He may have been blessed with a mind that could pump out one classic riff after another but there were also many times where he could stretch himself well beyond his usual wheelhouse before he even reached Led Zeppelin. The Yardbirds may have been a great foundation, but it was a lot more interesting seeing where he could go when he walked into any session that he signed up for.
But before learning about Page specifically, you need to realise how difficult the life of a session musician could be for people. No one is looking to pay someone by the hour for their time only to watch them fumble through the chords of whatever song they were working on, and if Page was going to go the distance, he was going to need to be able to sit within the song perfectly and find the right way to add his own flair to it in whatever way he knew how.
Although John Paul Jones had a more natural ear for arranging in Zeppelin, Page’s ability to hone down the right guitar part came from going to different sessions. It could be The Rolling Stones on one day and working with Shirley Bassey on the next day, but whatever he showed up with, he knew that he was ready for anything that they threw at him. That is, as long as the talent actually knew what they wanted to hear.
You have to remember that not all rock bands operate the same way, and while Van Morrison was on the verge of becoming a legend in Them, it took a lot before he was ready for the masses. ‘Gloria’ may have etched them into rock history pretty securely, but when listening to the band working on some of their first records, Page figured that he had walked into a half-formed idea when he started laying down his parts.
For all of the sessions he had worked on, though, this was one of the first times where Page admitted he didn’t really like working on anything, saying, “On the Them session, it was very embarrassing because you noticed that as each number passed, another member of the band would be substituted for by a session musician. Talk about daggers! God, it was awful. There’d be times you’d be sitting there – you didn’t want to be there, you’d only been booked – and wishing you weren’t there.”
But that might be down to a conflict of interest half the time. Morrison was bound to become a musical go once he started working on tracks for Astral Weeks, but since he did that mostly on his own, it wasn’t going to be easy for him to follow along with the rest of the group playing one idea while Morrison was off on his own separate tangent half the time they played.
At the same time, it’s not like Page couldn’t learn a thing or two from him, either. The whole point of Zeppelin was about jamming, and while a lot of their records had more than their fair share of chaotic moments, there was always a sense of fun watching them come up with different parts on the spot or changing things completely whenever they got around to performing live.
Them may have been a much different kind of band from what Page was used to, but every session musician should take any song they’re playing on as another lesson. It’s far from the greatest way of working half the time, but sometimes changing things up is exactly what you need when you’re stuck in a rut.