Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page Once Wanted to Smash His Guitar Over His Housesitter’s Head: ‘I Couldn’t Live With the Fact This Idiot Had Done This’
Jimmy Page went from a session musician to the Yardbirds to Led Zeppelin in a short time. When the Yardbirds folded, Zep formed, rehearsed, gigged, recorded their debut album, and launched a North American tour within months. Page hired a housesitter to watch the homestead while he toured, but he found a nasty surprise when he arrived back home after an early Led Zeppelin tour.
Jimmy Page turned down the Yardbirds and got Jeff Beck’s guitar as a consolation prize
The Yardbirds were a well-established band that had already launched Eric Clapton’s career when the band’s manager asked Page to join for the second time.
Page declined the invite, preferring to remain a session musician, but he received a nice gift for the job he didn’t take. Page recommended his friend, Jeff Beck, to the Yardbirds’ manager instead. Beck soon joined, the band signed a new contract, and Beck bought a Corvette with the money. He drove the Corvette to Page’s house and gave him his Fender Telecaster guitar as a gift for getting him into the Yardbirds.
Page customized the guitar, first adding small mirrors to the body and later stripping the wood and painting a psychedelic pattern. That was the guitar Page used to record Led Zeppelin I, but he left it at home on an early Zep tour. When he got back home, he found his housesitter had used it to make a unique present that left Page contemplating assault.
Jimmy Page wanted to smash his guitar over his housesitter’s head: “I couldn’t live with the fact this idiot had done this”
Led Zeppelin practically lived on the road for two years when the band formed. Zep dropped their first three albums within two years and toured extensively behind those releases.
Page needed someone to watch over his house during an early tour. It’s safe to say that person never got the job again as Page returned home to a nasty surprise he never wanted or asked for, as he told Fender during a sit-down interview (via YouTube):
“I go on tour, and I leave my Telecaster behind with somebody who made ceramics and was also a bit of an artist. He was going to look after my house. So I came back home, and he said, ‘I’ve got a present for you.’ And I said, ‘Oh? What’s that?’ … He said, ‘The guitar.’ So I looked at the guitar, and I didn’t for one moment think it was mine, because now it was a Telecaster that had been painted with all these modulating lines with very earthy colors all over it. I said, ‘Yeah, where’s my guitar?’ He said, ‘Oh, that’s it. That’s my present. I repainted your guitar for you.’
“Now, I probably would have smashed the guitar over his head, but I was still so vibed up from the tour that the whole thing didn’t really sort of fully connect. But I never felt comfortable with it, so I had it all completely taken off. I couldn’t live with the fact this idiot had done this, and I didn’t want to look at it.”
Jimmy Page describes what his housesitter did to one of his guitars
Yep, you read that right. The guitar given to Page by his friend and budding rock legend, the one Page customized to his liking twice, was overhauled by his housesitter. The instrument didn’t feel like his, so he more or less abandoned it. Page started playing Gibsons frequently, making his sunburst Les Paul and double-necked Gibson famous.
The housesitter committed a cardinal sin
Led Zeppelin had bigger-selling albums, but Led Zeppelin I established the band as juggernauts right out of the gate. Page used the not-yet-sullied Telecaster throughout the album’s recording process, including the hammered E chords on album opener “Good Times Bad Times.” Zeppelin later committed what Page called a cardinal sin on “Stairway to Heaven,” and so did the housesitter.
One rule that should be obvious (but clearly wasn’t to the housekeeper) is you don’t even touch a musician’s instrument without permission. Adjusting the tuning, playing it, or painting it is out of the question. It would be like painting over Picasso’s “Guernica,” shaving down Babe Ruth’s bat, or re-lacing Michael Jordan’s shoes.
Jimmy Page wanted to smash his guitar over his housesitter’s head for desecrating his Fender Telecaster. But Page kept his cool, moved on to a new guitar, and went on to write some of Led Zeppelin’s most famous songs.
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