Jimmy Page's Yardbirds

Jimmy Page’s Yardbirds

I was 15 when I lived in Cupertino California and went to see Led Zeppelin at Keezar stadium in San Francisco with my friends. It was near the end of the school year in 1972. I was finishing up my freshman year. Prior to that I saw Leslie West of Mountain and Jack Bruce from Cream play at Winterland also in neighboring San Francisco. Amazingly I still have both ticket stubs (somewhere).

What probably changed my life and my guitar playing was seeing Jimmy Page in person for the first time. Houses of the Holy had just come out and I bought a copy upon its release. I picked it apart note by note and guitar lick by guitar lick. Jimmy Page exceeded my expectations and I was thoroughly enamored by the whole Led Zeppelin spectacle.

I had a cousin who had told me he saw the Yardbirds several years earlier. Even though he told me he thought they sucked, I was impressed as I owned at least two Yardbirds albums. One had Eric Clapton and the other was a live album with Jimmy Page. One song in particular that impressed me with Page on guitar was “Over Under Sideways Down”. Page wasn’t on the original version of this song, but he did the tune justice live. There was a certain guitar lick that in hindsight was much alike a riff in Moby Dick and Heartbreaker from Led Zeppelin two. I’d have to show it to you. It much resembles what we guitar players might consider to be a “hammer-on”. Whatever!

The Yardbirds were obviously yesterday’s soggy cereal and Page was advancing without them. Clapton was long down the road with Cream and Beck had long since formed the Jeff Beck Group with a new talented singer by the name of Rod Stewart.

Jimmy Page knew in advance there would be little point in reforming and reinventing the already outdated Yardbirds. Its true Jimi Hendrix put a positive spin on playing lead guitar and bending notes, but Page learned how to bend strings from legend blues players. Hendrix didn’t invent it, he emulated it into his own style. Page did the very same thing but added principles acquired from years of playing in various musical settings. It’s been claimed Hendrix set the standard for heavy rock guitar playing which is an absolutely false premise.

The Yardbirds had a substantial draw when realized by ticket sales. It’s also true that Page saw the advantages of the larger crowds and bigger venues away from the club scene. Page heard a bigger sound that was very soulful, but also bigger than life. “Heavy”. The Yardbirds could never fit this profile Page had in mind. Robert Plant and John Bonham were the newer and more modern energy Page was hearing and wanted for the new band.

The band would need order. Page knew this well ahead of the venture. In the process of finding the right session musicians, Page enlisted an old friend, John Paul Jones. Jones would be Page’s production mate. However, instead Jones fit perfectly as a forth member of the band in a position where a handful of session musicians were discarded.

A small number of “takes” like Dazed and Confused had proved Jones to be more than just a sideman or a simple session player. Jones clicked with the band plain and simple. Page didn’t need to look any further. He had precisely what constituted the heavy sound he was striving for. From that point forward Page did what he did best. He wrote songs and guitar parts. Plant chimed in at first with basic lyrics and ideas he had penned previously with other groups that didn’t gain momentum and the nucleus of the writing pact had begun. Did Page write lyrics? Did Plant play guitar? Plant knew enough guitar to write melodies and Page knew enough about lyrics to fill holes and guide Plant’s amphonic voice and versatile talent. John Bonham provided a very strengthened and steady beat. John Paul Jones played all the right bass lines and filled in the missing pieces with his keyboard skills.

By the time the second Led Zeppelin album arrived at the record stores, album sales outpaced Led Zeppelin’s bookings not only in Europe, but in the states. By the summer of 1971, Zeppelin was touring their first album while their second album was airing and climbing to the top ten. The tour was halted momentarily to regroup and retool from minor television spots to greater plans of full scale shows in stadiums all over the United States.

Where the Beatles invaded America and played a good share of large auditoriums and large venues, Led Zeppelin conquered arrogantly and loudly. Led Zeppelin was a first of its kind and an invention of its own making. There was nothing close to the magnitude of Zeppelin in sound and stature. Certainly Zeppelin was so much louder than anyone else had been before. A newer and advanced sound technology was setting foot in large rooms and Led Zeppelin stepped in with two feet well planted.

But it wasn’t that Led Zeppelin was loud or had bigger amps than anyone had ever had. There was a lot of excitement in the air as rock was making yet another change and a new era was coming into play. Hearts were beating harder and toe tapping became stomping feet. The chords were struck and could be heard everywhere with Whole Lotta Love and the beat thundered with songs like Moby Dick. The new standard followed and we were all there to bare witness.

I was watching some Youtube clips recently of Led Zeppelin minus the deceased John Bonham with Jason Bonham filling in his place. Jimmy Page appears to be an older yet sober rock guitar god and Plant looks much older as well. But their songs still remain the same. So many young guns have tried to copy Page and very few singers come close to making the sounds Plant made as a young man fronting one of the greatest bands in rock and roll history. There just isn’t another Led Zeppelin somewhere else in time. This was the one and only. Ironically, when they are all finally gone and laid to rest, so will I.