A meeting between music legends occurred in “the back of a truck” according to Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page.
The hitmaker behind Stairway to Heaven met with The Rolling Stones in the back of a vehicle at an early blues festival. It appeared there was a decent reason for Page and The Stones to be in the back of the van, with the group on their way to a recording session at Ronnie Wood‘s house. Page said: “I first met Mick [Jagger] and Keith [Richards] at one of those very early blues festivals. We were all in the back of a van going from one place to another.” The recording sessions, it would seem, were for the song Scarlet. Though Wood would not play on the song, he was present for the session, which featured Richards and Jagger.
He said: “[Wood] had a studio in the basement, and he said there was an invite to do a session. It was with Keith, and [Rolling Stones road manager] Ian Stewart was going to be there. So I thought, ‘That’s going to be really great, let’s go along.’
“Ronnie didn’t actually play on it. Keith came in and set up his equipment, and I took my guitar. Obviously I paid a lot of attention to what he was doing and then came up with a riff that would go with a contraflow. It was great to work with Keith right from the bare bones of something.”
Page would reflect on Scarlet in an interview given in 2020, where he suggested he was surprised at how well the song held up. He said: “More recently, they sent through a file of the mix, and I thought, ‘Wow, that sounds really powerful. All the guitar parts I remember doing, everything was on there. I thought it sounded really solid, and everybody’s really on form.”
Page would brush shoulders not just with The Rolling Stones but The Beatles, too. A conversation with George Harrison prompted him to write Rain Song, after Harrison suggested Led Zeppelin “never do ballads”.
Page would tell biographer Brad Tolinski the All Things Must Pass hitmaker had effectively challenged him to write a “ballad” instead of the usual rock and roll work. Harrison had seemed to know of Page from The Yardbirds, being told of Led Zeppelin’s formation by engineer Glyn Johns. Harrison would ask: “Is he the one that was in The Yardbirds?” It may have been an exciting time on the music scene, but it seems a passing comment from Harrison pushed the band into writing one of their very best tracks.
Page would say: “George was talking to Bonzo one evening and said, ‘The problem with you guys is that you never do ballads,’ I said, ‘I’ll give him a ballad,’ and I wrote Rain Song, which appears Houses of the Holy. In fact, you’ll notice I even quote Something in the song’s first two chords.”
