as the 2012 concert film Celebration Day. Along with the Edge and Jack White, he participated in the 2008 documentary It Might Get Loud.
Page is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential guitarists of all time. Rolling Stone magazine has described Page as "the pontiff of power riffing" and ranked him number three in their 2015 list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time", behind Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, and 3rd again in 2023 behind Chuck Berry and Jimi Hendrix. In 2010, he was ranked number two in Gibson's list of "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time" and, in 2007, number four on Classic Rocks "100 Wildest Guitar Heroes". He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice: once as a member of the Yardbirds (1992) and once as a member of Led Zeppelin (1995).
Early life
Page was born to James Patrick Page and Patricia Elizabeth Gaffikin in the West London suburb of Heston on 9 January 1944. His father was a personnel manager at a plastic-coatings plant and his mother, who was of Irish descent, was a doctor's secretary. In 1952, they moved to Feltham, and then to Miles Road, Epsom, in Surrey. Page was educated from the age of eight at Epsom County Pound Lane Primary School, and at age eleven attended Ewell County Secondary School in West Ewell. He came across his first guitar, a Spanish guitar, in the Miles Road house: "I don't know whether [the guitar] was left behind by the people before [us], or whether it was a friend of the family's—nobody seemed to know why it was there." First playing the instrument when aged 12, he took a few lessons in nearby Kingston, but was largely self-taught:
<blockquote>When I grew up there weren't many other guitarists ... There was one other guitarist in my school who actually showed me the first chords that I learned and I went on from there. I was bored so I taught myself the guitar from listening to records. So obviously it was a very personal thing.</blockquote>
This "other guitarist" was a boy called Rod Wyatt, a few years his senior, and together with another boy, Pete Calvert, they would practise at Page's house; Page would devote six or seven hours on some days to practising and would always take his guitar with him to secondary school, only to have it confiscated and returned to him after class.
Among Page's early influences were rockabilly guitarists Scotty Moore and James Burton, who both played on recordings made by Elvis Presley. Presley's song "Baby Let's Play House" is cited by Page as his inspiration to take up the guitar, and he would reprise Moore's playing on the song in the live version of "Whole Lotta Love" on The Song Remains the Same.
He appeared on BBC1 in 1957 with a Höfner President acoustic, which he'd bought from money saved up from his milk round in the summer holidays and which had a pick-up so it could be amplified, but his first solid-bodied electric guitar was a second-hand 1959 Futurama Grazioso, later replaced by a Fender Telecaster, a model he had seen Buddy Holly playing and a real-life example of which he'd played at an electronics exhibition at Earls Court Exhibition Centre in London.
Page's musical tastes included skiffle, acoustic folk music, and the blues sounds of Elmore James, B.B. King, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Freddie King, and Hubert Sumlin. "Basically, that was the start: a mixture between rock and blues." The group played "Mama Don't Want to Skiffle Anymore" and another American-flavoured song, "In Them Ol' Cottonfields Back Home". When asked by Wheldon what he wanted to do after schooling, Page said, "I want to do biological research [to find a cure for] cancer, if it isn't discovered by then."
During his stint with Christian, Page fell seriously ill with glandular fever and stopped touring.
Page was the favoured session guitarist of record producer Shel Talmy. As a result, he secured session work on songs for the Who and the Kinks. Page is credited with playing acoustic twelve-string guitar on two tracks on the Kinks' debut album, "I'm a Lover Not a Fighter" and "I've Been Driving on Bald Mountain", and possibly on the B-side "I Gotta Move". He played rhythm guitar on the sessions for the Who's first single "I Can't Explain" Page's studio gigs in 1964 and 1965 included Marianne Faithfull's "As Tears Go By", Jonathan King's "Everyone's Gone to the Moon", the Nashville Teens' "Tobacco Road", the Rolling Stones "Heart of Stone" (along with "We're Wasting Time") (also, Van Morrison & Them's "Baby, Please Don't Go", "Mystic Eyes", and "Here Comes the Night", Dave Berry's "The Crying Game" and "My Baby Left Me", Brenda Lee's "Is It True", Shirley Bassey's "Goldfinger", and Petula Clark's "Downtown".
In 1964, Page contributed guitar to the incidental music of the Beatles' 1964 film A Hard Day's Night.
In 1965, Page was hired by Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham to act as house producer and A&R man for the newly formed Immediate Records label, which allowed him to play on and/or produce tracks by John Mayall, Nico, Chris Farlowe, Twice as Much and Clapton. Also in 1965, Page produced one of Dana Gillespie's early singles, "Thank You Boy". Page also formed a brief songwriting partnership with then romantic interest Jackie DeShannon. He composed and recorded songs for the John Williams (not to be confused with the film composer John Williams) album The Maureeny Wishful Album with Big Jim Sullivan. Page worked as session musician on Donovan Leitch's Sunshine Superman, on Engelbert Humperdinck's Release Me, the Johnny Hallyday albums Jeune homme and Je suis né dans la rue, the Al Stewart album Love Chronicles and played guitar on five tracks of Joe Cocker's debut album, With a Little Help from My Friends. Over the years since 1970, Page played lead guitar on 10 Roy Harper tracks, comprising 81 minutes of music.
When questioned about which songs he played on, especially ones where there exists some controversy as to what his exact role was, Page often points out that it is hard to remember exactly what he did given the enormous number of sessions he was playing at the time. During the Scandinavian tour, the new group appeared as the New Yardbirds, but soon recalled the old joke by Keith Moon and John Entwistle. Page stuck with that name to use for his new band. Manager Peter Grant changed it to "Led Zeppelin", to avoid a mispronunciation as "Leed Zeppelin".
1968–1980: Led Zeppelin
thumb|upright|Jimmy Page performing onstage in 1977
thumb|Jimmy Page's [[sigil from Led Zeppelin IV]]
Page explained that he had a very specific idea in mind as to what he wanted Led Zeppelin to be, from the very beginning:
Interest in the occult
Page's interest in the occult started as a schoolboy at age fifteen, when he read Aleister Crowley's Magick in Theory and Practice. He later said that following this discovery, he thought: "Yes, that's it. My thing: I've found it."
<!-- Deleted image removed: thumb|A derivative of Page's [[Saturn sigil, itself derived from a 1557 source]] -->
The appearance of four symbols on the jacket of Led Zeppelin's fourth album has been linked to Page's interest in the occult. The four symbols represented each member of the band. Page's own so-called "Zoso" symbol originated in Ars Magica Arteficii (1557) by Gerolamo Cardano, an old alchemical grimoire, where it has been identified as a sigil consisting of zodiac signs. The sigil is reproduced in Dictionary of Occult, Hermetic and Alchemical Sigils.
During tours and performances after the release of the fourth album, Page often had the "Zoso" symbol embroidered on his clothes, along with zodiac symbols. These were visible most notably on his "Dragon Suit", which included the signs for Capricorn, Scorpio and Cancer which are Page's Sun, Ascendant and Moon signs, respectively. The "Zoso" symbol also appeared on Page's amplifiers.
The artwork inside the album cover of Led Zeppelin IV is from a painting attributed to the artist Barrington Colby, influenced by the traditional Rider/Waite Tarot card design for the card called "The Hermit". Very little is known about Colby and rumours have persisted that Page painted it. and Astrology, A Cosmic Science by Isabel Hickey. The lease eventually expired on the premises and was not renewed. As Page said: "It obviously wasn't going to run the way it should without some drastic business changes, and I didn't really want to have to agree to all that. I basically just wanted the shop to be the nucleus, that's all."
Page has maintained a strong interest in Crowley for many years. In 1978, he explained:
Page was commissioned to write soundtrack music for the film Lucifer Rising by a fellow Crowley admirer, the underground movie director Kenneth Anger. Page ultimately produced 23 minutes of music, which Anger felt was insufficient because the film ran for 28 minutes and Anger wanted the film to have a full soundtrack. Anger claimed Page took three years to deliver the music and the final product was only "droning". The director also slammed the guitarist in the press by calling him a "dabbler" in the occult and an addict too strung out on drugs to complete the project. Page countered that he had fulfilled all his obligations, even going so far as to lend Anger his own film editing equipment to help him finish the project. Page released the Lucifer Rising music on vinyl in 2012 via his website as Lucifer Rising and Other Sound Tracks. Side one contained "Lucifer Rising – Main Track", whilst side two contained the tracks "Incubus", "Damask", "Unharmonics", "Damask – Ambient", and "Lucifer Rising – Percussive Return". Asked if he had ever reconciled with Anger, Page remarked that, shortly after his website had announced the LP's upcoming release, "curiously enough there was a request, suggesting that Lucifer Rising should come out again with my music on. I ignored it."
Although Page collected works by Crowley, he has never described himself as a Thelemite nor was he ever initiated into Ordo Templi Orientis. The Equinox Bookstore and Boleskine House were both sold during the 1980s, as Page settled into family life and participated in charity work.
Discography
With Led Zeppelin:
- Led Zeppelin (1969)
- Led Zeppelin II (1969)
- Led Zeppelin III (1970)
- Untitled album (1971) (de facto Led Zeppelin IV)
- Houses of the Holy (1973)
- Physical Graffiti (1975)
- Presence (1976)
- In Through the Out Door (1979)
- Coda (1982)
With Roy Harper:
- Whatever Happened to Jugula? (1985)
With the Firm:
- The Firm (1985)
- Mean Business (1986)
Solo:
- Outrider (1988)
With Coverdale–Page:
- Coverdale–Page (1993)
with Page and Plant:
- Walking into Clarksdale (1998)