Jimmy Page says Led Zeppelin initially took more than just the Yardbirds’ name. They used the same template for success, following a path into American radio and rock clubs on their way to hall of fame-worthy success.
“It was out of the ashes of the Yardbirds,” Page tells BBC Radio’s Chris Evans. “The Yardbirds decided to fold. There were four Yardbirds at the time. There had been five before with Jeff [Beck], but Jeff had left the band. They kept having these guitarists who were leaving. Eric Clapton had been there, as well, prior to that. The thing is, we were doing the underground circuit over there — and then they had FM radio, which was playing more sort of extensive tracks than the AM, which was a single format. So, I’d really gotten used to all of this, and I was really keen to put a band together.”
Page, who’d been with the Yardbirds since 1966, collected a trio of like-minded new collaborators in John Bonham, John Paul Jones and Robert Plant, with an eye on breaking into the U.S. marketplace. The New Yardbirds, as Led Zeppelin was briefly known, all but ignored their native UK at first.
“I knew what we were doing in the Yardbirds was really, really good — and nobody over here knew what we were doing,” Page says. “It was clear that the ideas I had been coming up with in the Yardbirds — they were good musicians but we were taking it on even further. We had the opportunity to come up with something which was going to be groundbreaking — which is what happened, really.”
And it happened in the blink of an eye, something Page still marvels over.
“What you have to understand is, the phenomenon of it is, there’s the Yardbirds in July of ’68,” Page adds, “and then there isn’t. They all break up. And then by the end of that year, Led Zeppelin have got an album, and they’re already on the verge of breaking America. By the end of January of the following year, it’s already done.”
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