Jimmy Page: The Definitive Biography. Chris Salewicz

to evoke the sort of enthusiasm and anticipation we would have for titles such as “Rumble”, “I Put a Spell on You” or “Voodoo Voodoo”, was it?’

      Soon appreciating the limitations of his Spanish acoustic instrument, Page worked for some weeks during the school summer holidays on a milk round, until he had saved up enough money to buy a Höfner President acoustic guitar. ‘It was a hollow-bodied acoustic model with a simple pickup,’ said Williams, ‘but when he attached it to a very small amplifier, it made something like the sound we all admired. I can recall that Saturday morning when I was summoned to his house to first feast eyes on it. Jim was like the cat with the cream. Pete and I were allowed a strum, but by now we realised that any aspirations we might have had in that direction were going to be dwarfed by Jim’s talent, desire and progress.’

      After Page had acquired his Höfner President, his parents paid for lessons from a guitar tutor. But the teenager, anxious to play the hits of the day, found himself mired in learning to sight-read; soon he abandoned the lessons, preferring to attempt to learn to play by ear. Later he would appreciate that his impatience had been an error, finally picking up the skill of reading music in the mid-1960s.

      ‘Rock Island Line’, the tune that Wyatt had been playing when Page approached him, was a Top 10 hit in 1956 for Lonnie Donegan on both sides of the Atlantic – in the UK alone the record sold over a million copies. The song was an interpretation of the great bluesman Leadbelly’s own version, and it became the flagship for skiffle music.

      Skiffle, a peculiarly British grassroots companion movement to rock ’n’ roll that required no expensive equipment, was played on guitars but also on homemade and ‘found’ instruments. Donegan, a member of Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen, would play with a guitar, washboard and tea-chest bass during intervals at Colyer’s traditional jazz sets. In 1957 the BBC launched its first ‘youth’ programme, Six-Five Special, with a skiffle title song. The craze swept Britain at an astonishing rate: it was estimated that in the UK there was a minimum of 30,000 youngsters – maybe almost twice that – playing the musical form. Across the country groups were created: John Lennon’s Quarrymen were a skiffle group that would lead to the formation of the Beatles.

      In accord with this spirit of the age, Page formed such a skiffle group, which his parents permitted to rehearse in their home. Really, this ‘group’ was little more than a set of likeminded friends, sharing their small amounts of knowledge about this new upstart form. Yet they seemed bestowed with a measure of blessing: in 1957, with Page just 13 years old, the James Page Skiffle Group, following an initial audition, won a spot on an early Sunday evening children’s BBC television show, All Your Own, hosted by Huw Wheldon, a 41-year-old rising star (11 years later Wheldon would become director of BBC television). The slot in which they were to be featured was one hinged around ‘unusual hobbies’. How did they get this television slot? By chance, runs part of their appearance’s myth: the show was looking for a skiffle act, and someone working on it was from Epsom and had heard of Page’s band. But there is also a suggestion that Page’s ever-supportive mother wrote a letter to the programme, suggesting her son’s group.

      Unfortunately, the membership of the James Page Skiffle Group has largely been lost in time. For the television appearance, a boy named David Hassall, or perhaps Housego, was involved. Not only did his family own a car, but his father possessed a full set of drums, which David endeavoured to play.

      On a day during the school holidays when the show was to be recorded, Page and Williams caught a train up to London to the BBC studio. Page’s mother had phoned William’s father to ask if his son would accompany him to the recording. ‘The electric guitar itself was already heavy enough for him to carry, but the amplifier was like a little lead box and he clearly could not carry both.’

      At around 4 p.m. Huw Wheldon appeared, fresh from a boozy media lunch, and asked: ‘Where are these fucking kids then?’

      His hair Brylcreemed into a rock ’n’ roller’s quiff and his shirt collar crisply fitted in the crew-neck of his sweater, Page – his Höfner President guitar almost bigger than himself – led his musical cohorts through a pair of songs, ‘Mama Don’t Want to Skiffle Anymore’ and ‘In Them Old Cottonfields Back Home’. (Page had also prepared an adaptation of Bill Doggett’s ‘Honky Tonk’, but he was – rightly – doubtful he would get to play it, as he felt certain they would need him to sing.) After the performance, he was interviewed by Wheldon, and, with an irony now all too evident, Page declared to the avuncular presenter that his intention was to make his career in the field of ‘biological research’, modestly declaring himself not sufficiently intelligent to become a doctor. His ‘biological research’ remark certainly was not glib; Page wanted, he told Wheldon, to find a cure for ‘cancer, if it isn’t discovered by then’. Clearly this was a serious, thoughtful young man.

      You can only imagine the confidence that this TV appearance must have engendered in the boy who had just become a teenager: in 1957 no one knew anyone who had appeared on the magical new medium of television.

      Having been watched by an audience of hundreds of thousands at the age of 13, why not carry on as he had begun? Success might not have been instant, but within four years Jimmy Page would become a professional musician.

      In the meantime, BBC television had finally begun to give limited exposure to rock ’n’ roll, and Buddy Holly appeared on its solitary television channel. ‘When he was killed in a plane crash in 1959,’ said David Williams, ‘I recall that Pete, Jim and I put on black ties and went to the local paper shop to buy all the newspapers that carried photos and obituaries of one of our heroes.’

      In his woodwork class Page carved a reasonable simulacrum of a Fender Jazz Bass, modelling it on the instrument used by Jerry Lee Lewis’s bassist in the film Disc Jockey Jamboree. ‘It sounded good enough,’ said Williams.

      ‘To say Jim was dedicated would be an understatement. I hardly ever saw him when he wasn’t strapped to his guitar trying to figure out some new licks.’ Williams noted that Page’s principal inspiration was no longer Elvis Presley or the anguished Gene Vincent, but the ostensibly more wholesome Ricky Nelson. This should not be a surprise: Nelson’s upbeat rockabilly tunes featured the acclaimed James Burton on guitar, as much an inspiration to Page as Scotty Moore. Ten years later Burton would be leader of Elvis Presley’s TCB band, playing with the King until Elvis’s death in 1977.

      ‘Those old Nelson records might seem pretty tame now, but back then the guitar solos (including the ones played by Joe Maphis) were cutting-edge stuff and greatly impressed my pal,’ said Williams. ‘I remember that he struggled for a long time with the instrumental break of “It’s Late”, but eventually someone showed him the fingerings he was after and he happily moved on.’

      Now Page set about forming a group that played more than skiffle. He found a boy who played rhythm guitar – though with little of the feel of rock ’n’ roll – in nearby Banstead, and then he found a pianist.

      Although lacking either a drummer or a name, the trio were, after a number of practice sessions, deemed sufficiently ready by Page to play their first show at the Comrades Club, a drinking establishment for war veterans in Epsom town centre.

      The gig was not a colossal success. In fact, Williams said it was ‘a complete shambles’. Certainly, it didn’t help that the three musicians lacked a drummer to propel the tempo; later in his career Page would ensure he played with the very best drummer he could find.

      ‘As rock ’n’ roll progressed,’ said Wyatt, ‘Jimmy and I added pickups to our guitars; we were going electric. Pete Calvert, a left-handed guitarist and friend of Jimmy’s and mine, had a small early Watkins amplifier and I had a Selmer. Jimmy had a bigger Selmer, a sign of what was to come? All three of us were always around each other’s houses banging rock ’n’ roll. Tommy Steele was making headlines as Britain’s first rock ’n’ roller, and although that was cool we preferred the grittier sound of the American artists such as Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps and, of course, Elvis. And for Jimmy and me, the sound made by Gene Vincent’s lead guitarist, Cliff Gallup: that was the style and guitar sound we loved the best in those days.’