(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Fri 19 December 2025 14:30, UK
The debate over who the greatest rock and roll guitarist of all time is has waged on since the dawn of rock and roll itself, and it will likely continue to be discussed and dissected for many years to come. Whatever the truth of that debate, though, when it comes to sheer impact and influence, Jimmy Page is inarguably up there.
Everybody with even a passing knowledge of rock will be all too aware of Page’s groundbreaking influence during the days of Led Zeppelin. Formed from the ashes of The Yardbirds, Zeppelin completely transformed the sound and style of rock forever, paving the way for the future of hard rock, metal, and arguably arena rock too.
Throughout the entirety of their discography, the group rarely put a foot wrong, and that stunning discography rightly earned Page a seat among the all-time greatest guitar heroes.
When you take a step back, though, Page’s 12-year stint living the hedonistic lifestyle of Led Zeppelin’s guitar god barely scratches the surface of his expansive influence on rock. After all, it isn’t as though Page struck upon the musical mastery of that hard rock outfit on his first try; the band’s 1969 debut was, in many ways, indebted to the guitarist’s previous experience, stretching right back to the early 1960s, before the colourful Carnaby Street explosion had transformed the era.
Before Led Zeppelin, and even before The Yardbirds, Page earned his crust as one of the most prolific and sought-after session guitarists in Britain; an axeman for hire embracing an unimaginable wealth of different projects without prejudice. From pop smashes to obscure muzak records and future garage rock classics, Page’s session days gave him an invaluable education in the wide spectrum of sounds filling up the hit parade, even if he often went uncredited for his work.
Jimmy Page demonstrates his talents years after leaving session work behind. (Credits: Far Out / Dana Wullenwaber)
“Everything Jimmy Page wanted to do for Immediate, we let him. He was a lovely fella,” Tony Calder of Immediate Records, where Page’s skills were in regular demand, once said of the young session artist. That relationship with Immediate also allowed Page to rub shoulders with the hippest and most happening stars of British rock, including The Rolling Stones – whose manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, founded Immediate – along with label mates Nico and Vashti Bunyan, among various others.
Outside of Immediate, though, Page wasn’t always given the credit or creative freedom he was due. You would, for instance, have no idea that it was the future Led Zeppelin guitarist backing Petula Clark on ‘Downtown’ or Shirley Bassey’s legendary Bond theme ‘Goldfinger’ – the word ‘underutilised’ certainly comes to mind. Still, such is the thankless life of a session musician.
Given the often uncredited nature of Page’s session work, it is tricky to say with any certainty just how many recordings he played on, but the figure is likely in the hundreds.
Some performances, however, have certainly risen to the top over the years, and we have compiled some notable highlights into a handy playlist, stretching from Van Morrison’s garage blues masterpiece ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ to obscure Who B-sides and virtually every highlight from Donovan’s early years.
Most of these efforts, it must be said, bear no identifiable relation to Page’s later style of playing; he was rarely hired to put his own spin on things, after all, just to play whatever was put in front of him. On a select few tracks, though, you can certainly make out the kind of quality that he’d later expand upon with The Yardbirds and, later, Led Zeppelin.
Either way, this broad selection of disparate session recordings makes up the early years of one of the greatest guitar heroes to ever grace the airwaves.
Jimmy Page’s classic session performances: Jet Harris and Tony Meehan – ‘Diamonds’Shirley Bassey – ‘Goldfinger’Nashville Teens – ‘Tobacco Road’Dave Berry – ‘The Crying Game’Brenda Lee – ‘What’d I Say’The Rolling Stones – ‘Heart of Stone’Them – ‘Baby, Please Don’t Go’Them – ‘Here Comes The Night’Petula Clark – ‘Downtown’Lulu and The Luvvers – ‘Surprise, Surprise’ The Kinks – ‘I’m A Lover, Not A Fighter’Vashti Bunyan – ‘Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind’Nico – ‘The Last Mile’The Who – ‘I Can’t Explain’The Who – ‘Bald Headed Woman’The Manish Boys – ‘I Pity The Fool’Marianne Faithfull – ‘In My Time of Sorrow’Donovan – ‘Sunshine Superman’Donovan – ‘Season of the WitchDonovan – ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’ Donovan – ‘Teen Angel’ Donovan – ‘The Trip’The Fleur De Lys – ’Circles’Jeff Beck – ‘Beck’s Bolero’Johnny Hallyday – ‘A Tout Casser’Joe Cocker – ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’
Related Topics