Before he climbed the stairway to rock immortality with Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page lit the fuse with a band that gave him his first real taste of stardom. June 22,1966- a date etched in rock history. on this day, Jimmy Page officially made his live debut as a guitarist with Yardbirds, the groundbreaking British blues-rock band that would serve as the launchpad for one of the most legendary careers in music history….

I’m sitting in the front row, almost close enough to touch Jimmy Page’s sky blue jacket. Page, leader of the legendary rock band Led Zeppelin, is in the midst of a lengthy number called “Dazed and Confused,” which requires him to run a violin bow across the strings of his electric guitar, thereby producing a series of mournful and disturbing sounds.

At least, the figure on stage looks, sounds and moves like Jimmy Page, but of course Led Zeppelin disbanded in 1980. The charismatic riff-meister is now 80 years old and living a quiet life in a haunted house in London with his girlfriend, a flame-haired 34-year-old poet he met a decade ago.

The rail-thin man with the ringlets hanging over his face in the Tokyo live music venue is Akio Sakurai, also known as Jimmy Sakurai or just “Mr. Jimmy.”  A former kimono salesman from snowy Niigata Prefecture, he has dedicated more than 30 years of his life to reproducing with astonishing authenticity what he calls “the sound magic of Jimmy Page.” Thus tonight, he is wearing the same  kind of satin bell-bottoms that Page wore in 1968 and 1969, using the same guitars and picks and, naturally, striking the same rock god poses.

This particular performance is modelled on the band’s early and, some would say most creative, period. Typical of Sakurai’s scholarly approach is the opening song, “Train Kept A-rollin’,” a staple of Page’s previous band, The Yardbirds, who can be seen playing it in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film “Blowup.”

More to the point, it was the first number that Led Zeppelin played when the four musicians came together for their very first rehearsal. Like several other songs Sakurai performed for us, the band never recorded it. His faithful renditions are the result of close study of super-rare bootlegs.

Tribute bands abound in Japan, with credible imitators doing Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Rolling Stones and many more. One of the most celebrated is The Parrots who have been performing the music of The Beatles from their home ground at the Abbey Road club in Roppongi for decades. They have played in front of such notables as former U.S. ambassador Caroline Kennedy, President Marcos of the Philippines and Paul McCartney himself.

Their leader, the late lamented Mamoru “Chappy” Yoshii who died in 2017, was a professional John Lennon for thirty eight years, just two years less than John Lennon was John Lennon.  He fulfilled his role with remarkable verisimilitude, including traces of a Liverpool accent despite having little proficiency in English. Now a new and much younger adept has taken over.