Thanks to the unexpected intervention of a discarded acoustic guitar, James Patrick Page found himself perfectly equipped to deal with rock’n’roll’s ‘youth explosion’ as it irresistibly infected his formative 1950s.
INSET: © JIMMY PAGE ARCHIVE 2019
Graduating from skiffle through rockabilly to blues by duplicating riffs on records, he taught himself to improvise, honing his craft with The Paramounts and Red E Lewis and The Redcaps, before becoming the hottest young guitar slinger on the burgeoning 60s session scene. Jimmy Page gravitated from studio anonymity to pop stardom when he joined The Yardbirds in ’66. Two years later, upon the band’s ultimate dissolution, he formed Led Zeppelin, with whom he rapidly conquered the world.