JIMMY PAGE: GUITARS I HAVE KNOWN

JIMMY PAGE: GUITARS I HAVE KNOWN

FEB.1975

There hasn't been a rock guitarist who—at least once—hasn't wished he could play guitar the way Jimmy Page does. Here Nick Kent quizzes the guitarist about his equipment preferences: guitars, strings and amplifiers. Read carefully, follow Page's advice, and who knows what'll happen?

Nick Kent

(As a guitarist, Jimmy Page has all the bases covered. Clapton has that soaring fluid thing down pat, Beck is the absolute Crowned Prince of Flash and Hendrix...well, his feet never touched the ground when he was on But Page... Page is solid.

If his rhythm work doesn’t quite have the manic flair of Townshend, it’s as close as dammit and when he solos it’s like a cluster of tiny volcanoes all timed to go off one directly after the other. Also there’s that arch sense of the hard rock dynamic for which Zeppelin still can’t be equalled.

Of his peers Page states:

“It’s strange really. In the early Richmond days we used to all play together, more or less. Everyone had the same influences and made the best of them really. It was like a melting-pot and...I’m sure, say, Beck would agree here...that from all that common ground one just picked up one’s own ideas and carried straight on from there.

“My own thing has been to keep every style. ..and obviously there are so many ways of playing guitar it’s not true...and work on them as parts of a whole as opposed to just getting stuck with one thing. I mean, being a guitarist...well it all depends on the person involved in the first place — how they actually approached the instrument aesthetically.

“I mean you could even approach it as just a block of wood, couldn’t you. After all it’s just a piece of wood with strings.”—Ed.]

What was your first guitar?

My first guitar worth talking about was a Stratocaster. Then I had something called a Grazzioso—don’t know where it came from. It was probably a Czechoslovakian version of Fender, that’s what it looked like anyway. Then I got a Fender Strat, then something very similar to that but a later model.

The company were making patented pickups at that time though I had that for five years. Yeah, I played that with the Crusaders, God, the Crusaders— another great rock legend (laughs).

Then I got a Les Paul Custom which I stayed with until it was nicked in the States during the first 18 months of Zeppelin—the second or third tour. Usually I never took that on the road, because it was so precious. But things were going so well for us that I eventually took it over and it suddenly went.

It had a big tremelo arm and Jo Jammer custom-wired it for me. I was starting to use it more than anything else. It got nicked off the truck at the airport—we were on our way to Canada. Somewhere there was a flight change and it disappeared. It just never arrived at the other end.

I advertised for it in Rolling Stone. Just a photograph—no name—and a reward. No luck though, even though it was very recognizable for all the custom work done on it.

What guitars did you use (a) for session-work and (b) for the Yardbirds?

That guitar, the Les Paul Custom.

So you must have got it in ’64 or ’65?

No, earlier than that—about ’62. It cost 185 pounds which was a lot of money. I got it on the old HP special.

What did you think of the whole guitar syndrome at that time? I remember the Rickenbacker 12-string particularly.

No, that was much later. That was in ’65—must have been. Yeah, the whole Byrds sound. Christ. I’d been doing sessions for three years before that. I remember seeing the Byrds in Ciro’s before “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

Actually at that time I think it' was mainly Telecasters and things. Strats too. And then there was a dramatic switchover to Les Pauls around the time when the blues thing started... when Eric (Clapton) was with John May all.

There was a definite sudden change in instruments and guitar ‘chic,’ wasn’t there?

Well you see, there was the ‘flat’ sound you got from those Humbucking pickups, ’cos you can get a really nice sharp sound from them. It’s just totally different. When Marshall amps came out the combination of the two was really fantastic. That’s when fingertremelos started.

Didn’t the tremelo arm then become rather redundant though?

It did, yeah. Hendrix was the one who brought all that back in. He started using it sensibly again.

Did you play that ‘weeping’ solo on Dave Berry’s “The Crying Game,” because that was the great tremelo-inspired effort of the time, wasn’t it?

Strange that. It was weird because it was all my equipment—but I didn’t do that one. I did the next one, “My Baby Left Me.”

. How did the Kinks get that very hard sound on “You Really Got Me”? What guitars did they use?

Dave Davies used an Epiphone when I was there—that was the Kinks guitar. It certainly wasn’t a Gretsch. But the sound was really a combination of things—valve amps and valve mixing units... everything sparkled then, soundwise.

Yeah, we should talk about amplification as well.

Well, it’s a matter of taste, but I prefer valves. They seem more punchy. Transistors apparently sound better for bass.

What guitars were you using on stage with the Yardbirds?

A Telecaster. I started on bass of course, then it came to the twin guitars with Jeff (Beck) and it was a Telecaster. He was using the Gibson and the Les Paul, so it was two different sounds.

My own thing has been to keep every style.

I used the Telecaster right through to the early Zeppelin period. Then I swapped to a Les Paul on the second Zep LP, and I’ve been using it ever since. But often I’ve done solos on a Telecaster—the solo on “Stairway To Heaven” for example.

Did you play one guitar on stage in the early days?

Yeah, well I used one of those two pickup Danelectros which cost 30 or 40 quid then. Actually they were great. That was the time when I used to do a long instrumental called “White Summer” in strange tunings. It went on for about 20 minutes—’till everyone fell asleep. Then we’d play a bit of rock ’n’ roll.

At that time I just used the one guitar, but later, like when we did all the parts—and that’s when I had to get a double-necked guitar.

Weren’t they hard to get hold of?

Yeah, mine had to be specially made up by Gibson.

Hpw many guitars do you have now?

I’ve got a Les Paul and a spare in case a string breaks, and a double-neck. I used to have an acoustic guitar as well when we were doing the acoustic numbers. But of late that’s all I’ve been

using.

What about tuning problems?

Well you see, this is the whole thing. We use so many different tunings that Raymond the road manager spends most of his time re-tuning the guitars— the double-neck. So we’ve bought one of those Strob-o-tuners, because we haven’t time for that all that. It means you have to work out the way that you plan your numbers, to give you enough time to tune up. “Stairway” is standard tuning, by the way.

What were your first influences as a guitarist?

Well “Baby Let’s Play House”—that was the first thing I ever started playing. Then I went through the early rock ’n’ roll efforts, learnings solos.

Purely solos?

Mainly solos. Most of the chords were pretty straight forward. Old Ricky Nelson things, James Burton—that sort of stuff. Just learning from solos, getting a groundwork really. You see 1 was fortunate, because this friend, who was a really avid blues collector, lived down the road.

I was an avid rock collector, so I used to send over to him to get all the Sun singles and things like that, and he used to git all the blues ones like B.B. King from me. So between the two of us we got a sort of coverage of all the different sounds.

I was doing a bit of everything in the early days. In fact, that’s why I jacked it in the first place.

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We were doing Berry stuff, would you believe, which some people really liked, but most of them wanted to hear neatly-balanced Top Ten numbers.

And I was getting ill...probably as a result of knowing I wasn’t getting anywhere. I’m not talking about big ambitions, but it was just as disheartening to go up to, say, Rushton or somewhere like that, and find 10 people having a punch-up.

In the end, it just didn’t appear to be going anywhere, so I jacked it in. The Stones weren’t going in those days.

Anyways, I was still sort of playing at home, even though I was at art college. And then it all started happening. The Diddley and Berry thing started to come through—in the south anyway. I, used to go down to the Marquee and jam. All these groups were performing—like the Yardbirds—and suddenly the whole thing started coming through big, and that’s why I suppose I was lucky, because I’d had prior ground-work and I knew what was going on.

A lot of the session guitarists had never even heard any of these R ’n’ B people.

Were you at that point purely employed playing rock stuff? I mean, did you ever play jazz?

I did as it went on. That’s when I really had to start working as a guitarist. I really had to learn every sort of style. I was even doing Tubby Hayes sessions.

But in the early days it was mainly rock. I never really got into too many of the jazz musicians. Django Reinhardt, sure, and Tal Farlow. Johnny Smith was great for chords...

How much practicing were you doing at the beginning?

Oh...probably six hours a day. When I was at school, probably eight.

This would be electric guitar.

Yeah, I didn’t get into acoustic ’till much later when I got into the whole sitar thing. Dylan was there as well. Bert Jansch just turned my head right around with acoustic. Oh yeah, far more than Renboume or Davey Graham—Jansch was definitely the one.

By the way, I’m missing out a whole section here where I got interested in learning classical guitar; which I did for a time. During the session days, this was. By that time I’d had to learn to read music so I thought I’d combine the two.

Did you go to a tutor at that point?

I did, yeah, but I’m not saying where because it was a con and I wouldn’t want to mislead anyone into thinking, “Well, yeah, if he went there then it must be good.”

What about tuition manual^,— the whole play-in-a-day syndrome?

Well, now I don’t know because recently I heard a record put out by “Shobud” on how to play pedal-steel guitar and Christ,' you’d only have to learn that record inside out and you’d be an ace steel-player.

Can you play pedal-steel guitar by the way?

Well, I can dabble about but...it’s strange, because I met Jerry Garcia recently and I’ve always rather liked his pedal-steel playing—far more, in fact, that his six-string stuff. I told him so and he just replied that he’d given it all up because, he said in effect, playing both was just too much to handle. As I said I can dabble, but dabbling’s no good when there are too many ace players around already.

How about the whole psychedelic thing you and the Yardbirds pioneered?

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CREEM SPECIAL EDITION

LED ZEPPELIN

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All 1 remember with that is that we were the first group to use backing tapes. Y'know, bombs dropping and news reels—musician’s concrete— as a back-drop to the music. I wasn’t so much into feedback stuff. I thought a lot of what was coming out of San Francisco was laughable.

Yeah, there was this one group called Kaleidoscope who were the best band I’ve ever seen.

How about your uiolin bow technique which you use these days, prominently on “Dazed And Confused” live?

I’ve done that for ages. I picked it up on a session once when a musician told me that if I played the bow over guitar strings it would make this certain sound. I said it wouldn’t but in fact when I came to try it out, it worked (laughs).

Actually I did that a lot with the Yardbirds on the Vox 12-string.

I presume it requires an awful lot of ‘resin

Oh yeah. . .because of the shape of the strings and their density.

What type of guitar would you advise the budding guitarist to invest in?

We-e-ell, as I say, I’m not that well acquainted with the newer models so I’d naturally advise someone to pick up on an older model, should they come across one. That would do for electric.

With acoustic models...well I could probably contradict myself here but it’s true that out of all those Yamaha guitars on the market you could probably find one that would beat a duff 800 Martin—if you were lucky that is.

The Danelectro model I used to have was a very good value. I’ve got a Harmony myself which I’m well pleased with, plus a Martin I purchased recently.

And practice amps?

Oh, a Champ. They’re quite expensive now though.

Any final hints to the [smirk] budding guitarist?

A good ear helps. I mean, if you hear something properly then there’s no reason why you can’t learn to play it.

I’m thinking more in terms of short cuts. Like, you taught Jo Jammer a lot of tricks when he was your roadie, right.

Oh, sure, right. But I mean he already knew how to play so he just did it by listening and watching all the time. That’s the trick, really. You should always check out with someone who already had the rudiments down pat. I mean, there’s always someone who knows how to play a guitar even if they live in the next village.

(Coutesy of the New Musical Express)