{"id":646096,"date":"2026-06-18T22:04:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T22:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/646096\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T22:04:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T22:04:10","slug":"when-jimmy-page-reviewed-the-hit-songs-of-1969","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/646096\/","title":{"rendered":"When Jimmy Page reviewed the hit songs of 1969"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jimmy<\/p>\n

Credit: Andrew Smith<\/p>\n

Thu 18 June 2026 18:35, UK <\/p>\n

In 1969, Jimmy Page was fully established. Having finally broken out with the self-titled debut of Led Zeppelin<\/a> earlier that year, Page was well on his way to becoming a guitar god. <\/p>\n

He had previously logged time as a session musician and helped guide The Yardbirds through their final lineup, but Page wasn\u2019t nearly on the same level as his peers, like Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton.<\/p>\n

Starting with Led Zeppelin I, Zeppelin were often subjected to scathing reviews in the music press. It got to be so bad that Page even instituted a boycott, rarely giving interviews. \u201cI didn\u2019t think they had a clue what we were doing, as each album changed in its sort of concept and variety,\u201d Page observed in the documentary It Might Get Loud. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe reviews were terrible. They didn\u2019t understand what we were doing.\u201d Page pointed to a magazine that gave Led Zeppelin IV<\/a> a one-paragraph review, despite housing some of the band\u2019s best-loved material, as a particularly low point in his relationship with the press.<\/p>\n

Despite his frustration with critics, Page remained deeply interested in music beyond Led Zeppelin\u2019s own output. His years as a session musician had exposed him to countless styles and performers, giving him a broad perspective that often surfaced whenever he discussed the artists who inspired him.<\/p>\n

But early on, Page was willing to play ball with the music papers. He was even willing to dish out some reviews of his own, as he did in the December 27th, 1969, edition of Melody Maker. The paper had a recurring feature called \u2018Blind Date\u2019, where musicians would review the latest singles of the day and give their opinions of the music. Page took some time to give his opinions, even though none of the songs that Melody Maker showed him would become classic singles.<\/p>\n

First up was the British jazz\/pop group The Peddlers and their 1970 song \u2018Girlie\u2019. \u201cHis voice doesn\u2019t knock me out \u2013 it\u2019s always so false,\u201d Page opinioned. \u201cHe never sounds convincing. I\u2019ve never heard him sing a note that sounds convincing, but I\u2019ll say that they always try very hard. That organ wah-wah is derivative of The Pretty Things \u2013 they did it first. I know they are all good musicians, but they never move me. As far as their following goes, I suppose they have got the agency scene really sewn up \u2013 Talk of the Town and Morcambe and Wise Show, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n

Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n

Page then turns his attention to an old-school single: jazz guitarist Charlie Christian and his collaboration with the Benny Goodman Sextet and Orchestra, \u2018Blues In B\u2019. \u201cI know who it is \u2013 it must be Charlie Christian if the guy said \u2018Charlie!’\u201d Page recognises. \u201cGuitarists from this period could have done a lot more if they had better rhythm sections. All the drummers used to chug along with a two-beat and it makes you wonder how the old guitarists would have sounded with today\u2019s drummers. So much has happened to drumming in the last ten year, and when you get a heavy drummer backing \u2013 you just explode.\u201d<\/p>\n

Page acknowledges that \u201cQuite frankly I never listened to Charlie Christian much; I listened to Les Paul and all the blues guitarists \u2013 B.B. King, Bukka White, and Elmore James, plus all the early rock guitarists.\u201d Almost as if to satiate him, Melody Maker decides to show him singles from both Paul and White next.<\/p>\n

First is a pair of Bukka White songs, \u2018Bed Spring Blues\u2019 and \u2018Aberdeen, Mississippi Blues\u2019. \u201cIt\u2019s contemporary and sounds like an old blues singer who has been got together in the studio with a drummer,\u201d Page says before admitting that he can\u2019t place who it is. \u201cIt really suffers from modern day recording techniques. For a start, on the old recordings the washboard was right up close to the guitar and I\u2019m sorry to say there\u2019s none of the richness in sound he had before. It\u2019s impossible to recreate the old recording sound because the old equipment has gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next up are Les Paul and Mary Ford with a trio of songs. \u201cLes Paul \u2013 he\u2019s the man who started everything \u2013 multi-track recording, the electric guitar \u2013 he\u2019s just a genius,\u201d Page gushed. \u201cI think he was the first to use a four-track \u2013 or was it an eight-track recording machine? I met him once and apparently he started multi-track recording back in about 1945.\u201d Page compliments the song, even though he says that Ford\u2019s \u201cvoice dates them a bit. It\u2019s back to the early fifties and Kay Starr.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, Page gets his hands on Fairport Convention\u2019s \u2018Come All Ye\u2019. \u201cI don\u2019t know who it is, but it\u2019s bloody good,\u201d Page raves. \u201cShe\u2019s got a lovely purity to her voice.\u201d Page correctly identifies the singer as Sandy Denny, the same singer who Led Zeppelin would later collaborate with on the Led Zeppelin IV track \u2018The Battle of Evermore\u2019.<\/p>\n

Check out some of the songs that Page reviewed down below.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> The Far Out Led Zeppelin Newsletter<\/p>\n

All the latest stories about Led Zeppelin from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Andrew Smith Thu 18 June 2026 18:35, UK In 1969, Jimmy Page was fully established. Having finally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[19405,143168,96,89073,23795,10866,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-646096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-1960s","tag-143168","tag-entertainment","tag-hard-rock","tag-jimmy-page","tag-led-zeppelin","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}