Looking back across the decades it’s not difficult to find examples of songs and albums that have been heavily criticised by journalists on their release, only to be widely acclaimed years later. Time, it seems, can be a great healer when it comes to critical appraisal.

Such was the case with The Rain Song, a gloriously emotive and sprawling ballad that appeared on Houses Of The Holy, the fifth album from Led Zeppelin, which was released in March 1973.

In a review at the time, writer Gordon Fletcher of Rolling Stone concluded that The Rain Song and another track on the album called No Quarter were “nothing more than drawn-out vehicles for the further display of [bassist John Paul] Jones’ unknowledgeable use of Mellotron and synthesiser”.

30 years later, in the same publication, writer Gavin Edwards wrote a retrospective review praising The Rain Song, concluding that Led Zeppelin had created “seven minutes of exquisite heartache”.

This latter view is how The Rain Song is now largely perceived, a track whose rich, graceful textures and gentleness brought fresh diversity to the heavy rock canon of Led Zeppelin.

The Rain Song is quite unlike anything else the band created. And it is one of Led Zeppelin’s finest recorded moments.

By 1973, Zeppelin were arguably the biggest live rock band in the world. Their first four albums had been massive sellers, and on the live circuit only The Rolling Stones could really compete with their live drawing power.

Zeppelin’s 1972 North American tour broke attendance and box-office records and they regularly sold out arenas and large stadiums.

By the time they recorded the fifth album Houses Of The Holy, Led Zeppelin had little left to prove as a hard rock band. They had entered what Tom Ewing of Pitchfork described as their “imperial phase”.

Houses Of The Holy drew on the most powerful elements of Led Zeppelin IV and accentuated them. The result was a much lighter and looser album, with a cleaner, more expansive rock sound.

The Rain Song epitomises the eclectic flavour of Houses Of The Holy. But the song as we know it might have never existed had it not been for a lighthearted, offhand comment from a former Beatle, George Harrison.

In the 2012 book Light And Shade: Conversations With Jimmy Page, by Brad Tolinski, Page explained how a chance conversation between George Harrison and Zeppelin drummer John Bonham inspired Page to write The Rain Song.

“George was talking to Bonzo one evening and said, ‘The problem with you guys is that you never do ballads’,” recalled Page.

When Bonham told Page what Harrison had said, Page was galvanised into action.

“I said, ‘I’ll give him a ballad’,” Page said, “and I wrote The Rain Song.”

What’s more, he began The Rain Song with a subtle reference to Harrison’s own famous ballad Something, from The Beatles’ Abbey Road.

“In fact,” Page said, “you’ll notice I even quote Something in the song’s first two chords.”

The Rain Song does make the same opening chordal shift from major to major 7 and follows a similar descending progression.

When it came to selecting the studio to record Houses Of The Holy, Led Zeppelin chose Stargroves, Mick Jagger’s country manor house and estate in the heart of Hampshire. The band used the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, which had proved so productive when they recorded Led Zeppelin IV at Headley Grange.

Jimmy Page had written the music and the melody for The Rain Song in 1971 and demoed the piece at his home studio in the village of Plumpton, in East Sussex.

In March 2023, on the 50th anniversary of the release of the Houses Of The Holy album, Page released this 1971 demo and explained its conception on his website.

“My original idea for the opening tracks for Houses Of The Holy was that a short overture would be a rousing instrumental introduction with layered electric guitars that would segue into The Seasons, later to be titled The Rain Song. Again there would be a contrasting acoustic guitar instrumental movement with Mellotron that could lead to the first vocal of the album and the first verse of the song.”

Page used the unorthodox tuning of DGCGCD to create the rich voicings of the acoustic and electric guitars.

He demoed the string orchestration himself using a Mellotron, before handing the arrangement over to John Paul Jones to perfect in the studio.

The initial backing tracks were reportedly recorded at Olympic Studios in London, with further recording then done at Stargroves.

Once the arrangement of Page’s instrumental had been developed, Robert Plant set about writing the lyrics, which paralleled the various stages of a love affair with the changing of the four seasons.

“It is the springtime of my loving,” sings Plant on the first verse. “The second season I am to know/You are the sunlight in my growing/So little warmth I've felt before.”

In a 2005 interview with Rolling Stone, Plant cited The Rain Song as the track on which he felt he delivered his absolute best vocal performance.

“I’d say that on Rain Song, I sounded best,” he said. “I’d reached a point where I knew that to get good, I couldn’t repeat myself. The high falsetto screams had become quite a kind of calling card. Nowadays, I learn new techniques on my trips to Mali and southern Morocco. I know about restraint and power and using my voice to insinuate.”

There is a wonderfully languorous feel to The Rain Song. It is a beautiful, sprawling composition and remains one of Jimmy Page’s most sophisticated arrangements.

There is also a real grit and tenderness in Plant’s vocal performance. As writer Kristofer Lenz of Consequence Of Sound wrote in 2014: “The Rain Song is one of the most sentimental tracks in Led Zeppelin’s catalogue, but it is also patient and beautifully arranged… Plant’s lyrics and vocals infuse a sense of humanity, loss, and transcendence — a touch of emotional maturity.”

The Rain Song has a natural fluidity to it and feels unimpeded by any restrictions of structure. Unsurprisingly, there are some beautiful judged guitar phrases from Page, such as the high-end sliding motif 29 seconds in, just before Plant’s opening vocal line on the first verse, and again, 41 seconds in, just before the third vocal line.

The song is notable for Page’s intricate layering of acoustic and electric guitars.

At 1:08, Page introduces a circular pattern on an electric, possibly his Danelectro 3021/DC-59 which was reportedly used on this song and is notable for its bright, chiming and slightly hollow sound.

By the closing line of the first verse – “I watched the fire that grew so low” – Plant’s voice is sounding wonderfully gravelly and ragged – as if he has already stretched his vocal on numerous vocal takes.

At 1:36, John Paul Jones’ beautiful, soaring string arrangement glides in, bringing a warm, grandiose feel to the song, underpinned by delicate finger-picked guitars and flowing piano trills.

Strings, piano, Mellotron, fingerpicked guitar and bass all weave gracefully around each other and space abounds within the arrangement and the mix.

Drummer John Bonham’s performance on the song was an absolute masterclass in restraint. Bonham doesn’t even play in the first three minutes of the song and he initially uses brushes, creating a softer more jazz-influenced tone.

The first skittering of Bonham’s nimble brushwork can be heard at 3:37 and by the four-minute mark Plant is back in with the second verse.

As the song progresses, there are tinges of jazz, before Bonham’s drums really kick in.

And so it goes on, with sonic ebbs and flows across its epic running time. The song drops down to a gentle, intimate feel as it nears its close, with some inspired chord work from Page, resolving with a plaintive and powerful climax.

Bonham drops out along with the piano, bass, and Mellotron for this closing section of the song, as Page’s guitars sparkle and chime.

Speaking to Classic Rock in 2014, Page said of The Rain Song: “As a guitar piece it was really good, but it came to life with Bonzo playing really sensitively on the brushes.”

One of the great strengths of The Rain Song is that everything feels organic and perfectly placed, yet with no sense of pre-thought or contrivance.

The Rain Song appeared as the second track on Houses Of The Holy, when the album was released in March 1973. From 1972 through to 1975, Led Zeppelin played The Rain Song in their live set, positioning it, as on the album, immediately after The Song Remains The Same.

They ordered the setlist this way so that Jimmy Page could use his iconic twin-necked Gibson EDS-1275 on both songs: using the top 12-string neck for The Song Remains the Same and then switching to the bottom 6-string neck for The Rain Song.

“On live shows, it became a work-out feature for the double neck,” said Page in Light And Shade: Conversations With Jimmy Page.

The Rain Song was dropped from the band’s 1977 US tour but reinstated for their two warm-up concerts in Copenhagen in 1979, before the Knebworth Festival of the same year. The song also featured on their 1980 European tour.

Over five decades on from its release, The Rain Song remains one of Led Zeppelin’s most beloved songs among fans and critics. Admittedly, it does not rank quite as highly as giants such as Stairway To Heaven, Kashmir and When The Levee Breaks. But it is a song that is widely admired for its beauty, sophistication and emotional impact.

In a retrospective review in AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine concluded that The Rain Song “is one of Zep’s finest moments, featuring a soaring string arrangement and a gentle, aching melody”.

Producer Rick Rubin was equally effusive, as reported in American Songwriter magazine in 2024.

“I don't even know what kind of music this is,” said Rubin of The Rain Song. “It defies classification. There’s such tasteful, beautiful detail in the guitar, and a triumphant feel when the drums come in – it’s sad and moody and strong, all at the same time. I could listen to this song all day. That would be a good day.”

When Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry talks about his biggest influences, two names are always bound to come up: Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. And in an interview with Q magazine in the early 2000s, Perry explained exactly why Page and Beck were so inspiring for him.

Perry began by naming a handful of albums that have had a major influence on his own playing. These included The Yardbirds’ Little Games (1967), recorded with Page as the sole guitarist; the first four albums Page created with Led Zeppelin; Beck’s solo debut Truth (1968) and The Jeff Beck Group’s Beck-Ola (1969); and John Mayall’s Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton, aka The Beano Album (1966).

“The first four Led Zeppelin albums, I have to have on me at all times,” Perry said. “The first two Beck albums and the last Yardbirds records are seminal for me – outlandish, experimental stuff. And I must have bought the John Mayall Blues Breakers album twenty times. If you have enough copies, you can never lose it. I listen to all these albums all the time for inspiration.”

Comparing the three former Yardbirds stars – Clapton, Beck and Page – Perry stated: “Jeff and Eric are so influential, but I guess Jimmy has the greatest influence because of Led Zeppelin – a pure inspiration for this thing called hard rock.

“Jimmy wasn’t just an amazing guitar player. He was an incredible producer and he wrote all these great songs. He had this world vision, and created a whole movement with Led Zeppelin.

“When he was cutting the first Zeppelin album, he knew what he wanted. That’s part of his genius – always knowing what he wanted.

“He’d been out in America with the Yardbirds and he saw this big gap that needed to be filled, and he knew what he needed to fill it. His vision was so much more global than Jeff and Eric’s. Playing guitar was just one part of the puzzle for Jimmy. His production values, the way he put Bonzo [drummer John Bonham] in the spotlight, became a touchstone for rock music.”

Aerosmith’s 1979 album Night In The Ruts featured a version of the Yardbirds song Think About It.

Perry told Q why he considered this a pivotal song for Page.

“We covered Think About It because it was only a b-side,” he said, “and we wanted people to hear this really cool song. It’s the only song that Jimmy did with the Yardbirds that pointed the way to Led Zeppelin. It’s proto-Zeppelin.”

Back in 1974, Aerosmith’s second album Get Your Wings included a version of the seminal rhythm and blues song Train Kept A-Rollin’ – which Jeff Beck recorded with the Yardbirds in 1965, and which Jimmy Page performed live with both the Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin.

In fact this was the first song that the four members of Led Zeppelin ever played together in their first rehearsal in 1968.

Aerosmith’s recording of Train Kept A-Rollin’ actually featured lead guitar from noted session players Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter instead of Perry and his Aerosmith bandmate Brad Whitford.

But as Perry stated, this song was hugely important in his own development as a guitarist.

He explained: “People always say there are certain songs that take you back to a certain time, the first time you heard it. People say that to me about [Aerosmith’s hit ballad] Dream On. And for me, when we play Train Kept A-Rollin’, I still feel the way I felt way back when I heard the Yardbirds’ version. It was like a drug – it set me free.”

Aerosmith ended up performing the song live with both Page and Beck – on separate occasions.

Page guested with them at the Monsters Of Rock festival at Donington Park in 1990, while Beck jammed with them in the US many years earlier.

“It was back in the ’70s that Jeff got up with us and played Train,” Perry recalled. “That was amazing, but of course I was intimidated – he’s a fucking genius! He’s Mozart – he’s that brilliant!”

Perry did his best to describe that level of genius.

“With Jeff, you just knew that he didn’t want to sound like anybody else. He was always pushing the edge, going into jazz.

“I always felt that if Jeff played a lick that sounded like somebody else, he’d throw it away. I’m still astounded that the sound from his amplifier just comes from his hands.

“A lot of guitar players will tell you the same thing – that Jeff is head, hands and feet above the others.

“The first time I saw Jeff play live, he was playing a Les Paul, so I had to have one of those. I bought a ’68 Gold Top. I wish to God I still had it!”

On 9 January 1970, Jimmy Page celebrated his 26th birthday by performing with Led Zeppelin at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

It was a landmark show for the band, captured on film and later featured in their official 2003 DVD.

As Page would recall to writer Cameron Crowe, the Royal Albert Hall was “at the time the largest and most prestigious gig in London”.

Zeppelin’s show at the venue in 1970 was part of short, 8-date UK tour. The setlist featured key tracks from the band’s first two albums, including Dazed And Confused, Heartbreaker, Communication Breakdown, Moby Dick, Thank You and Whole Lotta Love. Also included was a track from the as-yet-unreleased Led Zeppelin III – the classic blues number Since I've Been Loving You.

For the encore, the band played a medley of rock ’n’ roll standards including Eddie Cochran’s C’mon Everybody and Little Richard’s Long Tall Sally.

And it was during this encore medley that Page played one of his most iconic electric guitars – a 1960 Gibson Les Paul Custom 'Black Beauty'.

In 2020, Page talked about that famous gig and that famous guitar in an interview with Total Guitar editor Chris Bird.

Page said of the Black Beauty: “The first time I played it, I had such a connection with it. I thought, ‘This is it. After all this searching and going through guitar shops, this is the one.’

“I got it before I went to art college, so when I started doing studio work as a session player, that’s the electric that’s used on pretty much all of that work.”

He recalled playing the Black Beauty at the Albert Hall – “At the tail end of it when we did some Eddie Cochran stuff”.

He then told the story of how this treasured guitar was lost and then found many years later.

He said: “After the Albert Hall, I thought I’d take it to the States with me on one of the tours and we’d just do all this rock ’n’ roll stuff at the end, the Eddie Cochran stuff with the Bigsby. So the story is that I take it over there, we’re in Minneapolis going to Montreal, and we arrive in Montreal but the guitar doesn’t. It disappears in Minneapolis. I realised it was lost or stolen.”

He continued the story: “Gibson, under the circumstances of me having played all the studio work on a Gibson Black Beauty, they made a clone of that, a version of it.

“That was pretty cool. And I had some extra sort of routing in it, because on the original, where you have the up [position on the selector switch] it is the neck [pickup]. The middle [position] isn’t the neck and the bridge, it’s actually the bridge and the middle pickup. And then the down position is the bridge.

“So at no point could you get what you’d get on a Standard, which was the neck and bridge pickup together, so I worked out a way of doing that, and I had that built into that particular model, because I thought, well, crikey, you want to do that, you want any combination that you can get. So that was what I had, a Gibson Black Beauty [replica].”

In 2008, Gibson released the Custom Shop VOS edition of Page’s Bigsby-equipped Black Beauty, complete with a trio of signature BurstBucker humbuckers and the unique six-way pickup switch that makes it so versatile. This limited edition model (they only made 500 of them) now fetches silly money online.

It did the job for Page. He played the replica during Led Zeppelin’s 2007 reunion show at London’s O2 arena.

“That’s the guitar that I played at the O2,” he said, “when we did For Your Life [from Zeppelin’s 1976 album Presence]. I thought that would be really cool, that thick sound, because it sounded really good.

“And then after the O2 [in 2015], my guitar that was stolen turns up. It gets found. Isn’t that interesting? And unless you get the story, you just see a Black Beauty and think, oh that’s the same one he had before. But there’s a whole story about how it gets lost and I didn’t expect it ever to be back in my hands ever again. I thought it was gone.”

What had happened to it in all that time?

Page explained: “I think it was stolen from the airport and it was stuck under somebody’s bed, somebody who was in some sort of punk band or something, and nobody wanted to rat on him. I think he died, and once he died things became a bit more apparent as to what had happened, and we got it back.”

Page’s Les Paul Custom made its return to public life in 2019 when it was included at the Play It Loud exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Now that Gibson and Page have embarked on a multi-year partnership, releasing replicas of his iconic EDS-1275 Doubleneck and 1964 SJ-200 acoustic, might see a reissue of his 1960 Black Beauty replica?

Legendary folk singer Donovan knows a thing or two about great guitar players. In the ’60s he had Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck playing on his records. He also witnessed Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton performing at their peak.

Speaking to MusicRadar, Donovan discusses that period and his connection to those groundbreaking musicians.

“I loved Hendrix,” he says. “My friend Gypsy Dave and I were the first ones to say hello to Jimi when Chas Chandler, the bass player of The Animals, flew him in from America.

“And of course The Yardbirds had three super guitar players. One was called Jeff Beck, one was called Jimmy Page, and one was called Eric Clapton."

He continues: “Jimmy Page loved my music from day one. Jimmy was on [Donovan’s 1966 hit] Sunshine Superman, and one time when I visited him at his house in Windsor he showed me an EP of mine that was only released in France, and one of the songs on it was one I'd forgotten I'd written. It was called Every Man Has His Chain. Jimmy showed me that EP and he said, ‘Don, I’ve followed you from day one. I love your music, Don, and I will be there for you whenever you want me.’

“So Jimmy followed the unfolding Donovan story, and it made sense that at one point Jimmy would like his own band.”

When Page formed Led Zeppelin – originally under the name of The New Yardbirds – he enlisted another former session musician, John Paul Jones, who had worked with Donovan.

“JPJ – John Paul Jones – could put arrangements together,” Donovan says. “So Page said him, ‘Will you please join me and help me start a new band?’ These super session guys all wanted to do their own bands, but it’s not easy.

“I mean, who knows what was in Page in JP J’s brains when they were talking to each other about starting a band, but when Page asked JPJ he was begging him – because he knew JPJ was a talent beyond any other talent that anybody knew about.”

Donovan says of the three legendary guitarists who had played in The Yardbirds at various stages: “Clapton chose pure blues, and he hated when the volume went up. He actually said to Jimmy Page and Beck, ‘You're too fucking loud!’ Because he’s a purist.”

He also fondly recalls a connection with another iconic guitar hero – Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple.

“Ritchie called me up and said, ‘We just love your stuff. Do you mind if I record your song? The song was Lalena, which was a ballad, and when Deep Purple recorded it I was so honoured.”

Jimmy Page and Sundragon Amps have teamed up once again for a new tube amp combo that presents the Led Zeppelin icon’s peerless electric guitar tone in a bedroom-friendly one-watt package.

It is called the Nypmph. It has that inspired-by, souped-up Supro stylings. of Sundragon' OG Jimmy Page amp. This, however, really is the Led Zeppelin guitar amp you can play at home without declaring noise war on your neighbours, because this compact powerhouse has a 1/4-watt setting. Getting that big amp sound in a small format was not easy.

“This would prove to be the greatest challenge Mitch and Perry had faced to date with Sundragon,” says Page. “It was no simple task, as certain elements of larger amplifiers are notoriously difficult to scale down.”

But the Nymph is not just for domestic use only. Should the invite come to play some enormodome in Missouri, well, it can do that, too. There is a line-out, so you can send the signal to the PA and this small amp will sound huge.

“Put simply, this means the amp can go from your bedroom to Madison Square Garden without missing a beat,” says Page.

Page announced the Nymph’s launch on Instagram last night. He revealed that he first got his hands on one on November 3, 2023, when Page performed Link Wray’s Rumble during Wray’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

That was a night to remember. Page with his Gibson EDS-1275, that 12-string neck giving those Wray chords some extra skronk and snarl, making them sound bigger.

Well, that’s what Page used to test out the Nymph backstage – and he was worried whether it could handle the 12-string.

“Mitch comes into the dressing room with this tiny little amp, and he says, ‘So, this is the Nymph!’ I thought, ‘Hmm, The Nymph. Right!’ I mean, the idea of it sounded good, a small amp that you can switch from 1-watt to ¼-watt, but is this tiny thing going to be able to handle the double beck? I don’t want to blow it up!” says Page.

He didn’t. At first, he used the six-string side of the EDS-1275 to test it. This would have been a sight to witness. What did he play on it? Did he approach it with out preferred guitar store amp test approach, i.e., some open chords, a blues turnaround and a frown in concentration?

Did he go full Guitar Center on a Saturday afternoon and play the Enter Sandman riff? We might never know. But if anyone is allowed to break long-established guitar store protocol and demo it with Stairway To Heaven Well, it's Page.

Anyway, back to the amp. Page was impressed. Having previously worked with Sundragon on an exacting replica of the amp he used to track Led Zeppelin I, he would have known he was in safe hands. Even so, this single-watter took him by surprise.

“I thought, well, this is pretty extraordinary, but hang on: will it really be able to handle the higher output of the 12-string side? And it was incredible how it dealt with it,” says Page. “I said, ‘Eureka for all of us here, because you’ve found that elusive thing, a low-watt amp which reacts perfectly to a guitar and delivers all the tonal qualities you want.

“‘Hold on a minute, is this the 1-watt setting?’ And Mitch said, ‘No, Jimmy, that’s actually the ¼-watt mode!’ I mean, I just threw my hands up. I’ve got to tell you, that amplifier, the Nymph, is absolutely extraordinary.”

There are no further details, specs or prices just yet. But head over to Sundragon Amps and you can see more pics of this, and sign up for updates. We’d expect the Nymph on their webstore soon, and then for it to sell out in no time.

• “The electronics are just as authentic and deliver all of the sonic character of Jimmy’s legendary EDS-1275”: Gibson unveils meticulous Custom Shop VOS replica of Jimmy Page’s iconic 1969 Doubleneck

The Black Crowes and Jimmy Page have reunited to release a short film that tells the story of their Live At The Greek album, which was recently reissued to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary.

It features both Robinson brothers and Page sat down together giving the whole nine yards on their short-lived collaboration. It seems Robert Plant was the link. The Crowes had already toured with the Zeppelin frontman and when the group played London’s Albert Hall near the end of the '90s, Plant asked if he could bring his old bandmate along. “We just hit it off, like that,” says Rich Robinson.

Page had already been impressed by what he’d heard of the Crowes. “They were a band who clearly understood its roots and knew its roots. There was already a bond as far as I was concerned.”

The Crowes and Page started rehearsing together – a mixture of Zeppelin and Crowes originals and blues covers. Page remembers some of the Zeppelin material was transformed by the new group. “Ten Years Gone - I’d never heard it like that because back in the days of Zeppelin I’d try and do as much as I could just with the one guitar. Suddenly there were all these harmonies going on. It was like I had died and gone to heaven. It was a really emotional moment.”

Meanwhile, Page added an extra element to the Crowes’ originals. “She Talks To Angels is maybe our signature song,” says Chris Robinson. “And Jimmy adding something that was different. She Talks To Angels was never the same after that because he elevated this thing.”

It was a “country twang” that he introduced, according to Live At The Greek’s producer Kevin Shirley. “It’s a sound that you immediately relate to Jimmy. He’s the guy that introduced the B bend into rock n’ roll.”

By the time the group and Page got to the Greek in October 1999 “we were just ripping it up,” according to Chris Robinson. “We were truly in flight. Now we knew we were truly in the groove.”

The album was reissued back in March in an expanded three-disc edition, which includes a whole load more Crowes and Zeppelin songs that were tried out at soundchecks during that 1999 tour. The ten-minute film is up on YouTube as of now.

“I’m pleased you’ve enjoyed the book,” Jimmy Page said. “You know, being a guitar nerd like myself.”

It was 2020, and the legendary guitarist was talking about Jimmy Page: The Anthology, a weighty publication which he described as “an autobiography with photographs”.

The ‘guitar nerd’ he was talking to was Chris Bird, editor of Total Guitar magazine.

Five years after their meeting — on 27 May 2025 — Chris Bird died at the age of 48.

His interview with Page was one of the highlights of his career.

This was an epic, 8000-word cover story in which Page discussed every aspect of his life’s work: the groundbreaking music he made, first with The Yardbirds and then with Led Zeppelin; and the tools of his trade, iconic guitars such as the Black Beauty, and the amps and effects with which he explored new sounds.

What follows here is an edited version of the fascinating, in-depth conversation that those two guitar nerds enjoyed together…

Chris Bird: One guitar in particular — your 1960 Gibson Les Paul Black Beauty Custom — has an amazing story.

Jimmy Page: The first time I played it, I had such a connection with it. I thought, ‘This is it. After all this searching and going through guitar shops, this is the one.’ I got it before I went to art college, so when I started doing studio work as a session player, that’s the electric that’s used on pretty much all of that work.

You also played it during Led Zeppelin’s famous concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall in January 1970.

Yes, at the tail end of it when we did some Eddie Cochran stuff. And after the Albert Hall, I thought I’d take it to the States with me on one of the tours and we’d just do all this rock ’n’ roll stuff at the end, the Eddie Cochran stuff with the Bigsby. So the story is that I take it over there, we’re in Minneapolis going to Montreal, and we arrive in Montreal but the guitar doesn’t. It disappears in Minneapolis. I realised it was lost or stolen.

And then?

Gibson, under the circumstances of me having played all the studio work on a Gibson Black Beauty, they made a clone of that, a version of it. That was pretty cool. And I had some extra sort of routing in it, because on the original, where you have the up [position on the selector switch] it is the neck [pickup]. The middle [position] isn’t the neck and the bridge, it’s actually the bridge and the middle pickup. And then the down position is the bridge. So at no point could you get what you’d get on a Standard, which was the neck and bridge pickup together, so I worked out a way of doing that, and I had that built into that particular model, because I thought, well, crikey, you want to do that, you want any combination that you can get. So that was what I had, a Gibson Black Beauty [replica].

And you played the replica during Zeppelin’s 2007 show at the O2.

Yes, that’s the guitar that I played at the O2 when we did For Your Life [from Zeppelin’s 1976 album Presence]. I thought that would be really cool, that thick sound, because it sounded really good. And then after the O2 [in 2015], my guitar that was stolen turns up. It gets found. Isn’t that interesting? And unless you get the story, you just see a Black Beauty and think, oh that’s the same one he had before. But there’s a whole story about how it gets lost and I didn’t expect it ever to be back in my hands ever again. I thought it was gone.

Are you aware of what happened to it in that time?

I think it was stolen from the airport and it was stuck under somebody’s bed, somebody who was in some sort of punk band or something, and nobody wanted to rat on him. I think he died, and once he died things became a bit more apparent as to what had happened, and we got it back.

It’s an incredible story.

Well, these things don’t reappear, do they? It is a great story insofar as I’m still paying tribute to it, if you like, the one that was lost, even though Gibson made an edition of it. And yeah, then the first one turned up afterwards, and it was amazing, fantastic.

Les Paul ‘Number One’ and ‘Number Two' are your famous sunburst Standards. What are the differences between them in terms of setup, and more than anything how they feel to you when you’re playing them?

The first one has got quite a shallow neck, and that’s how it was when I had it. I’ve often wondered if it had been re-finished when I had it, by Joe Walsh, who sold it to me – whether he had re-finished it. He had more than one Les Paul at the time and he’d obviously decided to let this one go. But this was the neck that was on it. On the other one, they all played differently, they weren’t consistent on the ’50s ones. There’s a definite difference in the feel and the tension between the two of them. I’m not so sure whether the neck is quite so shallow on the Number Two, but it’s not one of those big clunky ones. And tonally it’s different as well. However, that’s the one I started to experiment on, so that I could do all various combinations, [coil-tapping] with the push-pull switch.

I gather you used two 12-strings, the Fender Electric XII and the Vox Phantom XII, on Stairway To Heaven...

That’s right. The Vox one, I had that in The Yardbirds, so a lot of the stuff in The Yardbirds – Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor and all those things – were done on that. And then I got the Fender one a little later. I think I got that when I came back from America the first time I visited. So basically I had two electric 12-strings, and on Stairway... I wanted to use both of them, so I’d have one [panned] left and one right. There is a slight difference obviously in the sound of them, so that bit in the fanfare that leads into the solo with all the 12s, that’s tracking both the Vox and the Fender. There’s a photograph in the book that shows the setup: the two 12-strings and the six-string solo.

And when it came to performing the song live, you turned to the Gibson EDS-1275 doubleneck.

Yes. I thought, what’s the guitar, how to do this on stage? And it was just obvious that the only way to do this, with the sort of fragile guitar of the opening style and the more racy sort of pickups for the solo – the doubleneck is the only way I’m going to do it. When I recorded the song I wasn’t thinking about how I was going to do it live. So in actual fact, the song demanded the guitar. There was no other way to do it. When you think about it, it was the only way to actually replicate that song, apart from jumping from one guitar to another on stage!

Was that approach repeated on later Zeppelin songs?

Well, I certainly didn’t think how I was going to do Achilles Last Stand live! I was just doing it – I was laying on everything that I could think of that would work within the context of whatever the composition was.

Did you miss having the acoustic guitar when performing Stairway To Heaven?

Yeah, sort of, but it was okay doing it with the neck pickup on the six-string neck [of the doubleneck]. That was about as good as it was going to get, really. I didn’t really miss it. I was just able to take it in another direction in a live situation.

In the live performances of that song, it’s not a different arrangement, but a different feel, a different vibe.

Yeah. The textures are going to be different, so the attitude’s going to be different. And another thing about the doubleneck... It’s after the fourth album that that arrives, so when you get to the next album after that, Houses Of The Holy, on that there’s what was originally called the Overture, but it becomes The Song Remains The Same and then The Rain Song, and I did those because I figured I would be able to do those on the doubleneck. So I was actually thinking of the doubleneck and being able to have those two numbers the way they appear on the album. I was thinking about how to really be able to use it, rather than just maybe for one or two songs. So it became an active part of the overall show.

The first Zeppelin album feels less produced, more in the room, so the double-tracking is less obvious. But by the time you get to 1971 and the fourth album, the production is massive. What do you feel was different then in the production sound?

I was acquainted with John Paul Jones’ playing as a session player, but John Bonham, with his approach to the drums and the dazzling technique that he had, the overall sound of his drums was unlike anybody that I’d heard before. It was so musical, because he knew how to tune his drums. So I knew instinctively what I wanted to do with Led Zeppelin that was unlike anybody else. I wanted to have the full stereo picture, the placing of the instruments.

And guitar-wise?

The first album was totally based around the Telecaster. And that’s what it was – just a Supro [Coronado 1690T] amp, [a Sola Sound Tone Bender] overdrive, an Echoplex [EP-3 tape delay] and a Vox wah-wah. So it’s really very minimal and it’s not going through different amps, just this one amplifier. So it really goes to show with all the tones just how much there was that you could get out of one guitar. And that’s basically what it was that I had. I wasn’t using the Black Beauty or anything like that. And as it went on, the second album was clearly going to be all about the Les Paul guitar. But again, it’s a large stereo picture of everything that’s going on, whether it’s panning of things or positioning or whatever, or where things come in or go out, what’s tracked and what isn’t tracked.

Things were moving very fast for you and the band at that time.

The first album was done in a very short time. The second album was done while we were on the road in America, although we were coming backwards and forwards to England, so it’s got all the energy of touring.

That energy was evident in the big rock numbers such as Whole Lotta Love and Heartbreaker, but the second album also had subtler songs such as Thank You and Ramble On…

The first two songs that I had for Led Zeppelin II were Whole Lotta Love and What Is And What Should Never Be... II is almost like turning a coin, isn’t it? One side to the other as far as textures and moods...

Dazed And Confused was just one of many epic tracks in the Zeppelin catalogue – alongside Stairway To Heaven, Kashmir, Achilles Last Stand...

It was part of the overall thing from the first album. Part of it goes back to what I said about singles. With Whole Lotta Love, that was clearly going to be the track that everybody was going to go to, because that riff was so fresh and it still is. If somebody plays that riff it brings a smile to people’s faces. It’s a really positive thing. But I knew with Whole Lotta Love that there weren’t going to be any edits. I insisted that they kept the middle section in it, which of course they didn’t like, but they had to do it. So I thought, well, if you just keep making the numbers longer and longer... [Laughs] They’re not going to make them singles! I did think that in a mischievous way. But there was another reason to make them longer and longer – there was more to say in them. Then again, it could be argued the other way. Good Times Bad Times is really short, as far as minutes and seconds, but there’s just so much that goes on in that. It is what it is. Sometimes you have shorter statements. Sometimes you need longer to get across what you’re doing.

The Danelectro that you used on Kashmir has such an individual sound. When did you first start using that?

Selmers was the big showcase shop, and I don’t know how they got away with it, but they sold every brand of guitar in there, Gibsons, Gretsches, Fenders. I don’t know how they did it, but they did. Suddenly the Danelectro guitar appeared in there, and [John] Entwistle had got the bass with horns on it, and this salesman was saying they had this guitar, it was only £45 or something, and all the other guitars were getting into the hundreds. I said, let’s have a go on it, and it sounded pretty great. Because of course it’s hollow bodied, put together with plywood. It sounded phenomenal, and I could afford it, so I thought, ‘I’ll have this as a sort of second guitar’. I did start to use it a little bit on sessions and there’s a photograph of me in one of these big sessions with loads of guitars and I’ve taken that thing along. I was using it not so much on sessions, because I was using the Les Paul, but yeah, in the Yardbirds I was using it, and putting it into [altered] tunings, and it stayed with me all the way through the Yardbirds straight into Led Zeppelin. It was the backup guitar, because I was only going out there with two guitars really, in ’68, ’69 I just had just the Telecaster and the Danelectro, until I got the Gibson. So if I broke a string, I’d quickly get it into standard tuning from the DADGAD it was in and then go off. On the bootlegs I can’t tell the difference, I can’t tell the swap-over, which is quite interesting really. But it was there, it was a true and trusted friend, it was there all the way through. I started to write things on it like Kashmir because I was used to playing it in the DADGAD tuning, so Kashmir came out on that guitar, and In My Time Of Dying. They’re both on the same album [Physical Graffiti]. So clearly I was using it in [altered] tunings.

Aside from the tunings, do you think it affected the way you played differently to the Les Paul or the Telecaster?

Yeah, the feel of it is different. But I found it a very user-friendly guitar and I thought the Danelectros were quite consistent. We were talking about Les Pauls being very different, certainly in those 50s ones; ’58, ’59, they really are. Of course it’s all in how they’re built, before they became more scientific about it in the approach. I found them to be relatively consistent, the Danelectros, which is always useful.

Before joining The Yardbirds you worked as a producer for other artists. Did you ever consider doing so again?

During the ’70s, I started to get offers coming in, but whatever I had, whether it was the writing or the playing, or the production, I wanted to keep that in Led Zeppelin. The only deviation from that was my playing with Roy Harper on Stormcock [Harper’s classic 1970s album]. He and I were playing the two acoustics, and that was really cool. I really admired Roy’s work and still do. But that was the only area really where I stepped out of Led Zeppelin, because if I wasn’t on the road I was writing for the next album. I was living it and I didn’t want to not live it. I didn’t want to deviate from it or be producing someone else’s album or anything like that. No, any ideas that I had, writing or whatever it was, they would all go to Led Zeppelin.

Legendary guitarist Steve Stevens has named his two favourite guitar solos - and they come from two very different players.

Stevens is back in action this month with the release of the new album he has recorded with Billy Idol.

The album, titled Dream Into It, is released on 25 April.

But first, he tells MusicRadar about the solos he considers the most inspirational.

His first choice is a masterpiece from Led Zeppelin maestro Jimmy Page.

“If it has to be hard rock, the quintessential solo is obviously Jimmy Page on Stairway To Heaven,” he says.

“When that guitar solo hits… Jimmy is such a master of building through a peak, and then the sound just explodes.

“But I think that’s pretty common knowledge. I think most people would say that’s the ultimate rock guitar solo.”

Stevens’ second pick is a connoisseur’s choice.

In the late '70s, Allan Holdsworth was a member of progressive rock supergroup U.K. alongside drummer Bill Bruford, bassist/vocalist John Wetton and keyboard player Eddie Jobson.

On the group's self-titled debut album, released in 1978, is the track In The Dead Of Night.

The solo from Holdsworth in this track is a classic example of why he was revered by so many, including Eddie Van Halen, as the guitarist's guitarist.

Stevens says: “Allan Holdsworth's solo in the song In The Dead Of Night is one of my favourite electric guitar solos of all time. It’s astounding.

“I remember the first time someone played me Allan Holdsworth and said, ‘You’ve got to check this out…’

“I said, ‘Wow, Jeff Beck has really taken it to the next level…’ But then I realised, ‘Oh, wait a minute, this isn’t Jeff Beck!’

“I was just like, ‘This guy is on a whole ’nother level!’

Stevens continues: “Everything about those early Allan Holdsworth records was great. I devoured that stuff.

"I loved his tone. And I’m a sucker for a guitarist with a good vibrato.

“I don’t care if they play two notes or three notes, it’s all in the vibrato. That’s what I really want. That’s what really catches my ear.”

Stevens says that these two very different solos by Holdsworth and Page are still as inspiring as when he first heard them.

“When I listen back now,” he says, “those two solos give me the same feeling as they did then.”

Jimmy Page has described the UK Government’s policy proposals for AI governance as a “sham” that offers a “free pass” for artificial intelligence to exploit the work of musicians and other artists without their consent or fair compensation.

In a statement posted to Instagram account, the Led Zeppelin guitarist said the UK Government’s proposals for a so-called opt-out system were “technically impossible”.

Under the government’s policy proposals, tech companies would be allowed to train AI models on existing works of art unless the original copyright holders explicitly choose not to allow their copyrighted works to be used for this purpose. Page says this is unworkable.

“Under the Data (Use and Access) Bill, AI companies would be allowed to take works, past and future, and use them as training data without consent or payment,” wrote Page. “These models digest vast amounts of human-created content and then generate imitations, bypassing the rights of the original creators.

“The government’s proposed ‘opt-out’ system – the idea that artists will always be in a position to preemptively reserve their rights – is a sham. It is technically impossible for artists to opt out… we should be clear: this is not regulation; it is a free pass for AI to exploit creativity without consequence.”

Page is not alone in voicing his concerns about how the evolution of AI threatens artists. Kate Bush, Damon Albarn and Hans Zimmer were among more than a thousand musicians who put their name to a silent album, This What We Want?, released to protest the use of recorded works to train generative AI.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Brian May said he feared it was too late too late to put the genie back in the bottle, cautioning that if the regulation around AI and copyright was insufficiently robust, the future of the music industry was under threat.

“My fear is that it’s already too late – this theft has already been performed and is unstoppable,” said May. “Like so many incursions that the monstrously arrogant billionaire owners of Al and social media are making into our lives. The future is already forever changed.”

Page’s sentiments were echoed by researchers from Cambridge University. In a report authored by the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, researchers urged caution, advising that a “robust economic analysis” of the impact on the UK’s creative industries was required.

The report argued that a robust regulatory framework was needed to protect a sector that had contributed contributed £124.6 billion to the UK economy in 2022.

“Opt-out options are not fool-proof solutions to these problems,” reads the report. “First, it will be difficult to decide on and enforce a technical measure for opt out. Smaller and less established creators may be left behind as they may not have the skills, knowledge, or resources to issue opt out notifications.

“Second, placing the onus on copyright holders to actively assert their rights places an unfair burden on them, especially small copyright holders who may not have the technical expertise or means to do so.”

Page says that we have arrived at a hinge moment in human history, a moment of greater significance than a mere rights issue in the music industry; the ethical issues posed by Generative AI’s evolving capabilities are “profound”.

“When AI scrapes the vast tapestry of human creativity to generate content, it often does so without consent, attribution, or compensation. This is not innovation; it’s exploitation,” he writes. “If, during my session days, someone had taken my riffs without acknowledgment or payment, it would have been deemed theft. The same standard must apply to AI.”

You can read Page’s statement in full above. It serves as a moment of clarity, if needed, as to how serious the implications are for musicians (and all artists and creatives), and also as a love letter to the arts, to the struggles, the stories and the humanity behind it – which is why we are all here in the first place.

Jimmy Page and the Black Crowes have dug up a version of The Lemon Song that they recorded at a soundcheck 25 years ago.

The song – originally recorded by Led Zeppelin in 1969 and released on Led Zeppelin II – is one of a number of unreleased tracks that will be included on a reissue of Live At The Greek, a collab album that Page and the Crowes first released in 2000.

Live At The Greek was, as the title suggests, recorded at LA’s Greek Theatre across two nights in October 1999 at which Page and the band played a selection of old Led Zep and Black Crowes songs plus a smattering of old blues and rock n’ roll standards.

As you’d expect, the new expanded reissue has been remixed, remastered and thoroughly scrubbed up. Aside from The Lemon Song it also includes another 15 unreleased song, as well as exclusive photos, video and more.

In a press statement, Jimmy Page said of the reissued album: “The new mixes capture the collaboration of those historic encounters and provide the full explosive passion and exciting energy of those alchemical moments.”

For the Crowes’ part, the reissue obviously brings back fond memories of the event itself, and playing with one of their heroes. Frontman Chris Robinson said of the album: “The new Live at the Greek box set brings the whole experience of our work with Jimmy into a vibrant, electric, mystical and powerful perspective. Hail, hail rock ‘n roll!” while his brother and guitarist Rich Robinson added: “Going through the shows and putting together the new box set has been such an incredible dive back to that time in our history.

“It was a once-in-a-lifetime thrill to play these amazing iconic songs with the man who composed them. The sound of the new mixes and extra songs blew me away when I first heard them.”

If you’re curious about what the actual gigs sounded like 26 years ago, have a look at this:

In other Black Crowes news, it was recently announced that the band are among the artists up for consideration for the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame this year. Others include Soundgarden, Oasis, Joe Cocker, Chubby Checker and, er Mariah Carey.

Kashmir is perhaps the most revered Led Zeppelin song after Stairway To Heaven. And in a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone magazine (paywall), guitarist Jimmy Page revealed how he created Kashmir as one of the cornerstones of Zeppelin’s legendary 1975 double album Physical Graffiti.

Recalling the recording sessions at Headley Grange, a mansion in Hampshire, Page described how he and drummer John Bonham worked as a pair on the embryonic Kashmir.

“It sort of kicked off with myself and John Bonham there,” Page said. “I had a good half-dozen things [songs] at least. And one of them — the first one that I couldn’t wait to get the drums in the hall, to get this big drum sound and then play the riff of — was Kashmir.

“I wanted to try out these ideas that I had for the cascading brass part and figure out the guitar’s pace on it. I always thought of that guitar part as being something that was augmented by the orchestra. Basically, it was just really good to start kicking it off with him [Bonham], ’cause he and I worked so well together.”

Page gave a detailed breakdown of the song’s development.

“I had the ideas for the riff and the cascading part, which is actually electric 12-string and it’s brass on the record, from something that I had been working on before we even went to Headley,” he said. “It was another piece of music entirely, and right at the very end of it, while I was playing along, I played the acoustic guitar part in reverse, and there was a sort of fanfare, or the cascades, followed by the riff, and I thought, ‘Whoa.’ It just occurs right at the end.

“I said, ‘Oh, boy, I can visualise this. It’s going to be built around the drum kit, and I’m going to get in there with John Bonham.’ It’s the first thing that I ran through with him, because I just know that he is gonna love it, and he loves it, and we just play the riff over and over and over, because it’s like a child’s riff.

“Musically, it’s a round, like Frère Jacques, where you can lay things on top of it. That was the idea of having this riff that was gonna be really intense, and probably pretty majestic as well, but quite intriguing.

“But the fact was, it was going to be built around the sound of Headley, and the drums in the hall. That’s how I heard it, and that’s how I saw it, but I also heard it with orchestra in mind.

“It was the first track where we actually heard the complement of a full orchestra on top of the brass, and the strings. We’d used strings on Friends, on the third album, just a small string session, but this was really something that was meant to be pretty epic and substantial.”

In the same interview, Page also stated his reasons for making Physical Graffiti a double album.

“It gave us the chance to put in the material that was left over from the first visit to Headley,” he explained. “There were three tracks that were left off of the fourth album, and that was Boogie With Stu, Night Flight and Down By The Seaside. If you think about it, you couldn’t have substituted anything off the fourth album with any of those tracks, quite rightly so. Each of them had their own individual charm and character.

“So with those, plus the fact that Houses Of The Holy was a track that wasn’t included on the album Houses Of The Holy, that was four things [for the album] straight away.

“And, you know, given the chance of having a good run at this writing and recording process, I didn’t want it to be a double album with any padding on it. It would be a double album with all character pieces, the way that Led Zeppelin did their music with the sort of ethos of it, if you like, that everything sounded different to everything else.”

When it comes to lists of the greatest guitar players of all time, one player you can guarantee will always get a mention will be Led Zeppelin’s very own Jimmy Page.

An icon in the world of guitar, Page was one of the first major guitar heroes, playing a huge part in the invention of heavy rock, and developing recording techniques that we all still use to this very day. While he himself once claimed “There’s so much that can be done on the guitar. I’ve only done a few bits and pieces", it’s pretty safe to say that all guitarists can learn something from him.

In this lesson we’re going to be looking at five Jimmy Page-style concepts you can take away and add to your own guitar playing right away to give it that Page flavour.

1. Over-bending

From Page's behind-the-nut bends in Heartbreaker to his more expressive soloing in Since I've Been Loving You, wide-interval bends (aka over-bends) are a major feature in Led Zeppelin's discography. In our lick you’ll be taking the 15th fret D on the second string and bending it to meet the pitch of the 18th fret F – a bII interval and a note from outside the key of E minor and sure to create musical tension. Alternatively, if you treat the 12th fret B as your root note, playing in B minor instead of E minor, you'll be bending to a bV interval – another tense sound.

2. Triplet pull-off licks

This lick is made up of a simple three-note phrase that you can throw into any guitar solo for a Page-style burst of speed. You’ll be playing a triplet on each beat of the bar – that's three notes for every beat. The pattern is a pull-off on the first string from the 15th to the 12th fret, before playing the 12th fret on the second string, which is repeated until the final string bend. Although this lick is simple, it can be easily moved to any pentatonic shape and any string pairing to add some fast passages to your solos.

3. Simple repetition

Jimmy Page was a great lover of improvisation and would often stretch out live solos to great lengths. One of his best-used approaches is the use of repeating licks inside a solo. Our example is a simple four-note idea that you can loop for as long as you want to. One thing to note here is how the phrase locks in rhythmically. It is not played as a straight lick. There is some movement to the rhythm. The phrase lasts one and a half beats, causing each repeat to land on different points in the bar. Do it long enough and you'll start on beat 1 again. Regardless, this rhythmic displacement keeps a simple lick sounding interesting.

4. Six-note groupings

This lick is something we’ve seen in a bunch of Page solos, most notably the opening lick from Stairway to Heaven’s guitar solo. Though based on straight 16th notes (that's four notes per beat), unusually, the lick is arranged in groups of six notes at a time. Just like the previous lick then, this means the rhythm is displaced with each repeat. Spend time understanding this six-note pattern and focus on alternate picking every single note. Once you’ve got the rhythm locked in and you’re playing cleanly you can start to increase the speed.

5. Fast legato bursts

The final idea we’re going to check out is Jimmy's approach to short, fast bursts of legato combined into a longer lick with repeated phrasing ideas and an over-bend. This lick will give you some great Page habits across a few techniques at once. This lick is a great lick to throw into the middle of a guitar solo to buy you some time to think about where you’re going to move next.. The repeated phrase can also be moved around different shapes of the Minor Pentatonic scale inside of the same key.

A newly expanded version of the 2000 album Jimmy Page & The Black Crowes: Live At The Greek is released on 14 March with 16 previously unreleased tracks.

The original album was recorded over two nights in Los Angeles in 1999.

These performances featured classic songs from Page’s career with Led Zeppelin combined with The Black Crowes’ signature tracks.

Celebrating the album's 25th anniversary is a 36-track edition produced, mixed and remastered by Kevin Shirley.

Ahead of the album release comes a two-track single featuring their versions of the classic Crowes song No Speak No Slave and Zeppelin’s Bring It On Home.

Jimmy Page states: “I’m really looking forward to the soon to be available release of Jimmy Page & The Black Crowes material from concerts in 1999. The new mixes capture the collaboration of those historic encounters and provide the full explosive passion and exciting energy of those alchemical moments.”

The Black Crowes' singer Chris Robinson adds: “The new Live at the Greek box set brings the whole experience of our work with Jimmy into a vibrant, electric, mystical and powerful perspective. Hail, hail rock ‘n roll!”

Crowes guitarist Rich Robinson comments: “Going through the shows and putting together the new box set has been such an incredible dive back to that time in our history. It was a once-in-a-lifetime thrill to play these amazing iconic songs with the man who composed them. The sound of the new mixes and extra songs blew me away when I first heard them.”

The new (and long awaited) documentary Becoming Led Zeppelin finally lands this week and the film makers have released a wee clip onto Instagram in which they describe what it was like meeting Jimmy Page for the first time.

“That very first meeting we had was quite intense,” Alison McGourty says.

Her creative partner Bernard McMahon suggests: “He just wanted to know how thoroughly we knew the subject.”

“We got a phone call from him out of the blue, (saying) it’s up to you to get the other guys on board,” remembers McGourty, before McMahon adds: “That’s really the Zeppelin way.”

Becoming Led Zeppelin is the first officially sanctioned documentary about the group, which seems mad considering they broke up 45 years ago, but there you go. It tells the story of Zep’s early years, but interestingly cuts the tale in 1970, just before they emerged as arguably the biggest, baddest rock band on Planet Earth.

It’s also significant in that there are no other talking heads, except the three surviving members of the group, plus archive footage of the late John Bonham. The filmmakers apparently tried – as much as was possible – to allot equal time to each member, in the same way that Page tried to bring balance to Zep’s music, with every instrument (and Robert Plant’s voice) as important as each other.

In addition to this, McMahon and McGourty have used footage from the band’s many iconic performances from the late 60s, from gigs at Fillmore West, and festivals such as Newport Jazz, Atlanta Pop and the Bath Blues festival in 1969. They’ve even unearthed footage from a French TV show in 1969 in which the band launch into Communication Breakdown only for the audience to cover their ears and recoil in horror.

Becoming Led Zeppelin is on release at IMAX screens from this Wednesday and at cinemas nationwide from Friday. Tickets are available here.

In 1988, a funny thing happened when several American radio stations began playing a new rock song with a heavy riff and a high vocal.

Listeners thought they were hearing a previously unreleased Led Zeppelin track.

In reality, it was the debut single from a new band – Get It On by Kingdom Come. And it made them the most controversial and maligned rock band in the world.

Led by German singer Lenny Wolf, Kingdom Come were not the first band to sound like Led Zeppelin. But they sounded more like Led Zeppelin than any other band had ever done. And they took a lot of shit for it – not least from Zeppelin’s former members.

In a 2013 interview with Classic Rock, Lenny Wolf joked: “In the beginning, Kingdom Come were accused of sounding too much like Madonna.”

But he wasn’t joking when he said of the Zeppelin comparisons: “That was very flattering, but it was something I could never really understand.

“The riff in Get It On had a very strong Zep feel. I’m not trying to hide it. I was heavily into the band back then.

"But when you hear Robert Plant’s voice and then you hear my voice… I mean, “Hello? Is anybody home?” Those are two different worlds.

“But it could have been worse. They could have compared us with Poison!”

Back in 1988, Kingdom Come guitarist Danny Stag was quoted in an interview saying he had never heard Led Zeppelin.

In 2013, Wolf explained: “Those remarks were misunderstood. Danny got so tired of hearing about the Zeppelin issue that he just blurted out: ‘Who’s Jimmy Page? Never heard of him!’ Which of course was meant ironically, it’s so obvious.

“But some writer picked up on it, and then other idiots jumped on the bandwagon, writing the same bullshit. And that’s when the shit started.”

So why did Wolf also say he’d never heard Zeppelin?

"I don’t remember saying that,” Wolf told Classic Rock. “But if I did, it was meant in the most ironic and funny way. It’s beyond stupidity to say you’ve never heard Led Zeppelin!”

Nevertheless, that first Kingdom Come album was a huge hit, going gold in the US with sales of half a million.

But by 1991 Kingdom Come was essentially Lenny Wolf’s solo project, and as he said in 2013, he had embraced different influences across the years.

“On the album Independent from 2002, that was when I became very attracted to industrial sounds,” he said. “I was always heavily into David Bowie, Pink Floyd and Depeche Mode, and they always used a lot of unusual elements in their music, not just drums, bass and guitar. That fascinated me, and since then I’ve been experimenting with sounds."

"People who liked the first two Kingdom Come records, many of them didn’t grow with me," Wolf said. "But I don’t write songs with dollar signs in my eyes. Music to me is very pure. It comes from the deepest part of my soul.”

Jimmy Page celebrated his 81st birthday on January 9. And while the Led Zeppelin legend has enjoyed huge success in his career, he’s also had a few missteps along the way - including a short-lived superstar project with Whitesnake’s David Coverdale.

The duo were billed as Coverdale • Page. Coverdale himself jokingly christened the project ‘Led Snake’.

With such star power, it seemed inevitable that their self-titled 1993 album would sell millions. Only it didn’t turn out that way.

When the album was released in March 1993, Coverdale and Page gave a joint interview to Kerrang!

Page explained how he and Coverdale had begun working together.

“I wanted to do a really big album and get out on the road and show I was still alive and kicking, basically,” Page said. “I’d been wading through scores of cassettes of singers, and it was getting pretty daunting. I wasn’t getting any inspiration at all. And then I got a call saying, ‘Would you consider working with David?’”

Previously, the pair had met on a few occasions, but only briefly. As a result, their first step was to see if they could connect on a social level.

“We felt we had to get together and see how we got on socially,” Page explained. “I think we agreed on a couple of weeks to see how it would go, and in that time we had such a wealth of material - it just came flowing out. We just went behind locked doors and started writing, and kept everything very private.”

In this interview, Page also felt it was important to clarify a comment he had made about Whitesnake’s 1987 hit Still Of The Night.

Page was of course famous for using a violin bow during his guitar solo in Zeppelin shows, and in the video for Still Of The Night, Whitesnake guitarist Adrian Vandenberg was seen pulling a violin bow across his guitar strings.

Page was reported to have said that he fell off his bed laughing when he saw that video, but as he told Kerrang!, he was laughing at that one moment in the video, not the whole song.

“Shall we get this story straight?” Page said. “The first time I saw Still Of The Night I was sitting on my bed watching the television and I did fall off the bed laughing when the guy picked up the violin bow. That’s what it was about. It wasn’t anything to do with the rest of the song. It was purely the reference to the bow, which wasn’t used on the record as far as I know.”

Page even said how much he was looking forward to touring with Coverdale and performing Still Of The Night and other Whitesnake songs alongside Led Zeppelin classics and Coverdale • Page originals. “We’re both equally proud of the work we’ve done in our respective pasts,” he said. “I’m going to have fun playing Whitesnake songs.”

The Coverdale • Page album had some flashes of brilliance in songs such as Shake My Tree, Ride And Joy and Take Me For A Little While. The album made the top 10 in the US and UK.

A backing band was put together for a world tour, with Guy Pratt (Pink Floyd) on bass and Denny Carmassi (Heart) on drums.

But the only shows came in December 1993 in Japan. And that was the end of Coverdale • Page.

Soon after, Page reunited with former Zeppelin singer Robert Plant, and Coverdale resurrected Whitesnake.

Join us for our traditional look back at the news and features that floated your boat this year.

Best of 2024: As cross-cultural high points go in post-war austerity Britain, the American Folk Blues Festival tours that started in 1962 took some beating. Seemingly out of nowhere, iconic blues artists of the age such as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker and Sonny Boy Williamson fetched up on these shores to enlighten and dazzle.

The media loved it. In 1964, Granada Television released a special documentary, watched by 12 million people, and filmed on the platform at Wilbraham Road railway station in suburban Whalley Range, Manchester. Muddy Waters performed, sporting a trilby and Telecaster, and surrounded by a large group of fans. Another highlight of the event was Sister Rosetta Tharpe. After stepping gracefully along the puddle-strewn platform, Tharpe strapped her beloved white ‘61 Les Paul SG Custom over her long fur coat and launched into the first number of her set.

“Didn’t it rain children? Didn’t it rain?” she sang in her powerful, low tones as the audience roared its approval. Singing a gospel tale about Noah’s flood to the sodden audience on a suburban Manchester branch line was an irony not lost on the audience. Tharpe’s sheer power and electricity bowled the crowd over. “She staggered everybody,” recalled one fan.

The American Folk Blues Festival became an annual event and on Thursday, 25 February, 1965, 200 miles due south, a similar epiphany took place at the Marquee club, 90 Wardour Street in Soho, London. On the bill that night was Buddy Guy, a guitarist who had made a name for himself playing with blues icons such as Muddy Waters. Howlin’ Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson.

Buddy Guy was a pioneer of the use of distortion and feedback in the blues and his playing was unlike anyone else around. His style was dynamic, fearless and utterly enthralling. He would search for the highest squalling notes, all delivered with impeccable feel and emotion.

As he stepped out on stage at the Marquee that evening, the audience included guitar luminaries of the British blues explosion, such as Eric Clapton. He was all too familiar with Buddy’s talent having heard him on records by Muddy Waters, Little Walter and Willie Dixon. "Guy’s playing just stood out in the mix, because of the originality and vitality of his playing, recalled Clapton in 2005, as he and BB King inducted Buddy Guy into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Clapton went on to describe the impact of Buddy’s performance at the Marquee back in 1965. “In the flesh, he was earth shattering,” recalled Clapton. “His style on every level was fantastic. Doing all the things we would later come to associate with Jimi Hendrix, playing with his teeth, his feet, and behind his head. He brought the house crashing down.”

Clapton recalled that Buddy gave a “thundering performance, delivering the blues with finesse and passion in a way I had never heard before”. It also set Clapton to thinking that a trio was a pretty good line-up for a band.

“All in all, everything about that night was deeply profound for me," Clapton added. "The blues was clearly alive and well and it looked good too, for as well as being the real thing, musically Buddy was a star. His suit, his hair, his moves, his sunburst Strat, everything was sharp and perfect. He was for me what Elvis probably was for most other people.”

Like all the iconic blues musicians, George ‘Buddy’ Guy came up the hard way. Born in 1936 in Lettsworth, Louisiana, he was one of five children in a family of sharecroppers and began learning the guitar by playing a two-string diddley bow that he made. He later gravitated to a Harmony acoustic and in the mid-1950s was playing with bands in Baton Rouge.

In September 1957, he moved to Chicago and soon earned a reputation as a uniquely gifted player, falling under the electric crossover influence of Muddy Waters.

Buddy signed to legendary blues label Chess Records in 1958 but his career there never really flourished. The label’s founder Leonard Chess allegedly described Buddy’s style as “just making noise”, according to a piece by Greg Prato in 2012 in Rolling Stone and the label attempted instead to promote him performing R&B ballads, jazz instrumentals, soul and novelty dance tunes.

But Buddy was also working as a session guitarist with Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson among many others. And he was soon in demand.

Buddy’s first electric guitar was a Les Paul Goldtop, but this was stolen in 1957 from a club in Chicago, as he recalled in an interview with Reverb you can watch above. When it came to getting a replacement instrument, it wasn’t a Les Paul he went for, but a Stratocaster. It was an unorthodox choice for the blues. At that point Strats were more associated with country music. But Guy knew within seconds of trying the Strat that this was the guitar for him.

“Man, that guitar: you could hit a note on that guitar and hold it until next week,” he recalled about his first Strat, in the Reverb interview. “People look at you and ask, ‘Is that you still playing?’ Because it still looks like it’s holding that sound too long.”

This was the guitar he was playing at the Marquee club in 1965 and for Clapton and others in the audience such as Jeff Beck, his choice of a Strat was a revelation. That gig was still fresh in Clapton’s mind in 2013, when Guitar Center presented Clapton with the Fender Custom Eric Clapton ‘Brownie’ tribute Stratocaster.

“I heard Buddy Guy on an album called Folk Festival of the Blues where he was the new kid on the block playing with Muddy and Howling Wolf and they’re all singing and he just launched into this solo that killed everybody dead. And then I went to see him play and I thought, ‘This is the sound’. And funnily enough, I saw [Steve] Winwood using [a Strat], just about the time he was about to leave Spencer Davis. And Hendrix.”

Guy reflected to Reverb on he influenced players like Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck to use Strats. “They said they didn’t know a Strat could do that,” Guy added. “Eric and them laugh now every time I get in the room, saying, ‘Man, we didn’t know a Strat could play the blues until we saw how you did it’.”

Clapton sought out Strats with maple necks but most of the models in the UK at the time had rosewood necks.

“It wasn’t until I went through the States on tour that I started picking them up in pawn shops for a song. I’d buy four or five at a time.”

For Jeff Beck, the impact of seeing Guy at the Marquee in 1965 had a similarly profound effect.

“Buddy Guy just hit the spot for me,” Beck told Don Wilcock, author of the biography Damn Right I Got The Blues. “It’s his youthful vigour, sort of manic stuff and comedy. He has a lot of very exquisite timing and is delightfully out of key sometimes. That’s what I find so charming. It’s just a hair sharp. It wouldn’t be right, had it been dead on the note. From there on, I was like a junkie. I would go around looking for other people to share the same stuff. I was bringing it up to Eric and Jimmy – ‘Have you heard this stuff!?'”

Jimmy Page too was bowled over by Buddy Guy’s playing. "Jeff Beck and myself, we were still probably teenagers when we heard Buddy Guy,” recalled Page on The Late Show with David Letterman in December 2012. “I remember being with Jeff and playing the vinyl which was called Folk Festival Of The Blues, where Buddy Guy is really young on it and he’s playing with Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin’ Wolf, etc, and he sings two songs on it and just the whole delivery, and the passion, and the drama… the guitar is just out of this world.”

Despite his fearsome reputation as a player, until 1967 Buddy Guy was having to work as a tow truck driver in the daytime while playing clubs at night. But by the end of the decade, his fortunes were changing. In March 1969, he was invited to play at the so-called Supershow, in Staines, Middlesex, alongside Clapton, Led Zeppelin, Jack Bruce, Stephen Stills, Buddy Miles, Glen Campbell and others.

In 1972, he established the Checkerboard Lounge with LC Thurman, a blues club in Chicago’s South Side. He left the partnership in 1985 and in 1989 opened Buddy Guy’s Legends club, a venue that is still thriving today.

Guy’s career received a significant boost during the blues boom of the late eighties and early nineties, and in 1990 and 1991, Clapton invited him to be part of 24 Nights, a live album compiled from 42 concerts at London’ Royal Albert Hall. Guy went on to sign a deal with Silvertone Records and recorded his album Damn Right I’ve Got the Blues, in 1991. This was his break into the mainstream market and from that point on, Buddy Guy’s stature on the world stage was elevated.

In 2006, he appeared onstage with the Rolling Stones at the Beacon Theatre in New York, a performance so effortlessly impressive that at the end of the song, Keith Richards, handed over his black Guild Starfire to Guy as a tribute and gift.

Buddy Guy is now the last, living American blues legend. When Clapton and BB King inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame in 2005, their induction speeches were both reverential and heartfelt. When Buddy Guy himself stepped onto the podium to accept the honour, he was clearly moved.

“Look at this,” grinned Guy as he looked over to his left where BB King and Eric Clapton were standing. “To be standing here and [having to] pick up a guitar and get between these two guys and play… man, you’ve got to be me to know how I feel tonight. This is no small task.”

As he ended his acceptance speech, he left the assembled artist and music industry dignitaries in the audience with one last parting thought. “If you don’t think you got the blues,” he grinned, “just keep livin’.”

• "He showed me some things that Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson had taught him – he knew those people": Hubert Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf and their legendary blues legacy

Led Zeppelin’s fourth album was released in 1971 and is officially untitled, yet it goes by various names: Led Zeppelin IV, Four Symbols, Zoso. But whatever you call it, it’s arguably the greatest rock album ever made.

Jimmy Page - Zeppelin’s leader, guitarist, principal songwriter, producer and all-round genius - gave an interview to Classic Rock in 2014 in which he discussed the making of the biggest selling album of the band’s career.

He spoke in detail about two of the album’s cornerstone tracks - Stairway To Heaven and When The Levee Breaks. And he stressed the importance of how the eight tracks on the album were carefully sequenced for maximum dramatic effect.

He began by discussing what is arguably the most revered of all rock songs, Stairway To Heaven, and how he wrote it with the aim of creating a “profound” piece of music.

Recalling how he first presented the song to the rest of the band, he said: “I had the sections for it. It was a question of piecing them together. And that all worked. But by nature of the fact that it had acceleration through it, it needed some work on it. Definitely it was the sort of thing where you wanted to be all around each other.”

He remembered watching singer Robert Plant writing lyrics for the song while the band were working through the arrangement. “There was a lot to remember in Stairway, when you were playing it and routining the track. I can say – he’ll probably deny it, ha ha – but during the running through of Stairway, I remember Robert was sitting down in the room and he was writing and writing. And there was a point where he came to sing it, and he had a major percentage of the lyrics already done.

“And then he went home and tweaked things. But that’s how it was. That’s what the whole magic of the environment was like. It was like everybody’s creative energies all joined. It was wonderful.”

Robert Plant has in part disowned his lyrics for Stairway To Heaven, but Page countered: “I thought his lyrics were superb. They come at you on many levels. So… maybe we all criticise our past work. I’m not going to tell you what, but I could say, ‘Well, I could have played better guitar on such and such a number.’ But I ain’t gonna do that, because it is what it is.”

Page explained how he decided on the running order for the album’s eight tracks.

“We were crafting albums for the album market, which is what everybody was sort of doing in a certain league outside of pop singles. So it was important, I felt, to have the flow and the rise and fall of the music and the contrast, so that each song would have more impact against the other.”

On the original vinyl format, Stairway To Heaven was at the end of side one. Asked if he had considered placing this song at the end of side two – as the final track on the album - Page answered: “No, no, no! When The Levee Breaks had to end it.

“You had your opening statement, which is side one. But I thought that Levee Breaks just had to finish the overall picture of what we’d done – the sonic picture – because it was just so ominous. It’s ominous and it’s dense and it was just going to disturb people. After you’ve caressed them with Stairway, now you’re going to disturb them! But that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Conjuring up all these different emotions.”

Page also responded with a smile to the suggestion that side one of Led Zeppelin IV - Black Dog, Rock And Roll, The Battle Of Evermore and then Stairway To Heaven - is probably the greatest side of vinyl in all of rock history.

“It is good, isn’t it?” he said. “You get the whole feeling of the creativity of this band. It’s just coming in with full force. It’s showing the whole picture of what this band is musically. There’s no doubts about it at this point.

“It was real honest performances, and if you did a song it wasn’t made up one word at a time and all pieced together with ProTools. That’s a way of doing things. I’m not saying that that is necessarily wrong at all, because I really like what they do with modern mixing.

“But at that time it was real performance – this is a performance that you feel, and you feel the dynamics, and it’s manual mixing, so the whole thing is really – I don’t want to use the word ‘organic’, but you know what I mean!”

Gibson has unveiled a new Custom Shop VOS edition of Jimmy Page’s iconic 1969 EDS-1275 Doubleneck.

Not to be confused with the $50,000 Murphy Lab Jimmy Page EDS-1275 Collector’s Edition, the limited edition signature guitar that was launched in March and is now sold out everywhere, this presents the Doubleneck just as it was when Page took it out of the guitar case.

In other words, it is box-fresh, with the VOS nitrocellulose lacquer offering a gently aged patina that suggests an alternate timeline in which Page decided not use it to perform Stairway To Heaven live with Led Zeppelin, or The Rain Song, Celebration Day and The Song Remains The Same, making rock history along the way.

“Here is your opportunity to own a clone of Jimmy Page’s famous EDS-1275, identical to how it appeared on the day that Jimmy first received the guitar,” says Gibson. Perhaps you could see this as an invitation for you to write your own bit of rock history.

Page also signed and played each one of the Collector’s Edition Murphy Lab replicas but besides that, this VOS Custom Shop electric guitar is exactly the same. Back when the Collector’s Edition was launched, Gibson CEO Cesar Gueikian described the process like “almost taking an MRI of the guitar” and that’s the same quasi-medical approach behind this latest model.

Gibson took 3D scans of the original guitar’s necks to ensure their profiles were 100 per cent accurate. Page was involved from the outset, and had “significant input” on the project.

The Jimmy Page EDS-1275 Custombuckers, with ‘Double Black’ bobbins and Alnico V magnets, are left just like the original, with the six-string neck served by a pair of uncovered pickups, with “True Historic” chrome coverings on the 12-string neck’s humbucker pairing.

All the components are off the top shelf; CTS pots, Switchcraft output jack and pickup selector switch, ceramic disc capacitors as per the original spec.

The build is period-correct, with both necks joining the body with a long neck tenon set and a joint set with hot hide glue. The body and necks are mahogany. That VOS nitro lacquer will age further still; ’69 Cherry is the name of the stain used here.

The fingerboards are Indian rosewood, have the customary 12” radius, 20 authentic medium jumbo frets, and are inlaid with aged cellulose nitrate parallelograms. Take a protractor to the neck and headstock and you’ll find with some satisfaction that this headstock is set at a 17-degree angle just like Page’s original model.

The Kluson double line, double ring tuners are, again, a chip off the old block. And of course this Gibson Doubleneck design means there are 18 of them, so you’d best have a good guitar tuner to hand.

The Jimmy Page EDS-1275 Doubleneck VOS in ’69 Cherry is available now and is priced £8,799/$9,999.

Inside the guitar case you’ll find a leather guitar strap and a COA featuring a Barrie Wentzell photography of Jimmy Page in his pomp. If you think you have what it takes to wield the Doubleneck with similar élan, head over to Gibson for more details.

As Page reminded us all when he honoured Link Wray with a performance of Rumble at the 2023 Rock And Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, he’s still got it. And that guitar remains the same. Super-cool. And yes, totally iconic.

The long-awaited documentary Becoming Led Zeppelin is due for release in May 2025. And it includes a 1972 interview with Zeppelin’s late drummer John Bonham, as well as new interviews with the other three members of the band - guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant and bassist John Paul Jones.

A new trailer for Becoming Led Zeppelin combines extracts from these interviews with the sound of one of the band’s classic tracks, Whole Lotta Love.

The documentary focuses on the early part of Zeppelin’s career - tracing the origins of the four musicians and charting the band’s rise to stardom up to 1970.

In the trailer, John Bonham says of the band’s instantaneous chemistry: “The first time we played together it was stunning. It was like a gift from heaven, wasn’t it?”

Bonham is also heard recalling some early struggles: “You could tell it was going to be a good group, but people wouldn’t even book the band.”

In the new interviews, John Paul Jones also remembers a negative reaction to the band in the very early days. “Everybody said, ‘You’re mad, completely crazy,’” Jones says, before adding: “I knew we were on the right track.”

Robert Plant recalls the excitement of that period. “We knew something was in the air… it was an electric atmosphere.”

And Jimmy Page says of his masterplan: “I knew this was going to be the way to go… I wanted this to be something that they hadn’t heard before.”

Officially billed as “the first ever authorized documentary” of the band, Becoming Led Zeppelin has been a long time in the making.

“In true Led Zeppelin style, it’s been a long running saga,” says Dave Lewis, the world’s foremost Zeppelin expert, whose fanzine Tight But Loose was for decades the Bible for Zep fans.

“They started working on it in 2019,” Lewis explains. “Then a cut was shown at the Venice Film Festival in 2021, and Jimmy [Page] was there.”

Lewis says of the finished version: “As I understand it, there’s quite a lot in there about what the band members did pre-Zeppelin. There’s a lot of emphasis on 1969. And it goes up to 1970. There’s the Albert Hall show from that year, and the Bath Festival performance from June 1970 might also be included.”

Lewis says in conclusion: “As the first ever officially sanctioned Zeppelin documentary, it is eagerly anticipated. I can’t wait to see it!”

Alice In Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell loves pretty much every song that Led Zeppelin ever recorded. But as he tells MusicRadar, there is one Zep number that he loves more than any other.

Jerry describes Led Zeppelin as the perfect combination of four brilliant musicians.

“All you gotta do is listen, man!” he says. “And if you were lucky enough to watch them in front of you, Jesus Christ! Sadly, I never got to see Led Zeppelin live, but all the footage out there is incredible.

“What I love about them is that they’re a real band, first and foremost. I’m not taking anything away from Jimmy Page, but it took John Bonham, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones to make it a band… just like Alice In Chains.

“I’m part of a collective. I wouldn’t have gone as far as I did if I didn’t have those guys to make music with. But I think Jimmy had a real fire and knowledge of music. His early days of session work and working in bands like The Yardbirds really paid off.”

He continues: “I always admired Jimmy’s understanding of sound. He was one of the first muso guys to spend a lot of time and attention on using the studio as an instrument, too.

“He was a guitarist and a producer. He was into sounds, recording and layering. That appealed to me and the music he made was completely unique and slightly out of control and raw. That’s what rock ’n’ roll is supposed to be. There is no other band that can occupy the space that Led Zeppelin occupies.

“It’s funny, I read an interview with [Jethro Tull frontman] Ian Anderson from 1978 or 1979 and he was asked about how he came up with his own sound. And his answer was something like, ‘We couldn’t do heavy rhythm and blues because Led Zeppelin were the best band in the world for that. We couldn’t do bluesy rock ’n’ roll because The Rolling Stones were the best at that. And we couldn’t do trippy space rock because Pink Floyd were the best at that... so we tried to fill the gap!’ I thought that was f*ckin’ great.

“That’s what we are all searching for, our own gap to exist in. I wouldn’t compare Alice In Chains to Led Zeppelin but we definitely occupy our own space. That’s hopefully where you end up at the end of the search, and maybe you’ll inspire somebody else to find their own thing.”

And his favourite Led Zeppelin song?

“There’s not really much they did that I don’t like,” Jerry says, “but Dazed And Confused always stands out for being heavy.

“Then there’s Good Times Bad Times, You Shook Me, Black Mountain Side, Communication Breakdown, Your Time Is Gonna Come, I Can’t Quit You Baby, How Many More Times... all of that stuff [on the debut Led Zeppelin album] is brilliant.

“Even the later records that are oftentimes panned are awesome. I think In Through The Out Door [1979] is a great record, man.

“I may be incorrect in saying this, but I think Led Zeppelin were trashed by the music mags early on. People didn’t get it at first, but they persevered and found their audience. They’re one of my favourite bands and greatest influences. Anybody who plays rock ’n’ roll would have to admit they are one of the cornerstones of it all - it would blow my mind if they didn’t!”

Gibson has teamed up with Jimmy Page for a pair of stunning Murphy Lab replicas of the storied 1964 SJ-200 acoustic guitar that he played on Led Zeppelin’s debut album.

Both are nigh-on identical, with light ageing on the Cherry Tea finishes giving them that time machine look that the Murphy Lab specialises in. They ship in custom hard-shell guitar cases with Page’s Zoso logo on the front. Both epitomise high-end acoustic guitar making and will set you back a pretty penny.

The Jimmy Page 1964 SJ-200 Collector’s Edition is limited to 50 units worldwide, comes with Page’s signature on the back of the headstock, and is priced an eye-watering £17,499/$19,999. The “regular” Jimmy Page 1964 SJ-200 is also very much a collector-grade instrument, priced accordingly at £11,299/$12,999.

Each of these instruments has a soundhole label that has been signed by Page, and you can consider that his seal of approval that Gibson got these replicas spot on.

As he reveals in the introduction video, he had a little trepidation when the first prototype turned up for inspection. Would it be a disappointment? He need not have worried.

“The J-200 is such a quality instrument. It really, really is,” says Page. “When I saw the prototype, the case had arrived and I thought, ‘Oh boy, what’s going to happen when I open this?’ We worked really hard on this to get it right, with all the colour matches and all that from the original, and I thought, ‘Wow! They’ve got it!’”

Page had the photos of the original. He had his memories of the original. This would be one of the most important acoustics in his collection. It was the SJ-200 he used on Led Zeppelin’s eponymous debut and the guitar he chose when booked to perform on the Julie Felix Show on 26 April 1970, when he played White Summer/Black Mountain Side for a television audience.

Gibson says Page had “significant input” into the design of these guitars, offering his feedback and counsel “on everything from the sonic character and wear to the playability”. The Cherry Tea sunburst finish was also met with Page’s approval.

“I just took it out and I could see all the flame coming out on the side of it and I went, ‘Oh my goodness gracious.’ It’s just so beautiful,” says Page. “I was just looking at it and admiring every aspect of it because it was so authentic and yet it was so new at the same time. Then I played a little bit on it and I thought, ‘Wow! This is just so much the right thing that has been done here.’”

The SJ-200 is not known as “the king of the flat-tops” for nothing but these take the cake with AAA flame maple on the back and sides of the instrument and a soundboard of AAA Sitka spruce. The neck joins the body with a compound dovetail neck-to-body joint that has been set with hot hide glue.

Flame maple is the recurring theme. You’ll find it again on the three-piece neck, fashioned into a round profile and topped with an Indian rosewood fingerboard inlaid with MOP graduated crowns.

The Moustache bridge is a work of art, too, all rosewood inlaid with mother-of-pearl mother-of-pearl hourglass and teardrop details. And then you have the pickguard, which, again, has been aged to match that finish.

As you would expect, there is multi-ply binding on the top and back of the body, with single-ply binding on the fingerboard and headstock – the headstock is fitted with a set of Kluson Waffleback tuners with keystone buttons in gold.

These guitars have left the Gibson Custom Shop in Bozeman, Montana, with a Tune-O-Matic Bridge with nylon saddles but inside the case there is another Tune-O-Matic unit with gold-plated brass saddles.

The vital statistics read 12” fingerboard radius, 25.5” scale length and a 42.8625mm (1.687”) nut width. The truss rod cover is black with a wide white border and it is engraved with “Custom” lest you forget the instrument’s provenance.

Inside the case there is all manner of ephemera, including a certificate of authenticity, a guitar strap, and in the Collector’s Edition you also get a guitar pick that has been used by Page himself.

The Collector's Edition is limited to 50 units worldwide, with 100 of the regular '64 SJ-200 available now. For more details, head over to Gibson.

A classic interview with Pantera legend Dimebag Darrell is one of the highlights of the last-ever issue of Total Guitar, which goes on sale this week.

This final issue features excerpts from many other interviews from across the years with cover stars including Jimmy Page, Brian May, Noel Gallagher and Matt Bellamy. But for pure foul-mouthed entertainment, nothing can beat the conversation with a drunk Dimebag from the summer of 2004 - just a few months before the guitarist’s life was cut short.

At one point during this interview, Dime grabbed his new Washburn signature guitar and swung it at the head of TG writer Steve Allsworth. But even as the hangover from hell crept up on him, Dime remained lucid enough to discuss the magic of spontaneous creation.

“I’ve got to the point where I just don’t f*ckin’ practice,” he said. “If I feel it’s slacking, I’ll do a little work. But dude, I’ve been doing this my whole f*cking life! I don’t know all the f*ckin’ scales, but you know what? If I knew all the scales, I’d know what something was gonna sound like before I played it. And then there’d never be that experience of stepping out there and saying, ‘Let me see if I can make this solo fly! Can I get that last lick in there?’ And if you can turn a sour note into a good one just by bending it a half step, you can almost make it sound like it was meant to be!”

And at the end of that interview, the man who would be buried in a Kiss-branded coffin, with one of Eddie Van Halen’s guitars, had some sage advice for TG readers. “As far as guitar playing goes, go to the old school - Randy Rhoads, Tony Iommi, Eddie Van Halen - for the lead chops. And do what’s right for you.”

Total Guitar’s Editor Chris Bird comments: "For me, it has truly been a privilege to work with a frankly awesome team of contributors and colleagues, and to have been able to spend the last 17 years of my life creating lessons and features for you.”

But that’s not the last you will see or hear of him. Chris will go on to a new role as Lessons Editor on MusicRadar and our sister sites GuitarWorld and Guitar Player - serving up high quality tuition content for the guitar-playing community.

While these six chords are great choices for classic rock styles, the truth is they're useful for all kinds of players to learn. 

Note the slash chords’ alternative bass notes here (notes shown after the / mark), giving a subtly different feel to basic major chords. For example, D5 and A/C# is the kind of move you’ll hear in Queen’s One Vision. 

Use two-, three- or four-note shapes and pick firmly for a tight, focused rock-style delivery. Alternatively, make use of the open sixth string in the E and D/E chords for a weightier impact, the way Jimmy Page does in Led Zeppelin’s roof-raising classic Whole Lotta Love.

Tone tips: Aim for the mid-rich overdrive tones of '70s rock here - that’s before the high-gain madness of the '80s and '90s really kicked in, so keep the drive at a medium level for authenticity. 

Classic rock track 

This '70s rock-style example is a cross between the Rolling Stones and Aerosmith, but also in the territory of Paul Kossoff of Free. 

A slash chord puts an alternative bass note at the bottom of a chord, giving it a slightly different feel. This is great for creating riffs, as you will hear!

Click on the top right of the tab to enlarge it 

• Learn 4 Jimmy Page guitar chords from classic Led Zeppelin and The Firm songs

Danelectro might just have the solution for the player who is looking for some doubleneck electric guitar action but whose budget can’t quite stretch to a Gibson EDS-1275 – and, come to think of it, whose lower back is quite grateful that it doesn't.

The Danelectro Doubleneck 6/12 might just be the platonic ideal of the format, one neck with 12-string, the other a standard six, and an $899 price tag making it the most affordable serious doubleneck we have seen in recent memory, perhaps ever.

Yes, it does not have the humbuckers you would get on an EDS-1275 but those lipstick pickups are pretty darn powerful, and rolling back some of the tone could yield the warmth you need from the bridge pickup. Besides, that Led Zeppelin vibe is sustained by virtue of the shorthorn body style and coke bottle headstocks – it’s not a million miles away from Jimmy Page’s guitar choice for Kashmir.

Furthermore, in comparison to other doublenecks this is a featherweight, thanks in no small part to that classic Dano semi-hollow build of hardboard and spruce, with a centre block to tame feedback.

We have seen these before. It is part of the Danelectro modus operandi to launch models to little fanfare and then drop them a year later, only to bring them back a few years later with refreshed finish options. It is the circle of life.

This 2024 doubleneck arrives in White Pearl finish – and unlike some previous editions of this model it has the matching painted headstock to match, which it wears well.  In previous years there have been silverburst editions. There has been white, too, but with a natural finish on the headstock.

There are six and 12-string bridges, each with individually adjustable saddles, which is a good thing, too, because 12-strings always always demand a close relationship with your guitar tuner to get the best out of them. And that goes double for doublenecks.

Each side of the guitar is served by a pair of lipstick single coil pickups, with stacked volume and stacked tone controls and a three-way pickup selector. A second toggle switch selects the six or 12-string side of the instrument.

Other specs include a rosewood fingerboard with dot inlays, 21 frets, and a 14” radius. The nut is made of aluminium. The scale length is 25”. 

Select the six-string side, dime a tube amp and maybe give it some hair from a fuzz pedal and you’ve got a very respectable tone. Kashmir-worthy, you might say. Put it into 12-string guitar mode and you’ve got that celestial Stairway To Heaven vibe. It should similarly cater for those fans of Johnny Marr, the Byrds or James Honeyman-Scott.

We often say the most versatile electric guitars of this world are the ES-335 or the HSS Strat but that’s because doublenecks are too rare, too niche to be part of the conversation. But what could be more versatile than a guitar that serves up two necks? Steve Vai might already have found the answer to that.

For more details, head over to Danelectro. The Doubleneck 6/12 is priced £1,199 / $899.

When it comes to defining years, 1969 is a standout in Led Zeppelin’s history. It was only in October ’68 that Jimmy Page had adopted the Zep moniker for his new band, who had briefly been treading the boards of Europe as The New Yardbirds, dutifully fulfilling contractual negotiations for the legendary R&B outfit from which the new heavier line-up had emerged. 

But within the space of just 12 months, drummer John Bonham, bassist John Paul Jones, vocalist Robert Plant and guitarist / production visionary Page had recorded and released Led Zeppelin I and II – two of the greatest rock ’n’ roll records of the era – and duly cemented themselves as the Brit kings of heavy.

Despite further lukewarm reviews from both the UK and the US press, Led Zeppelin II soared to the top of the album charts in both territories and the 1970s was now Zep’s decade for the taking.

From the moment Page’s iconic guitar riff kicked off proceedings for album opener Whole Lotta Love, it was clear the blues-rock script was being rewritten with both raw power and recording subtleties. Jimmy’s production job, aided and abetted by the wizardry of Jimi Hendrix engineer Eddie Kramer, was bold and experimental, and the long player’s nine tracks offered no let-up in the macho swagger stakes.

“Led Zep II was very virile,” Robert Plant told Uncut’s Nigel Williamson in 2005. “That was the album that was going to dictate whether or not we had the staying power and the capacity to stimulate. It was still blues-based but it was a much more carnal approach to the music and quite flamboyant. It was created on the run between hotel rooms and the GTOs [famed LA groupies, often referred to as ‘Girls Together Outrageously’], and that was quite something.”

Indeed, while Led Zep’s debut album had been hammered out in a 36-hour stint at London’s Olympic Studios, Led Zeppelin II was largely written and arranged at US soundchecks and during elongated onstage jam renditions of Dazed And Confused. Studios were booked at the last minute across the UK, US and Canada – whenever there was a spare hour or two to lay down a rhythm track or overdub. The band’s live performances were ripping up venues across America and the band couldn’t afford to sit still for a single minute.

“It was done wherever we could get into a studio, in bits and pieces, so I couldn’t even tell you how long it actually took,” Jimmy Page explained to Trouser Press magazine’s Dave Schulps in 1977. “I remember we did vocal overdubs in an eight-track studio in Vancouver where they didn’t even have proper headphones. Can you imagine that? It was just recorded while we were on the road… Thank You, The Lemon Song, and Moby Dick were overdubbed on tour, and the mixing of Whole Lotta Love and Heartbreaker was done on tour.”

As far as Led Zeppelin II’s innovative approach to recording and mixing goes, there was no doubting who was head honcho: “With Zeppelin, you always knew who was the boss – Jimmy Page!” engineer Eddie Kramer told Mix magazine in 2003. “He had very specific ideas of what it should sound like, what the solos should be, how the vocal fits in with the overall sound. He was very, very much in charge at all times, and very talented.”

Bring It On Home is the last song on Led Zeppelin II and it kicks off and closes with a slow 12-bar shuffle, with Plant's howling blues harp interspersed with his throaty whisper of a vocal.

While Zep claimed a full songwriting credit for the track, these two sections resulted in a lawsuit for the band as the parts were lifted from Sonny Boy Williamson II’s 1963 recording, Bring It On Home, penned by Willie Dixon.

During Zepelin’s life as a band, they would often be accused of stealing from other artists and II would lead to three successful cases against them. As well as for Bring It On Home, Willie Dixon also won damages and a future credit for Whole Lotta Love, which included lyrical lifts from his song You Need Love (recorded by Muddy Waters in 1962), while Howlin’ Wolf’s representatives were successful in suing the band and gaining a credit for Chester Burnett over The Lemon Song and the elements it took from 1964 cut, Killing Floor. Such cases narked the guys in the band.

“The thing is, they were traditional lyrics and they went back far before a lot of people that one related them to,” Jimmy told Trouser Press. “The thing with Bring It On Home – Christ, there’s only a tiny bit taken from Sonny Boy Williamson’s version and we threw that in as a tribute to him. People say, ‘Oh, Bring It On Home is stolen’. Well, there’s only a little bit in the song that relates to anything that had gone before it, just the end.”

Gear-wise, Jimmy Page mostly played his ’59 Gibson Les Paul in tandem with a 100-watt Marshall across the whole of the album, including Bring It On Home. This historic Les Paul and Marshall combination brought together a sound that has seen Led Zeppelin II widely and deservedly heralded as one of the greatest and most influential rock albums of all time. 

The record’s engineer, Eddie Kramer, is certainly still proud of it. “It was a marvellous record and so different from the first album,” Kramer told Dave Lewis of Tight But Loose magazine in 2009. “With the mixing process, it was an organic thing – we instinctively went for something different. Jimmy did some really interesting stuff with the sound and the way the songs were structured and thought out. It’s a very hard-hitting record and its power when you listen to it today is still all there. It’s not a super-loud record, but when you hear it on the radio you think, ‘F*** me, what’s that?’ It still has that effect.”

• Led Zeppelin II: Jimmy Page guitar lesson 

In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees… and a Doubleneck signature guitar. We knew it was coming, but did you predict the price? 

$49,999 for a forensically accurate recreation of Jimmy Page's EDS-1275 Doubleneck, the guitar he would use to deliver Stairway To Heaven, The Rain Song, Celebration Day and The Song Remains The Same live with Led Zeppelin. And more recently, a tribute to Link Wray.

Each one of these 'Collector’s Edition' guitars has been signed and "played" by Page, so new owners have no excuses for not writing their own rock epic on it. It's also the first release in a signature guitar partnership that should last years, and will probably be the most expensive offering from that, but who knows? It might also be the most exclusive, given that only 50 of these instruments are being made.

Gibson surveyed Page's original EDS-1275's profile with 3D scanning technology and a process Gibson CEO Cesar Gueikian described as “almost taking an MRI of the guitar” to attempt to recreate the guitar's feel. 

“I really wanted to have something that was exactly the same as my one,” Page told us and the rest of the invited audience during a Q&A with Gueikian at the new Gibson Garage London in February. 

“Because I’ve changed the controls but also the colour of it, from my point of view, it had to be absolutely as close to the bones as possible. They took a lot of trouble and time to get everything absolutely right. 

“It wasn’t a case of OK, ‘I’m Jimmy Page, make my doubleneck. That looks shit, now go and make it!’ It wasn’t like that… The Murphy Lab, the distressing – that looks like mine.”

High praise - and a high price, though you do also get "a lavish collection of case candy" that was curated by Page, including a Certificate of Authenticity Book with photo taken by Barrie Wentzell, a wooden Pick Display with Herco Flex pick played by Jimmy Page on the specific serialised guitar, a Premium Cherry/Black Leather Strap and Vintage Replica Strap, Schaller Strap Locks, an Embroidered Dragon Guitar Shroud, and a Gibson Doubleneck Stand. 

$50,000 doesn't seem so expensive now, does it?

OK, it does, but if you're interested, you can find out more on the Gibson website.

Following our lesson focusing on The Beatles' Abbey Road, we're looking at another classic in our series of 1969 milestones. The year before, n 1968 the Yardbirds disbanded, leaving guitarist Jimmy Page as the band’s sole remaining member and facing contractual obligations to perform further gigs. Recruiting Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham to play as the New Yardbirds, the foursome would soon become the band we know as Led Zeppelin. The rest, as they say, is history.

The band’s self-titled debut would land in early ’69 – a rootsy mix of folk, rock and a hefty slice of traditional blues influences, without so much of the epic riff-athons for which they would soon be known (we'll get to that in the next instalment).

We’re taking a look at Jimmy’s soloing on tracks like I Can’t Quit You Baby and more rock-focused tunes such as How Many More Times and Communication Breakdown. Though these songs have a hard rock edge, blues is the stronger influence in the solos, so minor pentatonic and blues scales rule here!

1. Timing And Bending 

Jimmy would sometimes play with technical precision; other times he'd be loose as hell, so experiment with the timing and feel of the opening line here. 

Try picking every note or using hammer-ons and pull-offs. The four-fret bend at the end of the lick is another blues-style Page phrase. In general these are easiest to play on the third string.  

2. Using The Whole Fretboard

3. Zep Sliding Away 

Led Zeppelin II: Jimmy Page lesson

Led Zeppelin’s first two albums rocked, rolled and downright blues-boogied the band to the point of greatness, establishing them as the true kings of heavy. Then came 1970’s Led Zeppelin III, which raised more than a few eyebrows for its reliance on folk rock, mystical fantasy and acoustic balladry. 

But when Zep’s fourth record hit the world’s turntables in November 1971, all was promptly forgiven. “I suppose there’d been a bit of a backlash about the Zep III album being more of an acoustic-type thing,” legendary engineer Andy Johns told Total Guitar magazine in 2011. “The album sold well, but there were some complaints about what had happened to Led Zeppelin... like ‘Where’s the meat?’ So I guess when we went back to do the fourth one, that must’ve been on Jimmy [Page]’s mind.”

If the monster-riffing of album opener Black Dog wasn’t enough to settle the heavier-than-thou stomachs of the Zep faithful, then Rock And Roll, IV’s second track, would blow any remaining worries out of the water. As soon as John Bonham’s cymbal-heavy opener hits the ears and Page’s axe rips into the beat like a speed-snorting Chuck Berry, you know you’re hearing a band at the height of their powers.

While many of the songs on Led Zeppelin IV had already been part-written by the time the band arrived at Headley Grange to record it in January 1971, the 12-bar battering of Rock And Roll serves as a living testament to the creative buzz that was enveloping Zep during those sessions.

The track stormed out of nowhere after a failed attempt to nail Four Sticks’ tricky time signature. “We were attempting Four Sticks and it wasn’t happening,” Jimmy Page later told the BBC. “And Bonzo started the drum intro to Keep A-Knockin’ [the 1957 Little Richard rock ’n’ roll smash] and I played the riff automatically. That was Rock And Roll and we got through the whole of the 12-bar bit. We said, ‘This is great, forget Four Sticks, let’s work on this’.”

“I just remember them playing it and Pagey having that ‘dum-dum dum-dum, dum-dum, da-dum dum', recalled Johns. “It just sort of happened... they were very fast, they didn’t muck about. Like everything else, it was, ‘We’re gonna do this now!’ and kabam... two or three takes, done!”

“It sounded good and we went into the [Rolling Stones’ mobile recording] truck to hear it,” Page told Disc magazine at the time. “Within 15 minutes, the whole framework for the rest had been written and recorded. That’s quite raw and those sorts of things are happening all the time. Whenever we get together, we come up with something.”

As usual, Robert Plant took no time at all to sketch out a few lyrics, serving up a wistful tribute to love, youth and partying. “He was a very quick writer, was old Robert,” recalled Johns. “He was so fast... and he would always get his vocals in two or three takes every time.”

The core rhythm track of Rock And Roll was recorded with all four guys and their gear in Headley Grange’s drawing room. Bonham’s drum setup caused headaches, as Johns explained: “John’s got his hi-hat nearly all the way open and that was bleeding all over the place. It was difficult to do, but it was the appropriate way to play the thing. It was just a bit tough, because the hat was leaking into bloody everything, especially the snare mic.”

On the guitar side, Jimmy Page crashed through the thundering main riff with his trademark '59 cherry sunburst Les Paul plugged into a Hiwatt Custom 100, which was pumped right up to the max. However, for the stabbing guitar overdubs, solo and outro section, he opened up on his ’59 ‘Dragon Tele’. Some of these additional layers were captured with a revolving Leslie speaker cabinet.

“I know Pagey made me mix the outro section half a dozen times: ‘Not enough of me, dear boy! Not enough of me, make me louder!’” laughed Johns. “He kept showing up at the studio and I’d be in the middle of another gig... ‘Look, you’ve got to redo the outro section! ’

"I think I must’ve redone it, and I won’t exaggerate, three or four times because of that Leslie effect. There’s the solo section, a bit of counterpoint now and again, and then on the outro section he goes bananas, but you have to turn it up quite a bit to really hear what notes he’s doing.”

Credit also has to go to ex-Rolling Stone Ian ‘Stu’ Stewart, who contributed the maniacal honky-tonk piano on the track. Stu, a close mate of Page’s, was present at the Headley Grange sessions as the resident engineer responsible for the Stones’ mobile recording truck, which was parked at the front of the house. Andy Johns fondly remembers him “hunched over the piano, banging away and having a good old time”.

Johns, who was only 19 years old when he engineered Led Zeppelin IV, had been responsible for capturing some of the greatest guitar albums of the past four decades, including Exile On Main Street by the Rolling Stones, Highway by Free and Marquee Moon by Television, but he still sees Zeppelin’s fourth long player as a definite milestone.

“It was a hell of a record,” he told Total Guitar. “On the few occasions that I listen to it, I’m still very pleased with the results. It was a spectacular thing and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world!”

• Read more: Engineer Andy Johns on recording and mastering Led Zep IV: “I put the tape on and the first song goes by and sounds bloody awful. Then the second one comes along and that’s really horrid, too... Pagey should’ve fired me at that point"

Joe Bonamassa, Billy Gibbons and Zakk Wylde swear by it, so did Jimmy Page (in the early days of Zeppelin), Jeff Beck and Duane Allman. Some dismiss it and recently the Gibson Gazette has been digging into whether top-wrapping a Stop Bar tailpiece is actually better than the traditional method of stringing straight through it on an electric guitar. So, are we closer to getting a defining answer?

It's important to define both what top-wrapping is and who it's going to apply to. If you own a Les Paul, SG or ES-335 it's likely to apply to you because those guitars tend to feature Stop Bar tailpieces, in combination with a tune-o-matic bridge. The Stop Bar anchors your guitar strings with two posts holding it in position, and these can be raised and lowered.

Plenty of other brands use the Stop Bar design (I top wrap a Gordon Smith GS-1 myself) so this can apply to them too. Top-wrapping involves threading the string from the front bridge side of the Stop Bar instead of the traditional way from behind it, the string then passes back over the bar.

To top-wrap you'll need a longer length of string than the traditional method so it's best to try it when fitting a fresh set. As well as physical contact between the string and the top of the bridge, it also reduces the break angle over the saddle. This can be accounted for slightly by dropping the Stop Bar down low to touch the body, but the break angle is still reduced in comparison to the traditional method. 

You can also do this with a wraparound bridge that doesn't have a tailpiece – such as a Les Paul jr and we have a step-by-step wraparound bridge setup guide here. 

The 'decking' of the tailpiece by dropping it right down is said to help increase sustain because it provides closer contact between string vibration and body wood through the tailpiece. 

"In order to make the guitar feel a little bit slinkier and not so difficult to play, we borrow the technique invented by Jimmy Page and Billy Gibbons; you top-wrap over the stud, which lessens the angle over the bridge," explains Bonamassa in the video above - illustrating with the late Bernie Marsden's '59 'Beast' Les Paul Standard he was borrowing at the time.

"So it's a much nicer, slinkier feel. But it also retains the big heaviness of the string so when you hit hard you're not playing out of tune."

The idea your top-wrapped guitar – especially one with heavier gauge strings – will feel slinkier to play (from a longer string length) suggests less tension, but as the Gibson Gazette points out, the YouTuber Dylan Talks Tone actually measured the effects scientifically and contrary to previous perceptions, he found top-wrapping actually creates more tension for string bends. Gah! 

Feel is subjective, but the perceived negative effects of top-wrapping can vary from guitar to guitar too. You may experience intonation issues without a guitar setup to account for the switch to top-wrapping. Physically the strings are rubbing on the Stop Bar too, increasing the chance of physical wear.

Cardinal Black guitarist Chris Buck waded into the debate on his excellent Friday Fretworks YouTube series below, touching on the way the debate has raged across Les Paul forums for some time. The fact is there's no definitive answer – a common theme in the guitar world – and experience will differ from player to player and their guitars. 

Even Gibson won't give us a definitive answer: Chris found a top-wrapped a Les Paul in the company's own early 1956 product catalogue but the Les Paul on the next page was strung the other way!  

"All I can do is speak from personal experience," says Chris. "And in the last two years I've been top-wrapping some of my Les Paul-style guitars, for me at least – whether it's psychosomatic or not, who knows, strings do feel a little bit more pliable. As though there is a little bit less tension in the strings."

For what it's worth, I found the same with my Gordon Smith GS1. And that was enough for me to stick with it for that guitar – I just like that slinkier feel. The only way for you to find out for yourself is to try it. It will only cost you the price of a set of strings. 

You could take the measurements of your pre-top-wrapping Stop Bar height on the bass and treble sides before making the change so if you decide to go back to the traditional method, you can so easier.

• 10 of the best Les Paul tones of all time

Gibson and Jimmy Page have teamed up for a “multi-year partnership” that will see the launch of a series of signature guitars based on the Led Zeppelin guitar legend’s most-famous instruments, and the first to come will be his iconic 1971 EDS-1275 doubleneck.

The news broke as Page visited the opening event of the Gibson Garage London, where flanked by fellow guitar gods Tony Iommi and Brian May, and Gibson higher-uppers, he cut the ribbon on the Garage and officially declared the Nashville brand’s flagship store open (though it officially opens to the public on Saturday 24 February).  

Page has enjoyed a long association with Gibson. His number one guitar, a 1959 Les Paul Standard, is one of the most storied electric guitars in history, having previously been owned by Joe Walsh of the Eagles – though his number two Les Paul Standard would give it a run for its money, and we have no shortage of love for number three, his 1969 Les Paul Deluxe. 

Page has also played Les Paul Customs. He got the Gibson Custom Shop to build him an ES-350 that he played at the 2012 Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert at the O2 Arena, London. You might also recognise this Chuck Berry-style rock ’n’ roll machine from the 2008 documentary It Might Get Loud.

But if you’re going to announce a multi-year partnership with Jimmy Page you’ve got to go big, and that means the 1971 EDS-1275 doubleneck that Page used live with Led Zeppelin when playing Stairway To Heaven. No Stairway? Yes, Stairway, because it sounds like Gibson has gone to town on this forthcoming attraction. 

Cesar Gueikian, president and CEO, Gibson, credited Page with establishing a new era for the brand, and an “ambassador emeritus” for the guitar.

“Jimmy Page deserves a very important chapter in the history of Gibson,” says Gueikian. “We think of Jimmy as an ambassador emeritus of guitars and a music trailblazer in the birth and evolution of rock! In many ways, Jimmy is responsible for the success, continued innovation, and evolution of post-Golden-Era Gibson. We are grateful for Jimmy’s trust in the Gibson team, and we look forward to paying tribute to him by bringing this epic collaboration to life.” 

In November 2023, Page gave his first live performance since 2015 when he paid tribute to rock ’n’ roll pioneer Link Wray at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame awards ceremony. It was quite the occasion, quite the performance, and perhaps in retrospect, it was telling that Page chose to press his EDS-1275 into action. 

Gibson has of course made Custom Shop reproductions of Page’s most-famous Les Pauls before, which now fetch eye-watering prices on the vintage market, but this collaboration will be deeper, and perhaps – as with the likes of the Adam Jones and Kirk Hammett ranges – will offer models at all price points on the Gibson/Epiphone family tree of products.

Page credits Gueikian’s stewardship of the Gibson brand as one of the reasons he jumped at the chance to develop a signature line.

“When I met with Cesar and he explained what the future of Gibson looked like, I knew I needed to be involved,” says Page. “There is a spirit in the place; after seeing the people working at the factories and getting a connection with them, I knew that picking up that Les Paul Custom and the Doubleneck all those years ago was certainly the right decision.”

Just how deep will this run go? Well, it’s going to last years, there are going to be some Holy Grail guitars incoming. And we’ll know they’ve really, really gone for it if we see a replica of Page’s awesome Style U harp guitar, as seen on the video for Coverdale/Page's Take Me For A Little While. Either way, vintage-inspired LedZep guitar gold is incoming.

• “It is going to become a hangout place, a destination, and I truly want to make it the most welcoming place in music”: Cesar Gueikian on what guitarists can expect at the Gibson Garage London

Today Jimmy Page turns 80, so we're paying tribute to the rock god's rock god, an undisputed guitar behemoth. Here, in an exclusive with Guitarist magazine back in 2014, Page talks us through his autobiography and opens up about the instruments that shaped his early path from teenage pretender to star of the London session scene, the Yardbirds... and beyond.

Jimmy Page at 80: Jimmy Page is sitting in a London hotel talking about the book that tells the story of his musical life. He leafs through the copy on the table in front of us and points to one of the many photographs. He’s about 20 years old, frozen in black and white while recording one of the innumerable studio sessions he took part in back in the 1960s.

“Do you know what’s really interesting?” he asks. “There’s all these pictures in here of me in the studio doing sessions with various people, and yet when it comes to Led Zeppelin, the only time that we’re in the studio being photographed is across the second album. Isn’t that interesting? So, pro rata, there’s more of me at those studio sessions, when you wouldn’t think there’d be anything. I just find it ironic. But it was interesting, sieving for gold...”

The 70-year-old Page looks dapper - all in black, silver-haired - in a wafer-thin, ageing gracefully, rock star kind of way. He’s very enthusiastic about his book, very proud, and he’s intrigued by the idea that its procession of pictures can also tell the story of his guitar life.

“That’s what we’ve got to do,” he says with a grin as he turns more pages and reveals the sequence from Grazioso to Les Paul to Telecaster. “We’ve got to try and explain what it is and why it is.”

The early material in Jimmy’s book is especially interesting. There are fascinating connections and links during the decisive years from the period in which he acquires his first guitars, through the studio sessions, and on to The Yardbirds and the first months of Led Zeppelin.

Page turns to a picture of himself playing live with Neil Christian & The Crusaders, supporting Cliff Richard, probably in 1960. He’s got his Grazioso electric and he’s on his knees with it at the front of the stage.

"I got used to big bass drums before hearing John Bonham"

“The interesting thing here,” he says, “is that my body language is exactly the same as something from 1977 in the white poppy suit, pictured later in the book. And we had a superb drummer in that band, a drum major in the army.

"He had a load of swing, he loved all the big-bands. Look at the size of that bass drum! So I got used to big bass drums before hearing John Bonham - someone else who had an amazing swing to his playing.”

There’s a lovely picture in the book of you as a teenager in front of someone’s fireplace with a Grazioso or Futurama...

“Isn’t that great? That’s the first electric guitar I got. The one before it, a Hofner, my dad bought, but... maybe he was psychic, and he knew what was coming. Because there’s a whole procession of guitars that come into my life over the next few years. I’m either 14 or 15 in that picture, it’s 1958, or probably 1959, and that’s the first one, the Grazioso. It looked and felt like an electric guitar, even though it wasn’t a Fender.

"In fact, it had a tremolo arm on it, and I’ve got recordings of me playing on this thing, but you’d think this arm would break, actually. I heard somebody, a sort-of record collector, he told me, ‘You’ve got to hear this Carl Perkins stuff ’ - and it’s terrific guitar playing, he’s a real stylist.”

Were you thinking, ‘Actually, I really want an American guitar’?

“Oh, this is a result of seeing and drooling over Gene Vincent & His Blue Caps, by the time they’re doing Hot Rod Gang [1958 movie] and they’ve got all those Fenders. It was oh... my... god.

"I’ve seen Bruce Welch talk about when he saw the Fender with Buddy Holly on The Chirping Crickets album, and he describes it exactly the same way as I felt, too, which is: that thing looks like it’s from outer space! What is it?!

"So, you find out, and then you see them, and they’ve been sprayed in almost hot-rod colours, and they’re all matching. It just looked so damn sexy! The Fenders were sexy to begin with, just beautiful, sculptural designs. Then when you saw a whole nest of them, with the bass and the guitars and Gene Vincent standing there, well...”

What was the first American guitar you got your hands on?

“I did get a Strat along the way. But guitars in those days, they weren’t all user-friendly, you know? Just because it was a Strat, didn’t mean to say it was like a Strat we know now. Then it goes from that to one of those orange Chet Atkins Gretsches, and then pretty much from there through to the Les Paul Custom.

"In [2008 documentary film] It Might Get Loud, that was nothing to do with me whatsoever where they’ve got [the caption] ‘Jimmy Page’s first electric guitar’ and they show a picture of a Strat. I don’t know whose Strat it is. The reality of it is, that Grazioso was the first electric guitar.

"Here I am with these guys, but up in Liverpool, there’s pictures of George Harrison playing one, too. So, that guitar was as good as you were going to get around that point of time.”

There’s a picture with you posing with your Les Paul Custom and some Selmer and Fender amps...

“None of it was mine apart from the Les Paul Custom - and I’m wearing clothes from John Stephen in Carnaby Street.

"Anyway, I went in this shop, and they asked me to do a photograph with all the amps that they were promoting. I guess I must have had enough of a reputation for them to want to take a picture of me with their amps, even though I was just a studio musician. I was doing both, art college and sessions.”

There weren’t many Les Pauls in Britain at that point in time...

“No, there weren’t. It was just such a gorgeous-looking thing. It just sounded so wonderful. The middle setting wasn’t what you’d expect it to be, it was a spiky sound that was really superb.

"It’s the one that got stolen later, and eventually Gibson said to me ‘what sort of guitar shall we make you?’ And I said ‘I know exactly what guitar: we’re going to do a Custom so you can get all the pickup combinations.’ I played it at the O2, and it sounded bloody marvellous. Everyone was saying that guitar sounded the best of anything that night.”

You used the Custom on many sessions in the 60s...

“Yes, and also I introduced my semi-acoustic Danelectro into the world of sessions. The first session was when Glyn Johns put me in the Jet Harris & Tony Meehan thing, Diamonds, but I was really young then, it was way before that.

"Later, I was at art college and I was playing in the interval band in the Marquee, when the Marquee was on Oxford Street, and somebody there said, ‘Do you want to play on a record?’ I said ‘yeah, absolutely’. So I went along and took my DeArmond [tone and volume] pedal and all the rest.”

Did you have to read music?

“At one point, they came along and gave me a piece of music, and it had dots on it. Just a little bit. And I thought, ‘uh-oh. This obviously means either: we’re going to kick you out, or: you better bloody well learn to read music a bit sharpish because we’ve got things which are more demanding of you.’

"I’d be playing on film scores, on television adverts, on folk sessions, I’d be playing middle-of-the-road music, playing with groups, I’d be playing with singers that were from groups where they’d substituted group members with session musicians. I’d have people coming in from France, from America, right across the board, all kinds. And now I’ve got the hint: you better learn to read music!

"So I sort of did, I got to read music. In the early days, there were some sympathetic arrangers who would actually give you your part first, so you’d have a chance. But I’ve got to tell you - reading the sort of fluent notes, that was all right, but when it was chords written, it was ‘oh my god, why don’t they just write down the chord names?’ That was testing.

“And here’s the key to it. I’d played so many different styles of guitar, I’d played fingerstyle on my Harmony acoustic, and I’d played blues, and I knew how to play rock - I knew where the roots of these things came from.

"Also, I learnt to be able to ask a lot of questions, to the engineers, about certain things that I’d heard. I’d play things to people, say ‘what’s that? How’s that done?’ It was an apprenticeship, and I became so accepted behind that closed door. I’m experimenting with the bow, too, although I’m not doing anything on pop records with that.

"I’m doing all of this, all my friends are off having a great time, and I’m faced with f**king muzak. And it’s like, ‘okay, this is it, this is the moment, it’s time to go.’ Everyone’s been really kind, and you think: thanks so much, but I really want to be on my way. I just had so much that I wanted to do.”

You joined The Yardbirds, and Jeff Beck had his Sunburst Les Paul, so you got his Telecaster...

“He came round one day in a brand new [Corvette] Stingray and gave me that guitar. It’s the Yardbirds guitar, but I wanted to make it my own, and that was when I painted it.

"That’s the only area that tells you the boy went to art college, the only thing that illustrates that, the fact he painted his Telecaster. Well [laughs], it wasn’t a wasted opportunity, then, was it?”

What was your musical relationship like with Jeff?

“It was really good, great. I don’t know how old he says we were when we met, I think he reduces the years to almost 11. His memory’s bloody good, I’ll tell you that much. You know that by his guitar playing: he’s got a photographic memory.

"I met Jeff when we both had homemade guitars, so we go back that far, when we’re seeing who’s got the closest version of My Babe by James Burton. Just two kids really enthusiastic and passionate about music and guitar playing.

"Anyway, Jeff had said it would be great if we both played in The Yardbirds together. That was what he said, and I said I didn’t really think it was going to be possible, because there was this union, five Yardbirds - five live Yardbirds - and it didn’t seem that that was going to be six, to have even more guitars.”

You did end up joining The Yardbirds, but you started on bass...

“Yes, because Paul Samwell-Smith left the band and they had dates to do. I’ll tell you what, that was a hard gig, doesn’t matter if I’d done sessions or whatever: I’m playing bass and trying to fill Paul Samwell-Smith’s shoes, and that was tough.

"But the idea was that Chris [Dreja] would take over the bass and Jeff and I would play guitars together, so we did stuff where I do a bit of bowing, doing stuff like Over Under Sideways Down in harmony guitars. It was just fun. It was really good and promising. There wasn’t anything like that, not what we were doing or were planning.”

There are some pictures of you playing Jeff’s sunburst Les Paul...

“I had no choice, I had to take over on guitar if he walked off. What else are you going to do? Walk off with him? It was usually because the amplifiers were playing up, or something.

"All in all, knowing Jeff ’s sort of technique and his precision, I can understand it, but at the time it was ‘oh my god, he’s being really temperamental here’. But he was in the whole world of what he was trying to do, and shaping his sound. So I’ve got to play the stuff that’s been done before, but I’m really keen to move it into other areas and put my own stamp on it.

“The stuff that I did sort of collides with singles that have to be done, and you try to put the stuff that you’re really doing on the B-sides - Think About It, Puzzles, the bow, it’s all coming in.

"You have no idea how quickly the Little Games album was recorded. ‘Right, red light’s on, take, next...’ because [producer] Mickie Most didn’t like albums, he only liked singles.

"That’s why I knew, when it came to the time of Led Zeppelin, that’s how I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Exactly how I was going to go about it, exactly what material. There was an audience for it, if I got a good band together.

"And I didn’t just get a good band, I had a phenomenon together. It was really exciting! Imagine! But when people talk about Zeppelin as musicians... everyone dreams of being in a band like that.

“I really wanted The Yardbirds to continue, because I really believed in it... we’d done some recording in the studio, we’d also done a live thing, none of it actually was supposed to come out – I don’t know what sort of leaked out on bootleg – but I had sort of an idea, I had material to be done.

"They wanted to try something else, they didn’t want to be The Yardbirds any more, so that’s it. I know what I’m doing, I’ve had this period now coming out of the studio, really studio-disciplined, I know how to do things and I know how to approach the next stage, certainly in my life, and how it relates to America.”

So you took the Telecaster with you into Zeppelin, and that lasted for the first-album period, before you got your own Sunburst Les Paul...

“Absolutely, the first album is done on the Telecaster, because it is a transition from The Yardbirds to Led Zeppelin, it’s exactly the same guitar. It’s not until 1969 that I get the Les Paul, when Joe Walsh insists on me having this guitar.

"He bloody insisted, he said, ‘You’ve got to buy this guitar!’ I said I didn’t necessarily need it. ‘No, you’ve got to have it, just try it, you’ll want it’. I said, ‘I’ve already got the Custom’. ‘No, no, you’ve got to try it!’

"I knew it was a good guitar. I knew there wouldn’t be the feedback, the squealing you got from the Telecaster - every night there was a whole episode of controlling that. Everybody had that, if they started turning up a Telecaster loud, you know? So I did buy it, and I kicked off the second album with it. It was a pro rata price, he wasn’t stealing me up, and he wasn’t giving it to me as a present.

“It’s the intervention of the guitar again. My first one was left behind at a house we moved into. Then there’s the energy-charged guitar in The Yardbirds that Jeff Beck had. Then Joe Walsh insists I buy this guitar. The intervention of the guitar again.

"That Les Paul was a beauty. It wanted a new home, so I took it home. I had it right through to the O2 [2007], and that’s unusual. Most people have got other guitars they’ll play, but no matter what, it’s the same Les Paul.

"It’s hypothetical, but I may not have come up with the riff from Whole Lotta Love on the Telecaster. That fat sound on the Les Paul, you’re inspired. Well, I am, and I know other people are inspired by the sound of particular instruments. Suddenly they’re playing something they haven’t played before, and it’s really user-friendly, and suddenly they’ve got some sort of riff, which is peculiar to that moment. So many things start singing, you know? Really singing.”

For updates on Jimmy Page visit jimmypage.com

Join us for our traditional look back at the news and features that floated your boat this year. 

Best of 2023: When you're very good at what you do, you can get headhunted. And that's especially true in rock n' roll where the departure of key band members (or dissatisfaction with them) can lead to hard questions and unexpected propositions.

 Just how close did we come to hearing Rory Gallagher's maverick blues in the Stones, Michael Schenker's cocked wah in Aerosmith or Michael Bolton's soaring soul vocals fronting Black Sabbath?

Let's find out… 

Shuggie Otis – The Rolling Stones 

The first of a few Stones propositions, the psychedelic soul singer-songwriter got a call from the band's touring pianist Billy Preston (more on him later) in the mid-seventies to see if would be interested in joining the lineup for a tour. 

Otis had recently got to the end of a long creative tunnel to release his own album Inspiration Information, and the decision was easy for him. “I was so excited about my own music coming out that nothing really appealed to me about wanting to be in anybody’s group,” he told Rolling Stone in 2013.

“I didn’t want to be a sideman,” he explained to the Guardian in 2016 about his mindset at the time. “I wanted to do my own music. ”I could have been an instant millionaire, a few times, probably, but that wasn’t on my mind at all.”

Myles Kennedy – Led Zeppelin

This one got far enough down the line for Myles Kennedy, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham to have jammed together more than once, following a call to the Alter Bridge vocalist from the drummer. Fresh from the high of Zeppelin's 02 Arena reunion in 2007, but knowing Robert Plant did not want to take it further, the trio set about moving forward the following year with another singer.

Kennedy's vocal ability was obvious, and combined with his deep knowledge of Zeppelin's back catalogue it put him firmly in the frame. But he wasn't the only one; Steven Tyler also jammed with them. Kennedy made enough of an impression after his first session with the band to be invited back for four days a few months later.

"I should say that it was never supposed to be 'Led Zeppelin' per se, because how could it be Led Zeppelin?" Kennedy told us in 2010. "I think they were just itching to play again. Still, they weren't really sure of what they wanted to do exactly. What happened was, I got together with them one day in June of 2008 and we just jammed on some ideas. Everything went really well, and as you can imagine, I was just flattered beyond all belief to be in the same room with those guys. I mean, everything I ever learned about rock, I learned from Led Zeppelin. Just being near Jimmy Page was unbelievable. All the guys! Hearing their stories, the whole experience…it was something I'll always treasure."

So why didn't it go any further?

"Well, I'm not really sure," Kennedy admitted to us. "Again, I just don't think they really could decide on what they wanted to do. I did get together with them again a few months later, and this time we spent about a week jamming on some ideas. I didn't do any actual writing with them – it was all very informal. There was just so much going on around them, and once all the talk got out about 'Led Zeppelin is going to tour'…I'm not really sure why things didn't happen, but that's OK."

Michael Bolton – Black Sabbath, Ted Nugent, Journey

Now this is a strange one – and not for the obviously surreal proposition of the Soul Provider singing War Pigs in 1982. No, it's because one party denies it was ever even a remote possibility. Spoiler: it's not Tony Iommi. 

"Me and [bassist Geezer Butler] had to rethink the whole thing," Iommi wrote in his 2012 autobiography Iron Man. "We had a million tapes sent in from different singers and most of them were horrible. One of them was from Michael Bolton. I didn't know him at the time. We had Michael come in and we had him sing Heaven and Hell, War Pigs and Neon Knights. He was quite good, but he wasn't exactly what we were looking for then. We dropped a bollock there, didn't we? Michael Bolton! A little bit of a mistake."

That all sounds too specific to be a misunderstanding, and Iommi returned to the subject again in 2020.

"I found David Coverdale, and he said, 'Oh, I just got this band together, Whitesnake. Why didn't you find me before?'" Iommi told Gibson TV . "I said, '[Black Sabbath vocalist Ronnie James Dio] hadn't left before; it's happening now.'

"So, there was a lot of looking for another singer, and we would audition various singers — including Michael Bolton, believe it or not," Iommi added. "He was one of them, which was an odd one. It just went on a bit, and we couldn't decide."  

And what say Bolton in all of this? He says it never happened. "That's a rumour," he told Malaysia's Lite in the clip above. "I think people mix it up because my rock group was Blackjack...we did two albums for Polygram in the late '70s, those were part of my rock years."

Bolton does add that he discussed joining Ted Nugent's band as a vocalist though, instead deciding to focus on his solo career. But that's not all; he was also briefly in the running to replace Steve Perry in Journey following the singer's 1987 departure.

"We thought about it for a second," Journey guitarist Neal Schon told Louder in a reader Q&A in 2012. Michael definitely had pipes – he was pretty bionic when I worked with him. But even then there was a lot of personality clashing. I didn’t feel that we would get too far, that’s all I can tell you."

In the same interview Schon alluded to some of that 'clashing' in a separate experience he had with Bolton.

"Michael Bolton was a little eccentric," he opined. "I played the blues guitar solo on his version of (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay, and Bolton made me re-do my solo about 200 times." Ouch. 

Marc Ford – Guns N' Roses 

Former Black Crowe Marc Ford recently detailed the time he was approached, and declined, the chance to play alongside Slash as Izzy Stradlin's replacement in the early '90s.

“The music of the Crowes spoke to me a bit more,” Ford reflected recently with Guitar World about choosing the Robinson brothers over Axl and Co. “But also – and even Slash agreed with me on this – the Crowes were a better fit for me over Guns N’ Roses because, with the Crowes, I could have more of a voice.”

“If I had joined Guns N’ Roses that would have basically been me filling the role of someone having to back up Slash,” he added. “I don’t think it would have been all that fulfilling or satisfying to do that. I would have gotten bored, and that would have been dangerous…”

Zakk Wylde - Guns N' Roses 

Zakk got much closer to becoming a hired Gun than Ford; he jammed with the band for a week in the mid '90s when Slash and Duff McKagan were still part of the lineup, and that period even sewed the creative seeds of a song.

“[Zakk] brought energy and enthusiasm that was lacking within Guns at the time, wrote McKagan in his 2011 autobiography. "‘We can build on the legacy,’ he said excitedly. ‘We can make something great. Listen to this.’ He saw a piano against the wall and sat down and elegantly played it. I had no idea he could play piano at all, much less like this.

"We recorded a few demos with him, but nothing panned out," Duff added. One of those demos would become Rose-Petalled Garden, a song on the first Black Label Society album, 1998's Sonic Brew.

Paul Rodgers – The Doors, Deep Purple 

When you're one of the greatest blues-rock vocalists of all time, people will call, and sometimes those people are the members of The Doors and Deep Purple.

Paul Rodgers' illustrious career has seen him collaborate with guitar greats including Paul Kossoff, Jimmy Page and Brian May, but if it wasn't for his commitments to his own projects at the time we could have seen him in at least one other classic band. 

Following the death of Jim Morrison in 1971 the surviving members of The Doors were serious enough about approaching Rodgers to take on the lead singer role that they flew to London to find him.  "[The] thing is, at that time, I had buried myself in the country, working on things, and they couldn't get a hold of me," Rodgers told The Pulse Of Radio in 2011.  "My jaw actually dropped like in a cartoon when Robby [Krieger, guitarist] told me this," the singer added. "Would I have joined them? I dunno. It's hard to say, looking back. But I think not. I tend to form bands, that's what I do. Although it's always flattering to be asked!"

A similar situation arose in 1973 when Rodgers got the call to replace the departing Ian Gillan in Deep Purple. "Free had played with Deep Purple in Australia and it was our very last show," Rodgers told Hoston Press in 2007, confirming the DP rumour. "I got along really well with [Purple] keyboardist Jon Lord and we exchanged numbers. Later, I got a call to [join], but I was forming Bad Company at the time, so it wasn’t possible." 

Michael Schenker – Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones, Ozzy Osbourne, Motörhead

The Flying V firebrand was certainly in demand in the seventies and early eighties. Starting with Ozzy Osbourne's search for Randy Rhoad's replacement…

"I was kind of tempted," Schenker told Full In Bloom in 2022. "I had only just left UFO and the Scorpions, and I had already auditioned for Aerosmith. When I was approached by Ozzy, he told me, “You were Randy Rhoads’s favorite guitarist. I want you to join.” It was kind of strange to deal with that situation because Ozzy called me in the middle of the night, and he was obviously very confused and disturbed and begged me to join. I considered it heavily, but something was pulling me away. I had to analyze what was going on. I didn’t quite understand myself."

The guitarist's instincts told him to focus on his own music, rather than playing the parts of another player. Nevertheless, following advice from his management Schenker actively auditioned for Aerosmith to replace Joe Perry following his own walkout from The Scorpions on their 1979 tour for the Lovedrive album. But Aerosmith claimed Schenker made a terrible first impression before he even played a note.

In the official Aerosmith book Walk This Way, Schenker is described as walking into a rehearsal room and greeting vocalist Stephen Tyler, guitarist Brad Whitford, bassist Tom Hamilton and drummer Joey Kramer with the following announcement: “Hello, I’m taking over. Before I join your band, I want it clear I’m taking over right now. Here – my jacket – take and hang up.”

Schenker denies this. “What happened was that [manager] Peter [Mensch] flew me to New York," the guitarist told Classic Rock. "Steven wasn’t doing so good at the time, and I wasn’t in the best shape either. I ended up sat in my hotel room for five days waiting for something to happen. And when it did… it was worthless. Nobody was in a fit state to make it work.

“But later, when I started the Michael Schenker Group [in 1980], Joey Kramer and Tom Hamilton wanted to be my rhythm section,” he added. “We did some rehearsals but then just as we were getting somewhere Steven got better, so they went back to Aerosmith.” All's well that ends well, but then there was the Stones…

Schenker allegedly ignored the call to audition for the legendary band in 1973 when he arrived in the UK as a teenager to join UFO.  As he explains in the clip above, he received a phone call at the lodgings he was staying at, asking if he'd like to audition for the Stones. A flustered Schenker told them he'd call back. He never did. Then there was Motörhead…

When he first put Motörhead together, Lemmy asked me to be the guitarist," Schenker told Metal Talk in 2016. "It was many years ago, but we toured together when he was in Hawkwind and I was with UFO. We toured the States together, and I saw Lemmy every day, but later when he started to put Motörhead together, he approached me to be his lead guitarist but I wasn't interested… I couldn't see that it would be something for me. I declined. I just couldn't see how it would work."

Billy Preston – The Beatles 

Preston would have been an asset to any band he played in – which is why both the Stones and Beatles called on the keyboardist and vocalist's session services. He'd befriended the Fab Four as far back as 1962 and, along with Tony Sheridan, is the only non-Beatle to be given a credit on one of their recordings at the band's request. In Preston's case it was for the 1969 single Get Back, credited at The Beatles with Billy Preston. 

It was during this time that Preston's role in the band became ever more integral, as captured in the Get Back film. John Lennon suggested to the band that Preston could join, while McCartney argued it was hard enough to reach compromises between the four of them as it was.

It was during Harrison's time out from the band after temporarily quiting in the midst of the sessions that Clapton was considered as a replacement. But it wasn't needed in the end; during his time away, Harrison saw Preston performing with Ray Charles in London and asked him if he'd like to return to work with the Beatles alongside him. Relations between the band members very quickly improved as a result of Preston's presence.

“It’s interesting to see how nicely people behave when you bring a guest in, because they don’t want everybody to know they’re so bitchy,” Harrison wrote in the Beatles book Anthology. “Suddenly everybody’s on their best behaviour.”

“He got on the electric piano, and straight away there was 100 per cent improvement in the vibe in the room,” he added. “Having this fifth person was just enough to cut the ice that we’d created among ourselves."

Corey Taylor - Anthrax, Velvet Revolver 

Even though he was in one of the biggest metal bands in the world with Slipknot, and in a second band with Stone Sour, Taylor clearly couldn't resist trying some alternative shoes on for size when two bands were looking to recruit new vocalists. And he went surprisingly far down the line with one of them.

Taylor recorded around 10 songs with Velvet Revolver in 2010 as he was reportedly lined up as Scott Weiland's replacement, even going as far as to "neither confirming or denying" he was the new vocalist. Duff McKagan certainly sounded keen in the clip above from 12 years ago, but it seems Slash was less so.

"I love Corey to death but something about it was just a little too… what’s the word for it, you know how Corey sings, it’s very macho kind of thing." Slash revealed to Rolling Stone Australia in the clip below. "But it didn’t have certain elements I thought it needed so we just didn’t go down that path. That was the closest [to finding Scott's replacement] so far.” 

Those nine or ten songs remain unheard outside of the inner circle.  "The world will probably never hear them, which is fine, because I would want another crack at kind of working on some of that stuff anyway, Taylor told Loudwire. "But that will never happen, so it's all good."

A few years before that Taylor nearly became the frontman for New York thrash icons Anthrax, but that time it wasn't a band member that put the kibosh on it.

 “That actually started as an idea because of an acoustic gig that I did with Scott [Ian] and Frankie Bello at a place in New York," Taylor told Eddie Trunk in the 2020 clip shown below. "Afterward, we were all kind of just hanging out, and the half-joking line got thrown out, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if you joined Anthrax?’” Corey recalled on SiriusXM's Trunk Nation Virtual Invasion. “And we all laughed, and then we all stopped. And we all just went, ‘Hmmm. That could [be] interesting.’

Anthrax were without a singer at the time. “It was between Joey [Belladonna] and John [Bush], so everything was kind of up in the air," added Taylor. "We talked about it more and more, and it was something that I was really, really into.”

Slipknot's label Roadrunner had other ideas; the Iowa band's next album – that became 2008's All Hope is Gone – took priority. “It was the first time I had ever felt like I was kind of backed into a corner," said Taylor. "Not that I didn’t wanna do a Slipknot album, but I was so into the idea of doing an Anthrax album. And I remember having to call and tell the [Anthrax] guys that I wasn’t gonna be able to make it. It broke my heart so hard. But, obviously, things worked out for the better for them.”

It took a little while. The band ended up recording their next album [that became Worship Music] with vocalist Dan Nelson before he parted ways with the band in 2009 before it could be released. John Bush would return to help them for a live commitment before vocalist Belladonna officially came back to re-record Nelson's parts on a reworked Worship Music that finally saw a 2011 release. Metal sure is complicated sometimes. 

Dave Grohl – Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers

Dave Grohl was in an understandably dark place following Kurt Cobain's suicide in 1994. He hadn't played drums publicly since his last show with Nirvana in Germany on 1 March that year, then Tom Petty came calling.

“Someone from my management calls and says ‘Hey, Tom Petty just called and wants to know if you’ll play drums with them on Saturday Night Live?’” recalled Grohl in the Petty documentary Runnin' Down A Dream. The Heartbreakers were between drummers follower the departure of Stan Lynch and Grohl was shocked to be asked.

"What the f*** is he calling me for? He couldn’t find a good drummer?” wondered Grohl. His hard-hitting performance on the show for the two songs the band played reminded everyone exactly why he was asked; muscular on Honey Bee's intro (a favourite Petty song of Grohl's) before sensitively syncopating with the guitar dynamics in the verses. "It’s like the kind of thing a bunch of 16-year-olds would play in the garage to get off," said Grohl. "It’s killer. It’s a barn burner.”

If SNL was a stealth audition, Grohl aced it. Later, Petty called to offer him the drum job. "I just felt weird about just going right back to the drums because it would have just reminded me of being in Nirvana,” Grohl admitted to Howard Stern in 2021. 

“It would have been sad for me personally. It would’ve been an emotional thing to be behind the drumset every night and not have Kurt there.”  Instead, Grohl took the unexpected path of becoming a frontman himself with the Foo Fighters. And that turned out pretty well didn't it. 

Adrian Smith, Phil Collen – Def Leppard, Iron Maiden 

A very unusual vice-versa prospect here. Phil Collen may well have got the job as Iron Maiden's replacement for Dennis Stratton… but there was a clear snag. "They asked me to come down and I wasn't really interested," Collen admitted to Inside Out in 2008. "I have known them guys for years. I used to go to school with the original singer Paul DiAnno, who I have known since I was six. All the guys grew up in the same area as me, they're lovely guys, I love 'em, but it's a different type of music. I was in a glam rock band [Girl] and now I'm in Def Leppard… which is more up my street."

Collen ended up joining Leppard to replace Pete Willis and tracked the solos on 1983's Pyromania, which did pretty well as we recall with 10 million sales in the US alone. Adrian Smith ended up getting the Maiden job and it all worked out very well indeed, until Smith quit the British metallers in 1990. When Leppard was looking for a new guitarist after the tragic death of Steve Clark in 1991, Smith applied to audition. And he was in illustrious company.

Collen confirmed in a press conference earlier this year that the band invited five people they knew to audition – including Smith, former Whitesnake man John Sykes and a young musician from Birmingham called Huey Lucas. "Vivian [Campbell] just fit in straight away; it was just like [it was] meant to be," said Collen. [But] Adrian is great — he's a great singer. That was one of the other things [we looked for], if you can sing."

“John could sing his ass off,” Leppard frontman Joe Elliot told Classic Rock. “And he wrote Still Of The Night for Whitesnake. Adrian I adore, and in the end it worked out well for him because he’s back in Maiden where he belongs. We also tried out a young unknown kid from Birmingham, Huey Lucas. Great player, but his voice wasn’t that strong. Vivian was always the number-one candidate. For us it wasn’t about how well you could play, it was more about how well you can sing. And more importantly, we’ve got to get on with this person.”

For his part, Smith has suggested he might talk about his perspective on it all in his next book, but as Joe Elliot noted, he ended up rejoining Maiden in 1999 anyway, alongside returning vocalist Bruce Dickinson. And everyone rocked happily ever after. 

Patty Smyth – Van Halen 

Van Halen with a female vocalist is a very interesting prospect – and it really could have happened. The former Scandal singer, who later enjoyed a hit duetting with The Eagles's Don Henley on Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough, found fans in Eddie Van Halen and his wife. The guitarist even guested with Scandal onstage for two songs in 1984 – and you can hear it below. Then with David Lee Roth's departure the following year, Smyth suddenly found herself in the frame to replace him.  

"They were heavy drinkers. I don’t drink,"she reflected in an interview with Stereogum in 2020 on her decision to turn the band down. "I never saw myself living in LA. I was like, “I’m from New York, we don’t move to LA.”

"It’s all semantics because if [Eddie] had said to me, 'Let’s make a record', then I would have said yes to that. But joining the band — to me then, 'Oh god, they fight all the time, him and his brother [Alex Van Halen], and I don’t want to get into a volatile situation.' And I was probably heavily hormoned out because I was eight months pregnant, so there was a state of mind that I was in of how I need to take care of myself. But I regretted turning him down. For a long time I regretted it. When you start to have regrets, I was like, 'Oh man I would’ve made so much money.'

Smyth had the pipes for the job and Van Hagar detractors would obviously have been spared that whole era. But the band did very, very well with Sammy and, for her part, Smyth isn't bitter about how things turned out now. 

"I wish I had the right kind of luck," she told Stereogum. "I feel it’s just like I’m in this stream or this river and sometimes it’s just taking you where you need to go. Sometimes you’ve got to paddle and go in certain directions and other times you’re just letting it take you. And for me, like I said, my life has turned out unbelievable. That I’ve been married and with the same man for 25 years is insane."

Dimebag Darrell, Slash – Megadeth 

If you thought Anthrax's singer maneuvers were complicated, they've got nothing on the revolving door in Megadeth. Dave Mustaine has remained the band's only constant since 1983, but that revolving door nearly stopped the world hearing Pantera's classic albums.

“I actually called him up and asked him to play in Megadeth,” Mustaine told the Tampa Bay Times in 2019 of Dimebag Darrell Abbott in a recent interview. “Fate would have completely changed if I would have called him before I called [drummer] Nick Menza. I said, ‘Hey, Darrell, I’m looking for a guitar player.’ And he goes, ‘Can I bring my brother?’ And I went, ‘Who’s your brother?’ He goes, ‘Vinnie Paul! Don’t you know Vinnie Paul?"

“He wanted to bring his brother and have him play with us," Mustaine continued. "And I go, ‘Oh, man, I just hired Nick Menza.’ Can you imagine what Vinnie and Darrell would have been with me and Junior [bassist Dave Ellefson]? Would’ve been pretty cool.”

We can hear that in our minds but surely the rumor Mustaine asked Slash to join the band is nonsense? No, actually. Around the mid '80s before Guns started taking off, Slash found himself living near Mustaine in LA. 

"I crashed wherever I could, and did whatever came to mind, and there was a point in there when I hooked up with Dave Mustaine of Megadeth," Slash wrote in his 2007 autobiography.  "We became friends; he was strung out on smack and crack and he lived in the same neighborhood, so we hung out and wrote songs. He was a true, complete fucking maniac and a genius riff writer.

"We'd hang out, smoke crack, and come up with major heavy metal riffs, just f****** dark and heavy as hell. Sometimes Dave Ellefson would join us; we got along great, we wrote some great s***. It got to the point, in our drug-fueled creative zone, that we started seriously entertaining the idea of me joining Megadeth.

"Guns was in a holding pattern, after all, and I was high enough to consider all kinds of bad decisions," Slash added. "Dave Mustaine is still one of the most genius musicians I have ever jammed with, but still, in my heart of hearts, I knew I couldn't leave Guns."

Rory Gallagher – The Rolling Stones

Michael Schenker was certainly not the only number The Stones called when Mick Taylor quit the band in 1974. He left a huge guitar hole to fill, but Rory Gallagher certainly had the potential to fill it.

Rory had already found success with Taste and as a solo bluesman by that point, documented by the Irish Tour film that same year, but he couldn't resist the chance to find out more when he received a surprising phone call from the Stones' road manager and pianist at the family home in Ireland.

"It was about one o’clock the morning," Rory's brother and manager Dónal recalled to The Telegraph in 2020.  "Back then, if the call was overseas, you had to go through the operator. She told my mother she was connecting. I took the call. I was a bit defensive because, in those days, there were a lot of kidnappings [by the Provisional IRA]. The guy says, ‘My name is Ian Stewart… I’m looking for Rory Gallagher.

“Rory had gone to bed on one of his rare early nights," Dónal added. "When I woke him, he thought I was winding him up. But he agreed to go to Rotterdam to jam with them.” Jagger even collected Rory from the airport. 

"Rory did three or four nights," Dónal told Eon Music in 2020, "and I remember him telling me the first night Keith didn’t come down, so Mick said to Rory; “Can you start me up with a riff? I’ve got this song, but can you help me with a riff?”, and Rory said OK, and Jagger was just filling up with a coffee from a vending machine, and it burned him, and he said; 'Oh jeez, that’s hot stuff!' and Rory said; “Oh, is the title ‘Hot Stuff’?” and he said; “Oh yeah, that’s a great title!” So yeah, there was a lot of Rory riffs on that album that was used later on."

Despite the creative sparks, and the positive noises from Jagger, the whole thing fell apart.   

“On the final night, Keith had come down, and they had done sessions over the days, but Mick and Keith weren’t talking to each other," Dónal explained. "So Rory said, ‘Please let me know what’s going on because I’ve got to be on a plane to Tokyo tomorrow‘ [he was leaving for a Japanese tour he'd already arranged]. And Mick said, ‘Keith wants to have a good long chat with you. Please go up. He’s waiting in his suite upstairs.’ And Rory went up, and Keith was comatose in the bed”.

“Rory stayed up all night, went back every half hour, and tried talking, but [Keith] wasn’t," continued Dónal. "So Rory made up his own mind, for whatever reason, and just packed up his guitar and amp, and I met him at Heathrow with a fresh suitcase.”

Rory left a note with the band that day with details of how to contact him but the communication breakdown was never repaired. He would never play with the Stones again. Ronnie Wood would eventually get the job, and nearly 40 years on he's still there and we still can't picture the gifted Rory playing a sideman role in the Stones. "I think there was an issue that Rory should have been the man," reflected  Dónal, "but Ronnie Wood probably fits in better with the style and with the image."     

• 10 of the best songs for beginner guitar players to learn

Jimmy Page and Sundragon Amps have teamed up once again for another meticulous recreation of a holy grail guitar amp – and they don’t come any more holy grail than Page’s number one amp for all albums from Led Zeppelin II onwards.

It’s called the Super Dragon and is a modded 1968 Marshall Super Bass in all but name – the amp that Page turned to in ’69 as he was seeking a broader canvas for his electric guitar tone.

“After recording the first Led Zeppelin record and creating sounds that define rock guitar I needed an amp capable of reproducing this broad palette of sounds including the light and the shade in the studio and a live setting,” says Page. “Not only was the volume and tone important but it needed to have enough power to hear the subtlety of various aspects of my guitar playing. 

“I experimented with different amps until hearing about a fellow in the States named Tony Frank who was modifying Marshall amps.”

There is not a lot of reliable information on Frank. There is something about the maverick tube amp modder that lends them to mystery – you can file the legendarily secretive José Arredondo under that category, too. 

But legend has it that Frank tweaked Jimi Hendrix’s Marshalls to give them more power. Whatever he did to Page’s amp worked a treat. When he got the Super Bass back it cemented itself into the backline.

“I sent Frank my favorite Marshall, a 1968 Su-per Bass and the result was exactly what I was looking for,” says Page. “Frank’s modification en-hanced the amp’s power of the dynamic range. This amp became the main amp for live shows as well as the principal amp I would rely on in the studio for all Led Zeppelin records from Zeppelin II onwards.” 

Now, that is a guitar sound. You may also want to take the opportunity as Page did to deploy a new model onstage and in the studio. Page went for a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard so don’t be afraid to set your sights high; if you get yourself a Super Dragon, one of only 50 worldwide, you’re in for a real treat. 

As to what it sounds like, well, Page has already recorded the demo video for a watching TV audience of millions as he performed Rumble at Link Wray’s inauguration ceremony at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame 2023 awards show. And, if you didn’t catch that, then Led Zeppelin’s recorded output from 1969’s sophomore album is a decent enough reference.

Needless to say, like the Sundragon, which was a “forensic replica” of the modded Supro Coronado Page that Page used on Led Zeppelin I, Sundragon's Mitch Colby has left no stone unturned in making this as close to the original Super Bass.

The transformers have been reverse-engineered to match the original. Under the hood you’ll find NOS GE 6550 tubes, Iskra and Allen Bradley resistors and Phillips “mustard” capacitors. 

The matching speaker cabinet has been voiced to deliver the same feel and sound as Page’s original rig. And each of the 50 Super Dragons will be signed by Jimmy Page himself.

For more details, head over to Sundragon. Orders open from December,. These will no doubt sell in no time, and if that’s the case, fingers crossed we also see a standard edition as we did with the Sundragon, which is available direct for $3,875, or for an extra $1,000 if you want the NOS tubes.

The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame may divide opinion but surely we can all agree it's great to see Jimmy Page back onstage playing guitar again. This year's induction ceremony saw the Led Zeppelin legend step into the spotlight with his EDS-1275 for the first time in eights years to pay tribute to Link Wray with a performance of his groundbreaking instrumental, Rumble.

It was  Jimmy Page’s first first public guitar performance since he joined al all-star band at end of the Founders Award ceremony at the EMP Museum in Seattle on 17th November 2015.

"I first heard Link Wray's music via the Rumble and it was when I was 14 years old," Page said in a video introduction during the Link Wray tribute at the November 3 ceremony at New York City's Barclays Center to give him the Musical Influence Award. "It wasn't necessarily the sort of music that was being played on BBC radio, but I heard it on a jukebox.

"The first time I heard it I remember listening with such awe because I thought, what is this?! In those days there were many guitar instruments but as a 14-year-old kid who barely played the guitar, it really had an effect on me.

"The vigour in it… the power in it, and you know something else, it was fearless," marvelled Page in his speech inducting his hero. "It was just phenomenal. It's the essence of cool. It's just a masterpiece that melted its way into the fibres of my body and my consciousness as far as the drama that you can set up with six strings. It's the sort of stuff that can't be taught. It's the sort of stuff that you feel and you can take onboard if you're lucky." 

After the video, the lights came up to reveal Page and his Gibson EDS-1275 strumming Rumble's menacing opening chords, with the 12-string guitar half adding gravitas with the Rock Hall house band of the evening. 

Elsewhere at the ceremony, Rage Against The Machine's induction was notable for 3/4 of the band declining to attend, leaving only Tom Morello to represent the four-piece. Following Ice-T's opening speech inducting the band, Morello took the stage. 

"My name is Tom Morello, and I am one-quarter of Rage Against the Machine. I am deeply grateful for the musical chemistry I’ve had the good fortune to share with Brad Wilk, Tim Commerford, and Zach de la Rocha," Morello began in his induction speech. 

"Like most bands, we have differing perspectives on a lot of things, including being inducted into the Rock Hall. My perspective is that tonight is a great opportunity to celebrate the music and the mission of the band—to celebrate the fifth member of the band, which is Rage Against the Machine’s incredible fans. The only reason we are here and the best way to celebrate this music is for you to carry on that mission and that message."

Later in the speech Morello called upon those watching for action – to take up the baton the Rage carried to push for positive changes.

"Rage is not here, but you are," said Morello. "The job we set out to do is not over. Now you are the ones who must testify. If you've got a boss, join a union. If you're a student, start an underground paper. If you're an anarchist for a brick, if you're a soldier or a cop, follow your conscience, not your orders. If you're bummed out, you didn't get to see Rage Against the Machine, then form your own band and let's hear what you have to say. If you're a human being, stand up for your planet before it's too late.

"So tomorrow, crank up some Rage and head out and confront injustice," added Morello. "Wherever it rears its ugly head, it's time to change the world, brothers and sisters, or at a bare minimum to stir up a shit load of trouble. And finally, special thanks to my mom, Mary Morello, a retired public high school teacher, a proud Rage Against the Machine fan and a lifelong radical who turned 100 years old a couple of weeks ago. She's watching at home tonight, but she asked me to tell you this: History, like music is not something that happens. It's something you make. Thank you very much."

Other inductees for 2023 included Missy Elliott, Sheryl Crow, George Michael, Willie Nelson and The Spinners. The latter vocal group saw an electrifying performance from New Edition performing a medley of their hits. Chaka Khan, Al Kooper, and Elton John lyricist Bernie Taupin received the Musical Excellence Awards, while DJ Cool Herc also received a Musical Influence Award alongside Wray. 

Nelson, 90, was inducted by Dave Matthews and performed his song Whiskey River with Chris Stapleton during the ceremony on his trusty old acoustic guitar, Trigger. 

Stapleton returned to perform a tribute to the late Robbie Robertson alongside Elton John, Brittany Howard and inductee Sheryl Crow with a performance of The Weight by The Band. Elton had earlier paid tribute to his longtime songwriting collaborator, Taupin. 

Kate Bush didn't attend the ceremony but St Vincent took up the challenge of performing her vocally challenging 1985 hit Running Up That Hill. 

Fresh from her star turn with the Foo Fighters on Saturday Night Live, H.E.R joined Chaka Khan for a duet on Sweet Thing - and this time her Blue Marlin Fender signature Strat was very much present and correct. 

RECORDING WEEK 2023: Led Zeppelin IV - actually, the album is officially untitled - was released on 8 November 1971, and has so far racked up over 37 million sales. Here, to celebrate the anniversary of its release, read on to learn how the album's distinctive sonic signature was created.

Classic Interview: Andy Johns, the younger brother of another famed engineer, Glyn Johns, began his career working as an assistant engineer with Eddie Kramer on Jimi Hendrix sessions. 

Andy also engineered The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street and worked with Free, Blind Faith and Van Halen.

Andy was instrumental in shaping the sound of Led Zeppelin's seminal fourth album, including John's Bonham's ferocious drum sound on When The Levee Breaks.

Sadly, Johns passed away in 2013, but in this 2009 interview he recalled the highs and lows of those sessions...

Where did you kick off the sessions for Led Zep IV?

"The Rolling Stones had the first mobile recording unit in Europe. I had done the Stones' album Sticky Fingers and I had also done two other album projects at Mick's house, Stargroves, with the truck and I really liked it. It was a lot of fun and you got so many different spaces and it was better than being stuck in some airless, windowless room.

"We were getting ready to do the next Led Zeppelin album and I said to Jimmy Page: 'Why don't we use the Stones' truck and we'll go to Mick's house?' So Jimmy says: 'How much will that cost?' It worked out to be the same as a regular studio and a thousand pounds a week for Mick's house. 

"He said: 'I'm not giving Mick Jagger a thousand pounds a week for his place. I'm going to find something better than that.' And he found Headley Grange, which was rather fortunate. We did a few tracks there including When The Levee Breaks, Rock And Roll and Boogie With Stu [the latter would appear on Physical Graffiti]."

What was your approach to recording at that time?

"I'd been using very few mics on tracks like Can't Find My Way Home by Blind Faith. I had recorded the whole thing using just two mics including vocals, guitar and Ginger Baker's drums. So I was really getting into that."

John Bonham was famous for his very particular drum sound. How hands on was he?

"I never had Bonzo turn round to me and say, 'oh that's a great drum sound, Andy.' He'd just say, 'There's not enough 'frudge' on the bass drum.' That was his word and I knew exactly what he meant by 'frudge'."

When The Levee Breaks put Bonham centre stage, held down by that monstrous 26" Ludwig bass drum. What was the process behind achieving that sound?

"One night Zeppelin were all going down the boozer and I said, 'You guys bugger off but Bonzo, you stay behind because I've got an idea.' So we took his kit out of the room where the other guys had been recording and stuck it in this lobby area. I got a couple of microphones and put them up the first set of the stairs."

It wasn't just the stairwell that got that famous, earthy delay sound though...

"I used two Beyerdynamic M160 microphones and I put a couple of limiters over the two mics and used a Binson Echorec echo device that Jimmy Page had bought. They were Italian-made and instead of tape they used a very thin steel drum.

"Tape would wear out and you'd have to keep replacing it. But this wafer-thin drum worked on the same principle as a wire recorder. It was magnetised and had various heads on it and there were different settings. They were very cool things!

"And so playing at that particular tempo on 'Levee the limiters had time to breathe and that's how Bonzo got that 'Ga Gack' sound because of the Binson. He wasn't playing that. It was the Binson that made him sound like that. 

"I remember playing it back in the Stones' mobile truck and thinking, 'Bonzo's gotta f**king like this!' I had never heard anything like it and the drum sound was quite spectacular."

What was Bonham's reaction to hearing the track back?

"I said: 'Bonzo, come and listen to this, dear chap.' And he came in and said, 'Oh yeah, that's more f**king like it!' And everyone was very happy. I guess I must have done it as a one-off thing and I didn't start using that technique of room mics all the time until later in the '70s with people like Rod Stewart. 

"Jimmy picked up on it and used it on 'Kashmir'. When The Levee Breaks came out quite well and people still ask me about it when I appear on music biz panels and what-not."

You then moved onto Island Studios…

"Black Dog was the first thing we did there. That was a collaboration with Pagey and John Paul. My contribution to that was triple-tracking the guitar riff played on a Gibson Les Paul. I used a couple of universal limiters. It worked really well but as soon as Jimmy stopped playing, with all that gain it went 'Ssshh woarg!'"

Tell us about the recording of Rock And Roll and Stairway To Heaven…

"[Rock And Roll] was a little tough to record because with the hi-hat being so open and [Bonham] hitting it that hard it was difficult to control. But I managed somehow or another. We did Stairway To Heaven upstairs in the big room at Island.

"I had said to Jimmy that we needed a song that builds up and hadn't been having much luck. But then he said: 'I think I've got something that you'll like and we'll do it next week.' And he came in with Stairway To Heaven.

"We tracked it with drums and acoustic guitar and John Paul was playing an upright Hohner piano. I'd never even seen one before or since. The drums come in later because it's a 'building song', innit! I didn't have a lot to do with Stairway except for the 12-string guitar sound that I really liked at the time.

"Jimmy was always running his 12-string Rickenbacker through a box, which is a good sound. But if you do it direct and compress it, you get a much more bell-like quality. So I suggested we try that and he really liked it. 

"There was a bit of a struggle on the solo. He was playing for half an hour and did seven or eight takes. He hadn't quite got it sussed. I was starting to get a bit paranoid and he said, 'No, no you're making ME paranoid.' Then right after that he played a really great solo."

The initial mixing sessions took place at Sunset Sound studios in LA...

"I had mixed an album with Gary Wright at Sunset and there were some wonderful mixes coming out of that studio. We got there just after a big earthquake had struck in 1971 and we were running around like maniacs. In Going To California there is mention of an earthquake in Robert's lyrics. I remember Jimmy saying: 'oh don't put that on there, it will cause another earthquake.' I said, 'oh, don't be so bloody stupid, gimme a break!'

"So the tapes began rolling and sure enough there was an aftershock. Totally coincidental of course but Jimmy was convinced it was the power of the music. So that was rather funny. But Peter Grant [Led Zep manager] would lie on his bed clutching the sides. 

"He was a hard-nosed character but he was petrified of the earthquakes. Everyone thought the place was going to fall into the ocean. And as it turned out, mixing the album was an absolute disaster. That's why I didn't get to work with Zeppelin again after that album.

"It all sounded great at Sunset but the only mix that got used was When The Levee Breaks. That, for some reason turned out alright. But we did this playback at Olympic Studios in London and it wasn't the greatest place to hold a playback session. I should have chosen Island. 

"Anyway the first song goes by and it doesn't sound very good at all. Jimmy and I are sitting on the floor with heads in our hands going 'What the hell is this?' Then we played the next one and the next one… and it all sounded 'orrible.

"The other three guys were turning round and giving us funny looks. 'What's happened here?' If it had been anyone else I would have been booted off the project there and then. Jimmy said: 'Well, that's not very good is it? Let's go back to Island where we should have been in the first place. We'll mix it there.'"

You must have been devastated?

"My bottle had gone and obviously I was shattered. The previous stuff I'd done at Sunset had come out Jim Dandy and was really good. I thought Sunset was a cool place but they had changed the room since I was last there. I don't know what happened. So we went back to Island and re-mixed Zeppelin IV although we still used the Levee Breaks mix from Sunset. But it had all cost a few bob, flying us over there to LA and staying at the Hyatt House. And I know that Bonzo was furious about it."

The When The Levee Breaks drum sound has been sampled and copied many times over the years, notably by the Beastie Boys.

"It's funny actually. I remember mixing some tracks in Tokyo and there were three 32-track machines all strapped together. It was insanity. One machine had all the percussion tracks and I found it even had a little of bit of When The Levee Breaks. Who would have thought all those years later I'd be stealing my own stuff!"

Video footage of Led Zeppelin’s incendiary cover of Little Richard’s Long Tall Sally from the band’s epic performance at London’s Royal Albert Hall on 9 January 1970 has emerged online.

That this footage is largely unseen and was the preserve of bootlegs is something of a mystery. It was pro-shot, with decent quality audio, and it captures one a great moment in electric guitar history when Jimmy Page cuts loose and goes over the edge with one of his wildest guitar solos. 

But somehow it never made the cut when Led Zeppelin released their Albert Hall concert performance on Disc One of their eponymous 2003 DVD. Another track notable for its absence was Heartbreaker. These days, Led Zeppelin concert footage is like a precious natural resource – they’re not making any more of it, so whatever is unearthed has to be savoured. 

This performance in particular was one for the ages, a final cover in a set that opened with LedZep’s legendary cover of Ben E King’s We’re Gonna Groove – a track that reportedly was in the running for Led Zeppelin II but only got released on disc when it showed up alongside other offcuts on 1982’s post-breakup album Coda. Indeed, Led Zeppelin used the Albert Hall performance for Coda, polishing up with some overdubs.

• Genius and controversy: the story of Led Zeppelin's Bring It On Home

As for this Long Tall Sally footage, the video was spliced together from all available sources of the video, and it makes for a helter skelter viewing experience, with split screen footage, fast cuts, and an in your face camera that gets you closer to Robert Plant’s mutton chops than any barber of the era. The audio does bottom out now and again but when it is on, it is on. 

Page is on a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, which by that point had supplanted the Fender Telecaster as his number one instrument, and is in fine voice as Page and co play fast and loose with the arrangement. The energy is off the charts. But then Little Richard was always an animating force for Led Zeppelin as he was for any rock band of that era. 

When the band hit a wall, dipping into the Little Richard catalogue for a cover could often shake something lose, as it did during the writing sessions for Led Zeppelin IV, when John Bonham started playing and a riff just appeared to Page.

“Rock And Roll was a spontaneous combustion,” he said, speaking to Dave Schulps of Trouser Press in 1977. “We were doing something else at the time, but Bonzo played the beginning of Little Richard’s Good Golly Miss Molly with the tape still running and I just started doing that part of the riff. It actually ground to a halt after about 12 bars, but it was enough to know that there was enough of a number there to keep working on it. Robert even came in singing on it straight away.”

Page might have been misremembering the Little Richard track in question. It was widely regarded that the drum tag that opens Keep A Knockin’ was the inspiration for Rock And Roll – it is instantly recognisable. But the point stands. The influence of the rock ’n’ roll pioneer would echo throughout the late ‘60s and ‘70s as a new generation put their stamp on it.

In 1985, Page would cover Little Richard’s Lucille with the Beach Boys in Philadelphia, rocking a Hawaiian shirt and his 1953 B-Bender-equipped Telecaster, and doing some serious damage with that solo. Hey there’s a pattern developing here...

Take a straw poll of Metallica fans on what their favourite album is from the Bay Area metal behemoth’s back catalogue and the chances are the 2003’s St Anger will not enjoy a podium finish – and yes, as its producer, Bob Rock, says, it not only saved the band when it was coming apart at the seams, it can count on some famous fans, with both Jimmy Page and Jack White going out of their way to tell him how much they loved it.

The complaints about St Anger are many and come from all directions. There are those who can’t abide the iron clang of Lars Ulrich’s snare sound, those who tuned in only to feel cheated that Kirk Hammett was kept on a short leash and there were no guitar solos to spice things up. 

After the long-form epics of the ‘80s, the concise FM metal of the ‘90s, this was something different, an album that was overseen by one of the world’s most high-profile producers, known for creating indomitable rhythm tones by layering and layering electric guitars, and it came out under produced and over long. 

Not only that, Rock played bass guitar on the album. It did not help the album’s reputation that the the whole drama surrounding the making of it – Jason Newsted quitting, James Hetfield disappearing, Ulrich’s dad on quality control – was captured in the tragicomic Some Kind Of Monster documentary.

But 20 years on, Rock sounds like he has made peace with what was a difficult time for the band, and him career-wise. Speaking to Chris Jericho on his Talk Is Jericho podcast, Rock admitted it was not a great album to have on his CV at the time, but ultimately St Anger saved the band. 

He said there was “no mindset” going into the record. The sessions started when the band did a fanclub visit to their old practice space at a house in Oakland, and Rock requested that very same old Tama drum kit to be brought in to the studio. A recently bought snare drum was added to the kit and thus became one of the most talked about drum sounds ever recorded.

“All I can say is there is this great album by the Stoogies, Iggy and the Stooges, called Raw Power, and if you think about it, St Anger sounds like the band in that house,” says Rock. “There were no harmonies. There is no fixing anything. It is just raw.”

• Metallica The Black Album track-by-track interview with Bob Rock

There were no solos, notes Jericho.

“That was a rule that I didn’t make but I am not going to say what happened there,” said Rock, who decribes the approach as more like what San Francisco punks The Fucking Champs would do, piling riffs on top of riffs. Besides, he says, it was something they needed to do as they waited for Hetfield to return.

“James wasn’t there for a long time,” says Rock. “We had to punt. We had to keep it going and moving, so that record wasn’t the best for my career, but it was the best in terms of I had to be there for those guys because they broke up. I just put a couple of years and concentrated on being a friend, and if that album didn’t happen I don’t think they would have lasted. They had to do that album so they could just go back to being them.”

And, to borrow a phrase with particular resonance in Metallica contexts, so what if it wasn’t perfect? After all this time, Rock can look back on a couple of memorable encounters that proved at least some people dug the record.

“Jack White! It Might Get Loud, I happened to be at the premiere in Toronto,” says Rock. “He came up to me from across the room and he says, ‘By the they way, I love St Anger – it’s an amazing album,’ and left. Another thing, Jimmy Page, not to drop names but he is kind of a friend. He was at the Sunset Marquis. He was sitting eating breakfast at the other end of the pool, and somebody walked by and said [to him], ‘I’m here seeing Bob Rock.’ 

“He said, ‘Bob Rock’s here?’ He came over and talked to me, which blew my mind – coming from Winnipeg – that Jimmy Page even knows my name. And he said, ‘By the way, I love St Anger. It’s a great album.’ So I am okay. Those two guys bought the record, and those two? I’m fine.”

You can listen to the whole conversation between Bob Rock and Chris Jericho on the Talk Is Jericho podcast wherever you get your podcasts from.

In April 2019, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City hosted an exhibition in collaboration with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame that brought together some of the most famous and culturally significant electric guitars and amplifiers in the history of rock. 

The exhibit, Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll, ran for six months and featured the rigs of rock’s greatest players. Some 130 instruments were on display. Among them were many from Jimmy Page’s collection.

The Led Zeppelin guitarist spoke at The Met's preview event, but he also shot a gear demo video that has just surfaced online, and is essential viewing for any Led Zeppelin gear nut. 

Here we have the core components of Page’s rig as it evolved from the early days, the transition from the Yardbirds to Led Zeppelin I, up to the Physical Graffiti era. There is the backline of a Vox UL4120 guitar amp head and Rickenbacker Transonic cabinet, his Marshall JMP Super Leads, the 4x12 speaker cabinet with ‘Zoso’ grill cloth, the Tone Bender MkII and the Vox 95-932011 King Vox-Wah pedal, and more. 

But of course, he has to start with his Fender Telecaster, aka the Dragon Telecaster that Jeff Beck gave to Page after pulling up in a sports car outside his house and causing a commotion, that Fender reissued in 2020.

“I love this guitar!” says Page. All these years on and he is barely able to contain his delight at how it sounds through that old modded Supro combo; a combination that formed the basis of his guitar tone on Led Zeppelin I. Page says the Supro and the Tele got on like a house on fire.

“The whole of that first album is done with this guitar, this amplifier, a wah-wah pedal and the overdrive [Tone Bender MkII],” he says. In 2019, the Sundragon, a forensic reproduction of that Coronado was released.

There is a lovely grace note here as Page hits a note and bends it by bending this Tele’s neck, which is of course something all Tele players do, something Page has done a million times – and with more oomph – but nonetheless it’s a heart-in-mouth moment when you consider the historical significance of the guitar. 

For many, that Telecaster is the ür-guitar of the Jimmy Page legend, rivalled only by the 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard that he acquired from Joe Walsh, then of James Gang, in 1969. Page says the introduction was as simple as Walsh insisting he should play it that night. 

“He had a Les Paul and he said, ‘Use it. Just play it!’” Page recalls. “I said, ‘What, in the show tonight?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, in the show tonight.”

The rest is history. It became Page’s number one, the singlecut that brought the thunder to Immigrant Song and more, and one that paired particularly well with amps such as the Marshall JMP Super Lead. It became a totem. An Excalibur for a band whose sound and aesthetic had more than a touch of the Arthurian legend to it.

“It was just a real dream to be playing this guitar,” says Page. “I never looked back from that point, really. It’s brought me a lot of luck.”

So, too, did the violin bow. Not only did it give photographers such as Koh Hasebe and Michael Putland an image that would become iconic in the annals of rock photography, it gave Page a different dynamic than just pick and fingers. He was always straining at the leash to pull guitar forward. Here we get a demonstration of the bow and a backstory that explains how Page arrived at the Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin with a feel for the instrument that was far evolved from what his peers were doing. 

All those hours cutting tracks on the clock as a session player, borrowing a bow from a violinist and seeing what sounds could come out. Speaking of weird sounds, we get a demonstration of the theremin that was deployed for avant-garde weirdness in the Whole Lotta Love mid-section, but what’s really cool about this is that he uses his famous #3 1969 Deluxe Goldtop that was refinished in Cardinal Red, rerouted for humbucking pickups, and later modded with a Parsons/White B-Bender. 

Sadly, Page doesn’t talk about the guitar, though it is nice to see it in action. But it can’t be a Page rig tour with no mention of a double-neck EDS-1275, without which Stairway To Heaven would have been a song greatly diminished in live performances. Again, as with the bow, this would not only give Page the particular sound he needed but would become an indelible image from Led Zeppelin’s pomp. 

It was the only option for Page looking to recreate the sound of an acoustic guitar in one channel with a pair of electric 12-string guitars panned left and right. 

“It needed to have all these voices of the 12-string and the six-string,” he says. “It became a real sort of working tool in the band and it also became really iconic.”

Other highlights? Well, how about Page playing the opening riff to Kashmir on his legendary black-and-white Danelectro #3021 parked in DADGAD tuning. It doesn't get much cooler. Plus it's also reassuring that the Dano 59 DC is still in production, still awesome, and is an electric guitar you can pick up for under 500 bucks.

Check out Page's rig tour from The Met at the top of the page.

In 2020, Total Guitar magazine featured an extensive interview between editor Chris Bird and Jimmy Page as the guitarist and producer looked back on his history with Led Zeppelin.

In this extract, Page talks about their third album, as it now reaches its 52nd anniversary. The seminal Led Zeppelin III is a record that showcased just how versatile the young band could be…

With Led Zeppelin III – released 50 years ago this month – you had Immigrant Song, a powerful statement of intent, and Since I’ve Been Loving You, this huge blues ballad, but also acoustic tracks such as That’s The Way and Tangerine...

Jimmy Page: "People were saying, ‘Oh, Led Zeppelin’s gone acoustic’. Well, what happened to your ears on the first album and the second album? Ha ha. It’s just variations on a theme, really. There were so many ideas put into the first album, but they were able to grow and be developed.

"With the third album, we had a break from touring and it gave us a chance to work on more of the acoustic stuff."

What are your memories of making that album?

"Right at the early stages of rehearsing, when I think it was just John Bonham and myself, I had Immigrant Song, Out On The Tiles, and also Friends. If you say straight away you’ve got Friends and Immigrant Song, already it’s got the yin and yang. And there’s all this other stuff that’s going to go in. 

"We’d already played Since I’ve Been Loving You before, that was written just before the third album. So we knew we had that as well. There were all these textures coming up, and I was keen to do Gallows Pole because I thought it was quite curious the way that song had started off in England and gone all the way around the States and come back, so then we were going to do it and send it back to the States again as a folk song."

There was a clear progression with each successive album.

"Certainly within the written context of what was being presented to people to hear, everything was going to be moving forward. So when it went to the point of the more acoustic style of the third album, you can imagine our record company getting that in and going, ‘Where’s the Whole Lotta Love?’ If anyone had said that to me I’d have said, ‘Oh that, that’s on the second album – this is the third album.’ 

"You know how it is with A&R men going, ‘Oh, you’ve got to have a single.’ We had singles in America and other places, but I wanted to stay clear of that market and keep it as an albums thing. Right in the early stages I demanded – after having done all the Mickie Most stuff – that we didn’t want to be a band that was known for singles. It was albums that we were going to be known for. And clearly I wanted to make each album different from the one before.

It’s evident that you had a clear vision for Led Zeppelin right from the start.

"Yes, I did. I really knew what it was that I wanted to do. If you think about it, on the third album there’s Tangerine, but I wrote Tangerine back in The Yardbirds. So I’d waited an amount of time. I didn’t stick it on the first album or the second. I waited until it would fit in with the right texture of everything else. It fits great in the third album. 

"So, yeah, I had a bit of a plan [laughs]. And not just for that one number, of course!" 

If you were back at the time of the third album, how would you describe it? 

"I didn’t really do interviews in those days, to be honest with you, but I would have just explained what it was in the context of the second album having the energy of touring, and this being the other side. 

"Things like That’s The Way are bloody brilliant, you know? There’s just so much good stuff on it, and every number that we recorded was always different, it always had its own character. If anything started to sound like something else that we’d done before, we’d just stop doing it.

"We wouldn’t be doing recordings that sounded like we’d recorded it before, like a secondary version of something else, like Whole Lotta Love Mark Two. We didn’t do that. 

"So yeah, I would have brought people’s attention to Since I’ve Been Loving You, no doubt about it, because nobody had actually approached blues up that point like that. Everybody was playing blues but nobody had gone that sort of extra mile."

Jimmy Page: The Anthology is out now through Genesis Publications. For more info visit genesis-publications.com

Classic interview: Jimmy Page talks Yardbirds, Jeff Beck, Led Zeppelin and his early career with guitars

Total Guitar readers have voted Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love as the greatest guitar riff of all time. Jimmy Page's overdriven groover edged out Randy Rhoads' electrifying motif on Ozzy's Crazy Train, with AC/DC's Black In Black coming in third.

Opening Led Zeppelin's epoch-defining second album, Whole Lotta Love left an indelible mark on popular culture, changing electric guitar music for good. 

Such was its success, it would become consumed by culture at large, the TV watching public reminded each week of its magisterial energy when it would be reprised for the Top Of The Pops opening theme. Indeed, when it came time to record Led Zeppelin III, A&R people would ask Page where the singles were – a question he gave short thrift, for he had no intention of doing the same thing twice.

Total Guitar put forward a laundry list of great riffs for the poll, with readers asked to vote via Guitar World. In appraising Page's riff, they likened it to Neil Armstrong's moon landing – both events from 1969 have transcended the tumult that brought the 60s to its conclusion.

”Whole Lotta Love's guitar figure took just 2.7 seconds to play, but it immediately projected music into another decade,” writes Total Guitar. ”While everyone else was still playing the 60s, Zeppelin were now playing the 70s.”

”It wasn't the first great riff, but it is the defining one. It's why riffs became central to guitar music, the reason bands search for the guitar hook that can propel a whole song – or even a whole career.”

Total Guitar whittled their list down to a Top 50, with the readers propelling some familiar tunes into the Top 10. 

At four, you've got the everyone's first riff, Deep Purple's Smoke On The Water.  The more tricksy yet melodically irresistible Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love by Van Halen comes in fifth, while Metallica's Enter Sandman, another Saturday afternoon at the guitar shop favourite, comes in sixth place. 

Rounding out the Top Ten you'll find Black Sabbath's Iron Man in seventh, followed by Pantera's monochromatic 12/8 shuffler Walk, ZZ Top's La Grange, and Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze at 10th.

As with any 'greatest ever' list, there are bound to be controversies, but let's not forget that this exercise has been subjected to the democratic process, and the people have spoken. And sadly for Slowhand, there were not enough of them to nudge Layla into the Top 10. It is bubbling under in 11th. 

It is also surprising to find Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit in 17th. As with Whole Lotta Love, Kurt Cobain's riff ushered in a new era for rock music; it was the riff that killed the guitar solo – in a manner of speaking – for many years, and is another elemental piece in the beginner guitar trick bag.

Despite popularising the fuzz pedal and creating a song for the great Otis Redding to make his own, the Rolling Stone's (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction comes in at number 20. You can read more about these riffs in the July 2021 issue of Total Guitar.