The album Jimmy Page said changed everything for rock music: “So many ideas”

Every generation has those defining records that hold a place in people’s hearts from subsequent generations as well. As much as listeners might have thought they sounded fresh at the time, certain records have that kind of magic that makes everyone want to listen again and wonder how they got to it before the days of Pro Tools. But when Jimmy Page was first putting together Led Zeppelin, he never considered he was making a legendary rock band from scratch.

All he knew was that whatever he was doing needed to be different from what was happening in The Yardbirds. The blues outfit Page cut his teeth with was great for what they were, but when listening to their turn towards teeny-bopper music, it wasn’t long before the guitarist figured that he could find something better if he only had the right people working with him.

And while the band embodied everything that a supergroup was supposed to be with Robert Plant and John Bonham in the mix, the accurate measure of their talent was going to be how they transformed the blues into something else. The band could have been playing the same few songs over again, but looking through albums like Houses of the Holy and Physical Graffiti, they would eventually grow into an eclectic rock band that no one could touch.

There would be occasional points where they went back to the blues, but songs like ‘Kashmir’ or ‘The Rain Song’ feel like they belong in their own separate category half the time, almost sounding like a rock and roll take on classical music. But nothing ever replaces a musician’s first love, and Page admitted that there was always something trailing back to the blues on Zeppelin’s debut record.

It’s not exactly blues from skin to core, but considering how much force they put into it, this was some of the heaviest blues to ever come out of England. While it does have a slight asterisk next to it since Jeff Beck’s Truth was doing the exact same thing, Page felt that their takes on songs like ‘Dazed and Confused’ and originals like ‘Communication Breakdown’ were what truly changed everything for the next generation.

From where he sat, the guitarist knew that no one would have been playing the same way were it not for what Zeppelin did, saying, “I think the very first album of Led Zeppelin changed everything in the way people recorded. Then went into the world of ambient recording. The first album was full of so many ideas that hadn’t been done before. That’s at the top of the list, because if it weren’t for the first album, there would have never been a second album.”

And while it’s hard to think of any artist talking up their own music in that respect, Page does have a point there. Because if you look at all the kids that were inspired by that one album back in the day, it’s easy to draw a line from Zeppelin to everyone from Black Sabbath to Deep Purple to Rush to Soundgarden, and all of the other outfits that their successors have subsequently influenced.

Did Page think that they were making one of the greatest albums of all time? Probably not, but that’s because he was laser-focused on getting the right ideas down on paper, and while he may have made a historic album as a result, its influence only came from the people who followed him after the fact.