(Credits: Far Out / ceedub13)
Tue 20 January 2026 17:44, UK
Although he never quite commanded the musical mainstream with the same ferocity as some of his peers, Jeff Beck appears to have been a constant, unavoidable presence when looking back upon the rock and roll history of this sceptred isle, and one band with whom he always shared a particularly close connection was Led Zeppelin.
Jimmy Page was, of course, the driving force behind the formation of the hard rock harbingers during the late 1960s, and it was he who concocted the group’s infallible line-up of rock and roll talent. It would not be overly contentious, however, to suggest that the band might never have formed were it not for Jeff Beck. After all, it was within The Yardbirds that Page planted the first seeds of Led Zeppelin, playing duelling guitars alongside Beck.
Then, when Beck left The Yardbirds for pastures new, it was Page who took the reins, and eventually mopped the band into the early incarnation of Led Zeppelin – The New Yardbirds. It is only fitting, therefore, that Beck remained rather close with the band throughout their rise to rock and roll stardom and beyond, all the while focusing on his own incredible jazz-centric style of play.
Once the dust had settled on Led Zeppelin’s 1980 break-up, in fact, Beck was quickly recruited among the extensive cast of studio and session musicians for Robert Plant’s Honeydrippers project, which should give you some indication of how closely aligned the two rock and roll heroes were.
Nevertheless, Beck was never one to hide his musical opinions away, and he routinely let Plant know about which Led Zeppelin tracks never found his favour. Namely, the band’s signature masterpiece ‘Kashmir’ was one of Beck’s most hated tracks, as Plant once recalled to FourFourTwo.
Discussing the singer’s lifelong obsession with Wolverhampton Wanderers, and the club’s tendency to play Zeppelin tracks before kick-off – along with Beck’s football anthem ‘Hi-Ho Silver Lining’ – Plant shared, “I’m very proud of that, except they’ve edited the thing wrong – I need to get in there and cut it up. But it’s a fanfare just before Jeff Beck’s ‘Hi-Ho Wolverhampton’.”
One of the club’s favourite tracks to play over the P.A. before a match is ‘Kashmir’, much to the apparent chagrin of Jeff Beck. “I used to call him up when they played that, and he used to hate it profusely,” Plant laughed, adding: “He hated that song.”
Neither Page nor the late Jeff Beck expanded upon exactly why the guitarist had such a strong disdain for ‘Kashmir’. It is, after all, one of Zeppelin’s inarguable classics, a staple of their live shows, and one of their most profound and expansive compositions. What’s more, you would be forgiven for thinking that its experimental angle would endear it towards Beck, who was always rather experimental in his own right.
Regardless of all that, though, it sounds as if Beck simply didn’t like the track for whatever unknown reason. Still, hearing it at the occasional Wolves match is a small price to pay for ‘Hi-Ho Silver Lining’ being played at countless football clubs up and down the country on a weekly basis.
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