Today, he cruises into his 80s on the wings of a stunning and elegant performance of Link Wray’s “Rumble” at the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame last November.
In 2023 alone, the grey-haired eminence bid farewell to Jeff Beck, one of his oldest friends – and earliest rivals – and Killing Joke’s Geordie Walker, a player Page has admired for decades. Jimi Hendrix is long gone, of course, and we lost Eddie Van Halen back in 2020. David Gilmour (77) and Eric Clapton (78) are still somewhat active but have ceased moving their music forward. More egregiously, Clapton, first of the triumvirate of guitar heroes to helm The Yardbirds, has been pushing unpleasant and harmful theories about vaccines and other hot button issues. Hardly the behavior of a god.
While it’s too reductive to say that Page stands alone on that mythical pinnacle, as there are some brilliant guitarists working today, it is safe to say that Page occupies a unique perch, as much for what he has done as for what he hasn’t. By age 20 he had served a rock ‘n’ roll apprenticeship on the road and established himself as one of the leading guitarists in London’s studio scene, playing acoustic and electric parts on everything from Goldfinger’s classic theme to songs by The Kinks, The Who, Marianne Faithfull and dozens of others less well-remembered. During a brief spell as an in-house producer, he tipped his hand as a sonic architect, shocking the strait-laced engineers by driving Clapton’s guitar into the red on “Telephone Blues” during a session for John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers.
Shortly after that, he joined The Yardbirds, first as a bassist just so see if he liked being in a band, but quickly moving into a twin lead guitar arrangement with Jeff Beck. Though short-lived thanks to Beck’s cantankerous nature, it was enough time for Page to recognize that studio work, with all its compromises, was no longer for him. The Yardbirds themselves, while a mighty force on stage, also faced restrictions in the studio that eventually contributed to their split. Then, in 1968, came the formation of Led Zeppelin, launching one of the most creatively and financially successful bands of all time and writing the names of Page, John Paul Jones, Robert Plant and John Bonham in the halls of legend.
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