Jimmy Page My Les Paul Guitar is My Mistress and Wife | Parade.comJimmy Page: My Les Paul Guitar is My Mistress and WifeThree real-life guitar heroes rock the house in “It Might Get Loud.” Jack White (White Stripes), Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), and The Edge (U2) get together for an impromptu jam session in Davis Guggenheim’s documentary tracing the rise of the electric guitar and three legendary musicians who made it their own.by Jeanne Wolf
Parade.com’s Jeanne Wolf found out some of Jimmy Page’s own rock memories and why he’ll miss the man who started it all, Les Paul, who passed away Thursday.
Jamming with The Edge and Jack White.
“What was so fascinating about it is that we are all really self-taught guitarists. We all have real interesting characteristics. It's not like we're part of an orchestra, where everyone has been taught the same way. But it turned out to be a great experience.”
Photos: Rock band reunionsRemembering Les Paul.
“He’s the man who started everything. He’s just a genius. He set the scene for what was to come as the pioneer of the electric guitar and new tape-recording technology. The Les Paul Gibson guitar that I got, I’ve played all the way through my career. It’s absolutely irreplaceable. I’ve had a marriage with that guitar. It’s my mistress and my wife -- and I don’t have to worry about paying any alimony. Of course, it has spawned some sons and daughters because I’ve acquired far too many guitars over the years. The blessed part is that I can’t play them all at once. If I just got back to my basic tools like the Les Paul, I suppose I could eliminate quite a few.”
Delivering newspapers got him started.
“I don't think my parents understood at all what I was doing, but they certainly didn't sabotage any of it. My dad bought me my first guitar, which was an acoustic. After that I wanted to pay for my own, so I got a paper route and got an electric one.”
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What he listened to as a kid.
“It was rock and roll and then the blues. It was just purely what was available to be heard in those days. I started listening to the radio and it was like this arm came out of the speaker and pulled me in. I was seduced. But for sure, I was influenced by all of those early rock and roll artists, the ones that came out of Memphis, Little Richard, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. These days I've been listening to a lot of rockabilly.”
Hearing his influence in current performers.
“That's how music travels on. I mean that's how I learned. But as far as the record business goes, it's in a total change at the moment. I think kids want to get their music for free, but they are keen to hear live music. So I don't know how that's going to work out at the end of the day.”
The secret to making a great song like “Stairway to Heaven.”
“How it came about was just tinkering around on the guitar. It came from that. That’s exactly how it happens. You might have just tuned up, and you start playing and one minute you have nothing, or just a couple of chords, and the next minute you’re actually coming up with some new vision.”
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Still finding new fans after all these years.
“I guess I was old before I got young. Whenever I think about it, I think you just get measured up by what you do, what you produce, as far as your music goes. For me, it’s almost like being in the same picture with a different frame.”
As for those blasted critics.
“You can just be sarcastic or you can try and look at the positive side of it and say, ‘Well, they just didn’t have a clue,’ Each of our albums was so radically different than the one that preceded it, I guess the reviewers had no point of reference. The people who bought our records and got into them understood what we were doing.”
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Don’t look for Led Zeppelin on Guitar Hero any time soon.
“Obviously, there have been overtures made to us, but if you start with the first track on the first Led Zeppelin album, ‘Good Times Bad Times,’ and you think of the drum part that John Bonham did -- how many drummers in the world can actually play that? It’s like if they opened their Guitar Hero and started dabbling, there could be a lot of alcohol consumed and they still wouldn’t come close to Bonham.”