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Thu 30 July 2026 15:00, UK
You can say a lot of things about the career of Jimmy Page – that he ‘borrowed’ a lot of riffs from forgotten blues pioneers, or that some of his most lauded tracks are actually rather simplistic in structure – but it is virtually impossible to doubt the sheer technical skill imbued by the Led Zeppelin guitarist, which has infatuated and infuriated his fellow guitarists for decades.
Virtually every rock and roll guitarist for the past 50 years has hoped, on some level, to be able to knock out a tune like Jimmy Page. In many ways, the Zeppelin axeman is the archetypal rock and roll guitarist, establishing many of the most enduring images of hedonistic, flamboyant rock guitar playing. To his credit, though, Page never allowed his incredible skills to get to his head, always maintaining a deep appreciation for his fellow players, even if their proficiency with a six-string arguably outweighed his own.
After all, Page spent the majority of the 1960s rubbing shoulders with the greatest movers and shakers of London’s blossoming music scene. Across his extensive early career as a sought-after session musician, recording with everybody from Petula Clark to The Who, and propping up many early releases by Andrew Loog Oldham’s Immediate Records, the guitarist was exposed to virtually every music scene housed in England’s capital, including its illustrious jazz scene.
Jazz was on a rapid rise in 1960s London, spurred on by the various nightclubs springing up to meet the demand of the jazz-obsessed mod subculture, and that scene soon collided with the rock and roll world, too. So much so that the likes of Jeff Beck eventually abandoned rock and roll to pursue the artistically – if not commercially – rewarding realm of jazz fusion.
Although Page did not follow his former Yardbirds bandmate down that path, remaining rooted in the rock world that would soon provide a stage for Led Zeppelin, he certainly struck upon an appreciation for the emerging jazz fusion scene in London… It was, after all, chock full of incredible guitarists, of whom few could rival the great John McLaughlin.
It was in the hallowed walls of the Selmer music shop on Charing Cross Road in London that Page first crossed paths with the future jazz fusion hero. “He came down from [Doncaster], and he was living in London,” Page once recalled.
“He was sort of introducing himself onto the jazz scene and welcomed with open arms, as you can imagine.”
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Even during those early days, though, before McLaughlin had lent his incredible talents to the likes of Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Santana, and countless others, it was clear to Jimmy Page that the guitarist was destined for greatness.
“He was instinctively the best, I could tell,” the Led Zeppelin man declared.
“I didn’t listen to a lot of jazz – or it was selective, what I listened to – but I could tell from what I knew that he was easily the best that I was gonna hear or witness in front of me,” he added. “He was the best one I was going to see, that’s for sure.”
True to Page’s prophecy, it didn’t take McLaughlin long to rise to the very top of London’s 1960s jazz scene, becoming one of the nation’s most lauded, sought-after players in the process. Although his chosen field of jazz didn’t afford him quite the same mainstream attention as somebody like Jimmy Page, there was no doubting who would come out on top in a high noon guitar duel.
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