POST # 503 Jimmy Page on Developing His Style

I wasn’t really playing anything properly. I just knew a few bits of solos and things, not much. I just kept getting records and learning that way. It was the obvious influences at the beginning, Scotty Moore, James Burton, Cliff Gallup—he was Gene Vincent’s guitarist—Johnny Weeks, later and those seemed to be the most sustaining influences until I began to hear blues guitarists Elmore James, B.B. King, and people like that. Basically, that was the start: a mixture between rock and blues.

Then I stretched out a lot more, and I started doing studio work. I had to branch out, and I did. I might do three sessions a day: a film in the morning, and then there’d be something like a rock band, and then maybe a folk one in the evening. I didn’t know what was coming! But it was a really good disciplinary area to work in, the studio. And it also gave me a chance to develop all of the different styles.