It won’t surprise you to read that Jimmy Page’s talent for the guitar has always been there. When he initially started playing, there was a natural flare, and that meant that when he grew up and started showing interest in being in a band, he wasn’t short on people putting themselves forward to work with him. This led to him joining Neil Christian and the Crusaders and going on his first tour.
On that tour, it didn’t take long for word about the new guitarist to get around. In every city they went to, people left talking about the six-stringed protégé tearing up the stage every night. It felt as though Page was finally coming into his own, but one night in Sheffield, a combination of exhaustion, partying and life on the road meant he collapsed and pulled out of the rest of the tour.
This was a significant turning point for Page, as he decided to stop worrying about being in a band and instead focus on getting work as a session musician. This led to him mastering the art of playing various styles of music. Not to mention, it showed Page the inner workings of a studio, which meant that he felt a lot more confident when it came to recording his own songs.
A lot of Led Zeppelin songs only came to fruition because Page was confident enough to tell producers how sounds should be fed into monitors and recorded. He referred to the mass of feedback from his amp that played before recording as “Waking up the army of guitars,” and it was an army he was the commander and chief of. His confidence in the studio wasn’t just resigned to his own band, either. He worked with other musicians and used his studio knowledge to ensure tracks were given the right treatment.
He worked with Eric Clapton a lot in the studio, and one of the tracks that required him to help with production was ‘I’m Your Witchdoctor’, a 1965 single by John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. When recording the track, Clapton said he wanted to use strong feedback to add a wail to the track, which Page thought was a good idea, but the producer pushed back on.
“When ‘Witchdoctor’ came to be overdubbed, Eric had this idea to put this feedback wall over the top,” said Page, reflecting on their studio session. “I was with him in the studio as he set this up, then I got back into the control room and told the engineer to record the overdub.”
The recording was underway, but Clapton’s producer wasn’t a fan of harsh some of the feedback was coming across. “About two-thirds of the way through, he pulled the faders down and said: ‘This guitarist is impossible to record’. I guess his technical ethics were compromised by the signal that was putting the meters into the red,” Page concluded. “I suggested that he got on with his job and leave that decision to me!”
