In part one of our Jimmy Page interview from the October 1988 issue of GW, the legendary guitarist talks about his first solo album, Outrider, plus his roots and his creative process.

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Did you learn how to do that while making this album, or have you used your home studio in the past?

Yes, I've worked in this studio before, but there's accommodation so I was also living there as well. In the house I was in beforehand, I had a studio actually in the house. In fact, we did some of the Zeppelin stuff on In Through The Out Door there. It's a handy thing have, to say the least. But of course, you have to employ a discipline to keep things in balance.

Some artists who have home studios get obsessive about it -- to the degree they resent the fact that they have to leave in order to go on tour. Are you susceptible to that tendency?

Well, no, that's the very thing I want to do. I really love playing live – it’s such a gas. That's why I'll be on the road in the fall.

Prior to beginning work on Outrider, did you have specific musicians in mind or was it a process of trial and error?

Trial and error. Jason [Bonham] was involved from the kickoff, and he played really well. With some of the songs, [the players] took some time sort of learning them. I guess what seems to be easy to me, 'cause I suppose you play the way you think, or whatever ... it wasn't always easy for the other guys to grasp some of the ideas immediately. But then, once they got the thing of it, it was all right. Tony Franklin was involved to begin with on it, with Jason as well, but in fact we re-did some of the bass parts that he did -- in fact , most of them, really.

Was it a rhythmic inconsistency?

Yeah, a bit.

Well, you do have your own distinct sense of time. In fact, one of the elements that made Led Zeppelin so exciting was the tension generated by the juxtaposition of your sense of time with Bonham's -- the big ringing chord right on the heels of the snare hit, for instance. And on Outrider, you're generating a similar sort of rhythmic tension with his son.

With Jason -- he was in Air Ace and Virginia Wolfe prior to this -- from what he told me, with Virginia Wolfe, when it came to the recordings and such, he was actually just working with the time codes. But with this, he had a chance to ... well, explore his drumming, I suppose.

You didn't use click tracks, did you?

I did have to use a click track on "Liquid Mercury" -- 'cause that was a difficult one for them to remember.

At what point did you plug in the vocalists and lyrics?

John Miles was the first vocalist to come in, and I had the tracks actually done when he came in. So it was quite easy, really, to hear it, to gauge the feel of what everything was about. And then we just discussed the lyrical content and such. And away we went. 'Cause I don't sing, so I think if a guy's doing the lyrics, he's gonna sing them with more conviction than if he's doing yours, so to speak. That was the concept there, anyway, with two rock 'n' roll tracks and rock 'n' roll lyrics. Whereas you 've got the other end of the scale, where Chris Farlow just made up the lyrics as he went along on the blues, just as I'll make it up when I'm playing, at the same time. That's totally spontaneous, and it's great.

One of the more unorthodox aspects of your process was the fact that -- on the rock tracks, at least -- the vocals are part of the overlay rather than part of the nucleus of the song. In your work, the guitar is the primary element, and everything else is subordinate to it. Which leads me to what may sound like a semantic question: Do you see yourself as a composer who works primarily with guitars, or are you a guitarist whose parts become compositions?

Again, it's both, isn't it? It's both. Because it just depends on the way that the thing is put together in the first place. Obviously, if I've worked out a number before, that is composition -- then that is it. The fact was that I did have some demos that were gonna be the backbone of the album; I'd written quite a bit of stuff, actually -- in tunings, etc., etc. And in fact, they were at a house I wasn't living at the time –- I had a "domestic" situation. And when I went back there, that, along with quite a few other things -- Zeppelin tapes, etc., etc. – had disappeared. So consequently, rather than just tear my hair out over it, I just went in and started doin' it that way. Now I've located [the missing Zeppelin tapes] via bootleg -- I've seen 'em on bootleg lists.

Somebody must've lifted them with the intent of cashing in.

Musical rape, yeah.

You must be getting used to that by now.

It doesn't get any better, does it?

What were the demos like?

It was totally different to this stuff. There were two tapes, actually, that had a lot of stuff -- it was like a compilation of stuff -- I don't know if they're ever gonna re-surface. And if they do, well, they'll be heard anyway, won't they, so ... Those especially -- and I have in the past as well, employed a lot of tunings -- and then I'll
work around those tunings.

On other guitars?

They were all on acoustic, anyway. They were tunes, they were songs, you know, as such -- I mean, they didn't have lyrics to them, but they were ...

So this record might otherwise have turned out to be a Bert Jansch-style solo acoustic album.

A fabulous guitarist. He did some amazing instrumental work on his solo albums.

Y'know, you and I are the same age, so I feel I have some insight into what must've inspired you to start playing rock 'n' roll. I mean, we were both twelve and hitting puberty when Elvis came along.

Well, all of that, especially living in England. I mean, over here, you were lucky to have been around then. Just the whole energy of that rock 'n' roll explosion at that point was fantastic, wasn't it? And it still is.

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