(Credits: Far Out / APA Agency / Dina Regine)
Mon 12 January 2026 3:00, UK
Jimmy Page takes to live sound in the same way a duck takes to water. Effortlessly.
When he originally started Led Zeppelin, his ideas were ambitious. After playing as a session musician for plenty of years and working with The Yardbirds, Jimmy Page had mastered multiple genres and wanted to make a band that championed all of them. It was an ambitious idea, but one that it was clear would work out the moment they had their first jam.
“We first played together in a small room on Gerrard Street, a basement room, which is now Chinatown,” said bassist John Paul Jones, looking back on their first band session, “There was just wall-to-wall amplifiers, and a space for the door – and that was it. Literally, it was everyone looking at each other – ‘What shall we play?’ Me doing more sessions, didn’t know anything at all.”
After the period of tension and silence passed, the band began playing a song from The Yardbirds, and it became clear what a force they were. “There was an old Yardbirds tune,” said Jones, “Called ‘Train Kept a Rollin’… The whole room just exploded.”
As history unravelled right before the band’s eyes, it was made apparent that they would always pack a serious punch live. People came from far and wide to watch the band play live, and when they eventually started touring around the US, it wasn’t long before they were selling out arenas. At the time, the band broke records for playing the biggest concerts in recorded history, and it all stems back to the sound they stumbled upon in Chinatown.
Given they had such success in the States, it’s hard to believe that the first time Page travelled there, he wound up involved in some of the worst shows of his career. When he was speaking to William S Burroughs about his life on the road prior to Led Zeppelin, he spoke about how much he hated playing in Philadelphia, and how close he came to getting in a fight whilst out there.
He recalled an incident that happened there and said that he was almost physically sick upon seeing it. He also said that if he hadn’t been using one of his custom-made Gibson double-neck guitars, he would have probably smashed it over the head of someone during the altercation. “Unless you wait another nine months for them to make you another one at Gibson’s,” he said.
“What had happened, somebody came to the front of the stage to take a picture or something, and obviously somebody said, ‘Be off with you.’ He wouldn’t go,” recalled Page, “Then, one chap went over the barrier, and then another, and then another, and then another, and they all piled on top. You could see the fists coming out on this one solitary person. They dragged him by his hair. They were kicking him.”
This wasn’t an attitude he carried into Led Zeppelin with him. Page learnt from these tumultuous times and so made sure that regardless of how heavy their music might have gotten, Led Zeppelin crowds were always pretty orderly.
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