The making of a master: How one guitar string changed Jimmy Page’s career
In a fanzine called Sideburn from the ‘70s, there was a drawing that was only there to fill space but managed to resonate with many musicians at the time. It was of three guitar chords, an A, E and G. The text on the image read, “This is a chord, this is another, this is a third, now form a band.” That was the foundation of the majority of a lot of punk music.
Punk was an exciting time in music as it was a lot more about making noise as opposed to becoming fixated on the noise you were making. People wanted to say something, and it didn’t matter how intricate the music that accompanied them saying it was, so long as there was music playing. In that sense, people had the creative license to start a band after only knowing three chords, and the music industry was all the more exciting for it.
This wasn’t always the case, though. In the preceding decade, music relied on intricacy. The blues and R&B were making their way across the world, and with them, talented musicians who people couldn’t turn away from were treated like gods while their fans became fixated on playing like them. It meant that the music made throughout the ‘60s flaunted some of the best guitar playing the record industry had ever seen; at the forefront of that was Jimmy Page.
Page became a master of multiple genres of music. His work as a session guitarist meant he was exposed to a range of different playing styles; however, the only reason he was able to adapt to these different styles was because of how much he practised playing the songs of his heroes when he was younger. All of this started with one simple change to a guitar string.
The soon-to-be Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin man became engrossed with American rock n roll, which was the kind of music Elvis and Chuck Berry were playing. When listening to this music, he said, “The excitement and energy just grabbed me, and I wanted to be part of it.” He began practising relentlessly, confessing, “Solos which affected me could send a shiver up my spine, and I’d spend hours and, in some cases, days trying to get them off.”
Eventually, Page turned his attention towards the bent note guitarist, James Burton, who was responsible for a lot of the guitar on Ricky Nelson hits. The bending style of playing began to annoy him, though, to the point that he was borderline ready to give up.
The issue was that Page’s first guitar was an old classical one he found at home. It was a good starting point as he could get used to finger and plucking techniques while also learning a few different chords, but it wasn’t sufficient when it came to playing in the style of James Burton. At that early point in your playing, it’s important that you can see yourself walking in the footsteps of those who inspire you, so if Jimmy Page had stayed with this guitar, it’s not unrealistic that he might have given up before he even started. But that isn’t what happened.
Instead, his friend told him a secret, and Page changed the usually coated G string on his guitar with an uncoated string so it was thinner than the rest. A classical guitar has a much thicker neck, contributing to its unique sound; it’s perfect for classical guitarists but not ideal for someone trying to play rock music because it means the strings are nearly impossible to bend. By changing the G string, Page could better navigate the music of his heroes.
The result was that he practised repeatedly, stepping further and further into the footsteps of those who inspired him and continuing to improve. If he hadn’t changed that string, though, he might have found it too challenging to create the sound he was after and subsequently might have stopped playing. It’s interesting to consider what might have happened to Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin had it not been for that string change.