Twisted Sister guitarist Jay Jay French insulted Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page’s live playing in a new The French Connection podcast interview. Jimmy Page ‘Admits To Stealing’ Stairway to Heaven?
“I saw Zeppelin a zillion times, and Page certainly was great, way before anything he was a session guy, and established his cred. But as time went on, I thought his playing went sloppy, for me. That’s how I kind of look at it, for whatever reason…
“You could really see the difference between live Page and studio Page. Studio Page, throughout any, both Zeppelin stuff and stuff he did with Donovan, Tom Jones… I mean, the amount of records that we’ve heard that we don’t associate with Jimmy Page that he was on…
“He sat down and played, he was very focused, he was very accurate. When he was on stage with Led Zeppelin, he was a rock star. He had the Les Paul slung down to his knees.
“And I would rather see the rockstar and have it be a little sloppy because it’s about the spectacle than if you just sat in the chair and be like, ‘I got to hit these marks.’
“To me, it was the showman and the session guy, and whoever would show up would what you would get on any particular day.
“I interviewed [legenrady rock producer/engineer] Eddie Kramer recently, Eddie produced our first demos. And he went on about how great Jimmy was in the history of British session work; phenomenal, meticulous in the studio, a great producer…
“But I will say that I did see the Zep’s first tour when he was playing a Telecaster through Rickenbacker amplifiers – that was cool to see. He was playing his Tele, and I recently ran into him in London a couple of years ago, and I said to him…
“Because we lived in his house for three months doing one of our albums, and he never showed up, so I didn’t get the chance to talk to him, and I said, ‘By the way, I just wanted to know, as a fanboy, I was front row at the Fillmore, and you were playing a Tele through the Rick amps…’
“And he’s like, ‘Oh my god, you remember that?’ I said, ‘Of course, I was 16 years old. that means everything to me,’ and I said, ‘Six months later, you come back and you played a Les Paul through a half-stack Marshall, and I’m front row for that.’ And he goes, ‘You remember that?’ ‘Of course, I remember that.”
“For me, that’s rock god shit, that’s like, of course, you remember that stuff.” Ultimate-Guitar transcribed his comments.
