Jimmy Page and the late Jeff Beck’s origin stories overlap in all kinds of ways. They emerged from the same scene and became friends. Both had stints in the Yardbirds, both became greats of the instrument.

But in a 1977 interview with Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press, which was republished in the November 1991 issue of Guitar World, Page revealed just how close he and Beck came to forming a band together – and this band was the O.G. Led Zeppelin.

“We were going to form a group called Led Zeppelin at the time of the Beck’s Bolero sessions, with the line-up from that session,” said Page. “It was going to be me and Beck on guitars, [Keith] Moon on drums, and maybe Nicky Hopkins on piano.

“The only one from the session who wasn’t going to be in it was [John Paul Jones] Jonesy, who had played bass. Instead, Moon suggested we bring in Entwistle as bassist and lead singer as well.”

Not only would it have a twin-guitar act of Beck and Page, this Original Led Zeppelin was to have the rhythm section of the Who, with Keith Moon on drums and John Entwistle on bass guitar.

“After some discussion we decided to use another singer,” Page added. “The first choice was Stevie Winwood, but it was decided that he was too heavily committed to Traffic at the time, and probably wouldn’t be interested.

“Next, we thought of Stevie Marriott. He was approached, and seemed to be full of glee about it. Then a message came from the business side of Marriott, which said, 'How would you like to play guitar with broken fingers? You will if you don’t stay away from Stevie.' After that the idea sort of fell apart.”

This ‘Original Led Zeppelin’ could have returned to Moon’s original idea of having Entwistle front the band. But the year was 1967, and things were moving fast.

“We just said, ‘Let’s forget about the whole thing, quick.’ Instead of being more positive about it and looking for another singer, we just let it slip by,” said Page. “Then the Who began a tour, the Yardbirds began a tour and that was it.”

And all things considered, it worked out just fine. Page might have been upset that the Yardbirds were coming apart but they were soon to evolve. John Paul Jones called Page and asked if he wanted to do something together. “Jonesy was in,” said Page.

Terry Reid was mooted to front the next iteration of the Yardbirds, though he had signed up with Mickie Most. But he was eager to help. Reid put Page in touch with the singer in a band called Hobbstweedle. Robert Plant was his name.

Page had to pinch himself. He couldn’t believe it. This guy Plant had the stuff.

“When I auditioned him and heard him sing, I immediately thought there must be something wrong with his personality, or that he had to be impossible to work with,” Page remembered.

“I just could not understand why he hadn’t become a big name yet. So I had him down to my place for a little while, just to sort of check him out, and we got along great. No problems.”

And Plant knew a drummer by the name of John Bonham and that was that… The real original Led Zeppelin was born. Though Keith Moon can still take the credit for naming the band.

“It was Moon,” Page answered when asked who named the band. “I’m sure, despite anything Entwistle may have said. Entwistle must have just been upset that the original Led Zeppelin never took off.”

Starting in 1996, Guitar World was honored to publish a handful of lesson columns authored by Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. The following column, from our April 1997 issue, has been edited for use online.

A mature musician exercises restraint when the situation calls for it. In other words, what you don’t play is just as important as what you do. It actually takes more discipline to stick to an ostinato (repeating) figure for eight or 16 bars than it does to throw in gratuitous fills that don’t necessarily add to the music.

There are times, however, when playing a high melodic figure is most effective. The key is to know when to walk and when to run, or when to “stomp” and when to “noodle.” I’d like to illustrate this concept by citing a few contrasting examples of bass (and keyboard) parts I’ve played, and explain why I chose to play what I did.

First, let’s look at Trampled Under Foot, from Physical Graffiti. For the main verse figure in G minor, I simply stayed on the low G root note and locked in with Bonzo [John Bonham]’s kick drum. I also took this same “four-on-the-floor” approach with the clavinet part. The lesson here is: don’t mess with a great groove.

A fine example of a tune that epitomizes both approaches – “hard” and “soft” – is The Song Remains the Same, which we looked at briefly in one of my previous columns.

For the D-Dsus4 parts I played a tight, punctuated bass figure together with the drums. But when it came to the “floaty” part (:36-:42), where Jimmy Page quietly strums Dm9 and G13 chords, I played a lofty melodic run high up on the neck using the D Dorian scale.

The slow part of the tune (the half-time verse section) also illustrates these contrasting approaches. After hitting the big kicks (C-C-G) with Page and Bonzo (2:02), I played a descending scalar figure (F# Mixolydian) and then an ascending arpeggio (F) behind Page’s jangly F#7-Fmaj7 changes.

For most of Kashmir (Physical Graffiti), I played rather straightforward and repetitive bass and Mellotron keyboard parts. The only exceptions were the sinuous “Arabian string symphony” Mellotron parts I improvised during the two choruses. If you listen to the recording, you’ll notice how those string melodies move independently of the rhythm of the underlying groove.

In quite a different vein is Ramble On, from Led Zeppelin II. Behind Page’s two-bar chord vamp during the verse sections, I repeated an upper-register bass counter-melody that ended up becoming one of the more memorable parts of the tune.

I took a similar approach in What Is and What Should Never Be (Led Zeppelin II), but with a bit more variation. Playing in this sort of casual, melodic way seemed like the best thing to do at the moment, considering the fact that Jimmy’s part was so simple and subdued (E9-A13 chords).

Notice on the recording how well all the parts mesh during the verse sections, especially the bass and drums, and how everyone comes together in locked-step fashion for the chorus.

The main point here is that when it comes to playing music, there’s a time and a place for everything. Listen carefully to the overall sound of the rhythm section, and make wise, unselfish decisions as to what you should play at any given moment.

Approaching every arrangement in terms of opposites or contrasts between different sections – loud vs. soft, loose vs. tight, floaty vs. busy – will ultimately make your music more interesting.

The following feature contains excerpts from Blow by Blow: The Jeff Beck Story by Brad Tolinski & Chris Gill, out now via Da Capo.

Iconic guitars aren’t necessarily dime-a-dozen (as proven by the results of Christie’s recent Jim Irsay Auction where several instruments sold for astonishing prices that beat previous records), but they are relatively plentiful as almost every player of note is associated with a particular famous guitar, or several.

However, instances where two or more legendary guitarists are associated with one single guitar are much rarer, with the 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard that once belonged to Peter Green and Gary Moore (and is currently owned by Kirk Hammett) and the red “Lucy” Les Paul that passed from John Sebastian to Rick Derringer to Eric Clapton to George Harrison being notable examples.

A certain 1959 Fender Telecaster also enjoys legendary “two-timer” status for the roles it played in the early careers of Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page – two titans of the highly influential ’60s British blues-rock triumvirate, which also included fellow Yardbirds alumnus Eric Clapton.

This was the guitar that Beck played as he rose through the ranks of London’s burgeoning blues-rock/R&B club scene during the early ’60s through his beginnings with the Yardbirds and that later became Page’s main instrument on Led Zeppelin’s 1969 debut album and was featured on select later recordings, including the solo for Stairway to Heaven.

How or when this particular 1959 Telecaster ended up in England is unknown, but its earliest known history can be traced to sometime in late 1960 or early 1961 when John Owen purchased it as a used instrument for £107.

This was a late-1959 example, featuring a slab rosewood neck, white eight-screw pickguard, light blonde finish that looked almost white and an ashtray bridge with six holes for top-loading the strings (a short-lived, poorly conceived feature), although the late-’59 model also had holes for anchoring strings through the body.

Owen was a good friend of Jeff Beck during their teenage years, and when Beck got an offer to join a band called the Deltones he accepted only under the condition that they also hire Owen on rhythm guitar.

It was a bold move, but Beck’s loyalty ran deep. Owen had been one of his biggest supporters, often lifting his spirits during moments of self‑doubt. And then there was a more self-serving reason: Beck coveted Owen’s ’59 Tele.

During his tenure with the Deltones, Beck experimented with several different instruments, including a Hofner Futurama III and a 1960 sunburst Fender Stratocaster, the latter purchased in 1961 with his mother’s reluctant help as a guarantor.

Although both were solid, professional-quality instruments, he gravitated toward Owen’s Tele, borrowing it so frequently that it became less of a loan and more of a permanent arrangement. Eventually, Beck convinced Owen to part with it for good, most likely shortly after Beck traded his Strat for a 1953 Ford Zephyr in late 1962 or early ’63.

The ’59 Telecaster remained Beck’s trusty companion as he joined various bands during the early ’60s, including the Nightshift and the Tridents.

“When I first heard Beck, I just thought, ‘What the fuck was that?’” Tridents lead guitarist Mike Jopp, who Beck replaced, later recalled.

“There was this guy with a Telecaster and a Binson Echorec, and the notes were flying everywhere. Nobody at that point was doing anything like it. He was incredibly flashy, pressing the strings behind the nut, detuning them, making sounds that were just otherworldly. He was on a whole different level.”

At some point, Beck swapped the Tele’s original white single-layer pickguard for a black pickguard. Beck idolized the early ’50s black-guard Esquires he first saw as an impressionable 13-year-old in the hands of the guitarists in Little Richard and Gene Vincent’s bands in the film The Girl Can’t Help It. This simple cosmetic modification brought the Tele closer to those guitars of his dreams.

The Telecaster remained in this state when Beck replaced Clapton as the lead guitarist for the Yardbirds in March 1965. The guitar appeared in Beck’s highly capable hands in his early television appearances with the Yardbirds on shows like Ready Steady Go! and Top of the Pops.

It also appeared in a promotional film shot on June 16, 1965, for American television where the band campily mimicked a performance of For Your Love while dressed in Renaissance Faire regalia. Beck played the Tele on his earliest recordings with the Yardbirds, including the seminal raga-rock hit Heart Full of Soul.

When the Yardbirds returned from Paris, where they opened shows for the Beatles on June 20, 1965, the Telecaster temporarily went missing. While on a previous tour with the Walker Brothers, Beck noticed a 1954 Fender Esquire that belonged to Walker Brothers guitarist John Maus.

The Esquire had a blond maple neck – a feature rarely seen on Fender guitars imported to Britain as most Fenders that made their way to U.K. shores were later models with rosewood fingerboards.

Needing a quick replacement for the lost Tele, Beck made a beeline to Maus and bought the Esquire for £75. When Beck later replaced the white pickguard for a black one, he finally had an Esquire that cosmetically matched the ones he lusted after in The Girl Can’t Help It.

When the ’59 Telecaster was eventually recovered, Beck lost interest in it in favor of his new axe. That interest waned even further when Beck bought a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard in early 1966 and the Les Paul became his main guitar.

When the Yardbirds’ newly hired manager, Simon Napier-Bell, distributed funds from a large advance he negotiated for the band from EMI Records, Jeff bought a 1963 Corvette Stingray. The next day he drove it to his good friend Jimmy Page’s house along with the ’59 Telecaster.

“I was still living with my parents at the time in Epsom,” Page said. “And I heard this car come roaring up. I looked out the window and I saw this blue Stingray outside… and Jeff’s coming out and he’s holding this guitar. [I thought] ‘Oh, he’s come to have a play.’

“He knocked on the door and explained that [the Yardbirds] had just done a new deal and he bought the Stingray with it. Then he said, ‘Here, this is yours’ and gave me his 1959 Telecaster. He said, ‘This is yours for getting me in the Yardbirds.’ Well, obviously, I was really moved, you know, because there was a lot of love in that gesture of giving it to me.”

When Beck gave Page the Tele, Jeff had restored it to its original cosmetic appearance by replacing the black pickguard with either its original white pickguard or one he made himself. Later, when Page joined Beck in the Yardbirds – first on bass and soon as a second lead guitarist – he played the Tele with the band. Page perfected his signature use of the violin bow on this guitar while performing alongside Beck.

The ’59 Tele got the first of two significant cosmetic modifications Page performed to the guitar shortly after Beck left the Yardbirds in late 1966. First, Page acquired eight small circular mirrors and glued them to the guitar’s top on the upper bout and below the bridge as well as to the pickguard.

“After Jeff left, I started to think much more about my visual image with the band,” Page wrote in Jimmy Page: The Anthology (Genesis Publications, 2020).

“I wanted there to be more to the Telecaster than just the sound it made. I thought that maybe I could do something with light, maybe reflecting light from the guitar onto the audience to make a kind of kinetic sculpture. It started to become an art piece in its own right.”

Eventually, Page decided to make a second, even more dramatic modification to the Tele’s appearance by stripping off its finish, installing a custom reflective pickguard that displayed changing colors under bright spotlights and painting a multi-colored dragon image on the body.

“I painted it in one go over the course of an evening, finishing it the next day,” Page recalled in The Anthology. “The pattern took on the imagery of a dragon. I was quite happy with the way it ended up. Now it was the ‘Dragoncaster.’ I played it on the last Yardbirds recordings at the Anderson Theater in New York and on Led Zeppelin. Once it was created and painted it became like the legendary Excalibur as it traveled from the Yardbirds to Led Zeppelin.”

The “Dragoncaster” became a familiar sight at Led Zeppelin’s early shows up until April 1969 when Page bought a Les Paul Standard from Joe Walsh while the band was on tour in the United States. The Les Paul promptly became Page’s main guitar, and he left the ’59 Telecaster behind at his home after Led Zeppelin returned to England in June 1969.

Led Zeppelin’s North American tour resumed during July and August 1969, and when Page came back home in September he was greeted with an unwelcome surprise from his house sitter.

“It’s a tragic story,” Page told Guitar World in 1998. “When I got back, a friend of mine had kindly painted over my paint job. He said, ‘I’ve got a present for you.’ He thought he had done me a real favor. As you can guess, I wasn’t real happy about that. His paint job totally screwed up the sound and the wiring, so only the neck pickup worked.”

In despair, Page stripped off the paint once again. He managed to repair the wiring and used the Tele for one last hurrah in 1970 when he recorded his solo for Stairway to Heaven. “I salvaged the neck and put it on my brown (string bender) Tele that I used in the Firm,” he told GW in 1998. “As for the body, it will never be seen again!”

That statement led many guitar fans to believe that the guitar had joined the list of legendary “lost Teles,” a rumor that still persists to this day. Fortunately, Page broke his controversial promise in 2019, not only by resurrecting the Tele but also by painstakingly reproducing his original dragon artwork from detailed photos and his own memory.

“It was the Met (the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City) wanting to include this guitar in the Play It Loud exhibition that gave me the motivation to get it repainted,” Page wrote in The Anthology. “I’d been meaning to do it at some point but had had so many projects to do and now was the time.”

Later that year, Fender released signature models based on the “mirrored” and “dragon” versions of this legendary 1959 Telecaster, each offered as both a production model and as a limited-edition Custom Shop release.

The Fender Jimmy Page Dragon and Mirror Telecasters were long-overdue tributes to a truly iconic guitar that played a massive role in the historic British blues-rock movement during the ’60s by inspiring the development of hard rock and heavy metal, which made the electric guitar the leading voice of rebellion and free expression ever since.

• This feature contains excerpts from Blow by Blow: The Jeff Beck Story by Brad Tolinski & Chris Gill, out now via Da Capo.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Pedals Week 2026: Looper pedals are undoubtedly one of the best writing tools a guitar player can have in their arsenal, but they’re also invaluable for anyone looking to sharpen their skills as a soloist, both technically and theoretically.

You could take the chord progression from one of your favorite songs, for example, and start testing out new ideas – which will help you find your voice and identity on your instrument.

As any Guitar World reader already knows, it can be highly rewarding to learn your favorite solos note for note, but studying the chord progression underneath them will help you put your own spin on things. And this is precisely where a looper will come in handy.

Some of the world’s greatest solos were written over movements that allowed the players to create something truly astounding and unique. The more attention you pay to chords and rhythms, the more impactful your solo might end up sounding.

Play the chords into your looper and start experimenting with different sounds and feels. You might notice how some tracks stay in one key and allow you to build your story a scene at a time without any radical harmonic departures.

In other situations, you might notice that some of the chords you’re playing over allow you to add in other tonalities and venture outside of the key, with options for more ear-catching notes from a different scale – from the introduction of Dorian, Aeolian or Mixolydian flavors to more dramatic-sounding harmonic and melodic minor scales.

So, even if you feel like music theory isn’t a strong point, just a little bit of due diligence can go a long way to impress listeners and help you learn how to deliver a solo that truly soars and sings. Your ear is the most important thing here.

Here are 10 tracks that are great for looping, with repetitive progressions that give you plenty of opportunities to conjure up something extra special.

1. Eagles – Hotel California

It’s one of those songs that’s always in the running for the greatest guitar solo(s) of all-time, with Don Felder and Joe Walsh going head to head before joining forces for some lavish harmonized arpeggios at the end.

The minor chord progression underneath is what gives ample opportunity to create something dramatic, with the V chord being changed to dominant (F#7 instead of F#min) and the IV chord alternating between major and minor instead of staying minor.

This is what allows soloists to switch between B pentatonic and Aeolian to harmonic minor, especially on the substituted chords Ultimately, the goal here is to not stick with one scale – make your solo more fluid and unpredictable to catch listeners off-guard.

2. John Mayer – Slow Dancing In A Burning Room

If you’re looking for the perfect song to master your C# minor pentatonic chops, as well as its E major relative, this could very well be it. Unlike Hotel California, the progression is completely diatonic and therefore feels like it’s all in one key, so it’s more about phrasing and delivery than note choices when targeting chords.

With a laid-back tempo and slinky feel, it’s the kind of musical scenario that calls for big pentatonic bends, and therefore works as a practice tool for pitch accuracy. It’s worth asking yourself what note are you trying to bend up to and how close are you getting.

3. Pink Floyd – Comfortably Numb

Often cited as one of David Gilmour’s greatest moments, this final single from Pink Floyd’s 1979 rock opera The Wall is an absolute masterclass in how to speak B minor pentatonic.

Pay attention to your vibrato and note choice, because these are two areas where Gilmour is known to excel, and see if you can find your own lines that feel natural and avoid over-complication.

The bar where the chords drop from G to F#min and Emin calls for something extra special – think about what you can play to emphasize the movement underneath you and have some fun with it.

4. B.B. King – The Thrill Is Gone

Anyone trying to master the art of 12-bar blues will undoubtedly come across this Grammy-winning hit from 1969. This is another B minor progression that’s all about the bends – know exactly what you’re aiming for and see what happens when you undershoot or overshoot to unlock “the in-between notes” on the fretboard, like the original blues masters.

The minor pentatonic will be your friend here, but if you’re looking to spice things up, try introducing B melodic minor or A# half-whole diminished scales over the dominant chord (F#7) to create tension before the progression returns to root. This resolution from the V chord to the I is often referred to as a perfect cadence.

5. Metallica – Wherever I May Roam

Arguably one of the most famous heavy metal tracks written using the Phrygian scale, the fourth single from Metallica’s self-titled landmark album of 1991 is a great way of introducing yourself to more outside ideas.

For his solo, Kirk Hammett chose to use a mixture of E minor pentatonic and E Phrygian Dominant – which is the fifth mode of A harmonic minor – to great effect. The big jump from a minor second to a major third is a surefire way of capturing people’s attention.

Use it too much, however, and it loses its effect. So try switching between Phrygian, which has a minor third, and its dominant sibling to mix things up – essentially swapping a G for a G# wherever you think it feels right. Follow your ears and have fun.

6. Led Zeppelin – Stairway To Heaven

Maybe don’t try this one while testing looper pedals in your local guitar shop, but if you’re hoping to explore the world of natural minor, this hit provides a perfect backdrop.

The A minor pentatonic scale will do the trick for most of the chords, but highlighting the F chord with an F note will add a sense of sophistication to what you play, showing everyone how you understand the song’s inner workings by targeting the sound of a minor 6th at exactly the right time.

If you listen to the last note of Jimmy Page’s opening line, you’ll hear how it creates an atmosphere of tension after the familiarity of more bluesy sounds.

7. Free – All Right Now

Some of the world’s greatest guitar solos aren’t strictly major or minor, with the player blending ideas from both worlds into one seamless package. This 1970 hit is one of those, thanks to Paul Kossoff’s iconic fretwork halfway into the song.

Maybe start off in A major pentatonic and work your way into A minor pentatonic as your solo builds towards its grand crescendo, or try using both in a ‘call and answer’ fashion. Kossoff’s vibrato also played a huge part in his solo’s overall feel, so experiment with how you shake the notes you’re choosing to let ring – there’s plenty of space to get creative and express yourself here.

8. Joe Bonamassa – Sloe Gin

The New York blues maverick is one of the undisputed titans of the long-form solo, and the title track from his 2007 album is the perfect example of why that is. Once you’ve recorded the chords into your looping pedal, begin with some simple phrases in D minor and slowly build your ideas in terms of intensity and dynamics.

The original solo is almost three minutes long and never outstays its welcome. Holding back is an art form in itself – and playing along to a progression like this is a great way of learning how to flow naturally through control and discipline, keeping the listener on the edge of their seats every step of the way.

The chords to Purple Rain by Prince would also work very well for this – look at it as telling a story with a beginning, middle and end, rather than going in all guns blazing.

9. Joe Satriani – Flying In A Blue Dream

If you’re mainly used to pentatonic scales, Lydian – which is the fourth mode of the major scale – can present some serious challenges when it comes to phrasing.

Jamming along to the chords from this title track on Joe Satriani’s third full-length, released in 1989, is a great way of familiarizing yourself with these shapes and sounds. You can look at C Lydian from a G major perspective, which is its parent scale, or think of it as C major with a sharpened fourth, or even C major pentatonic with the inclusion of a B and an F.

Ultimately, different ways of visualizing a scale can help you explore new sonic horizons. Experiment with every possibility, even the ones that feel more confusing and less natural, because they might push you in a completely new direction.

10. Gary Moore – Parisienne Walkways

Much like Moore’s most famous track Still Got The Blues, this late ’70s hit is a great way of getting used to cycle-of-fifth progressions, also typified by songs like Autumn Leaves and I Will Survive.

Parisienne Walkways is in the key of A natural minor but at the end of the main progression, the perfect cadence of a V chord (E7) into the I chord (Amin) provides an opportunity to use the A harmonic minor scale for extra tension, which is then released by resolving back to the root.

Like Stairway To Heaven, it’s a great way of learning how to change just one note over the right chord and provide more depth for the listener to appreciate, taking them on a journey that travels further and therefore exceeds expectation.

Ever wondered why there seems to be an unspoken rule not to play Led Zeppelin’s opus, Stairway to Heaven, at your local guitar store? All roads – or, ahem, stairways – lead to the 1992 movie Wayne’s World. Specifically, the scene that’s forever cemented in pop culture and guitar lore.

“I think this whole thing started with Wayne's World making fun of Stairway,” Guitar Center CEO Gabe Dalporto tells Guitar World, referring to the iconic “No Stairway, Denied” scene.

Perhaps frustrated by the sheer number of players attempting to emulate Jimmy Page, Guitar Center employees did in fact, at some point, “Put signs up in the stores [saying], ‘No Stairway.’

“And then I think people got scared to play Stairway… and so almost nobody played Stairway anymore,” Dalporto admits.

Fast-forward to 2025, and Lithuanian multi-instrumentalist and content creator Døvydas decided to test the waters and bring badly played renditions of the Led Zeppelin classic back to stores nationwide.

Dalportpo continues, “He's like, ‘Hey, I want to come in and shoot in Guitar Center.’ So I went down and met with him, and we're like, ‘I think it's time, let's lift the ban.’ And so we did a version of Stairway. We're just kind of jamming and playing back and forth… and we officially lifted the ban.”

And while Stairway to Heaven is finally back on the cards, there are a couple of songs that Guitar Center staff members would rather not hear again.

“We went and did a survey – the top 10 most overplayed songs and most hated songs in Guitar Center – [and] the number one song was [Metallica’s] Master of Puppets,” Dalporto reveals, referring to the company's recently published list of the 10 most-played guitar riffs in its stores.

In a seperate interview with Guitar World’, Dalporto addressed the skepticism surrounding Guitar Center's new in-house brand.

In June 1980, Led Zeppelin embarked on a 14-date tour of Europe. Beginning on June 17, in Dortmund, Germany, the tour would also wrap up in Germany, with a July 7 show at Eissporthalle an der Jafféstraße in Berlin.

Tragically, that Berlin show would prove to be the band's last ever performance with drummer John Bonham, who passed away on September 25, 1980, after a day of heavy drinking. He was just 32 years old.

Though Bonham's health was already in decline throughout the summer trek (he collapsed three songs into the band's June 27, 1980 show in Nuremberg, Germany, forcing the band to cancel the rest of the show), you can't hear any evidence of it in the soundboard recording – posted below – of the band's July 7 gig.

Throughout the 14-song set – which included a number of tunes (In the Evening, Hot Dog and All My Love) from the band's 1979 In Through the Out Door album, alongside classics like Black Dog, Kashmir, Whole Lotta Love, and Stairway to Heaven – Bonham was in typically thunderous form. Like the rest of the band, Bonham was all too eager to show audiences that – even after a decade-plus at rock's pinnacle – the mighty Zepp still had plenty of gas in the tank.

Though their commercial standing had never been higher at the dawn of the ‘80s, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and Bonham were jittery about the band's place in rock at the time.

The band's August 4 and 11, 1979 mega-shows in Knebworth, England – designed to be a triumphant live return to their home country after an absence of four years – were polarizing. Many fans felt that the gaudy production of the concerts – which were attended by hundreds of thousands of people in total – distracted from the music itself, which was more than a little ragged at times.

Of course, by this time, punk and especially new wave had gone from buzzy sub-genres to the kings of the hill, rendering the long-form, blues-based music of Zeppelin and their late-‘60s/early ‘70s contemporaries largely out of fashion.

With that in mind, the quartet viewed their summer 1980 gigs as a reset. No big light show, no lasers, no white smoke – not even any lengthy stand-alone solos or flamboyant outfits.

Even the venues on the tour were significantly downsized, the small Western and Central European arenas the band tore through on it being a far cry from the masses at Knebworth and the enormous arena and stadium American crowds the band had entertained on their last tour, all the way back in 1977.

The success of the 1980 European tour gave the band a jolt of momentum, and persuaded them to book a North American tour for the fall of 1980, with a similarly scaled-down approach.

It was during rehearsals for that tour – which was scheduled to begin on October 17 – that Bonham passed away.

We'll obviously never quite know how Led Zeppelin would have evolved from 1980 forward had Bonham lived, but the soundboard recording from their last show with him certainly suggests that they had plenty of musical fire left.

Since emerging alongside singer-songwriter Lyle Lovett in the 1990s, Viktor Krauss has forged a formidable reputation as a modern-day session player on both the electric and acoustic bass.

His intuitive bass work can be heard on Bill Frisell’s Gone, Just Like A Train and James Taylor’s American Standard, while his talent pool as a gifted multi-instrumentalist has been tapped by Alison Krauss in support of her collaborative work with Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant.

“Stuart Duncan and I became the utility players in that band,” says Krauss. “I played electric guitar, acoustic guitar, six-string Danelectro bass, tic-tac bass, keyboards – whatever was needed. Stuart was doing the same thing with banjo, mandolin, fiddle, and a whole range of instruments. It was a lot of fun.”

High points of his career are many, but working alongside Plant ranks among the highest. “The thing that struck me most is that he's exactly the person you'd hope he'd be. He's incredibly smart, gracious, and makes eye contact with everyone. Nobody feels left out of the conversation when he's around.

“Every now and then I’d see footage of Led Zeppelin from 1973 and suddenly remember, ‘Oh right – he actually lived all of that.’”

“Sometimes he'll instinctively create a little extra tension before a phrase resolves, and everybody has to react in real time. His intuition is incredible, and you have to stay on your toes because he's constantly improvising.

“As someone who grew up as a huge Led Zep fan, there were moments where he'd play a phrase that sounded like something straight out of a Zeppelin record.

“I remember one rehearsal Robert asked, ‘Do you know a Led Zeppelin song called The Ocean?’ I just casually answered, ‘Yeah, I think I know that song.’ Those moments were all pretty amazing.”

How did you get the gig with Lyle Lovett?

Even before I moved to Nashville, I'd heard The Large Band record and started thinking seriously about where I wanted my career to go.

I'd spent a lot of time playing big band music, but what Lyle was doing felt unique. He was blending swing, country, and a lot of other influences, and I remember thinking as early as 1989 that I'd like to play with him someday.

When I moved to Nashville in 1992, I started trying to figure out who was on his team. Through various connections, I eventually got to know some people around his management.

At the time, I was playing with Peter Rowan, who was connected to both the bluegrass world through Bill Monroe and the West Coast scene through Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. Peter was this fascinating combination of influences, and through that network I met people who knew Lyle's camp.

Eventually I called, and introduced myself. The response was, ‘Lyle doesn't need anybody now, but I'll keep you in mind.’ So every once in a while I'd check in.

I had a really lean summer in 1994. Peter wasn't working much, and I just thought, ‘Let me call and see if there's anything going on.’ Before I could even finish my sentence, the manager said, ‘Oh yeah, Lyle might need a bass player.’

I didn't know if it was actually going to happen, but about ten days before the tour started, I got the call: ‘You've got the gig.’

This was around the I Love Everybody record, which had come out in 1994. It was a huge amount of material to learn. The band was essentially a trio with occasional horns, and the bass parts were pretty demanding. Fortunately, a lot of it featured upright bass, which played to my strengths.

I learned all the material, and from that point on I stayed with Lyle for most of the next 10 or 12 years. There were a few breaks when we were raising kids, but I worked with him regularly until 2022, when I started working more with Robert Plant and Alison. It was an incredible run. I still occasionally do shows with him. I played a couple this year, and every time it's just fun.

Can you share some insights on your recordings with Bill Frisell?

Working with Bill was amazing. It's funny – if people know me for anything, it often seems to be those records, especially Gone, Just Like A Train. That's the one that comes up most often.

I didn't know Bill before working with him. When he was making the Nashville record, a few people recommended me because I had experience in both jazz and bluegrass circles. They thought I might be a good fit.

I remember talking to him on the phone, then meeting in the studio in September 1995. We started playing together and I immediately thought, ‘Wow. What is this?’ We seemed to hit it off right away.

We made several records: Nashville, Gone, Just Like A Train, Good Dog, Happy Man, The Sweetest Punch, which was a collaboration involving Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello. That's the most overtly jazz-oriented thing I did with Bill.

That record featured Brian Blade, Curtis Fowlkes, and Billy Drewes. I remember feeling like I was part of a very special group of musicians. We also did projects like Disfarmer and some soundtrack work.

Those records were all wonderful experiences because everything made sense to me. I had enough experience in the different musical worlds he was drawing from that I felt very comfortable in that environment.

What was your goal on Gone, Just Like A Train?

On that album, it was just Bill, Jim Keltner, and me. Jim could go way out, Bill could go way out, and I was perfectly happy being the thing that held it all together. That role was more enjoyable to me than playing lots of solos.

Some of the bass parts he wrote out very specifically, almost like piano music, with split staves showing melody and bass movement, but what I really enjoyed was being the anchor.

How about James Taylor?

I initially overdubbed on one or two songs for his American Standard album, but it eventually turned into nine tracks. Some of those overdubs were even recorded from a hotel room while I was out on the road.

I only spent one day with him in person, but he was everything you'd hope he'd be – kind, thoughtful, and easy to work with. He was another one of those people who completely lived up to the image you have of them.

I'd listened to him so much growing up that when I started playing on those tracks, I realized all I really needed to do was listen to the lowest note of his guitar part and support that. It was a really fun way to fit into the music.

Do you have a go-to bass tone?

My favorite bass sound is actually the live bass tone on No Quarter by Led Zeppelin. John Paul Jones was using those Fender bass pedals, and I have a set myself. They're organ-style pedals, which give you a huge, thick fundamental low-end. That's what I'm often chasing on upright bass.

For bass guitar, a lot depends on right-hand placement and how much attack you want. I tend to like flatwound strings with a strong lower-mid-range presence. Something warm and substantial that can be shaped easily in a mix.

How do you setup in the studio?

For upright bass, I have a default microphone position that I like, and I always run a direct signal at the same time. Then I leave it up to the engineer to decide how much of each source they want in the final mix.

I use a Fishman BP-100 pickup. It has a lot of upper-mids and top-end, which helps me hear the pitch more clearly. It's an insurance policy for playing in tune.

Electric bass is more variable. It depends on the project. Is it a modern record? Something vintage-sounding? Does it call for a short-scale bass? A Precision Bass? A Jazz Bass? Something active? Usually the song dictates the choice.

What skills do musicians need to be successful?

It's interesting because when you look at successful musicians versus incredibly talented musicians who never quite get the break they're hoping for, talent alone isn't usually the deciding factor.

In places like Nashville, it's almost assumed that you're a good musician. That's the minimum requirement. A lot of success comes down to professionalism. Being prepared. Being on time. Being pleasant to work with. Showing genuine enthusiasm for what other people are doing. People want to be around people who seem excited to be there.

Networking matters too. Years ago, I would regularly go through my address book and call people I hadn't spoken to in a while. I'd reconnect, catch up, and maintain those relationships. Today that often happens through texts and emails, but the principle is the same.

How about from a playing perspective?

From a playing perspective, I think it's important to stay open and listen to lots of different music. I don't really have a strict practice routine. I just enjoy playing.

Even if I'm playing guitar instead of bass, it's all connected. The more you're playing, the more alert and responsive you become musically.

I always felt my best after a long tour. It's like exercising a muscle. If you're in shape, you're always going to play better.

It's hard to think of another band that has had as monumental an impact on the heavier end of the rock spectrum as Led Zeppelin. One major component of their success was the solid, funky and bluesy rhythm section of John Paul Jones and the late drummer John Bonham.

Though his onstage persona was perhaps less flamboyant than his bandmates, Jones was never a bass player to sit in the shadows. From his tight riffing on tracks such as Black Dog to the funky grooves of Trampled Under Foot, Jones doled out high-quality basslines on every cut.

Although Jones gets more attention for his bass playing these days, he was also Zeppelin’s go-to keyboardist, often switching between bass guitar and keys during live shows. In fact, it was a standing joke in Led Zeppelin that if there was an exotic instrument needed for a track, John Paul Jones would take care of it. Organ, mandolin, recorders? No problem.

As he told Bass Player in 2008, “I’d be there with a triple-neck guitar, bass pedals, and keyboards, and Robert would ask, ‘Can you sing, as well?’”

The following interview from the Bass Player archives took place in May 2008.

What was your contribution to Led Zeppelin's overall sound?

“I was a sort of Motown and Stax specialist when I was a studio musician, and I brought that groove into Led Zeppelin. Bonzo was also a big R&B fan, so there's a lot of it in the Zeppelin rhythm section. In addition to keyboard, mandolin, and other things like that, I just brought my musical experience.

“I've always said that Zeppelin was the space between four individual musicians, and it was bigger than the sum of its parts. We all had different musical tastes, and we didn't try to emulate any other band. Soul, jazz, country, folk, Arabic, Indian – we all had these different influences, and we weren't ashamed to whip them out at any time. The way those influences mixed became Zeppelin.”

What was the first Zeppelin rehearsal like?

“We met up in a tiny room in London and all looked at each other, working out what we were going to play. It was kind of like, ‘Well, what do you know?’ ‘I don't know, what do you know?’

“Page said, ‘Do you know The Train Kept Rolling?’ I said no, and he said, ‘Its in E, but there's a riff that starts on G.’ He showed me the riff and counted it in, and the room just exploded. We all knew we had something special.”

Bonham's drum phrasing was unusual.

“Absolutely. He was like that – a very imaginative drummer. He could pick out the interesting parts of a riff and come up with a really cool part.”

How would you go about matching up with his drums?

“Since Bonzo's kick-drum playing was so complex, it was much more effective to synchronize and play with the kick rather than just boom right across it. That was part of our style; I would leave out notes in order to let a kick or a snare come through. That's especially effective with a really good drummer – it makes the rhythm come alive when you leave holes for the drums to pop out.”

When and why would you switch from playing fingerstyle to playing pickstyle?

“My preference is fingerstyle, but l often had to play with a pick in the session days, so I got quite used to it. I can play Immigrant Song with my fingers, but it just sounds better with a pick. Same with Black Dog. It just gives you different phrasing, and a more metallic, guitar-y sound. I didn't see any reason not to swap one for another if the occasion demanded it.”

How did Zeppelin communicate onstage?

“There was eye and ear contact. Robert always used to tell me to stand up in the front. I used to play the first song up front, then I'd gradually edge my way back to my favorite position: just under the ride cymbal off the corner of the drums, where I could feel the kick.

“For improvised parts we would group around center stage with a lot of eye contact, and a lot of focus. That concentration is what made it successful. Anybody could take anything anywhere, and we'd all follow.”

What was your keyboard setup?

“It changed over time. I used to use a Mellotron, which was the only way you could get a string or flute sound in those days. But you'd never know whether it was going to be in tune, so I replaced that with a Yamaha GX1, the big green machine. In the end, I think I used a Fairlight, an early 8-bit sampler.”

What was the band's approach to recording and touring?

“To me, Led Zeppelin was a live performance band. We would make a record and that would be the blueprint. Then we'd go off and play the record live, and it would move on from there. I'm pretty used to recording studios, so it was no big thing to be in the studio. Playing live was the most fun for me; I think that was the best of Zeppelin.”

Don’t believe everything you see or read on the internet. Ritchie Blackmore just found the other day that he didn’t like Jimmy Page, much to his surprise.

Because the Stratocaster-toting Deep Purple and Rainbow icon thinks quite the opposite, and has paid tribute to the Led Zeppelin guitarist, describing him as a “magical guy”.

Blackmore was speaking on April 14 during a livestreamed interview on his birthday (he was born at ten-past-midnight, UK time. Many happy returns, Ritchie), doing one of these ask-me-anything type deals.

And so one fan writes in to enquire if he likes Page. The answer is 100 per cent yes – though he understood where the question came from.

“I read the other day that I hated him,” says Blackmore. “I can’t believe they said that.”

Blackmore says he and Page go way back, and says he knew from the moment he met him that Page was going to be a star. This was the early ‘60s, and they were both sharpening their skills in backing bands.

“The first time I met him was 1963 or ‘62. He was in a band called Neil Christian and the Crusaders, and I was in Lord Sutch and the Savages,” Blackmore recalls. “I knew he was going places, because I could tell, not only did he have a style, he had the playing ability, and he just looked right, playing the guitar. He was a star in the making, Jimmy Page.”

Page spent much of the early ‘60s in and out of recording studios. He was one of the first-call players in the UK. He played on Shirley Bassey’s Goldfinger theme song, tracked with the Who, before the Yardbirds came calling, then Led Zeppelin, and then the rest is history.

Peter Grant might have been the administrative spearhead for the Led Zeppelin machine but Blackmore says Page’s business smarts have served him well. “He was a good businessman, too. Not only a guitar player, he was a businessman,” he offers.

Sadly, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin never shared a bill, nor did Rainbow. So whenever Blackmore and Page’s paths would cross, it would be a social occasion, like the last time he bumped into him at the most-legendary of all Los Angeles’ rock-friendly watering holes

“Last time I spoke to him, he was probably in the Rainbow, in Hollywood,” recalls Blackmore. “He said to me, ‘Where did you learn all your runs from?’ And I thought, ‘That was a strange question.’ And I thought, ‘Runs? Well, they’re just improvisational, extemporizations, improvisational inversions.’ And that was quite a compliment coming from him.”

Remarkably, Blackmore and Page both grew up in the same small town of Heston, in Middlesex, England. There’s only a year between them. And yet they never knew each other till later.

“I never knew that he was even in the village, and that would have been when we were both 15 or 16,” notes Blackmore. “But magical guy, great guy. Always will be.”

In related Blackmore news, in the same livestreamed interview the Deep Purple guitar legend said that most guitarists aren’t nice people – but named one player who bucks the trend.

The SatchVai Band recently treated fans to a spectacular jam at a show in Portland, covering two bona fide rock classics and littering them with three-part guitar harmonies and oodles of guitar solos.

The band, spearheaded by resident virtuosos Steve Vai and Joe Satriani, powered through a high octane take on Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll, before riding through Steppenwolf’s ever-cool Born to be Wild.

The show at the 2,700-capacity Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall was the second date of the band's latest run, marking their first dates since last summer and their first US run.

The Surfing with the Hydra tour is now making its way across the US for the first time. Before, the SatchVai Band's only show on home soil prior to this tour was a debut gig in New York in 2024.

So, to mark the occasion, they dropped in two rock guitar staples into their encore.

Marco Mendoza handled vocals pretty damn well across the two songs, but given the context of the night, all eyes were on the fretboards of Vai, Satriani, and their well-picked third guitarist, Pete Thorn. It was the latter, after some extravagant three-part harmonies, who delivered the first solo, unleashing a flurry of hot pentatonic licks on his Suhr signature guitar.

Vai was next up, and as is to be expected, there was a little more weirdness sprinkled in, including some whammy-lavished mimicking of Robert Plant’s crooning vocal lines, all while staying faithfully in blues rock territory.

Satriani actually didn’t get his chance to strut his stuff until Born to Be Wild, and he serves up tapping and harmonic licks aplenty. It's like his time in the Best of All Worlds band is rubbing off on him.

There was also a tasty wah solo from Thorn, more screaming leads from Vai, and some dextrous arpeggios from Satch, who was seen to be rocking his EVH-coded 3rd Power Dragon amps. A nod to Cream’s Sunshine of Your Love to top it all off was a doozy, too.

The band’s first US tour sees Animals As Leaders in tow – for even more virtuosity – and a SatchVai album has been teased for the near future. They released their third single, Dancing, earlier this year, with the help of Dethklok’s Brendon Small.

Jimmy Page has shared the original homemade demo of Led Zeppelin's Ten Years Gone, presenting the classic in a raw, unfiltered format.

The English guitar legend uploaded the track to his YouTube channel over the weekend (on March 29) as a “footnote” to a track that featured on 1975's expansive and experimental LP, Physical Graffiti.

It was recorded by Page at his Elizabethan manor house, Plumpton Place in East Sussex, England, ahead of the band convening at Headley Grange to work on what would become their sixth studio album.

The demo features several layers of edge-of-breakup guitars, with some tracks clipping, giving them a more distorted menace. It's free of drums or vocals, but shows quite clearly why Page often saw his guitar parts as orchestrations. You can also hear the beginnings of the tracks' lead lines, though those licks later underwent some refinement.

“I presented this rough mix to the band at Headley Grange in order to do this for real,” Page writes in the video’s caption. “Robert Plant came up with some lyrics for my music that were extraordinary, and then we arrived at the song Ten Years Gone.”

The song, of course, would go on to be a Led Zeppelin classic, with the brooding rock ballad delivered with a subtle snarl and edge.

Speaking to Rolling Stone, super producer Rick Rubin once said he was floored by the song.

“[It’s] a deep, reflective piece with hypnotic, interweaving riffs,” he said. “Light and dark, shadow and glare. It sounds like nature coming through the speakers.”

Several unreleased Physical Graffiti tracks were sold at auction in 2014, with the album getting an anniversary remaster the following year. But this is the first time one of the record's tracks, as embryonic as this, has become available for public consumption.

In related news, Dweezil Zappa is eyeing Jimmy Page for his mega-shred instrumental project. Paul Reed Smith has also claimed that Page played one of his guitars, and the display he put on was one of the best he's ever seen.

Witnessing Karma Sheen live is transcendental. The gritty tone of a ’60s Les Paul melds with the unmistakable sparkling sound of the sitar, as frontman Sameer Khan switches between vocals, harmonium, and bansuri, which all pay homage to a 600-year-old Hindustani classical music lineage.

The band undulates in tandem, crafting a colorful tapestry of sounds and textures that’s as inspired by Sufi lyricism and Indian ragas as it is by Jimi Hendrix and ’60s psychedelia.

Indeed, the London-based outfit – led by Khan, and composed of Rod Bourganos on sitar, synth, and theremin, Amad Chima on guitar, Grisha Grebennikov on bass, and Arun Dhanjal on drums – somehow manages to bridge an ancient musical lineage with contemporary subcultures and diasporic experimentation – a captivating pairing which has made a fan out of none other than Jimmy Page.

“The first time that Page saw us was in 2017, in this very embryonic stage of Karma Sheen,” recalls Khan of his first encounter with the Led Zeppelin maestro.

“That was quite nerve-wracking to play in front of him, but I said, ‘You know what? I’ve just got to get on with it, because we've got all these people that are here to see us. Rock royalty is sitting in the room, but I know I've got a job to do.’”

Page’s seal of approval was completely unexpected. “At the end of that show, he goes, ‘The way that you mix rock and Indian music is something of the likes I've never seen before.’

“This is coming from someone who was the first white musician to have a sitar in the UK. He used to listen to Ravi Shankar at the Indian Embassy before Hindustani classical music became very Woodstock, hash, and harem pants. So for him to say that to me was all the assurance on a personal level that I needed.”

Take us back to the moment you first picked up the guitar.

I grew up watching pro wrestling. I’d listen to Kurt Angle’s music, Shawn Michaels, D‑Generation X – all that. I just thought, ‘I really love this kind of music.’ All this rock and alternative rock sounded amazing.

I picked up a guitar in 2003, when I was about 11, turning 12. That was when School of Rock came out. I watched the film, and it made me want to play guitar – I wanted to be Zack Mooneyham, basically.

There’s that scene where Jack Black has all the rock genres and band names on the board. I remember pausing the DVD and writing down all the band names, then going off to find and listen to them. I even started practicing guitar the way Jack Black tells the kids to practice: listen to the music and figure out what the guitar is doing.

How did you end up discovering – or, should I say, rediscovering – Hindustani classical music and seriously pursuing that?

My family has always been into music, but they were always into traditional music – classical folk music from Pakistan. They were always friends with Ustad Shafqat Ali Khan [legendary classical singer of the khyal vocal genre from Pakistan and the custodian of a centuries-old legacy of traditional music].

My parents would hold concerts in their house, and according to him, when all the other kids would be laughing and running around, I would just be sitting there listening and absorbing it all in.

Then I got into Ravi Shankar playing on the sitar. I got into ’60s music. I got into my final guitar hero, which is Hendrix, and I started learning how he played stuff. I tried to find ragas [melodic framework for improvisation in Indian classical music] on the guitar. As I was learning singing, I was trying to match everything on the guitar with my voice.

Then one fateful night happened. The nephew of my teacher [Ustad Shafqat Ali Khan] was visiting London. And whenever they would visit, we would always spend a lot of time together. My old bandmate in Karma Sheen, Martin, said, ‘Do you want to sing with us?’ And he sang Bageshree [a Hindustani raga that depicts the emotion of waiting for reunion with one’s lover].

There's this absolutely beautiful photo of me and the old bassist, Samuel, and Shujat Ali Khan [the nephew]. Me and him are both looking at Shujat in the middle, just smiling, knowing that what we're witnessing, and what we're a part of, is incredible. It was from that day that I decided I was going to start singing and doing things in a more traditional way.

How did that training influence your guitar playing?

There's this myth that surrounds Hindustani classical music – that it's magical. I do think it's magical, but there is this myth that you need a sitar to get those microtones, but the truth is, they are all just notes.

Sure, there might be a note that's in between the fifth and the sixth fret, but that note is going to sound closer to either the fifth or closer to the sixth. So then you just reinterpret it. If we look at Bageshree, or if we look at Jog, or any raga from the Kafi thaat, they’re pentatonic ragas.

Every guitarist on earth knows the pentatonic scale. You use that as your blueprint to play these particular ragas. The notes are the same, but it’s just the manner in which you play it which could potentially be seen as a limitation.

Are you sliding? Are you pulling off or hammering on? Do you understand the rules of the raga? How are you supposed to engage with this raga?

Karma Sheen’s music is 99 percent based on the structure of Hindustani classical music. So all the notes and riffs that we're using are all pretty much notes from the raga that we're singing.

My go-to flavor of soloing doesn't go to blues pentatonic anymore. It goes to classic Hindustani classical pentatonic – those ragas that are in between that – and so what I now do is, I'm fusing a lot of the blues pentatonic shapes with the pentatonic ragas.

How do you approach fusing these ragas and rhythms with psych rock?

I don't think there is a band that’s come before us that has done this. They've done fusion, but for us, there is no reference to fall back on. There's only inspiration. So it'd be like, ‘Oh, you know what song I really, really love? Are You Experienced? by Jimi Hendrix. What's he doing here?’

So you try to break it down. This chord or these notes are not in this raga, and the raga that it’s closest to is most likely Jog, Bageshree, or Malkauns – it’s usually between these three pentatonic-shaped ragas. Then you can just kind of figure it out that way.

Our goal is to be the custodians of this kind of music, but we want to bring it forward in a way that makes it a little bit more accessible. This music doesn't just deserve to have someone in yoga pants, smoking a spliff, meditating.

I don't want to say that that is appropriation [but] yes, this music is spiritual, and yes, we can attach ourselves to that, but it doesn't necessarily need to be taken in that aspect. It can also be taken in a very light-hearted way, in a very rock way, and in a very cool way as well.

You’ve developed quite a reputation as a Les Paul player. Why did you go for a Gibson Les Paul, as opposed to, say, Hendrix’s favorite, the Strat?

Contrary to what people might think, I’m actually a Strat man – 100 percent. It’s simple. My dad's favorite car that he ever drove was a Vauxhall Vectra Elite model. I was asking him, ‘Dad, why don't you get that car again?’ And I was asking him that while he was sitting in his Mercedes, and he looked at me and simply said, ‘Son, once you go Mercedes, you never go back.’

And I can, hand on my heart, say the Fender Stratocaster is my absolute favorite guitar. But once you get a Les Paul, you can't go back. The Strat is an extension of you. But if you play a Les Paul and then you decide to go back to your Strat, your hands are like butter all over the Strat. It just feels incredible. The Strat for me is the ultimate lead and rhythm guitar – but the Les Paul is a fucking riff machine.

And when you play a ’60s model, there's just something that the Les Paul does that allows me to play in ways that I never knew I could play before.

Jimmy Page recently attended one of your headline shows. What was it like to play in front of him?

Our sitar player, Rod, is really good friends with Jimmy Page. He met him once by chance, outside of his [Page’s] house. They started talking, and they kind of developed this relationship.

For Rod, Led Zeppelin and Jimmy Page are everything, and so they've been communicating to a point where he's trying to get him to watch us.

Fast-forward all those years, maybe even seven years, and he's finally managed to find some time in his busy schedule to come and see us. It was quite nice because it was the third time that I'd met him. It's quite strange, actually, because he's more like a friend than someone who I really want to impress.

The truth is that, when I got chatting to him for the first time, I kept forgetting who he was because he was just a dude. But then, every so often, he'd make a face, or he’d make a comment that makes you go, ‘Oh shit. This is Jimmy Page.’ And in that moment, I was like, ‘Oh my god, brother. I literally got a poster of this guy behind my door that I just saw two hours before I came to this concert.’

What has been the highlight of Karma Sheen so far?

It's the entire journey – from writing my first ever song on a drum machine to playing in front of Jimmy Page. The only thing is that it’s in tandem with another job – otherwise, I am literally living the dream. I go and play national and international shows. We get a lot of respect from our peers, colleagues and friends. We are carving a very, very unique name for ourselves.

When we did the support tour with WITCH [the legendary Zamrock band from the ’70s], we were looking at people who were like, ‘Who are these guys?’ And every single night, it was like watching a flower blossom.

By the end of it, they are completely bloomed to the idea that who we are and what we're doing is a very unique thing. So I feel like I'm living the dream, and that, in and of itself, is the biggest highlight of Karma Sheen.

• Karma Sheen's latest single, Ishq Kalma, is out now, and the band will be heading over to the States for the year's SXSW in Austin, Texas.

Charlie Jones has had long-term bass gigs with Page and Plant, Robert Plant and The Cult – but he admits his arrival in the four-string world “sounds stupid.” He explains: “When I was young I bought an ‘electric guitar’ with money from delivering papers, so I could join my friend’s band.

“I’d thought to myself, ‘Wow, this sounds weird…’ But I went to his place, all ready to go, and he said, ‘This is a bass – you’re a bass player!’ I went, ‘Okay, then…’” Luckily he took to the instrument. “I learned very quickly. Within three years I was learning upright.”

Jones has gone on to play on a host of records, most notably on Page and Plant’s No Quarter (1995) and Walking into Clarksdale (1998). But he’s also heard on records by Goldfrapp, Siouxsie, and most recently The Cult.

Working with formed Led Zeppelin icons Page and Plant was, of course, “a very big deal,” he confirms. “It was very informative. I had to have a deeper understanding of blues, learn to be quick, make decisions and listen. They really worked on instinct. There was equality there; I was given freedom to express myself. Those guys were very generous.”

Jones adds: “My musical tastes are eclectic. Once I left Robert and got into Goldfrapp – a primarily electronic band – it opened up my potential further.”

What led you toward the acrylic bass?

When I started, all the basses around England were Japanese or Korean copies. Some were good, some weren’t. I used English gear – an HH cabinet and whatever else I had knocking around. The acrylic bass thing came about because I was very into glam rock, and I’d seen the Dan Armstrong basses.

I loved them, but I couldn’t get on with the short-scale neck. Before I got the gig with Robert I was using a Fender Precision Bass. I asked Fender if they could make me an acrylic bass then, but they couldn’t – though they did later.

But basically, what led me to the acrylic bass was the desire to have a long-scale Precision Bass with the aesthetic of those ‘70s Dan Armstrong basses

What led to the gig with Robert Plant?

I’d done a record with a producer called Tim Palmer in Austin, Texas. He recommended me for that gig when I was doing sessions. I had to give Robert lots of demos I’d played on. I had a taste for crossover artists from the Middle East, and you know how Robert’s into that stuff.

He heard that, and some of the other stuff I’d done, and it was quite eclectic. That appealed to him. I wasn’t strictly a rock bass player; and, of course, Robert’s tastes are pretty eclectic.

What gear did you pair with the acrylic bass once you joined Robert?

Robert was very gracious because I didn’t have the budget to buy the type of gear I needed for the touring he was doing. I needed a good rig, but the popular rigs at the time were Trace Elliot, which weren’t for me.

I was allowed to buy anything, and I went for the Marshall Jubilee for bass because I loved it. They had these big cabinets and massive transformers, and they weren’t valve amps. They had transistors with huge headroom with no breakup, and were very focused.

It informed my gigs live, though not necessarily for recording. I generally don’t use large valve heads; I use rigs with good weight transformers and plenty of headroom. The Jubilee series was bulletproof.

What was it like transitioning from working with Robert to adding Jimmy Page for the No Quarter - Unledded show?

Jimmy had his own viewpoint when he started working with Robert again, so there was a bit of a transition. The word "re-audition" is a bit big; but it was a different production working with Jimmy so that he felt comfortable. It meant having to dive much deeper into the Led Zeppelin catalog.

Jimmy is a fantastic bandleader. And his knowledge of the Led Zeppelin material – he’d study the bootlegs and say, ‘Hey, I wanna do this extended version of this song.’ So it was pretty intense. It was like a big apprenticeship.

And you were learning bass parts laid down by John Paul Jones, which is no easy feat.

That’s exactly right. Sometimes they’d say, “Your playing is not exactly like John Paul Jones’ on this tune. But we like it, so stick with what you’re doing.“ They were flexible. As long as it was working, they were happy.

They weren’t necessarily trying to do a reproduction of Led Zeppelin, because that’s not possible without the original rhythm section of John Paul Jones and John Bonham. It had to be genuine, and that meant adding a bit of your own flavor to it, and they were open to that.

Which led to you working on Page and Plant’s collaborative album Walking into Clarksdale.

That was different – when we did the Unledded record it was a huge Egyptian-style ensemble. We’d just get our heads together on the spot. But with Walking into Clarksdale we had to go into a room and write together. Writing with those guys was very organic. But it was no bowl of cherries!

Notably, you co-wrote Please Read the Letter during those sessions.

We rehearsed and wrote a rough arrangement for it. Then when we got to Abbey Road, Steve Albini was producing, which was a thrill for me. That was crafted between all of us, meaning we all had big input on the song. Robert took the lead in terms of the top line, and how the chords would fall within the arrangement, but I always believed it was a special song.

Still, it must have been a surprise when the song netted you a Grammy after Robert re-recorded it for his Raising Sand album.

Truthfully, it was! I was in this weird situation. I’d come off tour and said, “I’m not gonna open any of my mail for three months. I don’t give a shit. I don’t care what comes through. I’m shutting myself away.” Then my manager called and said, “Do you realize you’ve got a Grammy for this song?”

I went, “Really?” My manager said, “Yeah; your certificate’s come through.” I had to go outside to the garbage bags to find the certificate ‘cause I’d thrown it away! So it was a surprise; but to Robert’s credit, he always had a vision for that song and it never dwindled.

In 2022 you had the Fender Custom Shop build you an acrylic bass. Is that now your main instrument?

Yes, but it lives in America. I love that bass; it’s a copy of a ‘70s Precision. I found that some of those old basses from ’75 to around ’80 are slightly heavier, with thicker necks. They really lend themselves to rock compared to the '60s basses. So I had Scott Buehl copy that.

He made it lighter than the one I’d used with Goldfrapp, which weighed a ton. He chambered it, so it has a different sound. I use that one a lot with The Cult paired with Aguilar amplifiers and cabinets, but I leave it in the States. When I fly home, I use a ‘70s-style Antigua or a flat-body Precision.

Not everybody takes the so-called “plastic basses” seriously, but you’ve done a lot to alter that way of thinking.

I can’t be specific, but you assume a lot of musicians don’t take the instrument very seriously. They think it’s a novelty or an oddity. I understand why people think of it like that. But it really does have a sound, and I love that sound.

It doesn’t fit solely into one genre. Combined with the visual aspect and working with lots of different artists, it made my viewpoint as a player. You can’t pigeonhole what I do. That’s always been the case, and I’m happy about that.

How did you get the gig with The Cult?

It was kind of a homecoming because I’ve always loved The Cult; I always wanted to join, or at least do some recording with them. Tom Delgety, the producer, asked me to play on Under the Midnight Sun, and I got on so well with them that they asked me to join. It’s great – but I really had to concentrate on playing with a pick again.

The Cult have announced a hiatus from touring. What’s next?

I don’t really know what’s next for The Cult. I think they’re gonna take this time out, and there’s maybe some box set coming out of the Death Cult and Cult material from Beggars Banquet. And they may well want to do some recording, so that may happen this year.

Other than that, I’m gonna be doing my own stuff, and some other sessioning and recording. I’ll be concentrating on my bass playing, working hard to dig deeper into the lane that I’m in.”

• Stay up to date via Jones’ website.

A collection of gear from John Paul Jones’ collection is set to be auctioned off. The legendary Led Zeppelin bassist is looking to clear house and has teamed up with UK firm Soundgas to oversee the sale of his vintage gear.

Pick of the bunch is Jones’ Guild Thunderbass amplifier. The bass amp, was used to record with Them Crooked Vultures, his impeccable one-time supergroup with Dave Grohl and Josh Homme.

Afterwards, Grohl would go on to borrow the amp. But, as per its description, the amp was returned with its speakers blown. Whether it still works or not isn't clear.

"Used with Them Crooked Vultures and left at Dave Grohl's house," the listing for the amp reads. "Apparently someone borrowed it and when it was returned to JPJ the speakers were blown. We will test and check and report back."

It has an upper auction estimate of £1,400 (approx. $1,876).

Other pieces of kit from Jones’ studio – though sadly not affiliated with Led Zeppelin – include a rare Arbiter Soundimension mechanical echo unit, built in the 1960s. Said to be “almost impossible to find in any condition”, this particular chrome box is in fine shape.

It comes loaded up with “very expensive” NKT275 germanium transistors, which gave early Fuzz Faces their velcro-like grit. Owning it will cost you £4,500.00 (approx. $6,000).

There’s also a rack-mounted Hughes & Kettner PS64 guitar amp, which has some cosmetic bumps and scratches, a Carlsbro Mantis analogue delay, and a Roland SDE-330 Digital Delay for the best of both worlds.

Vintage pedal collectors, however, best look away now. Jones’ rarebreed Electro-Harmonix Talking Pedal, billed as “a speech synthesizer pedal in a wah-style enclosure”, has already sold.

As was the case with the recent Joe Walsh gear auction, it’s another example of a big-name musicians wanting their instruments and recording equipment to be re-homed to new players who will actually use them.

“John is still very active musically, writing, recording, and performing, but he no longer requires so much studio equipment, most of which he has owned from new,” says Soundgas. “He feels it should be in the hands of people who will put it to good use, so it is offered here without formal provenance, with the intention that it continues to be used as intended.”

Visit Soundgas to explore the full lot.

It's hard to think of another band that has had as monumental an impact on the heavier end of the rock spectrum as Led Zeppelin. Whether you think they were the greatest band ever, or simply overrated, their effect on rock music is without question.

One major component of their success was the solid, funky and bluesy rhythm section of John Paul Jones and the late drummer John ‘Bonzo’ Bonham.

“The whole point is to make the band sound good, and that realisation happened pretty damn quick with Bonzo and me,” said Jones in the September ’99 issue of Bass Player. “I was almost throwing down a challenge with some of those basslines – play me if you can! We would try anything, it just didn't matter.”

Jones was never a bass player to sit in the shadows, though his onstage persona was perhaps less flamboyant than his bandmates. From his tight riffing on tracks such as Black Dog to the funky grooves of Ramble On, Jones doled out high-quality basslines on every cut.

“John Paul Jones is such a fantastic all-around musician and it bleeds into his amazing basslines,” Alice in Chains bassist Mike Inez told the October 2009 issue of Bass Player. “His solid fundamentals gave him a great platform to experiment. Chops, tone, and an inventive brain – this dude is an all-timer!”

The tasty subhook on Ramble On brought the song’s verses to a completely different place, his twisted Black Dog riff was an attempt to trip up fans who would dance at the band’s concerts, and The Lemon Song is a masterwork blues that every developing bassist should try to learn.

Here's our pick of the best John Paul Jones basslines with Led Zeppelin.

Good Times Bad Times (1968)

Though John Paul Jones had been a professional session player and arranger since the age of 16, Good Times Bad Times was Zeppelin's first introduction to the record-buying public. Like the later Black Dog, it's based around a riff from Jones himself, and is a great showcase of his deft fretwork, as well as John Bonham's assured and dextrous drumming.

The intro and main riff are played in unison with the guitar, apart from a few grace notes. This approach continues until the chorus at 00:44, where the bass departs into a chromatic-style line, which becomes almost like a walking bassline, continuing on into the second verse.

There are quite a few key changes in this early part of the song, but it's worth noting that while there is some uniformity to the different sections, Jones is never reduced to simply transposing the same patterns from key to key – a mark of his prowess on the instrument.

Ramble On (1969)

Jones reached a melodic peak with Ramble On, from 1969's Led Zeppelin II. The distinctive ‘lead bass’ part in the verse is a prime example of his delicate control of note duration and his super-tight interplay with drummer John Bonham.

First there are quarter-notes, then eighth-notes, then a 16th-note turnaround that returns the articulation to tenuto (the opposite of staccato).

By moving to smaller note values, the bassline makes the whole song feel like it quickens, adding tension and excitement with each four-bar cycle.

The Lemon Song (1969)

The Lemon Song unwinds repeated cycles of a standard 12-bar blues framework that includes one of the finest rock bass solos ever recorded. Some of the riffs are right from the James Jamerson mould, with even a little Carol Kaye thrown in.

Improvising one of the most mind-blowing two minutes in rock history, Jones' acute expression is clear throughout his solo, which begins at 02:58. His ideas modulate, outlining each chord change with its parallel blues scale – the E blues scale over E7#9, the A blues scale over A7, and the B blues scale over B7.

Livin' Lovin' Maid (1969)

Livin' Lovin' Maid shows just how far a simple two-chord change can be stretched. Jones leans heavily on off-beats to create forward drive, before tackling the main riff in unison with the guitar. This continues until the chorus, where Jones plays a cascade of roots and 5ths before going on to explore Jamerson-style the 3rd, 4th, #4th, and 5th.

This would no doubt have filled out the sound onstage too, something which Jones was to become very used to doing, playing Mellotron, acoustic guitar and mandolin on later material. He ends his chorus line with a terse tonic E.

Immigrant Song (1970)

From the band’s 1970 album, Led Zeppelin III, Immigrant Song features more solid, funky and bluesy rhythm section interplay. Hinging on Jimmy Page’s repetitive guitar riff, Jones uses octaves to match a low note and a high note with the kick and snare drum.

For the first two bars of the verse, Jones takes an F# octave figure and simply moves it down a whole-step to E, which keeps the punchy groove going with the drums while Page sustains an open E chord.

“In certain situations you need to play something that's harmonically ‘grounded’, and octaves are always a safe bet as far as that's concerned,” he told us.

Black Dog (1971)

Inspired by a blues riff from Howlin’ Wolf’s Smokestack Lightning, it was Jones, not Page, who wrote the iconic Black Dog riff. The circular pattern pushes the beat back, bit by bit, as the song progresses. The bridge riff is also built from a repeating pattern that’s displaced by half a beat each time.

As this point in his career, Jones was predominantly playing fingerstyle, but he was equally adept at using a pick. “During the chorus and solo sections of Black Dog, I would sometimes strum E5 and D5 power chords behind Page's G and D chords, especially when performing live. I really don't think the song would have sounded as punchy if I hadn't used a pick.”

When The Levee Breaks (1971)

When The Levee breaks is seven minutes and eight seconds of churning bass and drums. There’s very little showmanship here. Just four musicians at the top of their game.

That said, the bridge section is a great example of effective non-root playing. Over both chords of the first bar at 01:07 (Db/Ab and Eb/Ab) Jones emphasizes the 5th, before following Jimmy Page's guitar for accented hits on the b3rd.

This lick is also typical of Bonham's signature four-16ths snare fill – proof that the two musicians influenced each other, and another insight into the relationship between bass and drums that gave Zeppelin their groove.

D'yer Mak'er (1973)

The flatpicked bass groove from the reggae-flavored D'yer Mak’er sees Jones replace the hollow thud of his early Zeppelin work with a more rubbery tone as he makes liberal use of 16th-note rests.

Jones plays only one A over the Am chord, ending with a C – a clever choice, since it's both the 3rd of Am and the 5th of the next chord, F. This is typical of how Jones would often use notes to not only outline the chord of the moment, but to also foreshadow the next one.

The Crunge (1973)

The Crunge is a workout for anyone who thinks they've mastered odd-time signatures. The bassline also shows Led Zeppelin at its funkiest, with Jones and Bonham hooking up for a ripping 9/8 groove.

This tune is difficult to count; with several off-beat accents and the quick tempo, it takes a while to determine where the one is, but latch onto it and you won't want to let go.

Achilles Last Stand

Achilles Last Stand harnessed the amazing power of the Bonham/Jones rhythm section once more, as they plough their way through nearly 10 minutes of furious rock and cannoning 5/4 breaks.

“The timing was interesting in Achilles because of the 5/4 bits. When Page came out with the first riff he said, ‘What are we going to do with the rest of it?’ I said, ‘The 8-string bass!’ It fitted perfectly.”

Altered tunings can be one of the most fun and rewarding elements associated with the guitar. Specifically, the ability to change the tuning of some or all strings in the pursuit of finding new chord shapes and evocative progressions is really inspiring. And inspiration is what we all crave when playing and writing.

It’s common to associate 'big change' tunings like open G (D G D G B D) with slide players, but it has also driven some of the most famous non-slide songs in rock and blues. Two fine examples are The Rolling Stones' Brown Sugar and Jumpin’ Jack Flash.

The beauty of this tuning is its instant usability. While tunings like DADGAD can be a challenge during first forays, open G (aka Spanish tuning) gives up the goods far more readily as you’ll discover in the following examples.

When I’m playing in open G, I keep a close eye on the triads (three-note chords) on the fourth, third and second strings as the results are the same as with standard tuning.

So, all the normal major and minor triad shapes can be used as reference points around which you can add colour with the other strings. Typically, this can involve using open strings to provide a relationship with the triads. Or you can really exploit the I to V relationship between the fifth string (G) and the sixth and fourth strings (both D).

As would be expected, open G major often pulls you towards playing in the key of G. While this isn’t a bad thing, you do want to ensure you get the best out of any altered tuning by exploring other keys, too.

For example, open G is particularly effective for playing in C major and D major as the open strings can be used to create colour or tension against fretted notes. In this regard, it’s a good idea to map out common open position major and minor shapes to begin with. Remember, the magic of open G lies in the fact that you have familiar reference points on the fourth, third and second strings. Onto the examples!

Example 1 - The open strings of Open G

It may seem obvious but the best place to start with any tuning is simply to hear it. This is best done by slowly playing the open strings to hear their relationship to each other and then play all strings together to hear the open chord. In this case, you'll be sounding a huge G major. Don't under-appreciate the loudness and resonance of all open strings sounding together in Open G – it's that good!

Example 2 - Simple C and G chords in Open G

Next you can start locating simple open major and minor chords and find out where chord progressions such as I – IV and I – IV – V lie. In this example, you’ll play G (the I chord) to C (the IV chord) progression. Listen how the open fourth string (D) at the top of the C chord creates a rich add9 extension.

Example 3 - Fingerpicking in Open G

Open G can take some of the work from the fretting hand as the open strings do so much. In this fingerpicking example you’ll play through the I – IV – V chords in G major (G - C - D). Check out how the chords require very few fretting hand fingers, a nice relief!

Example 4 - Thickening notes in Open G

Open G is a fantastic Americana and bluegrass tuning, even more so given how many traditional tunes are written in keys like G and C. Check out how easily you can thicken a G major chord using unisons (unison = two occurrences of the same note played together).

In bar 1, the G5 chord has two G notes and two D notes, sounding like a variation on a 12-string guitar.

Example 5 - Extended chords in Open G

It’s easy to find rich chords in open tunings, and Jimmy Page took this approach with many of Led Zeppelin’s classic tracks. This example explores rich-sounding G and D chords where the open strings add interesting textures: rich chords with little fretting hand work.

Example 6 - Americana stylings in Open G

This example is an Americana/folk inspired piece inspired by Rich Robinson of The Black Crowes. Importantly, it gets you out of all the ruts you may find in standard tuning so will, physically and sonically, sound fresh.

It’s based around G, C and Dm chords, using the open strings and textural options of the tuning to bring the piece to life.

Players who use Open G tuning

The Rolling Stones - Brown Sugar

Keef is perhaps the player best associated with open G tuning through the massive early Rolling Stones hit, Brown Sugar. Study this song and you’ll appreciate how the triads on the fourth, second and third strings serve as an anchor in open G tuning.

The Black Crowes - Remedy

The influence of Keith Richards and Jimmy Page is ever-present in Rich Robinson of The Black Crowes. That said, he took open G tuning and made it his own by writing many gorgeous parts in this tuning. Check out Remedy to hear how he uses it in a blues-rock context.

Charley Patton - Magnolia Blues

It's not just '60s and onwards guitarists that love Open G. The early blues pioneer, Charley Patton often used open G tuning which gave his playing a softer, folk blues feel. Magnolia Blues used this tuning, often with a capo placed at the 2nd fret or higher. For sure, you can hear Charley's influence on Keith Richards.

All the major electric guitar models evolved throughout the 50s and 60s, but Gretsch’s changes tended to be more seismic than incremental. The single-cutaway 6120 era lasted from late 1954, when the first ones were made, through to 1961.

In the intervening years, Gretsch gradually reduced the body depth, introduced two distinct variations of ‘trestle bracing’, transitioned from a dovetail to a mortice-and-tenon neck joint, adopted entirely new pickups and completely redesigned the wiring harness.

There were cosmetic changes, too, with cowboy kitsch fretboard inlays giving way to humpback and ultimately neo-classical thumbnail markers. Early 6120s had ‘G’-branded tops, and there were variations in pickguard shapes and placement.

Batch Maker

Gretsch historian Edward Ball’s scholarly reference book Gretsch 6120: The History Of A Legendary Guitar includes an exhaustively compiled analysis of Gretsch’s production batches on a year-by-year basis. Jimmy Page’s 6120 bears the serial number 23243, which places it about halfway through a 100-unit batch that rolled off the factory line midway through 1957.

The #232xx batch was one of eight 6120/6121 production runs Gretsch made for the 1957 model-year. Here’s where it can get confusing. Because with vintage Gretsch guitars, ‘model-year’ refers to a set of features and doesn’t necessarily correspond with the year of manufacture. It has been established that the first two batches of the 1957 model-year 6120s were actually made towards the end of 1956.

The same thing happened a year later when the first 1958 model-year 6120s with Filter’Tron pickups were actually made in late 1957. Edward Ball observes that dealers and customers placing orders towards the end of any given year may have received 6120s that looked very different from those depicted in Gretsch’s catalogue.

There would have been no surprises with this particular 6120 because it was made during 1957 and has all the features typical of the 1957 model-year. These included a non-compensated bar bridge and the G-indented control knobs, which replaced the earlier arrow-only design.

Other 6120 features carried over, including the maple ply body, ebony fretboard and laminated neck construction. The placement of Gretsch neck centre-strips could be hit and miss, but it looks fairly central on this guitar. Gretsch also fitted screw-in strap buttons that work surprisingly well.

6120 hardware was gold plated, but it tended to wear off and, like lots of mid-50s Gretsches, the hardware on this example looks more like it’s nickel plated. While the brass nut shows some tarnishing, the original open-backed Waverly tuners escaped the ‘upgrade’ craze and appear elegantly aged.

The DeArmond Dynasonic pickups divide opinions, even among Gretsch enthusiasts, but they’re known for their high output and near hi-fi clarity. Later wiring harnesses offered more options, including mute switching and the infamous ’mud switch’, but the 1957 model retained the individual volume controls, plus a master tone and a master volume located near the cutaway. The single switch is a three-way pickup selector.

Gretsch’s principal endorsee, the great Chet Atkins, was known to have felt embarrassed by Gretsch Western motifs and lobbied hard for Gretsch to ditch them.

The previous year had seen the discontinuation of the steer’s-head headstock inlay and the cow and cactus themed fretboard markers. For 1957, Gretsch replaced the transitional plain block markers with hump block inlays, put a more restrained horseshoe on the headstock and, no doubt to Chet’s great relief, discontinued the practice of branding a G into the front of the body as if every 6120 was a prize heifer.

The Giveaway

Tastes change and these days most vintage Gretsch fans would snap your Bigsby arm off for an early 6120. Even back in the early 1970s, Jimmy Page specified a G-branded example when he asked GTR in Nashville to find him a 6120 because Eddie Cochran was an early inspiration.

Jimmy told the story to legendary music journalist Nick Kent in an interview for the New Musical Express – now known as the NME. Apparently, the guitar cost him £200 including shipping and customs charges, which he considered “very reasonable” compared with the $1,500 retail prices of 1950s Les Pauls during that time.

The interview is a fascinating read, not least because it is so full of contradictions and misconceptions. But it’s easy to forget that accurate information about 1950s guitars was hard to come by in the early 1970s. It was long before coffee-table guitar books began making sense of that era and the internet put all the information we could ever need a mere mouse click away.

For instance, Jimmy wasn’t even clear on the model designation and believed its “technical name” was a “Chet Atkins Hollowbody”. He was aware that Cochrane’s had “an old block Gibson pickup by the neck” and had heard that there was another one just like it “somewhere in Tooting”. Jimmy also described his Gretsch as “a good all-rounder with good acoustics when it’s strung up properly”.

In the same interview he revealed that he didn’t own many guitars, so it was a generous gesture when Jimmy made his 6120 available as a prize in an October 1974 NME competition. In addition to Jimmy’s Gretsch, the winner could choose between £300 worth of Orange amplification gear or 10 “classy” new Fender acoustics.

After matching six close-up shots of guitars to the names of the famous guitarists playing them, entrants had to complete the sentence: ‘I loathe the NME because…’ in no more than 25 words, with obscenity discouraged and wit and originality being the order of the day.

The winner was announced in the 18 January 1975 issue with the accompanying headline: “Stunned Paddy scores guitar, meets idol.” It speaks volumes about the era that ‘Paddy’ referred to the winner’s ethnicity, rather than his name.

21-year-old Dubliner Charles Reid was pictured next to a smiling Jimmy Page and described as a “North London exiled guitar picker”. At the time he was auditioning with London-based bands and he scotched a rumour that he was joining The Rolling Stones. In another photo Charles Reid is pictured with the Orange amps he wisely chose over the Fender acoustics.

The Wild Angel

No information about Charles Reid’s musical career has come to light, but we do know that on 16 September 1990 he sold the guitar to Phil O’Donoghue for the sum of £2,000. In today’s money, that would equate to over £6,250 so it wasn’t an inconsiderable sum.

A couple of years later Phil was considering the resale value and was advised to obtain documentation to prove it was the Jimmy Page competition guitar.

Phil wrote to Charles requesting a receipt and received one by post in April 1992. Phil O’Donoghue was a member of a long running rock ’n’ roll band called The Wild Angels and he kept the guitar until his death. Phil’s brothers inherited his instruments and they contacted Wiltshire-based auction house Gardiner Houlgate with the intention of putting it to market.

We caught up with GH’s auctioneer and head of guitar department, Luke Hobbs, for a detailed description of the guitar.

“It’s actually quite phenomenal,” he tells us. “The only thing that detracts is a bit of oxidisation around the pickups, but we’re not going to touch that because it has been there for so many years and it has that artist connection.”

The guitar shows very little playwear, but Luke reports “the original thin frets are quite worn so it has clearly been played a lot, but there’s no playwear on the back of the neck and it has been very well looked after. The finish looks great, so it has almost certainly been kept in its case because the orange colour is very bold and strong.”

Luke’s observation about the way the guitar was kept may also explain the oxidisation issue, which is something many vintage Gretsch enthusiasts have experienced. It’s caused by the celluloid pickup spacers degrading and emitting a gas that in turn degrades the gold plating on the pickups.

It’s very common with Gretsches from this era and it can get particularly bad when vintage Gretsches are kept in sealed cases because the gas can’t dissipate in the atmosphere.

The spacers can eventually crumble away, but you can buy or make replacement celluloid spacers, and it’s far better to retire the originals than to risk damaging vintage pickups.

“Currently the action is set low and the strings are pretty light, so it’s a very easy guitar to play,” Luke continues. “It’s extremely resonant, but the strings are so old I don’t think we’ve heard it at its best and it’s hard to give a definitive opinion. It certainly doesn’t need a neck reset, and the action is low with a bridge that is set fairly high, which is usually a sign of a solid neck joint.

“I’ve done what I can to trace Charles Reid, but I haven’t had any success. But in some ways it’s almost irrelevant because we have the letter from him to Phil O’Donaghue. We also have both copies of the NME that featured the guitar.”

Rare Opportunity

It’s interesting to consider how much value the Jimmy Page connection adds to the guitar. “Well, a typical hammer price for a Gretsch 6120 from the mid-1950s would be £7,000 to £9,000,” Luke suggests, “but one in exceptional condition like this could even nudge the £10,000 mark. We’ve put a £30,000 to £50,000 estimate on it, but, to be honest, it’s just a stab in the dark.

“So far as I’m aware, only three of Jimmy Page’s guitars have ever come onto the open market. He’s notorious for not selling or giving anything away. He certainly hasn’t been in touch with us, and famous artists are never that interested. We often try to make contact simply for authentication purposes, but they don’t want to get involved.

“I’m sure Jimmy has amassed a huge collection by now, but back then he didn’t have that much stuff – just the tools he wanted for his arsenal – and in the NME article he indicated that he only had his iconic Les Paul, a backup Les Paul in case he broke a string, and his doubleneck. That’s what he said he had been using, but he probably forgot to mention his Telecaster, and he referred to an acoustic that he no longer had.”

Charles Reid declared that “Page must be mental giving away such a terrific guitar”.

He was not wrong. Page's Gretsch sold for over three times its estimate, fetching £100,000 ($135,366).

• With thanks to Gardiner Houlgate for allowing us access to this guitar
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.
  

Starting in 1996, Guitar World was honored to publish a handful of lesson columns authored by Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. The following is one of these columns. It has been edited in certain instances for use online.

This month, I'd like to talk about technique, specifically right-hand articulation.

I've heard a lot of bassists fuss over their right-hand technique over the years, many of them claiming to have settled on a one-size-fits-all method of articulation that's ideal for any musical circumstance. I've always preferred to take a more pragmatic approach and use whichever right-hand technique sounds best and feels the most natural for any given situation.

For instance, sometimes I find using a plectrum or my thumb to be more effective than playing fingerstyle, or vice versa.

For “galloping” rhythms, like the main part to Achilles Last Stand, or the intro riff to Immigrant Song, which we looked at last month, I prefer to use a pick so I can get that growly, “clangy” sound.

Back in the Sixties, when I was doing a lot of freelance session work on bass guitar, I would often be called upon to play with a pick – “More ‘click,’ please...”

When playing fingerstyle, I usually use my index and middle fingers to pluck the strings, mostly in a strictly alternating fashion, but not always – sometimes it feels awkward to do that.

Occasionally, I'll attack a note with both fingers for a stronger attack. That's how I played the pumping 16th notes during the intro to Out on the Tiles.

For certain parts, I actually prefer to use just my index finger. This may not seem like the most “efficient” way to play, but I like the consistent attack that results from using one finger.

This is the same reason guitarists sometimes choose to use consecutive downstrokes, instead of alternating downstrokes and upstrokes, to strum or pick fast eighth- or 16th-note rhythms; even though it may not be the easiest way to play a part, the resultant uniformity of attack is well worth the effort spent.

I feel I have the most control over dynamics and “touch” when plucking with my index finger – it's one of the things that's often helped me get a nice, round tone out of my instrument.

As far as facility is concerned, I've found that I can actually be quite nimble playing this way if I relax and economize movement.

A good example of a part that I wrote and played using this single-digit approach is the main riff to Good Times, Bad Times.

The run in the second bar is built upon the D root-fifth-octave shape in the 5th position.

This figure can be rather challenging to perform at tempo because of all the string crossing involved. It just seemed so much simpler to me to use one finger instead of two or three to play this part because I didn't have to think about which finger I'm using to pluck which note or string.

When crossing from a higher string to the one just below it, as in the second bar, I usually use what's called a rest stroke. To do this, simply drag the finger over the lower string after plucking the higher string.

If you listen to the a capella bass break at the end of the song's first chorus, you'll notice the fairly consistent attack and tone, which is the result of using the same finger to pluck all the notes.

Another noteworthy example of this technique in action is the chorus part to Ramble On, from our second record.

In the second bar, I'm pedaling on the root, A (D string/7th fret), in a steady 16th-note rhythm, and jumping up to the fifth, E (G string/9th fret), and the fourth, D (G string/7th fret). Again, notice the even, controlled attack of the notes here.

After having used this technique for a few years I started getting to the point where I was very comfortable plucking the strings with just one finger. I would use it to play the fast jam part of Dazed and Confused.

When performing this part live, Bonzo [Zeppelin drummer John Bonham] and I would push the tempo and play it ridiculously fast for minutes on end while [Jimmy] Page wailed away on the guitar.

I found that by using hammer-ons, pull-offs, and rest strokes, I could play this repeated figure quickly and cleanly as long as I wanted to without becoming fatigued.

As you develop your own style, keep in mind that there is no right or wrong way to play. Use whichever technique feels good to you at any given moment.

• This lesson originally appeared in the March 1997 issue of Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Starting in 1996, Guitar World was honored to publish a handful of lesson columns authored by Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. The following is one of these columns. It has been edited in certain instances for use online.

At the end of last month's column, we touched upon the use of octaves in basslines. I cannot emphasize enough how useful this simple interval can be for coming up with interesting and memorable parts.

In addition to being very effective for creating catchy, fat-sounding single-note “stomp grooves,” like the main riff from The Wanton Song, which we looked at last time, octaves are also great for constructing strong supportive basslines.

This month, we'll look at some examples of this kind of octave usage from the Led Zeppelin catalog.

One particularly effective way to use octaves is to match the low note and the high note with a drummer's kick and snare drum, respectively. A good example of this type of bass-and-drums octave synchronization is Nobody's Fault But Mine, from [Led Zeppelin's 1976 album] Presence.

I played the syncopated E octave part with Bonzo [Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham], behind the eerie guitar and vocal melody between the verses (at around 2:36), with an eight-string bass, which is what I used for the entire Presence album.

If you listen to the recording, you'll notice how the low E's are played in tandem with Bonzo's kick drum while the high E's are played in tandem with his snare. Also notice the effective use of rests here.

The object was to make the bass and drums sound like one instrument. I think that's one of the things that made Zeppelin sound so heavy – we would play all those little phrases absolutely together.

Another good and rather obvious example of this same kind of octave-synchronization is Page's main riff to Immigrant Song.

For the first two bars of the verse section, I took an F# octave figure and simply moved it down a whole-step to E to keep the punchy groove going with the drums while Jimmy sustained an open E chord. I used a pick on that one, too. Listen to the right channel to hear the bass clearly.

One very cool thing about using octaves in a bassline is that you can take a pedal point figure and make it more “busy” and animated without straying from the root and obscuring the harmony. Not that straying from the root is necessarily a bad thing – sometimes it sounds good to do that – but in certain situations you need to play something that's harmonically “grounded,” and octaves are always a safe bet as far as that's concerned.

For example, if you listen to the bass part during the verse sections of Kashmir, you'll hear me going back and forth between the open low D note and the high D at the 12th fret.

During the fast parts of The Song Remains the Same, I used octaves everywhere, particularly during the parts where Jimmy strums an A7sus4-A7sus4(add6) chord sequence over and over.

For those parts, I concentrated on locking in with Bonzo's kick and snare drum using A octaves. I don't think the groove would have sounded quite as powerful had I chosen just to pedal on the low A.

I based what I would play behind Page's D-Dsus4 changes during the section that immediately follows around the D root-fifth-octave shape (D-A-D) in the 5th position, and also used the fourth (G) to create a catchy little bass tune.

Again, notice the effective use of rests in this figure. Bonzo and I would always try to play this part as tightly as possible, even while he was splashing away on the open hi-hat.

• This lesson originally appeared in the February 1997 issue of Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

A choirmaster, organist and expert in many archaic music styles, John Paul Jones also happened to play bass guitar in Led Zeppelin, the biggest heavy rock band there has ever been or ever will be.

Whether anchoring those chunky riffs with huge grooves or adorning them with subtle upper-register flourishes, Jones inhabited the bass parts with the greatest of ease.

“I grew up listening to Led Zeppelin, and that's when I realized how good John Paul Jones is,” Duff McKagan told Bass Player. “It really hit me when I was part of a Jimmy Page tribute in Seattle, and I went to the woodshed to learn his stuff. That's when I gained a true appreciation for John Paul Jones.”

Led Zeppelin made its debut in 1968, but it was Led Zeppelin II, released in 1969, that really shook the masses. The record's third cut, The Lemon Song, unwinds repeated cycles of a standard 12-bar blues framework that includes one of the finest rock bass solos ever recorded.

“When I was growing up, John Paul Jones was one of my favourite bass players,” said longtime Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony. “I remember when Led Zeppelin II came out and hearing The Lemon Song. It has this bass solo in the middle when it breaks down. That solo is one of my favorite bass parts ever. I still play that today and I still dig it.”

The song begins with an eight-bar intro in E; two blues cycles follow, followed by three faster cycles, and then one additional cycle at the original tempo before Jones steps up. His keen ear and technical manoeuvring conjure up concentrated, lyrical lines extracted directly from three blues scales: E, A, and B. (A blues scale consists of the root, b3rd, 4th, b5th, 5th, 67th.)

Jones' acute expression is clear throughout his solo, which begins at 02:58. His ideas modulate, outlining each chord change with its parallel blues scale – the E blues scale over E7#9, the A blues scale over A7, and the B blues scale over B7.

Sometimes Jones interjects an open string to keep a line moving or to pivot to another string, Jamerson-style; a good example can be found at 04:32. Jones also employs slides, which often occur over several pitches within a phrase.

Striking passages filled with melodic tension can be found at 04:20 and at 05:26, in which A# (the raised 4th of E ) plays a major role.

“It was all done with the same Led Zep ethic,” Jones told Bass Player back in September 1999. “Try everything, try what you know, don't constrict yourself, and find out what works and what doesn't work. If it doesn't work throw it away. If it works put it in, and that is what Zeppelin was all about.

“We would try anything, it just didn't matter! We were all honest with each other and so if something didn't work it didn't matter whose idea it was – if it didn't work we didn't use it. The only thing that matters is that you like what you hear.”

Jones's eclectic style can be heard throughout the other tunes on Led Zeppelin II – especially What Is and What Should Never Be and Ramble On.

But despite all of the basslines Jones would go on to record after cutting this classic record (not to mention his extensive studio work from his pre-Zeppelin days), The Lemon Song can be considered the peak of his melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic brilliance.

Terry Reid, the guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist whose emotive singing style led gave him the moniker “Superlungs,” has died at 75, following a battle with cancer.

Earlier in July, Reid was forced to postpone a European tour “due to medical issues arising from recent treatment for cancer” – while his family and friends had organized a fundraising appeal to support the cost of his ongoing treatment.

News of his death led to an outpouring of tributes from the music community, with Joe Bonamassa calling him “one of the greatest to ever do it and a beautiful person and soul.”

Determined to forge his own path, Reid famously turned down an offer by Jimmy Page to become the lead vocalist of the band that would evolve into Led Zeppelin, as well as an offer from Ritchie Blackmore to become Deep Purple's frontman. However, he was much more than that – in 1968, Aretha Franklin stated that the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Terry Reid were the best talents England had to offer.

His career included extensive tours with the Stones, Cream, Jethro Tull, and Fleetwood Mac – the Isle of Wight Festival in 1969 and Glastonbury in 1970, as well as numerous collaborations with Graham Nash, a catalog of seven studio albums, session work with the likes of Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt, and songs he penned that featured in movies such as Up in the Air and The Devil’s Rejects.

In a 2023 interview with Uncut, Reid clarified that he’d rather be known as the man who put together Led Zeppelin.

“Jimmy [Page] asked me what he should do with the band,” he explained. “He needed a singer who could sing around those guitar licks, and not everybody could do that. I’d seen Robert with John Bonham, so I said to him, ‘Not only is Robert perfect, you’ve got to get the drummer – he’s an animal!’”

And while he may not have joined a big band, he clarified that he had no regrets and was proud of plowing his own furrow.

“When you’re in a band, you’re committed to that style,” he said matter-of-factly. “You’re not gonna be able to play any of that Brazilian music you like, cos they don’t do that. And all those folk things you like, well, forget that.”

Jimmy Page and Jake Holmes have settled their decades-long lawsuit over the origins of Dazed and Confused, just months after fresh allegations were levelled against the Led Zeppelin guitarist.

American singer-songwriter Holmes had written the original version of the track in 1967. Then, having played it when opening for the Yardbirds at a Greenwich Village gig in New York, Page is said to have been drawn to the song. The Yardbirds promptly began adding it to their live set before a reworked version made its way onto Led Zeppelin’s debut album a year later.

The liner notes on Led Zeppelin I credit Page as the sole songwriter, which was changed to “inspired by Jake Holmes” following an initial copyright infringement lawsuit in 2010, settled in 2011.

In May, following the release of the new documentary, Becoming Led Zeppelin, Holmes filed a fresh lawsuit. He alleged that Page had released several archival Yardbird live performances of the track, which left his name off the credits. Such a move is said to go against their 2011 settlement agreement, thus sparking new legal wranglings.

He also claimed that he had not been compensated for the use of the song in the documentary, which charts the band’s origins.

Full details of the new settlement have not been disclosed, but Reuters reports that the two parties told a California court that the issues have been resolved. Both parties are now working on a final written settlement.

Page and company have faced copyright allegations before. The band was sued in 2014, with the opening bars of Stairway of Heaven said to be lifted directly from Spirit's 1968 instrumental, Taurus.

Led Zeppelin had toured with Spirit during one of the group's earliest US tours, and they even covered Spirit's Fresh Garbage in their formative days, leading to claims that Page had stolen guitar parts from Taurus.

Led Zeppelin won the initial case in 2016, but it was then revived two years later, only for the US Supreme Court to decline to hear the case, thus putting the dispute to bed.

In related news, a guitar that Jimmy Page gave away for free in a magazine competition is expected to fetch over $67,000 when it goes to auction next month. Page had bought the 1957 Gretsch Chet Atkins 6120 for £200, and has since been described as “mental” for parting with it so willingly.

Dave Pegg has played bass with Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson and Jethro Tull – but among the dozens of albums he’s been involved with, Nick Drake’s Bryter Layter satisfies him the most. “It’s such a moving album,” he say of the 1971 release. “It’s the one I listen to the most. It’s great.”

That’s high praise considering Pegg played on Jethro Tull’s 1987 album Crest of a Knave, which famously beat Metallica to a Grammy. “They’d had 50,000 t-shirts printed, I think, saying, ‘Grammy Award Winners,’” he laughs. “All they could do was use them to clean their cars, of which I imagine they had several!”

He left Tull in the mid-’90s, focusing solely on Fairport Convention. It all started when he switched from guitar to bass many years ago. “I got more fun out of being in a group playing bass,” he says. “The responsibility wasn’t being out front, shaking your ass and coming up with incredible solos.

“When I meet young people who say, ‘I’m thinking of taking up guitar,’ I tell them, ‘Just take up the bass – it’s so much easier. And as far as I know, you get the same money!”

How did the switch to bass happen?

“I was playing blues guitar and in rock bands in Birmingham [England], where there was a big band called the Uglies, fronted by Steve Gibbons, and they were auditioning for a lead guitarist.

“I went along but about 10 other guitarists were there, so I knew I had no chance. Then Steve Gibbons said, ‘Do you play bass? We’re looking for a bass player.’ I said, ‘I’d love to have a go – but I don’t have a bass.’

“He said, ‘Our bass player who’s leaving is selling his 1962 Fender Precision for £70. If you get that you’re in!’ I’ve played bass ever since, and I kept that ’62 Precision for a long time. I still own guitars but I’m not really a player anymore.”

Is it true you were in a band with Robert Plant and John Bonham before Led Zeppelin?

“It’s a figment of Robert Plant’s imagination! Robert did have a band, The Band of Joy, but I was never in it with Bonham at the same time. Robert and I had a meeting in a pub in Birmingham, and discussed how we were going to be this great band – but that’s as far as it went.

“I never really played in a band with Robert, but was in a band with Bonzo. He was an incredible drummer, even in those early days. He was so good, but so loud, which meant we only did about 12 gigs. We never got rebooked! They were basically gigs in pubs and they’d always say, ‘Can you turn the drums down?’”

Given your friendships with Robert and John, were you ever considered for Led Zeppelin before John Paul Jones became involved?

“No. I’m sure Bonzo would have had a go, but I was no competition for John Paul Jones, who, next to Herbie Flowers, was the top session bass player in England. If Herbie couldn’t do a session, John Paul Jones got the call.

“And he’s much more than a bass player – his arranging, keyboard, and mandolin skills are to what you want to hear him play. He’s an all-round great musician; much better than I was, or would ever be.”

When you replaced Ashley Hutchings in Fairport Convention, you brought a very different musical approach with you.

“I’d come from more of a rock background, I suppose. I’d also been playing upright bass very badly for about 18 months with the Ian Campbell Folk Group; so when I joined Fairport, it was the dream band for me because they had this folky influence. Fairport is credited with making the first folk rock album in England; for me it was such a joy.”

You added jigs and reels into your bass playing, which became standard in folk rock and folk punk thereafter. How did you come up with that?

“I take great delight in being credited with it – but it’s all basically a lack of knowing what else to play on those tunes! There’s a medley selection in the song Dirty Linen; it was four traditional tunes that Dave Swarbrick put together.

“I hadn’t a clue how to find a bass part, so Swarb said, ‘Why don’t you just play the tunes, Peggy? I’m sure you’ve got enough technique.’ Being young, foolish and hairy, I had a go – and people said it was revelatory! I’ve kept quiet about the fact that I didn’t know what else to do until today!”

What was it like working on Nick Drake’s Bryter Layter?

“It was incredible. I was living in a disused pub called The Angel in the countryside. The fashionable thing was to ‘get it together in the countryside,’ so all 13 of the Fairports were living in this hovel, with one bathroom and some wives, and I had my daughter there too. Nick came up for a few days to run through the songs and work out some sketchy arrangements.

“What you hear is basically what went down in the studio. The way he recorded, his guitar playing, it’s so intricate. There’s an awful lot of right-hand technique going on in terms of his picking style. Most of the guitar and vocals were done at the same time, because it was impossible to separate them.

“He was just an amazing guitar player. We never knew whether he was happy or not because he was a very introverted guy. We couldn’t tell whether he was getting off on what you did or not. But it still stands up in my book. It’s exactly the kind of music I love to play.”

What led to your joining Jethro Tull in 1979?

“John Glascock, Tull’s bass player, had a tooth infection that he never got looked at, which led to a worse illness, and he couldn’t do a tour. Richard Digance told them, ‘Iif you’re looking for a bass player, you should have a go with Dave Pegg.’

“That’s how I got the audition. It was just to a seven-week tour while John was recuperating. But on the last gig in San Francisco, we heard the sad news that John had passed away. He was much loved by the band, and they were so upset. But that’s how I got to stay.”

What was it like working with Ian Anderson?

“Ian kind of changed the lineup of the band altogether. He kept me and Martin Barre on, and I stayed for another 13 years. It was an incredible band to play with – Ian worked everybody so well, utilizing us to the best of our abilities. He’d always bring out the best in your playing. I haven’t had many bosses in music, but I must say that guy was a real inspiration to me.”

Did your bass rig change when you moved from Fairport to Tull?

“Tull had a kind of light and darkness in its music. In those days they was doing big stadiums of 10,000 to 15,000 people. I was using Randall Amplifiers; I had about eight 12-inch speakers in two cabinets, and a couple of 15-inch speakers. It was a huge setup – we were very loud onstage compared to American bands.”

Was it a shock Tull beat Metallica for the Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance Vocal or Instrumental with Crest of a Knave?

“It still makes me laugh! I’ve got the only Grammy in Banbury in Oxfordshire. It's on my fireplace shelf. I'm so happy with it – despite the fact that it arrived in two pieces. The plastic had separated from the base. but it's still like, ‘I’ve got a Grammy!’”

Since Jethro Tull wasn’t in attendance, how did you find out?

“I got a call at four o’clock in the morning from one of my friends who lived in New York, saying, ‘You’re not going to believe this…’ We knew we’d been nominated but we all went, ‘There’s no way Jethro Tull is going to get that.’”

Why did you leave Tull in the ’90s to focus on Fairport Convention?

“There was no falling out, but I left because Ian lost his voice. He began to have real problems, through no fault of his own. We had to keep low in the keys for all the songs; he still suffers a lot with his voice.

“It was quite painful for me to listen to Ian. I just felt for him a lot. His guitar playing and his flute playing, as ever, were brilliant. He still worked his slabs off, performing and entertaining the audience, but it was because of his voice that I left, really.”

You’ve been with Fairport ever since. What’s next?

“We have the festival which we’ve been organizing for over 40 years. It’s in Cropredy, the little village where I used to live in the middle of Oxfordshire. We've had so many great people on it; it’s not a ‘folk festival’ – it’s very eclectic. Other than that, what I’m doing is having a rest!”

• The 2025 edition of Fairport’s Cropredy Convention takes place on August 7-9.

There is a time in most guitarists’ development when they become fixated on replicating the tones of their favourite players.

In pre-internet times we might have searched for snippets of information about guitars, amplifiers and effects in magazine interviews or scrutinised grainy video footage for clues. This later evolved into sifting through interminable newsgroup discussions while trying to distinguish between nuggets and nonsense.

Those innocent times had an aura of mystery, and artists could often be evasive. Few bands could match Led Zeppelin’s mystique, and countless Zoso wannabes have tried to decipher Jimmy Page’s tone secrets. His favourite guitars are now well documented, the trick wiring in his Les Pauls has been unravelled, and his fuzz favourites have been analysed down to component level.

The only remaining bone of contention was his Zeppelin-era amplifiers, but it’s now widely known that two of Jimmy’s most favoured amps were a 100-watt Marshall Super Bass and a Supro. Both were modified and, until relatively recently, there was uncertainty about which Supro model he used.

That changed in 2019 when Jimmy agreed to the amp, along with several guitars and stage gear, being included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s ‘Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll’ exhibition. It was subsequently displayed at the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, and the mystery Supro turned out to be a modified 1959 Coronado 1690T.

Chasing The Dragon

Guitar collector, studio owner and vintage guitar mover and shaker Perry Margouleff was involved in curating the exhibition, and he happens to be friends with Jimmy Page. Naturally, he was keen for Jimmy’s 1959 Telecaster to be included because it was used for Zeppelin’s first album and featured in so many early concert clips.

Jimmy had mixed feelings because, decades earlier, while he was away on tour, a house-sitting acquaintance had stripped the hand-painted dragon off the body. Perry suggested that Jimmy should consider restoring the guitar and he eventually did so with help from Fender. The restored guitar ended up in the exhibition and Fender released a replica.

It occurred to Perry that the Supro amp was so closely associated with the ’59 Telecaster that it should be reissued, too. This is when amp builder and former executive vice president of Korg, Mitch Colby, came onboard. Mitch had previously done some amp restoration work for Jimmy and he and Perry set about analysing Jimmy’s Supro to determine what gave it such a unique tone.

During the early 1960s Jimmy had taken his Supro on tour with Neil Christian & The Crusaders and it sustained damage when it fell out of the van. After some running repairs, the Supro was taken to a local tech who fixed it up using components that were available in the UK during that time.

When Jimmy sent his Supro over to Mitch’s workshop, Perry and Mitch discovered that the preamp valves were Mullard ECC83s and the 6L6 power valves were made by General Electric. The Mullard GZ34 that had replaced the stock 5R4 rectifier had also bumped up the B+ voltage.

The Supro would have had two 10-inch speakers, but the repairer installed a new baffle for a single 12-inch Oxford Alnico speaker. This had been repaired with a non-original Pulsonic cone with a smaller-diameter voice coil than the Pulsonics commonly used in Celestions.

While he had the amp, Mitch was able to go through the circuit and identify components that had drifted out of tolerance but were contributing to the tone. He was also able to tell that Jimmy’s onboard step-down transformer gave out 120 volts of mains voltage, rather than the 110 volts the Supro was designed for.

Through a combination of circuit analysis and careful listening tests, Mitch and Perry were able to modify a vintage Supro Coronado 1690T belonging to Perry to sound exactly like Jimmy’s. The speaker presented difficulties because the manufacturers of Oxfords and Pulsonics had both ceased trading. After extensive testing, they discovered a current production Jensen P12Q was the closest match.

Once Jimmy had given his nod of approval, they all banded together to form a company called Sundragon Amplifiers to produce their replica of Jimmy’s Supro. A limited-edition run of 50 amps was made with New Old Stock electronic components and valves, and each one was signed by Jimmy himself. Despite a $12,500 price tag, they all sold in two days.

After this, Sundragon began offering a ‘budget’ version with selected JJ valves and modern components. The transformers from Jimmy’s amp were sent to the original manufacturer for analysis and they were able to recreate them. Retailing at $3,875, this is the version we’re trying out.

O Suproman

The cabinet shape, control panel and mix of large, rounded pointer knobs and smaller tremolo knobs all capture the vintage Supro spirit. The covering and handle are in keeping, rather than vintage-accurate, but the split amp sections, with the preamp at the top and the power amp on the bottom of the cabinet, are faithful to the originals.

Each of the two channels has dual inputs and a dedicated volume control. The tone control is shared, and the tremolo channel has speed and intensity controls, with the former doubling up as an on/off switch. There’s also a top mounted socket for a tremolo footswitch, along with a three-way power switch for on/off/standby modes.

A paraphase inverter feeds a pair of cathode biased 6L6 power valves, and the tremolo is applied to the cathode of the tremolo channel’s first amplification stage. But one feature that sets the Supro circuit apart is the way that the inputs are configured.

Supro inputs are labelled Treble/Normal and that’s a fair description of their sounds. As Mitch Colby describes it: “One input is full and the other has a little more top-end with a cut in the bass. Both channels are voiced differently, and the tremolo channel has less bass than the other. Jimmy said he used all four inputs when he recorded Zeppelin’s first album.”

Another difference is that the input jack signal connections don’t short to ground when there’s no cable plugged in. Most manufacturers ground unplugged inputs to minimise noise, but the Sundragon’s input wiring is true to the original.

In use, there are distinct differences between the two channels. Channel 1 has the purer sound and overdrive increases gradually. Beyond a quarter turn it doesn’t become that much louder but instead gets more compressed and saturated. There’s a tweed-like interaction between the volume and tone controls, with higher tone settings sounding more gainy as well as brighter.

The tremolo channel sounds less clear, a bit more ragged and raw. It provides a useful contrast with the bluesy, expressive and vocal characteristics of Channel 1.

Even flat out the Sundragon has little in common with the raspy and fuzzy ferocity of a 5E3 Deluxe and instead allows the natural tone of a guitar to come through with the bass end holding together well.

The tremolo isn’t the swampiest, but it has a very useful speed range that generates a thick pulse at lower frequencies and graduates to a ‘Bang Bang’ flutter at full speed. There’s ample intensity, but it never swallows the front of notes and always remains playable.

The Sundragon delivers all its goods at volume levels that are comfortable even in close proximity. It’s easy to imagine ’60s studio engineers sighing with relief when Jimmy rocked up to sessions with his Supro because he would have been so easy to mic up, and spillage would have been manageable.

Super Sizing

Given the close association with Jimmy Page, it’s hardly surprising that Sundragon has also recreated his other iconic amplifier: a 100-watt Marshall Super Bass that remained his studio and stage favourite from 1969 onwards.

Jimmy described it as, “the main one I would play all the way through my career. It was just the best amp I’d ever had… and it was so roadworthy. It did all those Led Zeppelin tours and all the recordings.”

Given that it was a standard production model from an amp industry giant, most guitarists will be more familiar with the basic specs of a Marshall than a Supro. Of course, things are never that simple because very soon after he acquired it Jimmy had the amp ‘hot-wired’. He took Jeff Beck’s advice and employed a US tech called Tony Frank who had also worked on Hendrix’s amps.

Hot-wired Marshalls are usually associated with higher gain, but Frank’s mods were designed to do the opposite. Jimmy said, “After recording the first Led Zeppelin record and creating sounds that define rock guitar, I needed an amp capable of reproducing this broad palette of sounds, including the light and the shade in the studio and a live setting.”

The exact nature of the modifications has never been made public, and Mitch Colby is understandably reluctant to divulge details. We can report, however, that Frank replaced the stock EL34s with 6550s. Mitch also describes the voicing as being somewhere in between a Super Lead and a Super Bass.

Sundragon’s Super Dragon replica features recreated transformers by Heyboer, New Old Stock GE 6550 valves, Allen Bradley and Iskra resistors and Philips ‘mustard’ capacitors. After extensive testing, custom-made Warehouse speakers were chosen for the matching 4x12 cabinet because they were the closest match to Jimmy’s Celestion Greenback G12H30s with their 55Hz resonance.

Breathing Fire

As with the Sundragon, the test guitars we used were an early 1960 Les Paul Standard and a 1961 Stratocaster belonging to the owner of these amps, Andrew Raymond. Through the matching cabinet the Super Dragon sounded breathtakingly loud and powerful.

Channel 1 is extremely bright and we were soon dialling out most of the treble and presence with both guitars. Even so, clean Strat tones exemplify the sweet and crystalline sparkle of the very finest vintage Marshalls. The Super Dragon is certainly dynamic and punchy, but not in the spiky way that some high-powered Marshalls can be.

Both channels remain clean until the volume controls are pushed beyond halfway, but sheer volume and concern for our hearing prevented us from exploring the full gain range. To tame the level, we resorted to Andrew’s Pete Cornish-modified Marshall 4x12 cabinet with all but one of its vintage Greenbacks disabled.

Channel 2 provides a fabulous contrast because it’s easier to push into a smooth overdrive and its naturally darker tone opens up the full potential of the Treble and Presence controls. The Middle control has tremendous range and is very precise in the way it allows you to sculpt the sound. The amp can roar with real gravitas in the low mids and bass that is humongous but well controlled.

Clean-up is particularly impressive, with small volume-control adjustment taking the Les Paul from ferocious to chiming cleans. When overdriven, some Marshalls steal the show by imposing themselves on guitars and players, but the Super Dragon complements, rather than dominates, and allows individual instruments to shine.

Currently listed at $22,500 on Sundragon’s website, Super Dragons are still available, and no ‘budget’ version is currently on the market. But having had access to Jimmy Page’s original and his stamp of approval, there’s no doubting the authenticity of the sound.

• Find out more at Sundragon Amps.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Starting in 1996, Guitar World was honored to publish a handful of lesson columns authored by Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. The following is one of these columns. It has been edited in certain instances for use online.

Last time, we were discussing how octave-doubled single-note riffs and shifting rhythms can be used to create heavy-sounding “stomp grooves,” and we cited my Black Dog riff as an example of how effective this type of playing can be in a power trio lineup.

This month, I'd like to continue with this topic and offer a couple of examples of stomp grooves that employ another musical element, silence, to add impact and drama to a riff.

Silence, when used at the right times, can be an extremely effective compositional tool. It can help provide contrast, punctuation, and a feeling of release to a melody or accompaniment.

A good example of an octave-doubled single-note “stomp groove” that uses quite a bit of silence is the riff that begins The Ocean. I played this riff fingerstyle.

As with many other Zeppelin riffs, I originally came up with this figure on the electric bass guitar while jamming with John Bonham. It's one of those tricky parts that was conceived using a great deal of eye contact between the two of us.

Notice the pervasive use of silence in the riff, especially the gaping hole created by the half-note rest on beats 3 and 4 of the first bar. These rests helped provide the syncopation and allowed the riff to breathe while Bonzo continued to lay down the beat. (Page's verse riff in 4/4, the one comprised of the chords D5-05-A5-G5-A5-D5, also employs rests very effectively).

Also note that the second bar of the riff is in 7/8 meter. Dropping half a beat from the two-bar phrase sounded good to our ears, so we just went ahead and did it. We actually wrote a lot of riffs and grooves that way – by experimenting with different variations on parts until something clicked.

Another good example of this type of writing is the intro/verse riff to The Wanton Song, which also came to me whilst jamming with Bonzo. (I played this bassline fingerstyle as well).

Notice that beats 1 and 2 in the first measure are comprised entirely of 16th notes (the G octaves), while beats 3 and 4 are completely empty (except, of course, for the drums). The last 16th note of beat 2 (the high G) is accented to enhance the feeling of syncopation and make the “hole” that immediately follows on beat 3 sound more dramatic.

You may recall that during beats 3 and 4 of the fourth bar of this riff Page plays a punchy chord fill (F-F#) with the drums. I felt that it was more effective for me not to double the F-F# walk-up and instead lay out until beat 1 of the next bar. Keep in mind that what you don't play is just as important as what you do play.

For the break riff, I used the G minor-blues scale (G-Bb-C-Db-D-F) and a lot of syncopated 16th-note rhythms and rests to help create a funky, powerful-sounding phrase with lots of “kicks.”

In the final bar (the descending part of the phrase), each G-string note is repeated an octave lower on the A string. Playing the notes this way – in alternating octaves – really helped accentuate the syncopation of the line and gave it a very angular and interesting contour.

• This lesson originally appeared in the January 1997 issue of Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Starting in 1996, Guitar World was honored to publish a handful of lesson columns authored by Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. The following is the first of these columns, a breakdown of the infamously twisty riff that underpins the Zeppelin classic, Black Dog. It has been edited in certain instances for use online.

Hello everyone. Over the next several months I plan on sharing with you some of my approaches to playing, writing, and arranging music. I'll be discussing some of the concepts that I've gleaned over the years, illustrating them with some well-known – and a few not-so-well-known – musical examples.

Let's begin this first lesson by talking about what I've often heard people refer to as the classic Led Zeppelin “stomp groove.” A prime example of this can be found in the song Black Dog, from our fourth album.

As you probably already know, Led Zeppelin were heavily influenced by blues music – Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and many others.

I was inspired to write the Black Dog riff after learning an old blues riff in E from the Muddy Waters album, Electric Mud. [Ed. note: Jones later retracted this, citing Howlin’ Wolf’s Smokestack Lightning as his inspiration for the riff.]

It's a swampy, circular, single-note riff and Jimmy Page and I used to love to play it forever! I wanted to write an original riff that had that same type of busy, yet plodding, feel.

What I came up with has an extra beat thrown in at the end of the phrase. It just felt natural to hit the A note an extra time before Robert [Plant] came in again with the vocal.

I then came up with the bridge riff, which is in E. This riff is rather tricky-sounding, as it's built from a repeated phrase that is four-and-a-half beats long. Each time the phrase is repeated it's displaced by half a beat.

The E note, which falls neatly on beat one the first time the phrase is played, falls on the second eighth-note of beat one the second time around, on beat two the third time, and on the second eighth-note of beat two the fourth time. This technique of repeating an odd-length phrase in an even time signature such as 4/4 is known as hemiola and is a very effective compositional tool.

When this riff was played against Bonzo's [drummer John Bonham] half-time backbeat and doubled an octave higher on guitar, the result was a very powerful and catchy-sounding “stomp groove.” It seems that quite a few bands have picked up on this concept.

Originally, I wrote the bridge riff with different accents that disguised the beat even more. In the long run, however, playing it this way proved to be too tricky for everyone to hear and perform together without losing track of the beat, so we ended up changing the accent pattern to make the downbeats a little more obvious.

I used a pick for this song to get that growling, trebly tone. Many bass players scoff at the thought of using a plectrum for anything, but I've found it to be quite useful for a lot of things.

For example, during the chorus/solo sections of Black Dog, I would sometimes strum E5 and D5 power chords behind Page's G and D chords, especially when performing live. I really don't think the song would have sounded as punchy and “fat” if I hadn't used a pick.

A few years after we recorded this song, I started using an eight-string bass when performing it live. Since every note I played on that bass would be doubled one octave higher, it really helped fill out the middle register. This was particularly effective when Jimmy would go to solo.

Keep in mind that when it comes to creating music, there are no “rules.”

Look at Led Zeppelin – we broke just about every so-called rule of music and recording that there was, and for the most part, it seemed to have worked to our benefit. The only thing that really matters is that you like what you hear.

• This lesson originally appeared in the December 1996 issue of Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

25 years ago, electric guitar legend Jimmy Page and the Black Crowes teamed up on Live at the Greek – a historic live album that celebrates both Page’s and the Crowes’ rich repertoire, with some old blues and rock standards thrown in for good measure.

Most of the tracks were recorded at L.A.’s Greek Theatre (thus the album name) on October 18 and 19, 1999 and released a year later. The resulting album captured some of Page and co’s most thunderous live performances together.

In a new mini-documentary celebrating the anniversary of the historic team-up, Page sits down with Crowes’ Chris and Rich Robinson to reminisce about how the opportunity to play together came about.

“We were in London, we were doing a couple nights at the Royal Albert Hall,” Chris recalls. “Robert [Plant]’s like, ‘Can I bring Jimmy down?’ We were like, ‘We’d love to meet Jimmy! Of course!’ And we just hit it off like that.”

To which Page adds, “It was really good for me to meet them because I really admired them from the recording work that they’d done. They were definitely from the same school I come from.”

As opposed to – as the Zeppelin guitarist puts it – “just hustling a few jams together”, the collaboration transpired into something “more epic”.

For Page, one of the most standout moments was re-interpreting the track Rick Rubin famously likened to “nature coming through the speakers” – Ten Years Gone – from Led Zeppelin’s 1975 record, Physical Graffiti.

“Ten Years Gone was something I’d worked on at home,” he explains. “[It] had all this sort of guitar orchestration on it, but I’d never heard it like that, apart from on record, because in the days of Zeppelin, I’d try and do as much as I could just with the one guitar.

“And suddenly I had all these harmonies going on, like I died and gone to heaven! And I mean this for sure – [it was] really emotional moment.”

Page also contributed his guitar chops to one of the Crowes’ signature tracks, 1990’s She Talks to Angels. It was a pivotal moment for the band that led them to perceive the song differently.

“[It’s] definitely our most popular song, and Jimmy, adding something that was different, took on something else musically,” Chris recounts. “She Talks To Angels was never the same after that, because he elevated this thing [to the point] of, ‘Oh, this is what it could be.’”

An expanded and remastered version of the live album dropped on March 14 – and it includes Crowes songs that were omitted from the original release due to contractual restrictions from their record company, plus a previously unreleased soundcheck jam.

In more recent Jimmy Page news, singer-songwriter Jake Holmes – hailed as the original songwriter of Dazed and Confused, later popularized by Zeppelin – revived a copyright lawsuit against Page over songwriting credits and royalties.

If you could describe Marc Ribot's career with one word, it would have to be “storied”. The veteran electric guitar and acoustic guitar player made his start transcribing jazz solos, and earned $50 a session recording novelty albums for kids' characters, such as Barbie and Strawberry Shortcake.

Joining the eclectic outfit the Lounge Lizards in the ’80s opened up the doors that Ribot had relocated to New York for, and the move eventually lead to a long spell with Tom Waits. As Lounge Lizards bandleader John Lurie later wrote in his memoir, “Marc is a musical genius. So many ideas are coming out of that guy that it is actually often a problem.”

The “problem” Lurie jokingly referred to manifested itself in a session for Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s 2007 album Raising Sand, which came by way of T Bone Burnett. Ribot tells The Guardian that he was “totally intimidated” by the gig – so much so that he went to the session slightly over-prepared.

“My junior high rock band was called Love Gun! Like every other guitarist in the world, I always dreamed of playing Whole Lotta Love! I took 20 different fuzzboxes in with me: finally, I get to play some metal!”

Raising Sand, however, turned out to be a folk record, and although the direction caught Ribot off guard, his versatile chops were still well-suited for the job at hand.

“Still, whenever I’d hear Plant’s voice in my headphones, I was like Dr Strangelove when he can’t stop doing the Nazi salute, my foot twitching towards the fuzzbox. But Alison’s such a great singer and storyteller. I was so carried away by her voice and the story she was singing that I straight-up forgot to play. That had never happened to me before.”

Ribot had previously spoken about his work on Raising Sand with Guitar World, detailing the gear he ended up using on that record and speaking about composing parts that captured the spirit of the music and “whatever they wanted and whoever they were trying to be.”

Singer-songwriter Jake Holmes has revived a copyright lawsuit against Jimmy Page over the songwriting credits for Dazed and Confused.

According to an investigation conducted by Rolling Stone, Holmes is claiming that he hasn't received proper credit or royalties for the earlier versions of the track performed by the Yardbirds – one of which features in the recently released documentary, Becoming Led Zeppelin.

Despite reportedly sending a cease and desist to Page and the other defendants last month, Holmes hasn't received a reply, which led him to file a lawsuit.

Holmes wrote Dazed and Confused in 1967, even recording it for his album, The Above Ground Sound of Jake Holmes. After Holmes opened for the Yardbirds at a Greenwich Village gig in New York, Page allegedly took a liking to the track, and in the years that followed, the Yardbirds would perform their own rendition. However, it was never properly recorded, until Page revisited it for Led Zeppelin's debut album.

As Holmes would later comment in Greg Russo's book Yardbirds: The Ultimate Rave-Up, “That was the infamous moment of my life when Dazed and Confused fell into the loving arms and hands of Jimmy Page” – complete with the infamous descending riff that is unmistakably similar to Holmes' original.

While Holmes was aware that the song had found its way onto Led Zeppelin's eponymous debut album, he did not take any action. In the early ’80s, Holmes tentatively wrote to the group and asked for a co-credit but received no reply. It was only in 2010 that Holmes sued Page for copyright infringement – a case dismissed “with prejudice” in January 2012 after an out-of-court settlement.

The new lawsuit notes that over the past three years, several archival Yardbirds recordings of the track have since come out. According to Holmes, these have been falsely credited to Page and, as a result, he has allegedly been cheated out of royalties.

Furthermore, Holmes argues that in Becoming Led Zeppelin, the Zeppelin version is properly credited as “Written by Jimmy Page, inspired by Jake Holmes,” unlike the Yardbirds version, which simply says “Written by Jimmy Page.”

“The Yardbirds’ performance of Dazed and Confused in the film is a performance of the Holmes Composition,” the lawsuit states.

“Defendants have thus committed multiple acts of willful infringement by continuing to use the Holmes Composition without authorization and in the face of both specific knowledge of Plaintiff’s rights and Plaintiff’s cease and desist demand.”

In other Led Zeppelin news, newly unearthed Super 8 footage of the band performing in Denmark in 1979 has surfaced online after 45 years – complete with the original audio.

In 1968, Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan released Hurdy Gurdy Man – the influential title track of his The Hurdy Gurdy Man album from the same year, which featured the contributions of a rather high-profile session guitar player: Jimmy Page.

Page was, of course, a successful session player before he rocketed to fame with Led Zeppelin, but if things had panned out slightly differently in the late 1960s, it would have been a completely different ‘Jimmy’ who featured on the influential psychedelic rock track.

As Donovan explains in a newly resurfaced interview with Classic Rock, when he initially wrote Hurdy Gurdy Man, he actually had Jimi Hendrix in mind, and even went as far as to sound out the legendary blues rock guitar great over his availability for a potential feature.

“I saw him at [London club] the Bag O’Nails,” Donovan reflects of Hendrix. “Everyone was there: the Stones, The Beatles, The Who, the Kinks. Chas [Chandler, Hendrix’s manager] had invited everyone. And it was quite incredible. Such a superb blend of musicians.

“I didn’t see him much after that because we all went on the road and we all got famous and our paths only crossed occasionally,” he continues. “But when I wrote Hurdy Gurdy Man I thought of Jimi. I said to [producer] Mickie Most: ‘This is for Hendrix.’ And he said: ‘No it isn’t, it’s for you.’ So I said: ‘Let’s get Hendrix to play on it.’

“Mickie phoned Chas who said: ‘Jimi’s playing shows back-to-back.’ So we got Jimmy Page. And aren’t we happy about that. Because what came out of that, thanks to Jimmy, Mickie Most and John Paul Jones, was something that was pagan Celtic rock ’n’ roll, not a copy of American rock ’n’ roll.”

There is some debate over who was actually in the studio during the recording of Hurdy Gurdy Man, and while Donovan confirms Page and bassist John Paul Jones were there, there is speculation that another future Led Zeppelin member was present, too: John Bonham.

And, as Donovan once theorized to Uncut in 2008, it may well have been the Hurdy Gurdy Man session that ultimately sprang Led Zeppelin to life. After all, the band officially formed that same year, and released their debut in 1969.

“When we heard this thing that Page was doing coming out, we just said, ‘Keep playing…’” he said. “That might have been the first power-chord solo. Mickie Most's office in Oxford Street had an adjoining door to [future Led Zeppelin manager] Peter Grant’s.

“Maybe the band heard how Hurdy Gurdy Man went… 'And why are we doing sessions when we can do this?' And they became the greatest Pagan British Rock Band.”

Visit Classic Rock to read the full interview.

Jimmy Page has always been synonymous with his beloved 1959 sunburst Gibson Les Paul, a guitar so iconic that it was exhibited at no less than the Metropolitan Museum of Art, during the museum's guitar-centric 2019 exhibition, Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll.

Now, it's no CIA-held secret that the Les Paul wasn't always Page's instrument of choice for Zeppelin. He used a Telecaster for the band's fiery, epochal debut, Led Zeppelin I and, at least for a while, was satisfied with that and his Les Paul Custom.

Enter Joe Walsh.

Then a budding guitar hero with the James Gang, Page and Walsh had known one another since the former's pre-Zeppelin days with the Yardbirds. And Walsh had a proposition for him.

“Back then, Joe brought a Les Paul Standard along to a Fillmore East gig on the first leg of [a Led Zeppelin] American tour and said, ‘You’ve got to have this guitar,’” Page said in a 2023 Instagram post. “I said, ‘Well, I don’t need it, Joe, I’ve got a Les Paul Custom.’”

Walsh's lobbying, however, eventually won Page over.

Telling the story slightly differently in a 2012 interview with Guitar World, Walsh said, “When [Led Zeppelin's] first album really took off, Jimmy was still playing the Telecasters that he played in the Yardbirds. He was looking for a Les Paul and asked if I knew of any, 'cause he couldn’t find one that he liked. And I had two.

“So I kept the one I liked the most, and I flew to New York with the other one. I laid it on him and said, ‘Try this out.’ He really liked it. So I gave him a really good deal, about 1,200 bucks. I had to hand-carry it; I flew there and everything.

“Whatever my expenses were, that’s what I charged him,” the future Eagles guitarist continued. “That guitar ended up being a significant part of Led Zeppelin’s body of work. But again, I just thought he should have a Les Paul, for godsakes!”

Page quickly put the Les Paul to use, on Zep's What is and What Should Never Be and for what this publication ranked as the greatest guitar riff of all time, Whole Lotta Love.

“I played the Les Paul on Whole Lotta Love and What Is and What Should Never Be and that decided it for me: it was definitely going to be the Les Paul from then on,” Page said in 2023. “I always wanted to make a change for each album sonically and that was my first decision for Led Zeppelin II.

“Like I had built Led Zeppelin I around the Fender Telecaster, I built the second album around the sonic texture of the Les Paul Standard. Neither Joe Walsh nor I realized at the time just what an important thing he had done by coming along with that Les Paul.”

Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant has long been known to be a bit agnostic toward Stairway to Heaven, going so far as to tell the band Heart that he typically hates when other artists cover the eight-minute classic-rock touchstone.

It's a testament to Heart, then, that when they covered the song at the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors show – in tribute to Zeppelin, who were receiving the titular honor – their version left Plant in tears, and guitarist Jimmy Page and bassist John Paul Jones visibly stunned.

Heart's Nancy Wilson was on rhythm guitar duties – she would later tell Howard Stern that Page told her, “‘You nailed the guitar part!’” – but it was Shane Fontayne, a veteran guitarist most famous for his tenures with Bruce Springsteen and Lone Justice, who was given the lofty task of taking on the song's heroic solo, one of the most famous in rock history. Mind you, this meant that he had to play said solo in front of its author.

The thing was, though, Led Zeppelin never much figured in Fontayne's guitar journey. Somehow, he told Guitar World in a recent interview, he wasn't quite aware of just how much of a linchpin that solo is in the lead guitar catalog.

“I didn’t know it [the solo] was that iconic beforehand!” Fontayne told GW. “It was only when I started seeing all the comments that I realized it.”

Pressed on, erm, how this was possible, the guitarist explained, “I was a bit too young to be in that place.

“The hard rock thing, at the time, hadn’t so much been my kind of thing. So yes, Stairway is a classic rock staple, and I was obviously familiar with it, but it wasn’t something that had spoken to me so much – and it’s a long song!”

So! How did he approach such a lofty solo, having not known it super-well beforehand?

“You want to be respectful and do not necessarily what they would have done, because you’re not them,” Fontayne said. “Not necessarily what they would have done, because you’re not them. So, it’s about what I would want to hear if I was in the audience. In that regard, I wanted to recreate the solo that had been done on the record.

“With Stairway, because I’m not a Jimmy Page kind of player, even though I did get a Les Paul for that show, I listened to the solo. I wanted to try and emulate it with the right spirit and render it somewhat closely – but not just have it be a regurgitation. Fortunately, at the time, I didn’t realize how iconic it was. [laughs]”

Aware of the song's long-memed status or not, Fontayne was excited to meet Page after the show, taking the chance to ask him about the long-standing rumor that he played on the Kinks' epochal You Really Got Me (something that Kinks guitarist Dave Davies has vehemently denied.)

“In these moments – you’ve got a moment here, and somebody could be speaking a completely different language coming back at you – is he basically said that he’d been at that session, but I don’t think he played the solo,” Fontayne said.

“If I remember correctly, he’d been at the session or been on the session but didn’t play the solo.”

Keep an eye on Guitar World in the coming days for the full interview with Fontayne.

Few rock bands carry the mystique of Led Zeppelin. Aside from the sheer primal power of classics like Led Zeppelin IV, one thing that's sustained the band's near-mythical status is that its body of work includes very few live performances.

Thankfully, on record, bassist John Paul Jones's ferocity comes across: From his hard-edged Black Dog riffs to the melodicism of Ramble On to his startlingly inventive improvisations on The Lemon Song, Jones inhabited the basslines in Led Zeppelin with the greatest of ease.

“When I was working with John Bonham, the main thing was making sure that my notes and rhythms complemented the drums,” Jones told Bass Player in 2013. “For us, it was all about how good the band sounded, and we always worked to make the other members sound as good as they could.”

“If Jimmy was soloing on guitar, we'd make sure he had the proper backing to solo over. But it wasn't a plan we'd write out on a piece of paper. It was a total commitment to the band that made it what it was.”

Armed with years of experience as a session bassist and arranger – having worked with the Yardbirds, the Rolling Stones, and Jeff Beck – Jones brought an ear for experimentation to Led Zeppelin, folding keyboards, mandolin, and much more into his band's potent brew of blues, folk, rockabilly, and hard rock.

“My strong roots are from rhythm & blues and soul music, and jazz, but with Led Zeppelin, anyone could go anywhere musically, and we always knew we'd be followed. It was almost like a flock of birds, where one bird flies in a different direction and suddenly the whole flock changes direction.

“Jimmy and Robert had more of the Delta blues and a bit of Chicago blues sound, but I wasn’t afraid of bringing something new into the mix. There was also blues coming through soul music, and blues coming through jazz. So with all of that, we were able to make a unique approach to blues-based music.”

Did you ever go through a period when you'd transcribe other players' basslines and analyze what they were doing?

“Not at all. That might work for some people, but not for me. When you listen to a certain kind of music a lot, you begin to think that way – you understand why they play what they play, not just what they're playing, which is the case when you're simply copying something.

“When I started playing bass, I would switch on the radio and just play to it. That's great training. To start, back then, not everything was in exactly the same tuning; there were no electronic tuners, so unless there was a keyboard instrument, tuning on records was fairly arbitrary. So I'd hear something, I might have to retune quickly, and I'd just have to start playing and make sense of it.

“After a while I began to anticipate how sequences were going to go. I grew to know what was going to happen in the music and then be ready for it. The only thing you can't busk to like that is salsa music, because the bass hits the beat before anyone else does – so if you don't know the tune, you're fucked!”

Who were your most important bass influences?

“I had always listened to Duck Dunn, and later, to Motown and James Jamerson, and Willie Weeks. The groove was very important to me and to the band. Bonzo and I were great groovers – we really were. In those days, we'd play concerts and people would dance to our music. There aren't many hard rock bands these days that people dance to.

“I liked the simplicity of soul records in those days. It was just straight down the line, you know – nice phrasing and tasteful, melodic playing, but with a groove you wouldn't believe.”

You were also heavily into jazz. How did that affect your style?

“Charles Mingus was a huge influence – his power, the melodic aspects of his playing, and also his compositional approach appealed to me. I also would listen to Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, and Miles Davis. Miles's arranger, Gil Evans, was another huge influence.

“I like sparse harmonies – just a few notes to suggest quite a large harmonic range. I used that on the Zeppelin song No Quarter.”

It's hard to imagine a lot of metal players today going home and listening to Ornette Coleman records.

“It's their loss if they don't. But that was also true of a lot of bands back then; their music sounded like slower and faster versions of the same song, and I often thought it was because they listen only to one kind of music. But we had this great range of musical influences, and I always said Led Zeppelin was where all of those influences met.”

One of the striking things about Led Zeppelin is how flexible and organic the grooves were.

“Bonzo and I were pretty adept at putting the beat wherever we wanted. A lot of younger musicians don't understand that you can move the beat around against a pulse, but we used to do it all the time and that would change the tune's dynamic. We didn't think about it, though; we'd just do it.

“Sometimes we knew we were doing it, and we'd have fun seeing exactly how far we could lay back – but generally it was instinctive. We'd know there was a song section that needed a bit more urgency, but didn't want to go any faster, so we'd get just get a little more on top of the beat and push it, but without speeding it up.

“Then again, sometimes we would speed up; there's nothing in the rulebook that says thou shalt stay at the same tempo forever.”

“That was a problem with a lot of the programmed drums in the '80s: People would say, ‘Why isn't this getting more exciting?’ Because you're stuck at this tempo! I mean, Stairway to Heaven has a natural acceleration, and it's part of the tune's dynamic. There's nothing wrong with that at all.”

Weren't you largely responsible for the odd-time riffs on songs like The Ocean and The Crunge?

“Page was into the odd-time stuff, too. My riffs tended to be more melodic, and his were more harmonic, I suppose, with jagged chords. I always liked it when odd times were suggested by the melody; if the melody needs to go around another beat, you just stick in the extra beat.

“They used to do that in Delta blues as well. Country blues was rarely 12 bars; if they needed to say another line, it would be 13 bars! It didn't matter, because it was all organic. I prefer it when an odd time is suggested by the melody or rhythm rather than thinking, ‘I should be clever here and put in a 9/8 bar.’ If you do it that way, it often ends up sounding contrived.”

What did you bring to Zeppelin from your career as a studio session player?

“Apart from a fairly wide knowledge of all types of music, the discipline of sessions was really useful – being able to produce music on time, at a certain place, and to turn up for rehearsals. I know that sounds kind of obvious, but you'd be surprised how many bands today just can't make a rehearsal.

“You've got to show up and be dedicated; if you have a rehearsal, you can't stay home and watch TV just because your girlfriend is washing her hair. As a session player you can't be a minute late. You have to be ready to play when the clock strikes the hour, and you've got to be in top form.”

Newly unearthed Super 8 footage of Led Zeppelin performing in Denmark in 1979 has surfaced online, giving a candid taste of what watching the band at their peak was like.

Shot by Led Zep fan and filmmaker Lennart Ström on a camera he snuck into Copenhagen’s Falkoner Theater on July 24, the film had sat idle in a drawer for 45 years before getting a carefully executed glow-up.

The shows came on the eve of the band’s iconic Knebworth sets, with the two dates in the Danish capital acting as warm-ups for the main events. Ström’s 13-minute, set-traversing footage serves as a stunning time capsule of the night.

Notably, the footage was captured without audio as Ström was only filming the snippets of the show to test the camera out. The Dane says he’d occasionally showcased the footage to friends during the intervening years, but it has remained largely unseen. That was until he told the Heart of Markness podcast – which had run an episode on Zeppelin’s Copenhagen shows – of its existence.

That led to the clip’s revival at the hands of Reel Revival Film and the Pink Floyd Research Group – which played its part in reviving fan-shot footage of David Gilmour and Pink Floyd performing in 1975. Together, the parties have digitized and color-corrected the footage, and paired it with audio recordings from the show.

The finished film has been uploaded to YouTube by the channel ledzepfilm and features a plethora of Led Zep classics. It kicks off with The Song Remains the Same, during which Jimmy Page makes light work of his legendary twin-neck Gibson EDS-1275, and later takes in Whole Lotta Love, Black Dog, and Kashmir.

There’s also a guitar solo, unleashed by Page on his “Number 1” Les Paul, which is given a stirring visual accompaniment via a laser display that also sees Page playing with a violin bow that looks like a lightsabre.

Other bands, such as The Who, were already incorporating lasers into their live shows by this time, but Zeppelin were reportedly one of the first to use a high-powered laser. However, it often wreaked havoc with venues, which the band had learned the hard way the night before.

“We brought the Super 8 camera to test a new film that would work indoors,” Ström tells Led Zeppelin News. “It was no problem getting the camera in. It was quite small and I think I had it in my trousers.

“The gig the night before was, according to the papers, a disaster due to the electric failures that the laser had brought,” he continues. “So there were generators standing in the alley we passed before going in. We didn't understand why they were there, but I remembered from the army that [they were] generators. So we were of course concerned about the gig.”

Footage of a thankfully uninterrupted solo shows that the generators weren’t needed, but had likely been drafted in as a precautionary measure. It seems the force was with them on the night.

“I have kept this film in a drawer all the years,” Ström says. “I showed it to some friends, guitarists who went nuts. And that was the silent version.”

The film’s release comes just after the cinematic release of Becoming Led Zeppelin, a brand-new tell-all documentary on the band’s rise. Last year, unseen footage of the band’s record-breaking show at the Pontiac Dome in 1977 surfaced online.

Last night (January 30), a huge number of pop and rock A-listers came together for FireAid, a benefit show that aimed to raise money for victims of the devastating fires that tore through the Los Angeles area earlier this month.

As is often the case at star-studded benefit concerts, there were a number of surprise guests, most notably the surviving members of Nirvana, who played a four-song set with St. Vincent, Kim Gordon, Joan Jett, and Dave Grohl's daughter Violet, on vocals.

Unlike Nirvana, the Black Crowes were featured on the bill beforehand, but they had a surprise of their own.

For a rendition of Led Zeppelin's folky classic, Going to California, the Crowes recruited none other than Slash.

Few prominent rock bands are better-equipped to tackle the Zeppelin catalog than the Black Crowes. After all, many a year ago, they played a number of full, Zeppelin-heavy shows with Jimmy Page himself, the highlights of which were captured on the double live album, Live at the Greek.

Indeed, their take on the Zeppelin acoustic showcase is a beautiful one, with the Guns 'n' Roses guitarist – armed with a Gibson acoustic that, interestingly, doesn't appear to be his signature J-45 – and Rich Robinson, playing his Eastman 12-string, perfectly locking in with one another.

After thanking the city's first responders, Crowes frontman Chris Robinson said by way of introduction, “We're gonna play something we thought was appropriate for the evening.”

Just last year, Slash teamed up with Chris Robinson for a cover of the Steppenwolf-via-Hoyt Axton song, The Pusher. The song – which was made famous by the classic film, Easy Rider – served as the opening tune on Slash's blues covers album, Orgy of the Damned.

“When I called him about it, he loved that song,” the top-hatted guitar hero told Guitar World last year. “It was cool that he was so passionate about it, and excited about coming in and doing it.”

Chibson USA – known for its wildly popular guitar gear memes on social media – has released its first feature-length documentary, which focusses on Robert Plant's “favorite band”.

Dread Zeppelin: A Song of Hope is currently free-to-air via Chibson’s YouTube channel, and it tells the story of, erm, a Led Zeppelin reggae cover band that is fronted by an Elvis impersonator.

It’s a match made in heaven, in truth. If there was ever a band that embodied the Chibson spirit – the lovable lunatics that have brought you the Humbuckle, the treasure map guitar, and cease/desist toggle switches for Gibson Les Pauls – it most certainly has to be them.

“Here’s what's great about Dread Zeppelin,” journalist Kyra Phillips quips at one point in the doc. “They create this illusion. They want people to look at them and say, ‘Is this for real, or is this a joke?’”

Steel Panther’s pun-loving vocalist Michael Starr narrates the film, which, across just shy of 90 minutes, “chronicles the unlikely journey of the ’90s cult sensation… a band known for their revolutionary mashup of Led Zeppelin’s music with a reggae beat, led by the unforgettable 300-pound Elvis impersonator.”

The thing is, the documentary smartly touches on the fact there is more than just satire behind the band and their Dracula-meets-Elvis singer: they rose to fame in the late ’80s as the “comedic break” between rock and grunge, and offered a reprieve during a period when “people were looking for something authentic”.

As the trailer shows, they’ve also been described as “anti-rock ’n’ roll” during their time, with many people clearly failing to see the appeal. At one point, a news anchor asks them: “What would be worse, if someone told you you were lousy musicians or lousy comedians?”

Yet, despite the adversary they faced, Dread Zeppelin achieved impressive success, and a host of oddball hybrid bands have followed in their wake – most notably Elvana, an Elvis-fronted Nirvana tribute.

Chibson USA trawled through “hours of unreleased archival footage, personal tape recordings, and hundreds of unpublished photographs” to put the documentary together. It also features sit-down interviews with various band members and others who have been caught up in their madness along the way.

“Chibson USA is proud to bring this incredible untold story to the digital screen and celebrate a band that changed the face of satire in music,” it says.

Head to the Chibson USA YouTube channel to watch the doc in full.

The first trailer for the long-awaited Becoming Led Zeppelin documentary – which tells the story of the hard rock icons’ early years – has finally arrived, years after the film’s official premiere.

Becoming Led Zeppelin is one of the most anticipated guitar and music documentaries of recent years. The film, which will be the first-ever authorized Led Zep doc, was announced back in 2019, and received its first airing at the Venice International Film Festival in 2021.

However, it wasn’t until early 2023 when eager fans received an update, when it was reported by ledzepnews.com that the film was being re-named and re-edited.

Now, more than a year after that development – and over three years after the film was shown at Venice – Becoming Led Zeppelin (which has seemingly retained its original title) has finally received its first trailer.

It’s only just over a minute long, but there’s enough in there to further fan the hype flames, with archive footage of Led Zep on stage, modern-day interviews with the band’s surviving members, and never-before-heard audio of an interview with late drummer John Bonham all mixed together.

As the film’s name would suggest, Becoming Led Zeppelin charts the group’ early years, which – as the trailer makes clear – was far from plain sailing.

“Everyone said, ‘You’re mad. You’re completely crazy,’” says John Paul Jones. “We knew we were on the right track.” “I knew this was gonna be the way to go,” adds Jimmy Page. “I wanted it to be something that they hadn’t heard before.”

However, for all of the band’s confidence, the rest of the music world was slow to catch on to what they were doing. As John Bonham notes in an audio clip at the start of the trailer, “You could tell it was gonna be a good group, but people wouldn’t even book the band.”

Such obstacles, and how Led Zeppelin overcame them on their way to becoming one of the greatest rock bands of all time, will all be the focus of Becoming Led Zeppelin.

Directed by Bernard MacMahon, the documentary will be limited exclusively to IMAX theatres when it receives its general release on February 7. Two days prior, preview screenings will be held in 18 theaters across US and Canada. There’s been no official release date confirmation for elsewhere.

As the first authorized Led Zep documentary, with a never-before-heard audio interview with John Bonham, it’s set to become essential viewing for music fans.

“We spent five years flying back and forth across the Atlantic scouring attics and basements in pursuit of rare and unseen film footage, photographs and music recordings,” says writer/producer Allison McGourty.

“Then we transferred each piece of media with custom techniques so that in IMAX, these 55-year-old clips and music would look and sound like they came out of the lab yesterday.”

Visit the Becoming Led Zeppelin website to find out more.

Jimmy Page has accumulated and used a wide array of amps throughout his decades-long career, including his Supro Coronado 1690T, which he famously used on the Stairway to Heaven solo, and his Marshall 1959SLP, which, until recently, many believed to have been his main Zeppelin amp.

However, in the December 2024 issue of Guitar Player, Page reveals that one amp reigned, and still reigns, supreme: his 1969 Marshall JMP Super Bass 100.

Page describes the Super Bass as “a really hot-wired Marshall, the main one that I would play all the way through my career. It was just the best amp that I’d ever had in my collection. And it was so roadworthy. It did all those Led Zeppelin tours, and all the recordings. It did flippin’ everything, y’know?”

After he started using Marshalls in 1969, the Super Bass became Page’s main recording and live amp, thanks to modifications made by Tony Frank, Unicord/Marshall's top engineer.

Frank’s modifications included replacing the stock EL34 power tubes with the significantly cleaner 6550s, aiming not only to boost volume but also to enhance definition, clarity, and dynamic range – especially since, at that time, mic'ing guitar amps on stage was still uncommon. With these tweaks, Page continued to shape his distinct tone, ensuring his guitar cut through the mix.

And straight from the horse’s mouth, Page cites 1976’s Presence as the epitome of his Marshall Super Bass sound.

“[It's] the best example of the sound of my Marshall Super Bass, because it was an album we made in about three weeks, in Munich, Germany,” he explains. “So I wanted to work very efficiently, and that entire album is all Super Bass, along with mostly my Number One 1959 Les Paul.”

His trusty Super Bass, along with his Supro Coronado combo, served as the main inspirations for the Page-certified amps from Sundragon – the boutique amp company he founded in 2017 with noted producer and guitar collector Perry Margouleff and former Marshall/Vox executive VP and Park Amps chief Mitch Colby.

The result? Two limited-edition models – the Sundragon 12-inch combo and the Super Dragon 100-watt head with a 4x12 cabinet, each signed by Page and passing his “acid test” for tone authenticity. Both models sold quickly despite their steep prices of $12,500 and $22,500, respectively.

For the full interview with Jimmy Page, pick up the final edition of Guitar Player via Magazines Direct.

Many of us will understand Akio Sakurai’s devotion to Jimmy Page. At a young age, the future kimono salesman fell in love with music, found a hero and joined the ranks of rock guitarists round the world.

But the Japanese player’s commitment carried him beyond the realm of those who eventually leave their instrument to gather dust: he spun his dream of emulating Page into an odyssey that’s led to him becoming known as Mr. Jimmy.

He truly is the leader of the Page followers – he’s spent three decades transforming himself into a near-mirror image of the Led Zeppelin icon, down to his garb on and off stage. For many of those decades it was a part-time gig for Sakurai, as he performed note-for-note renditions of Page’s licks in Tokyo clubs.

But everything changed 11 years ago, when Page himself caught wind of his act and went to see him. “I asked Jimmy for advice and he replied, ‘You already know me,’” Sakurai says.

“I asked him if it was okay to keep doing what I’d been doing, as I’m aware that some artists don’t like tribute bands. To see someone wearing the same clothes and posing like them… it could be seen as creepy!” But Page, ever the English gentlemen, told him: “Keep doing it,” and hugged Sakurai.

Not too long afterwards, he made a break for the Los Angeles and joined a tribute act, Led Zepagain – and in 2019 he became the subject of a movie that bears his name. “Before the movie Mr. Jimmy was released, many people viewed me as just another guitarist in a tribute band,” he says.

“People thought I was just another fan of Led Zeppelin. But after watching the film, people can rethink what a tribute band is. For me, paying tribute requires a massive amount of respect and love for the original artist, and a strong passion and desire to become that person. You need love to do that.”

He continues, “Jimmy Page’s music is like Mozart – timeless and universally loved by people. No-one tries to change the notes. Beyond the technicality, emotions and expressions are attached to this music, and no one tries to change that. I don’t just play the songs; I play the essence, the emotions and the feelings.”

While Page will forever be associated with Gibson, and to a lesser extent Fender and Danelectro, Sakurai started out with Japanese ‘lawsuit era’ guitar maker, Tokai. “My first guitar was a Tokai when I was 17,” he says. “Back then, Gibson’s imported guitars were too expensive.

“And the Les Pauls available in Japan were shaped differently to the one Jimmy Page used. I was already detail-oriented by then; Tokai’s Les Paul was a very close copy. So I kept playing the Tokai until I was 30.

“In 1993, I bought my first guitar from Gibson’s Custom Shop. From then on, I started to collect the other models like the Custom Double Neck EDS-1275. Now I have every single guitar Jimmy Page used in performances, including acoustics.”

He corrects himself: “Well, there is one exception – Jimmy’s ’79 Gibson RD custom model. I don’t have one yet since he only used it for one night only. But when the day comes for me to recreate that performance, of course, I will have to buy that model.”

Creating such one-off performances isn’t easy, but it’s a big part of what Sakurai does. “People might think studying studio versions is easier – but it’s not,” he reveals. “I need to know which guitar, pickup, and amplifier Jimmy used. I need to know the control, vacuum tube, and speaker unit; was it original or was it replaced?

“Then there’s the mic; what kind was it? Where did he place it? How far was it from the speaker? And the mixing console – what kind was it? How about the mic amplifier? These elements make a huge difference in sound, and I need to master them all.”

He admits it can be close to impossible to achieve. “You can’t study it unless you can deeply examine each element. You’d need to go to the exact studio and find the exact setup. Even if you asked members of Led Zeppelin, they may not remember everything. So unfortunately I don’t always get to know all that I’d like to.”

But Sakurai has nailed Page’s sound, recreating a style so distinctive that many resort to dismissing it, calling it ‘sloppy’ rather than admitting that they can’t do it. “I can’t know it all,” he repeats. “But I can guess and imagine string gauge and the nuances.

“Bending and vibrato directly correlate with the string size, so I experiment and find the right size that produces the exact sound. And because of the studying I’ve done I can make an educated guess on the things that can’t be solved.”

It helps that Page “tends to use the same gear in the studio as he used on stage” – apart from the ’59 Fender Telecaster used on Led Zeppelin, before moving to a Les Paul.

The Page sound is steeped in rock ’n’ roll lore, mostly represented by Number 1, the ’59 Burst he scored off Joe Walsh in ‘69, after spending much of the previous year playing the Dragon Tele gifted to him by Jeff Beck. Within Number 1 lay a set of PAFs that would become providing Page with oodles of tone to spare.

For his modern-day PAF needs, Sakurai relies on Shinji Kishimoto, the man behind Grinning Dog Pickups: “Kishimoto once told me, ‘Pickups are the gateway to rock ’n’ roll,’ and I agree. A pickup is like a mic; when you sing karaoke, it picks up your voice. And depending on the characteristics of the pickup, the sound you get varies.

“If I’m trying to figure out Jimmy Page’s sound and use the wrong pickup, I’ll only get further away from what I’m trying to achieve. It's like painting. You’re using this blue color from a specific brand; every time you use it you get the same result. But if you got blue paint from another brand, the result would be different. That’s why pickups are so important.”

So what makes Grinning Dog Pickups his preference? “Original PAFs that are 60 years old are precious, but not necessarily suitable for the Jimmy Page sound,” Sakurai explains. “The original PAFs were made from ’57 through ’60. They were made by human hands one by one, so each pickup is slightly different.

“Gibson does have pickups based on original PAFs, and I’ve tried them, but they were too powerful. I prefer using the custom pickups Kishimoto makes for me, based on my requests.”

Of course, there’s always more to learn. "I would like to ask Jimmy Page – if I see him again – how did he get his tone during the 1973 Madison Square Garden shows? That fuzzy tone is impossible; it doesn’t make sense. We all know he used a Marshall, but was it modified with some kind of special circuit? What kind of vacuum tube did he use?

“To me, this journey is the very essence of getting to know Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin. It’s all very mysterious; it’s why fans are still crazy about them after many decades. What Led Zeppelin made wasn’t easily made; Led Zeppelin is a miracle. It’s why some people who want to ‘be them’ eventually give up. I’m don’t give up.”

Sakurai believes that learning about the artist’s background is as essential as the secrets of their output. “Where he grew up and what he saw growing up; studying these kinds of things helps to dig deeper in finding the origins of the music,” he says.

“When I visited England I went to his hometown [Heston, Middlesex]. I’d walk the streets that he walked and breathed in the air he breathed. I’d think, ‘He must have used these stations; he must have grown up looking at that clock tower.’

“I even noticed the smell when it rained. These things are crucial – they influence music. Jimmy Page reveals some of them in his interviews, but he doesn’t tell it all!”

Sakurai is starting to look beyond Led Zeppelin, integrating Page’s work in the ’80s and ’90s into the mix: “I have already studied and performed Coverdale/Page, The Firm and Jimmy’s solo work. I have a connection with Chris Slade and Tony Franklin [of The Firm], and I’ve performed with them. I plan to do a tribute to The Firm in the future.”

Anyone who’s seen him in action knows why Jason Bonham invited him to join his outstanding Led Zeppelin Evening shows – but despite moments like those, and the movie, Sakurai reveals: “I’m humbled by my success and accomplishments, but I am my toughest critic.

“From my eyes and ears, I think I have a long way to go. Only sometimes do I think I’m good, but… this journey is endless! And even if I was satisfied with what I do, one person didn’t create Led Zeppelin’s music. Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Bonham and John Paul Jones had the chemistry that gave birth to this music. My toughest mission left to do is to recreate that.”

He’s certain he won’t change his approach in the future. “Just today, I was listening to some Led Zeppelin in the car and I made a new discovery. It’s been 43 years since I started this journey, but I’m still finding new things.”

He concludes: “I have my challenges. I want to know the secrets of the pickups, who made the costumes, and how Jimmy felt in the costumes. I can’t feel more joy than when I’m trying to get closer to the sounds that Led Zeppelin made. To me, it’s the greatest part of life. It is the life.”

• Check out Jimmy Sakurai’s upcoming tour dates with Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Evening at his website.

Gibson has added to its burgeoning lineup of Jimmy Page signature guitars by unveiling the 1964 SJ-200 – a recreation of the acoustic guitar the Led Zep legend played in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Two versions of the model have been introduced: the first is a standard $13k version, which, according to Gibson’s website, has already sold out. The second is the Jimmy Page 1964 SJ-200 Collector’s Edition – only 50 of each will be made.

With an even higher price tag of $19,999, the Collector’s Edition SJ-200 by comparison offers some additional perks – namely, the fact that each have been played and signed by Jimmy Page himself.

As per Gibson’s own release, this SJ-200 is based on the Super Jumbo acoustic that Page played while Led Zeppelin tracked their debut album. It was used to record cuts such as Babe I’m Gonna Leave You, Your Time Is Gonna Come and Black Mountain Side.

That particular SJ-200 also the guitar Page took the stage for his rare acoustic solo performance on the Julie Felix Show in April 1970, where he played a medley of White Summer and Black Mountain Side.

What’s rather notable about this release, however, is the fact that the original SJ-200 that inspired the model never actually belonged to Page. As is explained in the new issue of Guitar Player, the Led Zep guitarist borrowed the SJ-200 from producer Mickie Most, who lent Page his own personal acoustic on both occasions.

“The J-200 used on Led Zeppelin I belonged to Mickie Most, the producer of the Yardbirds, and it was an amazing-sounding instrument,” Page once told Guitar World. “He graciously let me use it for the first album but didn’t let me use it for the second album, because, I think, by then he knew he wasn’t going to be the producer.”

Most had a tendency to lend his acoustic to recording artists – Jeff Beck and Big Jim Sullivan both reportedly played it, according to Led Zep News – but at some point the original example was stolen, and its whereabouts remain unknown.

“Unfortunately, many years later, someone stole them – they just took a walk,” Page said in that same interview with Guitar World. “He told me, and I said, ‘Mickie, I’m so desperately sorry to hear that.’ They were his instruments, man! That’s terrible.”

That means no physical guitar was examined when Gibson pieced together this collection. Instead, each model was “thoughtfully rendered to Jimmy Page’s exacting standards and recollection” in order to recreate the original example.

This might not sound like the most scientific approach to replicating a vintage instrument, but according to Page, it’s been a successful project: “When I saw the prototype… I thought, ‘Wow, they’ve got it,’” he says. “As I took it out, I thought, ‘Oh my goodness gracious, it’s so beautiful.’ It was so authentic and yet so new at the same time.”

Whatever the case, there’s quite the tale behind this new release, and it’s worth noting that Page does reportedly own a similarly spec’d SJ-200 that guitar collector Perry Margouleff (the same individual who helped track down Page’s stolen Black Beauty guitar) gifted to him on his 70th birthday.

As for specs, both Cherry Tea versions feature highly flamed AAA maple back and sides and an AAA Sitka spruce top, as well as a three-piece maple neck with a rosewood fretboard. The neck shape – which has been sculpted based on Page’s memory of the model – has been ambiguously labeled “round profile”.

The most intriguing spec, though, is of course that Tune-O-Matic bridge, which sits in the 1960s rosewood Moustache bridge plate. This is a very quirky spec that Gibson only tried for a few years at the start of the ’60s, and as such is exceedingly rare on existing examples.

Other appointments include TUSQ bridge pins, gold hardware finish, Kluson Waffleback with Keystone button tuners, the Murphy Lab’s Custom Light Aged treatment and Mother of Pearl Graduated Crown inlays.

The Jimmy Page SJ-200 and SJ-200 Collector's Edition are available now for $12,999 and $19,999, respectively.

Head over to Gibson to find out more.

It's the second Gibson Jimmy Page model to arrive this year, following the Gibson EDS-1275 Double-Neck.

Many players dedicate their entire craft to learning the music of their electric guitar heroes, but it’s safe to say that no one has gone to quite the same lengths as Akio Sakurai – aka Mr. Jimmy, who has devoted much of his life to becoming Jimmy Page.

That’s no exaggeration: over the past three decades, the former kimono salesman has spent his time combing through Jimmy Page’s entire career, learning every song and solo inside out as he attempts to literally transform himself into the near-mirror image of his hero.

Sakurai’s quest – recently the subject of the Mr. Jimmy documentary – has seen him unpick the mystery of Page’s gear, physically morph into a quasi doppelgänger of the icon, and channel his every on-stage move in a series of Led Zeppelin tribute concerts across the Tokyo club circuit.

It’s been a wild ride for Sakurai, and he probably couldn’t have done it if he hadn’t received the blessing of Page himself when the pair first crossed paths over a decade ago.

In a new interview with Guitar World, Sakurai reflects on the life-changing exchange he had with his hero, which occurred after Page visited one of the clubs where Mr. Jimmy performed his eerily accurate Pageisms.

“I asked Jimmy for advice,” Sakurai remembers. “He replied, ‘You already know me.' And then I asked him if it was okay to keep doing what I'd been doing as I'm aware that some artists don't like tribute bands, and to be imitated by wearing the same clothes head to toe and posing like them… it could be seen as creepy!”

Page’s response? “Absolutely, keep doing it!” Sakurai also says Page “hugged” him, before replying, “Thank you.”

It was a hugely affirming moment for the guitarist, who felt vindicated in his quest to honing his craft in the style of one of the greatest guitar players of all time.

As for why he’s decided to dedicate himself to channeling Page right down to the smallest detail, Sakurai tells Guitar World, “Jimmy Page's music is like Mozart, timeless and universally loved by people. No-one tries to change the notes.

“Beyond the technicality, emotions and expressions are attached to this music, and no one tries to change that,” he continues. “I don't just play the songs; I play the essence, the emotions, and the feelings.”

Keep your eyes peeled to GuitarWorld.com for the full interview with Mr. Jimmy, in which he discusses the hardest parts of his Page transformation, and the most important gear considerations one should take onboard when trying to replicate his guitar tone.

Fast-rising blues rock electric guitar star Grace Bowers has dropped her latest single – and it’s a cover of Led Zeppelin’s Going to California, which has premiered on Guitar World.

Armed with her trusty Gibson SG, the occasional Fender Strat, and her loyal Hodge Podge backing band, the 18-year-old sensation has fast become one of the biggest names in guitar – and the hottest name in blues – over the past few months.

In the space of just three months, Bowers has released her debut album, made her late-night US talk show debut on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, donned a Strat to cover two Stevie Ray Vaughan classics, and sat down with Guitar World to discuss her love of the SG.

Now, in the latest development to her skyrocketing career, Bowers has tackled another iconic hard rock cut, recruiting an all-star all-female band for a melancholic take on Led Zeppelin’s Going to California.

As a California native and long admirer of Page’s playing, the cover means a great deal to Bowers, who takes the opportunity to treat the atmospheric acoustic cut to some sizzling, cinematic leads that pay homage to Page’s original efforts.

It’s certainly a change of pace for Bowers, who has received plaudits from the likes of Nancy Wilson, Brian May, Susan Tedeschi and more for her untethered, hard-hitting blues rock style.

Bowers’ band for the track features vocalists Lucie Silvas and Caroline Jones, mandolin player Sierra Hull, and strings duo SistaStrings.

“I picked that song because I did a charity show in June in Nashville, and it was me, Caroline Jones and Sierra Hull,” Bowers tells Guitar World of her new single. “We were on stage, and we played that song together, and the whole room was dead quiet.

“It was just such a moment. I realized that while we were playing, and just wanted to capture that.”

Honoring Page’s playing was one thing, but being able to do so alongside a group of musicians she admires made the experience all the more sweeter.

“I think it's really cool that it's all women on it, and all women who I really look up to as well, because they're all incredibly talented,” she continues. “It’s always been such a special song to me, being from California, and also, just loving Jimmy Page’s playing on that.”

Though this track sees Bowers take an acoustic turn, expect her to return to the comfort of her Gibson SG soon – and don’t expect to see her revisit the acoustic again any time soon. As she explains to Guitar World, she has no plans to release anything similar.

“We stayed pretty truthful to the original, while giving it a deeper sound, I would say,” she concludes. “I'm definitely excited for people to hear it because it's very different from what I have put out.

“I don't think I'll do a whole lot of this kind of stuff because it does lean more on the acoustic, almost cinematic-sounding side of things, which is why I think it's so cool. It’s wildly different from what I have put out and from what I plan to put out, so that's a cool thing. It’ll appeal to a different audience, I'm sure.”

Grace Bowers is set to go on tour later this month. Visit her website for a full list of dates.

• Grace Bowers' cover of Going to California is available to stream now. Her debut album, The Wine On Venus, is also available now.

On December 27, 1969, just a few days before the dawn of the new decade, the music world witnessed an extraordinary changing of the guard as Led Zeppelin II reached Number 1 on the Billboard charts, dethroning the Beatles’ final full-on studio effort, Abbey Road.

After hearing Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant proclaim “I’m gonna give you every inch of my love” on their hit, Whole Lotta Love, the Beatles probably realized their days of singing sweet harmonies in an octopus’s garden were numbered.

And if the cover of Abbey Road is any evidence, the Fab Four apparently saw no other choice but to immediately vacate their recording studio and march, single file, into the streets of London, never to be heard from again.

Zeppelin would go on to dominate the sound and psyche of the ’70s. Their first four albums created templates for almost everything that was to follow in the next decade, including riff rock (Whole Lotta Love), heavy metal (Immigrant Song), prog (Dazed and Confused), power balladry (Stairway to Heaven), arena blooze (The Lemon Song), glam (Black Dog) and country rock (Bron-Yr-Aur-Stomp).

They even paved the way for late-’70s punk and the first Van Halen album. Guitarist Johnny Ramone once confessed that he honed his pioneering punk-rock skills by playing Zeppelin’s Communication Breakdown repeatedly. And Edward Van Halen told Guitar World in 2008 that, “I think I got the idea of tapping [while] watching Jimmy Page do his Heartbreaker solo back in 1971.”

But perhaps Led Zeppelin’s most important contribution to the ’70s was their fierce, uncompromising attitude. The band revolutionized the music industry when they negotiated their game-changing record deal with Atlantic Records that allowed guitarist Jimmy Page to produce their albums without any label interference. Additionally, the group retained control of all jacket artwork, press ads, publicity pictures and anything else related to their image.

As Page explained, “I wanted artistic control in a vise grip, because I knew exactly what I wanted to do.”

And what Zeppelin wanted to do was… everything and anything! They had this crazy notion that musicians should have the artistic freedom to play what they want — and that their fans might enjoy it. As it turned out, people did indeed love their wild experimentalism, and so did the record companies, who discovered they could make a ton of cash by allowing the band to have their own way.

Zeppelin’s example opened the floodgates to an intensely creative era that ushered in dozens of astonishing new genres of music, all played on adventurous FM radio stations.

Just a tiny sampling of the albums released in ’70s is enough to make any guitar nerd choke on their Ernie Balls – The Dark Side of the Moon, Sticky Fingers, Hotel California, Marquee Moon, Night at the Opera, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Van Halen, Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols, Machine Head – the mind boggles.

Given the vast scope of music made during the ’70s, trying to sum up guitar playing in the era is like attempting to solve a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded while riding a roller coaster in sequined bell-bottoms. It’s damn difficult! But let’s give it a shot…

The rise of heavy metal

You could argue that heavy metal was forged in the Sixties by bands like Cream, Jimi Hendrix, the Jeff Beck Group and, of course, Led Zeppelin. But you’d be wrong.

Sure, those bands started the ball rolling by chugging power chords through big-ass 100-watt Marshalls, but most of what they were playing was just amplified blues mixed with a bit o’ weird hippie psychedelia.

To make real heavy metal – 100 percent certified heavy metal – they were missing two ingredients: the devil… and Tony Iommi.

Hailing from the sooty factory town of Birmingham, England, Black Sabbath, featuring guitarist Iommi, along with vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward, set the world ablaze in 1970 with two groundbreaking albums, Black Sabbath and Paranoid. Their ominous riffs and occult-inspired lyrics on anthems like Iron Man, The Wizard and Electric Funeral would inspire thousands of bands, including Judas Priest, Van Halen, Slayer, Metallica and Ghost.

Given their preoccupation with the supernatural, it’s no surprise that their backstory reads like something out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales… but a whole lot grimmer. On the day Iommi was quitting his sheet metal factory job to become a full-time musician, catastrophe struck – he lost the tips of the middle and ring fingers of his right hand in a gruesome industrial accident.

A machine press came down and caught his fingers, and when he recoiled, the ends were ripped right off! (If there was ever a sentence that deserved an exclamation mark, it’s that one.)

However, Iommi wasn’t going to let a little thing like a couple of severed fingers stop him from playing guitar. Resourcefully, he used his machine-shop skills to custom-make special fingertip pads out of plastic and leather. Then, to make his guitar easier to play, he set his instrument’s action as low as it could go and detuned his strings to lessen the tension even further.

To Iommi’s surprise, when he plugged in his guitar into his Laney amp and cranked up his Dallas Rangemaster overdrive pedal, those elements coalesced into a deep, gut-rattling sound unlike anyone had heard before.

As Iommi later observed, “Some people believe the accident invented heavy metal, and it probably did. It helped me invent a new kind of music – a new sound and different style of playing.” He probably should’ve added, “But kids, don’t try this at home…”

Southern Harmony

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, so while Black Sabbath were busy serving up doom and gloom in U.K. in 1970, the Allman Brothers Band were spreading good vibes and magic ’shrooms throughout the southern United States.

Formed in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1969, the Allman Brothers Band migrated to Macon, Georgia, where they began building a reputation for their incredible live shows that combined elements of rock, blues, jazz and country music into memorable songs and explosive improvisations.

Their exciting smorgasbord of influences was unlike anything audiences had ever heard, but what really made the six-piece band unique were the soaring, harmonized twin lead guitars of Duane Allman and Dickey Betts.

Traditionally, when you had two guitarists in a rock band, one played rhythm and the other played lead. Betts and Allman threw that playbook out the window, trading leads and orchestrating tight harmony parts similar to the way jazz horn sections worked together.

The concept wasn’t completely new. Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck briefly experimented with the idea when they were both in the Yardbirds in 1966, but Allman and Betts elevated their two-guitar attack into a brilliant artform – one that would influence and shape dozens of Southern bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Molly Hatchet, the Outlaws, 38 Special and the Marshall Tucker Band throughout the ’70s.

It helped that both Allman and Betts were terrific musicians with distinct sounds and approaches to their instruments. Allman brought a new level of virtuosity and aggression to the electric slide guitar that remains influential today, while Betts added a sophisticated sense of composition and melody to the duo.

Their landmark live album, At Fillmore East, released in July 1971, sent shockwaves through the guitar community. It not only changed the way blues and metal guitarists thought about two-guitar bands and improvisation, but it also influenced the sound of country music in ways that can be felt today.

The Allmans were primarily a U.S. phenomenon, but British blues rock legend Eric Clapton took notice. After seeing the Allmans play in Miami, Clapton was so blown away by Duane’s slide technique, he invited him to play an equal role on Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, one of the greatest albums of the ’70s and one of the most exciting blues rock albums of all time.

“The Allman Brothers were unbelievable,” Clapton told journalist Sam Hare. “Duane and Dickey Betts were in such harmony. Their playing was very strong and well thought out. When Duane came to the studio [to play on Layla], I was so taken with him that I started ignoring my own band.

“I just tried to keep thinking of songs we’d both know so we could duet. We’d play blues standards like Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out and Key to the Highway. All these things were just really vehicles so we could play – just excuses to jam with one another.”

Tragically, on October 29, 1971, Duane Allman, then 24, was killed in a motorcycle accident. But despite the loss, the band miraculously carried on, recording their most commercially successful album, Brothers and Sisters.

Without Duane, guitarist Betts flourished, his sunburst Les Paul planting the seeds for modern country artists like Chris Stapleton, Eric Church, Lucinda Williams and the Zac Brown Band, all of whom have covered Allman songs in more recent years.

Just say Yes to prog rock

They say the best comedy is based on the truth, and that certainly goes for the one guitar joke that everybody knows:

Q: How many guitarists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: One to screw it in and another dozen to say, “I could do that.”

Guitarists have always been competitive, and that was certainly true in the ’70s. It was no longer enough to write great songs and look good – you also had to have serious chops.

Musicians playing under the banner of “progressive rock” or simply “prog” turned technique into a religion, and the result was some of the strangest and most ambitious music to ever grace the Billboard Top 20 charts. The most interesting prog bands were King Crimson, ELP, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Rush, Kansas, U.K. and Gentle Giant, but it was Yes who were the most commercially successful exponents.

Each member of Yes was an exceptional musician. Singer Jon Anderson – with his sweet tenor – had one of the most distinctive voices in rock; and virtuoso keyboardist Rick Wakeman – who wore sequined capes on stage – was flashy both visually and technically.

But the real star of the group was guitarist Steve Howe. Howe thrilled audiences by playing in a formidable assortment of styles on an astonishing array of electric, acoustic and steel guitars… often during the same song. Some critics accused him of being excessive, but for the most part, he was tasteful and generous, allowing his Yes compatriots to shine and take turns in the spotlight as evidenced by the band’s biggest hit, Roundabout.

During the band’s heyday, which lasted throughout the ’70s, his work on The Yes Album (1971), Fragile (1971), Close to the Edge (1972), Tales from Topographic Oceans (1973) and Relayer (1974) opened huge doors for guitar players looking to expand the techniques and colors they could use within a rock context.

Howe experimented with flamenco, Chet Atkins-style fingerpicking, classical harmonies and exotic chord voicings while shredding some of the speediest, harmonically advanced soloing ever heard on a rock album.

He was an amazing technician, but his lead playing also had an appealingly jagged edge that always kept the music rooted in rock ’n’ roll, no matter how complex it got.

Howe pushed the boundaries of popular music about as hard as any musician in the Seventies, and he did much of this on electric f-hole guitars like the Gibson ES-175, which was more associated with jazz players.

“The decision to buy the ES-175 set me on a course,” Howe said. “I didn’t consider myself to be someone who played solid bodied guitars at the time. It’s helped me to forge an identity as a guitarist with a full sound that isn’t reliant on distortion or tremolo or other gadgets.”

He was so dominant in the ’70s that he won “Best Overall Guitarist” in Guitar Player magazine an unprecedented five years in a row, influencing players as diverse as Alex Lifeson (Rush), John Petrucci (Dream Theater) and John Frusciante (Red Hot Chili Peppers). But unlike Jimmy Page or Eddie Van Halen, few people attempted to sound like him, probably because it was so difficult to do.

His lasting impact has been more about his grand concept than his style. He is the guy you can thank for introducing the idea of owning dozens of guitars for different colors and sounds. So, the next time anybody gives you shit for buying yet another Les Paul Junior or Epiphone Casino, just blame it on Steve.

Lighting the fusion

Guitarists like Howe, Frank Zappa, Tommy Bolin and Jeff Beck shaped the sound and style of Seventies rock by incorporating elements of jazz into their arsenal of licks. But just as significant were a new crop of young jazz players who started experimenting with the volume and aggression heard in rock music.

Guitarist Larry Coryell, sometimes called the “godfather of jazz-rock fusion” summed it up when he said, “We loved [jazz trumpeter] Miles Davis – but we also loved the Rolling Stones.”

Starting in the early ’70s, a gang of extraordinarily gifted young jazz shredders like Coryell, Pat Metheny, Al Di Meola and John Scofield scared the bejeezus out of rock’s greatest players with their command of the electric guitar. But the jazz shredder who made the most impact was the fast and furious John McLaughlin, who played a double-neck Gibson EDS-1275 through a 100-watt Marshall amp “in meltdown mode.”

Starting his career as a session musician in England, McLaughlin moved to the U.S. in the late ’60s, where he played with jazz drummer Tony Williams’ group Lifetime.

He then performed with the legendary Miles Davis on several pioneering electric jazz fusion albums, most notably In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew and Jack Johnson. But it was his work in the ferocious Mahavishnu Orchestra that made him a superstar in the rock world.

The five-piece Mahavishnu Orchestra combined elements of metal, jazz, funk and Indian classical music into their compositions, which they performed at lightning tempos. As Guitar World once put it, the band left you feeling as if they “were always on the very edge of exploding into a thousand pieces, so far did they push and extend themselves and each other.”

Guitar legend Jeff Beck was particularly floored. “Things took a funny turn for me in the early ’70s,” Beck recalled. “But it all turned out well after hearing John McLaughlin play on Miles Davis’ Jack Johnson album and with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Every musician I knew was raving about him, and I thought, ‘I’ll have some of that.’ The mastery of his playing was unequaled.”

Soon after hearing McLaughlin, Beck turned down a spot in the Rolling Stones and began experimenting with his own jazz-rock band. He was warned that playing fusion was commercial suicide, but ironically, it resulted in his most commercially successful album, Blow by Blow, released in 1975.

In the early ’70s, the radical Mahavishnu Orchestra recorded two brilliant studio albums, The Inner Mounting Flame and Birds of Fire, and performed more than 500 shows, playing unlikely bills with straight-up rockers like Aerosmith, Blue Öyster Cult and the Eagles.

While many rock audiences were confused by their weird, explosive music, others were intrigued, catapulting 1973’s Birds of Fire to Number 15 in the Billboard charts. However, just as it looked as though they were about to achieve the impossible by bringing avant-garde, freak-out jazz to the masses, they imploded.

“It was fantastic that we had popularity, but I think we had too much success too quickly,” McLaughlin said. “The band ended very acrimoniously, and that upsets me to this day. I have great relationships with all the musicians I worked with. Except that bloody band.”

Despite their brief lifespan, Mahavishnu left a lasting mark. Not only did they influence classic rockers like Beck and Carlos Santana, but their albums have also inspired current avant-garde heroes like Guthrie Govan, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (the Mars Volta) and Ben Weinman (Dillinger Escape Plan), proving that musical boundaries are meant to be shattered.

Glam bam, thank you, ma'am

While it was exciting that bands like the Allman Brothers and Yes were stretching the boundaries of popular music with their technical skills, many musicians were less than enthusiastic about prog. It was too damn complicated, and besides, who was going to piss off parents, disrupt social norms and have fun while looking cool? It didn’t take long to find out.

The answer came slinking out of Phoenix, Arizona, in 1971 when the Alice Cooper Band rose to fame with the hit single I’m Eighteen. Featuring a male singer with a woman’s name, the five-piece group were notorious for their theatrical stage shows, androgynous outfits and playing loud, obnoxious rock.

Boring old farts called them “degenerates,” but the press referred to them as “glam rock,” and it wasn’t long before the glitter craze took off, especially in England where David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars, T. Rex, Slade and Queen became mega-stars.

Glam was primarily about “the look,” but the bands also shared a common approach to their music. Unlike the progressive movement, glam rockers kept their songs tight, danceable and catchy. Instrumentally, their tunes were often powered by chunky heavy metal guitars and short, memorable guitar solos.

Mick Ronson, the iconic blond guitarist for David Bowie’s Spiders from Mars band, made no bones about being more interested in composing great riffs than diddling around with weird scales or playing 30 different guitars. Ronson believed if you wanted to play like John Coltrane or Mozart, go fuckin’ do it – but leave rock ’n’ roll out of it.

He had a point. It didn’t mean Ronno was a primitive musician. In fact, he was quite sophisticated. In addition to providing killer guitar parts to memorable rockers like Bowie’s Suffragette City, Panic in Detroit and Jean Genie, he was also a deft arranger, composing the dramatic orchestral parts on Bowie’s 1972 glam rock classic, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

One sterling example of his artistry can be heard on the album’s classic, Moonage Daydream. He begins the song with a couple thunderous power chords, then slowly layers parts on his blonde 1968 Gibson Les Paul Custom through a half-cocked wah-wah pedal, until the song reaches a soaring, spiraling conclusion of ascending strings and tape-delay guitar.

While his parts aren’t particularly difficult to play, they are beautifully constructed, executed, and perfect for the song. In other words, totally rock and roll.

Ronson’s smart, economical playing (and glittering stage outfits!) helped create the template, not only for glam rock in the Seventies, but also Eighties hair metal. Ozzy Osbourne guitarists Randy Rhoads worshipped Ronson, meticulously imitating his look and use of a blonde Les Paul.

“Randy was a big fan,” said his brother, Kelle Rhoads. “That’s where his obsession with polka dots came from. He saw Mick Ronson with polka dot knee pads and Randy took it to another level.”

However, it would be wrong to imply that Ronson was the only influential glam guitarist in the ’70s. There were plenty of others including Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls, Marc Bolan of T. Rex and Glen Buxton of the Alice Cooper Band. But perhaps the most famous and fairest of them all was Queen’s tall and elegant Brian May.

Queen have become so ubiquitous in our modern music culture that it’s easy to forget that in the ’70s they were originally a huge part of the same glam movement that spawned Bowie and the likes of Roxy Music and Sweet. But it might also be because Queen didn’t really sound like anybody else, and that was primarily due to May’s unique approach to playing and recording.

Far more ambitious than his fashionable contemporaries, his multi-layered guitar orchestrations on songs like Killer Queen and Bohemian Rhapsody ventured perilously close to being “prog.”

But May also knew how to boogie and always balanced his excesses with some good old-fashioned hard rock, as on We Will Rock You, Stone Cold Crazy and Keep Yourself Alive. Yes, Brian May could go over the top, but with Queen, he also knew when to kick royal ass – even while wearing flowing silk blouses and crushed velvet trousers.

Never mind the bollocks here's punk

Given how disheveled the typical punk rock musicians appeared with their ripped-up jeans and spiky hair, it was almost comical how much in they had in common with their glam rock counterparts. The Clash, Dead Boys and the Sex Pistols also believed that rock music should sound gritty, dangerous and close to the streets.

Punk guitarists didn’t just dislike progressive rock – they actively hated it. They were repulsed by what they perceived as the bourgeoisie snobbery of bands like Yes and Genesis. As for the Mahavishnu Orchestra… they couldn’t even pronounce it.

Punk musicians wanted to return rock and roll to its “everyman” fundamentals, so that anyone wanting to master three chords could take the stage and become a star. No one represented this attitude more singularly than the Ramones, a raucous four-piece juggernaut from New York City.

All members of the Ramones looked the same (shaggy hair with bangs), wore the same clothes (jeans, leather jackets and Converse All-Stars) and even shared the same surname.

Their songs all sorta sounded similar and their lyrics were hilariously moronic with titles like I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend and Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue. From a guitar perspective, it was the same story: every song consisted of an interchangeable series of power chords played with the same jack-hammer downstrokes by Johnny Ramone on his cheap Mosrite guitar.

On paper the Ramones sounded stupid and one-dimensional – and they were – but it’s also what made them great. They say the hardest thing about making great art is deciding on a direction and sticking with it. If that’s true, then the Ramones were the Picassos of punk.

They did one thing, and they did it incredibly well, and in concert, the band was as direct and as powerful as a locomotive. (I was tossed around so much during an out-of-control Ramones show that I lost one of my shoes after the third song and never saw it again.)

When the band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, it was said that their first album, Ramones (1976), saved rock from becoming “bloated and narcissistic.” While that’s not completely true – there was certainly plenty of bloat and narcissism to go around – they did provide a compelling alternative.

AOR in the USA

Punk wasn’t for everyone. But neither was metal, Southern rock, glam or any of the junk we’ve been talking about. That was the great thing about the ’70s. A lot of the music was kinda weird or extreme in some way. Even the biggest bands were odd when you really examined them closely.

The Wall by Pink Floyd was psychotic. Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin was fantastic, but totally wacky. And let’s not even get started on progressive bands like King Crimson and Jethro Tull.

Was there anything that was normal in the ’70s? Well, yes, there was plenty of meat and potatoes to be had. About halfway through the decade, many of the FM stations that were adventurous during the early part of the ’70s discovered they could grab more listeners and sell more advertising if the music they played was a little shorter and a bit more conventional. The stations shifted gears, and so did many rock bands who discovered they could sell more records if they did the same.

Suddenly, bands that appealed to more mainstream tastes started popping up like toadstools in Pennsylvania. Some called it “pop metal,” but most referred to it as Album Oriented Rock or AOR.

Platinum-selling bands like Foreigner, Journey, Boston, Styx, Eagles, REO Speedwagon, Steve Miller Band, Kiss, Toto, Pat Benatar, Kansas, Heart, Triumph, Bad Company and Fleetwood Mac were not particular innovative, but they wrote catchy songs that sounded great in the car.

While that might sound like an insult, it isn’t. Much of the music was very good and featured incredibly skilled guitarists like Neal Schon, Joe Walsh, Rick Nielsen, Ace Frehley, Steve Lukather and Gary Richrath, among others.

Now mix a bit of AOR with some Led Zeppelin, a bit of Pink Floyd and the more accessible “hits” of some of the more adventurous bands we’ve mentioned, and there you have the ’70s in a nutshell.

But wait… wait, wait, wait. What about Van fuckin’ Halen? Weren’t they part of the ’70s?

Well, the truth is – and this is highly classified information – that even though Van Halen’s first two albums came out in 1978 and 1979, they did not belong to the ’70s – they belonged to the ’80s. It was all a big mistake.

Eddie Van Halen insisted on arriving two years early, so he could gently guide guitarists to the next decade, where he would rule like a king for the next 10 years.

But you gotta promise not to tell anyone! If you do, I’ll deny everything. You know, conspiracy theorists, they’re all 5150…

Led Zeppelin founder and guitarist Jimmy Page has recently been honored by the British Embassy in Washington D.C., for “his and the band's more than five decades making brilliant British music – and his life of philanthropy.”

The event was hosted by the British Ambassador Karen Pierce and the UK Treasury’s Permanent Secretary, Charles Roxburgh, with notable attendees including US Attorney General Merrick Garland, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Brett Kavanaugh.

The celebration was organized by philanthropists Catherine and Wayne Reynolds, who run the Academy of Achievement, a nonprofit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest-achieving individuals in different fields.

In his speech at the event, which was filmed and posted by political journalist Steve Clemons, Page recalled how his life completely changed when he decided to pick up the guitar. 

He described how his family was moving houses, and in the new home, there was a guitar that seemed to have been left behind by the previous homeowners.

“It was a Spanish guitar, but actually, it was more of a campfire guitar because it had steel strings on it as opposed to nylon strings. So there it was and it made an intervention into my life. Nobody in my family played guitar. My parents didn't throw it out. They left it.”

He continued, “There it stayed for about five years before the musical scene changed to the point where those guitars were being played. And fortunately, there was a movement in England called Skiffle, and there was Lonnie Donegan who was playing versions of traditional songs and he was on the TV on a Saturday night.”

Page explained how the Skiffle guitarist's performance became a highlight for him and his classmates, who voraciously discussed the game-changing TV appearance. As luck would have it, Lonnie Donegan's songs played a crucial role in inspiring Page to start playing guitar.

“Two weeks after that, I went to school and there was a boy who was playing some Lonnie Donegan songs on acoustic guitar on the school field. I went up to him and said, ‘Look, I already got one of those at home.’ He said, ‘If you bring it to school, I'll show you how to tune it and I'll show you some chords.’”

As part of the celebrations, singer-songwriter and guitarist Grace Potter paid homage to Page with a version of Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love, from 1969's Led Zeppelin II.

In a social media post, Potter wrote about her experience performing the Zeppelin track in front of Page: “Every once in a while, you get invited into a world unlike any you have ever known. In this case it was an invite to a certain British Ambassadors residence to play for/ honor, the lifetime achievement of a certain rockstar (named Jimmy Page). Endless thanks to Catherine and Wayne. Your purpose generosity and fortitude is unwavering and awe inspiring.”

Jimmy Haslip, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, and guitarist Robben Ford are studio-savvy musicians whose musical connections date back to the 1970s. Back in 2001, they decided to record as a trio for the first time. In only three days of basic tracking they put together a set of 10 eclectic tunes that featured eye-popping musicianship and, particularly in Haslip's bass parts, lots of space.

“We wrote the songs with space in mind, actually,” said Haslip, who produced Jing Chi. “I like to open up spaces to allow other instruments to speak melodically or rhythmically. Thinking in these terms provides plenty of room to have a musical conversation – in other words, it leaves room for each musician to make a statement. This is a prime rule in playing successfully within an ensemble.”

Haslip is a lefty who plays a left-handed 6-string bass guitar with the strings reversed – his low B string is where the high C is normally located and vice-versa. On all of the Jing Chi tracks he played his old pre-Gibson Tobias, a prototype of sorts for the Tobias Killer B, which Haslip helped design. He changed basses only once, pulling out a Roscoe 6 for the Go Figure bass solo.

Haslip split his signal and went into two Dis: a stock Cabletech direct box and a Westlink DI. He recorded the Cabletech signal direct to Pro Tools, while the Westlink's signal went to an SWR Super Redhead amp with the tweeter turned all the way down, which was mic'd in a studio closet.

Back in June 2002, Jimmy Haslip offered up a track-by-track tour of the album.

1. The Hong Kong Incident

“This was a first take. The unison lines Robben and I play in the A sections create a lot of energy as well as tension. Then it opens up for the solo section, which we built primarily on my bassline.

“I've always been inspired by Larry Graham; that octave figure I play (at 1:46) constituted a form for Robben to solo over and Vinnie to play off of. We opened up the outro vamp and set it up for Vinnie to improvise until we dynamically bring down the music for a spacious, trippy ending.”

2. Stan Key

“A funky little tune that started with a loop and sequence Vinnie had in his computer. He had an interesting idea to record some tweaked snare drumming, and we added that on the end, which gave the song an interesting fadeout.

“At first I didn't have a good handle on what to play, but eventually I came up with a line based on an arpeggiated-picking, almost folk-guitar technique I use: I pick the lower notes with my index and middle fingers, and I use my thumb to pop high notes. I use that for much of the tune's groove section.”

3. Tengoku

“We improvised the intro, which sets up the unusual progression that's built on an Oriental-sounding scale. Again, we opened up everything with a jam on my bassline. It's all in 4/4, but it's rhythmically altered.

“My muting technique involves my fretting hand; in my case it's my right hand. When I'm muting like this I use only my index finger to fret the notes. Plucking the strings aggressively results in an intense thumping sound, like tuned bass drums. I can also mute the strings to the extreme to create dead notes whose sole purpose is to reinforce a rhythmic drum pattern.”

“We decided it got kind of redundant for me to start out with that bass figure and play it for the whole song. I ended up messing with it throughout the tune until the end, when I finally get to the original bass figure I wrote (at 7:40).

“We recorded the tune in one take. The form was basically improvised, and we cued each other visually. It was an experiment, but we like the way it worked.”

4. Crazy House

“This bassline was inspired by my listening to James Brown for many years. A lot of my roots are in R&B, and that comes out from time to time in a song like Crazy House, which sounds almost like an old Bar-Kays groove.

“This jam happened out of the blue after a short discussion about an idea and a form. We liked it so much that we just kept it intact. Vinnie and I added some samples that gave the simple jam session a nice dimension.”

5. Going Nowhere 

“Robben wrote this one, so I played what he wrote pretty much verbatim. I wanted it to sound more synth-like, so I used muting. I also mixed the bass a little hotter than usual; I wanted to accentuate the instrument's percussive nature to bring out the synth-like quality.

“Playing-wise, I was inspired by Jack Bruce's early work with Cream. I like the simplicity of the progression and the groove, and I also like Robben's positive, colorful imagery in the lyric.”

6. Go Figure

“During a jam Robben started playing this chordal pattern; it sounded familiar, but we weren't sure what it was. Than it hit us – it was the Goldfinger theme!

“This tune has my only solo on the record. I actually wasn't thinking of taking any solos on this recording; I just wanted to establish a strong groove, as I feel comfortable in that role and don't feel the need to solo on everything.

“I wanted a slightly different sound for the solo, so I chose my Roscoe 6-string. The Roscoe has a baritone-guitar-like sound, and I thought it would make for a nice change of pace. Plus, I've been playing that bass on most of my live gigs and thought it would be the most comfortable to use as a solo instrument. I thought of using a fretless, but I chose to stay with the fretted sound.”

7. Man in the Ring

“This song reminds me of a unique interpretation of the ZZ Top sound. We were jamming and Vinnie was playing a hip groove in seven, and I joined in and found this little bassline that repeats.

“This tune was hard to feel; I wanted to play something solid, so that if Vinnie started displacing eighth-notes – which he does regularly – I could hold everything down and not lose the pocket. That got pretty hairy during Robben's solo. At one point I really didn't know where one was, but I was totally focused on what I was playing. I knew where I was and trusted Vinnie to know where one was, and fortunately it worked out.”

8. In My Dream

“This ambient piece was inspired by many hours of listening to Radiohead. You can hear a slightly different bass sound on this track: I wrote the tune on my Akai MPC 2000 home workstation and then transferred the tracks to Pro Tools. But I wanted to emulate the synth-bass sound from the demo, so I played my MTD 6 again with a muted technique.

“We kept the original synth bass during the mix, but I featured the electric bass with the synth sound just shadowing the line. We also used a bit more compression on the bass to make it pop out.

“For the bridge I got the swells on the long, sustained notes with a volume pedal, and I overdubbed some picked notes as well. On the fade/vamp I play the bassline an octave lower than the synth to give the ending some serious girth.”

9. Train Song

“I came up with a slightly altered I-IV-V blues. I wanted it to be like a Cream tune, but then Robben wanted to put on some Spanish guitar, so it became more of a flamenco Cream song! I play just a simple blues-rock bass part. Our engineer, Rich Breen, treated the acoustic guitar with reverse delays, which created an unusual environment for the melody sections.”

10. Aurora

“Vinnie came up with this one, which has a serious Led-Zeppelin-meets-Frank-Zappa unison riff up front. The body of the tune kind of reminded me of Nirvana, so I tried to imagine what Krist Novoselic might play.

“Vinnie thought he could build a solo around the unison figure at the end, so we constructed a form for him to blow over. I thought it would make for a powerful, surprise ending to an eclectic body of work. If you listen closely, you can hear Vinnie's reaction.”

Back in 2023, John Wines – aka Old Grey Guitarist – skyrocketed to six-string stardom after his epic America’s Got Talent audition, during which he channeled Brian May and Eddie Van Halen, went viral.

Now, he’s grabbed guitarists’ attention yet again with another electric guitar stunt, but this time it didn’t take place in front of a live studio audience. Instead, it occurred in front of Jimmy Page’s home.

On Instagram, Wines posted a video that saw him and his Fender Stratocaster stationed outside Page’s home in London, which happens to be one of the stops along one of London’s popular Rock N Roll Black Cab tours.

And, in tribute to one of his heroes, Wines took the opportunity while outside Page’s humble abode to briefly alight and rip through the solo to Whole Lotta Love.

“The great jimmy solo to equally classic zeppelin track, outside the great man’s house!” Wines writes. “I’m guessing he wasn’t in, otherwise he would [have] quite obviously invited us in for a jam.”

Rather than going full Led Zeppelin and using a source material-accurate Gibson Les Paul for the occasion, Wines instead opts for his sunburst Strat and – as one would expect – does a top-notch job executing the iconic guitar solo.

Wines seems to have cracked the code for piquing people’s interests on social media, and it turns out he's made this "playing iconic songs near their spiritual homes" an actual thing. In a separate YouTube video, he can be seen playing songs outside Abbey Road, Freddy Mercury's house and more, while on the taxi tour.

It’s been a whirlwind year for Wines, who recently celebrated the first anniversary of his internet-breaking America’s Got Talent audition, which he followed up with an equally impressive Qualifiers round performance.

“It was definitely emotional, especially with the crowd there,” Wines told Guitar World of his audition. “The only abiding memory I have from that whole performance is the audience at the end shouting, ‘We want more!’ It just shocked me and hit me like a ton of bricks. I wasn’t expecting that at all.”

John Paul Jones has no need for further feathers in his cap. The bassist, keyboardist, and general rock ’n' roll badass anchored Led Zeppelin – arguably the most influential hard rock outfit in history – and has gone on to collaborate in too many cool projects to mention.

When he took the stage at London's O2 Arena in 2007 with Zeppelin bandmates Jimmy Page and Robert Plant (along with Jason Bonham, son of late, great Zep drummer John Bonham), Jones sealed his reputation as a top-notch performer with deep soul, crisp tone, and killer chops.

Jones could have easily rested on his laurels, retiring to the countryside with his countless acoustic instruments and giving his ears a well-deserved rest. Instead, he formed one of the most riveting new groups in contemporary rock, Them Crooked Vultures.

A collaboration between Jones, ex-Nirvana drummer and current Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, and Queens of the Stone Age principal Josh Homme, Them Crooked Vultures took the '70s-era riff rock of Jones's youth and blended it with punk-rock energy courtesy of drummer Grohl. For his part, Homme tapped the sludgy depths of his stoner rock past.

“The first time we got together we just jammed in a normal muso sort of way,” Jones told Bass Player. “New Fang was one of those early workings.

“Another idea Josh came up with, Dave and I looked at each other and thought, ‘Are you serious? What are you thinking?!’ He played this riff that he’d recorded in a hotel room on an electric guitar that wasn't even plugged in, but Josh was telling us, ‘No, it's going to be good,’ so we tried it and that turned into the track Reptiles. If you heard the first demo of that song you wouldn't believe it.”

Bass Player spoke to John Paul Jones back in March 2010 about what it's like playing with Dave Grohl, why you have to use a pick to play multi-string basses, and why he has no plans to write an autobiography.

How did you record with Them Crooked Vultures?

“We basically went into Josh's studio, sat in a room, and wrote and recorded at the same time. It was a very organic process where we'd groove in the studio, working on each other's ideas. There was a lot of laughing involved as well – it's amazing we got that much work done!”

Prior to these sessions, had you ever played with Dave Grohl?

“No, I hadn't. He's wonderful, and we get on really great together. He appreciates good grooves and good riffs. We listen to each other and we reinforce each other and we stretch each other, which is the best combination.”

Has your concept of tone changed much through the course of this project?

“I'm playing with a pick a lot more. You have to use a pick to play multi-string basses, or you don't get the full advantage of the double crosses.”

Do you find playing with a pick compromises your low-end?

“No, not really. It's just a different feel – a different attack. It's a much faster attack, and it gives you more of a rhythmic drive, especially on faster songs.”

What is that wild-looking guitar you play on No One Loves Me & Neither do I?

“That's an instrument Hugh Manson made that is based on the Melobar. It basically allows me to play lap steel while moving around onstage. I wanted one I could hang around my neck so I asked Hugh to make me one.”

Live, Alain Johannes is playing some of the bass, guitar and keyboard parts. How much did you work with him to get him up-to-speed?

“Not much at all – he's a good enough musician to have picked it up on his own.”

What basses are you playing?

“I've got my good ol' Manson 4-string, plus a 10-string and some 12-strings he's made for me. The 10-string is in octave courses, tuned EADGC, and the 12-string is BEADGC. Those go through an SWR SM-900 with 4x10 and 1x15 cabinets.

“I use an identical rig for my bass pedals, which are made by Roland. They span an octave-and-a-half-from C to G, and they're run through a Korg M3 synth, which provides the actual sound. I also play the M3 for piano and organ parts.”

With multiple basses, keyboards, slide guitar, and mandolin, you do a lot of changing instruments. Do you find that makes it difficult to get into a groove?

“No, I'm rather used to it. I used to do that in the Zeppelin days, as well. I quite like changing instruments.”

How much of the gig is set in stone, and how much is kept open-ended?

“The setlist mostly stays the same, but things really change a lot from show to show. A lot of it depends on the vibe of the night, but we'll often hit a different kind of groove to keep it interesting.”

The album has quite a few distorted bass sounds. What effects are you using?

“On the record, most of the distortion comes from running bass guitar through Josh's guitar amps. Live, I'm using an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff. I'd never really used distortion before – it's a new thing for me.

“The bass just sounded too clean when we were first trying things out. Now it fits a lot better with the guitars. Usually I'll split the signals from my basses and mix them together to get a blend of clean and distorted sounds.”

Is there anything you miss about your old Acoustic rig?

“No... except that it used to catch on fire! It actually caught fire quite spectacularly at the end of one show. I suppose the power amp got overheated. But no, I'm quite pleased with the SWR. It's got a nice clean, punchy sound.”

Have you given thought to writing a memoir or autobiography?

“No. Several people have asked, but I've just got too much to do. Life's too short to write about it.”

If you're familiar with the Foo Fighters’ big hits – Monkey Wrench, Learn To Fly, Times Like These, Breakout and so on – you'll know that they specialise in Rock with a capital R, designed for stadiums and beloved of crowds worldwide.

It's all a long way from bassist Nate Mendel's youth as a punk kid from Richland, Washington. “I just wanted to be in a band," he told Bass Player. “I was listening to the Ghost In The Machine album by the Police at the time, and I was hugely into Sting, so when my friend suggested I should play bass guitar I thought it sounded like an awesome idea.” 

It certainly was – so what was that first bass? "I got a Steinberger copy by Cort, because it was the ’80s, and that was what you did when you were 13 back then! I got a practice amp and we messed around a bit, but that band didn't last long. 

“After that I got into punk rock and moved on to an Ibanez Roadstar and a black Kramer, a kind of Travis Bean-style bass. I joined this band called Christ On A Crutch and I bought a P-Bass for $200 from the singer. That's the one I modelled my signature Precision on.” 

So who's bigger than the Foo Fighters, in terms of numbers of gigs played at truly huge venues? No-one in rock apart from U2 and Guns N’ Roses. But there was a time when not everything that Dave Grohl touched turned to gold.

Back in 2004, Grohl admitted to not being happy with the band's One by One album, with the group taking some time out before heading back in to record the electric and acoustic double-disc, In Your Honour, which also included such guest performers as Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme and Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones.

“It was Dave's idea to bring John Paul Jones in, and initially I was like, ‘Okay, so how many songs am I not going to play bass on?’ It was intimidating! – although he did everything in his power to make it not so. But when he was tuning up his Mellotron he played a couple of Zeppelin riffs, so that was great. ”

Jones played mandolin on Another Round, and piano on Miracle. “He is more than just a bass player,” said Grohl. “He's an arranger. He came in, listened to the song, put it on piano, played it a few times and it was done.”

“On the first disc we did things in segments,” said Mendel. “First drums, then scratch guitars, I'd take home a Pro Tools file and write a bassline. I would run it by Dave and the producer, we'd talk about it, make changes, and then put it down. I would usually come in with this elaborate bassline – but over time, I've come to appreciate simplicity and what it can do for a song.”

“When it came time to do the acoustic record, we were running low on time and I didn't have a chance to go and write basslines, so they ended up being much simpler.

“A couple of times, I hadn't even heard the song before – Dave and Chris would put down their guitar lines and I'd be in a room with the bass, and our producer Nick Raskulinecz would go, ‘Okay, let's run it a couple of times and see what happens.’ I was concentrating on just finding the notes and getting the rhythm right.”

As is usually the case when big bands on a big budget go into big studios, there was an enviable choice of gear for Mendel to choose from, including his custom shop P-Basses. “They were made for me in the late ’90s: they're basically what my signature bass turned into.”

“It's a pretty typical P-Bass, but I had different pickups put in, and a thicker bridge. The main thing was trying to get the shape of the neck right. In the batch of 1971 basses that mine came from, I think that they were trying to split the difference between the feel of a Precision neck and a Jazz neck. It's a little wider than a Jazz neck, which for me feels a little crowded.”

Has Mendel ever gone down into five-string territory? “No! In our little camp, five-strings are pretty illegal. It's funny, because I totally understand the value of that fifth string, but it's just one of those lines that you don't cross.”

Heavier, groovier, and more melodic than their debut, Led Zeppelin II replaced The Beatles at the top of the album chart in Feb 1970. For much of the album, John Paul Jones doubles Jimmy Page’s guitar riffs, helping the songs achieve the potency a generation of headbangers came to love. But that wasn’t all, as the expertly nimble bass playing on Ramble On showed.

“You’ve got to have the big picture in mind when you’re playing bass guitar,” Jones told Bass Player. “It’s not about playing whatever the lowest note available is. You have to consider melody, rhythm and harmony.” 

Jones had big plans when he wrote the opening line. First, he stepped all over Page’s gorgeous acoustic intro with a fantastic ascending motif in the upper register. Then he threw in a three-note lick after the first line of the chorus (after “Ramble on!”) which in turn sets up a bar in which he performs very fast hammer-ons, making the bass guitar the focus of the line when there’s plenty going on already, not least Robert Plant’s wailed vocal.

The track starts with Jimmy Page's quick, 16th-note acoustic strum and John Bonham's mellow yet persistent percussion. Rather than following his bandmates rhythmic frenzy, Jones generated the relaxed and memorably melodic line in the verse.

With the track playing along or a guitarist friend copping Page's part, play just the first bar. Notice any major difference between what you and your 6-string compadre are playing? In the same space as Page's 16th-note acoustic strum, you've plucked just two syncopated notes. The pacing contrast is similar in bar 2, where the bass part moves up to the A chord, closing with off-the-beat accents.

The syncopation continues in bars 3 and 4, but that's only part of what makes the second phrase rhythmically interesting. When you look at the whole phrase, you can see note values getting shorter and shorter: First there are quarter-notes, then eighth-notes, then a 16th-note turnaround at the end of bar 4. 

Music theorists call this rhythmic acceleration. By moving to smaller note values, the bassline makes the whole song feel like it quickens, adding tension and excitement with each four-bar cycle.

Check out the isolated bassline below.

Rhythmic acceleration isn't shaping only the four-bar verse phrases; it also shapes the whole song. The pre-chorus bass lick has quarter-note-based phrases in bars 1 and 3, and begins to mix in eighth-notes and 16ths. The song climaxes with urgent 16th-note riffs in the chorus.

The last piece you'll need to put the song together is the bridge line, which fits between the second chorus and third verse. Here, while Jimmy Page swaps strummy acoustic playing for twin electric licks, Jones takes on the rhythmic accents that pulsated through that original 16th-note acoustic part, emphasizing beat one, the ‘and’ of two, and four, embellishing the part with well-placed hammer-ons.

As when practicing the easy-feeling yet rhythmically precise verse and powerful chorus, remember that you're doing more than just learning a classic bassline. You're also gradually grasping concepts that can help enhance your creativity and build confidence for making up your own parts.

Jones said it best himself when we spoke to him in July '03: “A lot of younger musicians don't understand that you can move the beat around against a pulse, but we used to do it all the time – and that would change the tune's dynamic. 

“Sometimes we knew we were doing it, and we'd have fun seeing exactly how far we could lay back – but generally it was instinctive. We'd know there was a song section that needed a bit more urgency but didn't want to go any faster, so we'd get just get more on top of the beat and push it, but without speeding it up.”

In December 2012, Ann and Nancy Wilson took to the stage at the Kennedy Center in front of Led Zeppelin themselves to perform one of the most famous covers of Stairway To Heaven.

The evening was a special occasion: Zeppelin were receiving the Kennedy Center Honor – the prestigious award given to those who have had a significant impact on the world of American culture – from President Barack Obama.

Previous recipients include Ella Fitzgerald, Leonard Bernstein, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and many more, with each awards season culminating in a mammoth event at the Kennedy Center every December.

At this particular show, the Heart sisters treated the surviving members of Led Zeppelin – Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones – to an emotionally charged cover of their iconic 1971 track, complete with a fully fledged choir, orchestra and the son of their late bandmate, John Bonham, on drums.

The Wilson sisters were also backed up by guitarist Shane Fontayne – a seasoned session guitarist whose credits include Graham Nash, Mick Ronson, John Waite, Joe Cocker and a live stint with Bruce Springsteen in the early ‘90s.

While Fontayne was given the unenviable task of playing the iconic guitar solo in front of the guitarist who penned it, Nancy ushered in the performance by dealing with the track’s timeless riff.

The onstage assembly knocked it out the park. Highlights include Wilson’s soft solo opening, Fontayne’s admirable solo effort, and the goosebump-inducing outro section that merits a visible “Wow” from the onlooking Page. In fact, the performance was so powerful, it reduced Robert Plant to tears.

Despite the polished performance, the pressures of the occasion were (understandably) sky high. Speaking to Howard Stern in April 2024, the Wilson sisters revealed they’d only had the chance for one rehearsal, plus a soundcheck, before the live show.

As for the band members’ reactions – and Plant’s in particular – Ann was quick to theorize it was the occasion, rather than the cover, that so visibly moved them.

“[Robert Plant] wells up a little bit. He’s emotional, but my theory is he gets emotional for a bunch of reasons,” she observed. “Like, he looks down and sees Jason Bonham playing drums, who was probably just a little kid running around at their band practice when they were writing Stairway to Heaven.”

That’s not to say the cover didn’t blow them away, though. At the after-ceremony dinner, Heart shared a table with Led Zeppelin, who let their feelings be known.

“Plant let us know he usually hated people’s covers of Stairway,” Ann continued in her Stern interview, “but he liked that one.” As for the guitar playing, Nancy added: “Jimmy Page goes, ‘You nailed the guitar part!’”

Plant has spoken about the cover on numerous occasions. In fact, just last year the vocalist revisited the cover, which had been earmarked as one of the highlights of his career during an interview with Vulture.

“Look at the company I was keeping that night,” Plant said. “Who was I sitting next to? What was going on? I didn’t even know the people anymore. How did we move across from being a British blues band to this ridiculous achievement?

“We’re talking here about one song from 50-plus years ago. It’s just a magnificent performance to watch and it kills me every time. It kills me in two or three different ways. It’s just like, Oh my God.”

In a previous interview with LA Weekly, Plant had dubbed the entire experience “humbling” and “mind-altering”.

The Wilson sisters have also discussed the famed performance in the past, with Nancy once telling Classic Rock: “Before we went out there, I had to get my fingers really warmed up. It was winter, and it was cold and drafty backstage. You can’t play Stairway to Heaven with cold fingers in front of Jimmy Page! 

“It was really well put together. If anybody deserved a tribute like that, it’s Led Zeppelin.”