(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Wed 14 January 2026 12:30, UK
It’s impossible for any rock and roll band to think that they can have the same sense of finesse that Jimmy Page had with Led Zeppelin.
The whole thing was Page’s brainchild, but there’s a good chance that even he didn’t realise what he was in for when John Bonham got behind the kit or when Robert Plant made his way through songs like ‘Dazed and Confused’ for the first time. Every single person in the band was a master at their craft, and if they were going to grow their brand, Page was going to make sure that everyone he worked with from then on lived up to that same musical standard.
Granted, that’s almost not fair to ask of any other rock and roll artist. People like Terry Reid could definitely have lived up to the legend that Plant left behind, and even powerhouse drummers like Cozy Powell had the same kind of thunderous sound that Bonzo did, but even when working with another one-off like Paul Rodgers, there’s something about Zeppelin that feels like lightning in a bottle.
From their debut album all the way up to Physical Graffiti, there was hardly any song that sounded rough around the edges. Page wanted to make sure that the whole band sounded as tight as possible, but when they founded their own rock and roll label, getting the right bands under one roof would either be the best or worst thing to happen to them. But judging by people like Bad Company, they still had a keen ear for what the fans wanted.
After all, Page had been a session musician for years, so he knew the ins and outs of what a band needed to succeed. But when he founded Swan Song, he didn’t want to simply make pop offshoots of what Zeppelin were supposed to be. These artists needed to have something to say, and even though The Pretty Things had come out long before Zeppelin made their first album, Page wanted to make sure he got them through the door at Swan Song.
It’s not that they were floundering when they found themselves without a label. ‘Rosalyn’ was considered a rock and roll staple at the time, but even if SF Sorrow didn’t resonate with everyone, Page knew that they would be a welcome band on their roster when making records like Silk Torpedo in the mid-1970s.
Because throughout their entire career, Page counted The Pretty Things among the few bands that had never made a bad tune, saying, “The Pretty Things were a band that were really changing their music and had done because they probably did one of the best singles way back in the day with ‘Rosalyn’, that’s wild! That’s serious! And then they had gone through SF Sorrow and the music that they were doing on Swan Song was incredible. It was the sort of band that when someone said, ‘Oh, some tapes have come in,’ I was really keen to hear what they’d done, because it was always so good! Good writing, good performance from everybody.”
Then again, it’s not like Page had time to worry about every single piece that had come out. He was only one piece of the label at that point, but when Zeppelin started making their later records like Presence, you could hear him taking bits and pieces from every band that he had heard and incorporating them into his own work, like creating that small guitar army that marches through ‘Achilles Last Stand’.
Not every experiment that The Pretty Things made was a hit with the fans, but Page was always willing to give bands of their ilk a shot. Because ever since he began work with Zeppelin, it made a lot more sense for Page to spend time having fun in the studio than go back to the same tried-and-true method of making hits that everyone else was doing.
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