page_title: Jimmy Page
section_title: 1968–1980: Led Zeppelin
hierarchical_section_title: Jimmy Page / Career / 1968–1980: Led Zeppelin
caption_attribution_description: English: Jimmy Page #2 in Madison Square Garden with Led Zeppelin
context_page_description: James Patrick Page OBE is an English musician, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and record producer who achieved international success as the guitarist and founder of the rock band Led Zeppelin.
  Page is prolific in creating guitar riffs and his varied style involves various guitar tunings, technical and melodic solos and aggressive, distorted guitar tone as well as his folk and eastern influenced acoustic work. He is also noted for occasionally playing his guitar with a cello bow to create a droning sound texture to the music.
  Page began his career as a studio session musician in London and, by the mid-1960s, alongside Big Jim Sullivan, was one of the most sought-after session guitarists in Britain. He was a member of the Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968. When The Yardbirds broke up, he founded Led Zeppelin, which was active from 1968-1980. Following the death of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, he participated in a number of groups throughout the 1980s and 1990s, notably XYZ, The Firm, The Honeydrippers, Coverdale–Page, and Page and Plant.
context_section_description: Led Zeppelin are one of the best-selling music groups in the history of audio recording. Various sources estimate the group's worldwide sales at more than 200 or even 300 million albums. With 111.5 million RIAA-certified units, they are the second-best-selling band in the United States. Each of their nine studio albums reached the top 10 of the US Billboard album chart, and six reached the number-one spot.
  Led Zeppelin were the progenitors of heavy metal and hard rock, and their sound was largely the product of Page's input as a producer and musician. The band's individualistic style drew from a wide variety of influences. They performed on multiple record-breaking concert tours, which also earned them a reputation for excess. Although they remained commercially and critically successful, in the later 1970s, the band's output and touring schedule were limited by the personal difficulties of the members.
  Page explained that he had a very specific idea in mind as to what he wanted Led Zeppelin to be, from the very beginning:
  I had a lot of ideas from my days with the Yardbirds. The Yardbirds allowed me to improvise a lot in live performance and I started building a textbook of ideas that I eventually used in Zeppelin. In addition to those ideas, I wanted to add acoustic textures. Ultimately, I wanted Zeppelin to be a marriage of blues, hard rock and acoustic music topped with heavy choruses – a combination that had never been done before. Lots of light and shade in the music.
caption: Jimmy Page onstage in 1973
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