What would a Jimmy Page and Les Paul duet sound like?
Before playing guitar in the best rock band of all time, Jimmy Page worked with several different artists. Touring proved too much for him the first time, so he opted to become a session musician for a few years, where he worked with several different artists and mastered various styles of music in the process.
This all came in handy when Page was starting Led Zeppelin as he was keen on bringing together multiple different genres. This included acoustic music, blues, rock ‘n’ roll, R&B and big, heavy choruses. Without his session work, he wouldn’t have developed such a diverse range, and his collaboration with other artists only ever acted as a positive in Led Zeppelin.
Despite the fact he has played with a number of excellent guitarists throughout his career, including Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, Page never got the chance to play with his hero. Out of every guitarist on the planet, Page’s favourite was the innovative mind of Les Paul. While Page got to meet the guitarist, the two never played together.
“Les Paul – he’s the man who started everything: multitrack recording, the electric guitar – he’s just a genius,” said Page, “I think he was the first to use a four-track – or was it an eight-track – recording machine. I met him once, and apparently, he started multitrack recording back in 1945. Jeff Beck and myself have always dug him.”
Given that Page has worked with many guitarists, it’s worth pondering what a potential duet between the two would sound like. Despite the fact that the two were making music at different times, they had an affinity for technology and were always keen on trying different recording techniques. This means that we could expect a hugely different recording style at play and plenty of looping over the song.
The most interesting aspect would be how it would all actually come together. Les Paul was making music before the glorified use of distortion, and therefore, the sound would likely be much cleaner. We would probably hear both Jimmy Page and Les Paul record multiple layers to provide a backing track before the two took turns soloing over it.
We could certainly expect one of the more out-there Led Zeppelin time signatures, given Les Paul often worked with jazz and blues. The time signature would be scattered, and Pages and Paul’s solos would both likely be quick. No doubt that when all is said and done, we would be listening to two of the greatest guitarists of all time going back and forth.
Given how many people Jimmy Page worked with, it’s a shame that we never got the chance to listen to him perform alongside one of his guitar heroes. It seems almost cruel that we never got to hear the two record or accomplish something together, but we can still imagine what it would probably sound like. Both would push themselves when it came to the recording techniques used, while the two would play over a scattered jazz-inspired beat, trading speedy guitar runs.