How Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page Ruined Rush Guitarist Alex Lifeson’s Guitar
Yes, Jimmy Page ruined Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson’s guitar, but it’s not like the Led Zeppelin founder stopped by the house and swung it into a wall. Instead, Page’s playing inspired Lifeson to mimic him, just like one of the Zep guitarist’s solos massively impacted Eddie Van Halen’s style.
Jimmy Page’s ‘How Many More Times’ solo had ‘the biggest impact’ on Rush’s Alex Lifeson
Flashback to the popular music scene of early 1969. The Beatles were still the biggest band in the world. The Rolling Stones (Beggars Banquet) and Jimi Hendrix (Electric Ladyland) released seminal albums a few months earlier, and The Who were working on their rock opera Tommy.
Then Led Zeppelin entered the mix.
The quartet’s live performances gave them a strong following early in their career. A well-received show in San Francisco before Led Zeppelin I hit shelves in early January 1969 proved to singer Robert Plant that the band might mean something to fans. Manager Peter Grant cried after an epic concert in Boston. And in Canada, burgeoning guitarist Alex Lifeson hunted down an import copy of Led Zeppelin’s first album.
“I immediately went over [to the record store] to get it, and we sat down and listened to it a million times over,” Lifeson said in a Sirius XM interview (via Far Out).
Page’s playing on the album’s final song led Lifeson to completely ruin his guitar.
“‘How Many More Times’ was the one song that I think had the biggest impact on me. It was such a cool, heavy song, and then Jimmy Page played the first half of the guitar solo with a violin bow. That just absolutely blew my mind. Of course, I ran out and bought a violin bow and tried to emulate him, and all that happened was I got all this sticky rosin over my strings. I had to take my guitar strings and actually boil them to get that stuff off because I couldn’t afford new strings.”
Alex Lifeson
Of all the standout Jimmy Page guitar solos to emulate, Lifeson had to choose one of the three times Zep’s leader used a bow to make his guitar hum. (“Dazed and Confused” and “In the Light” are the other two).
A bow without rosin might not produce any sound at all when scraped across the strings. One with too much rosin can create an overly scratchy sound (per a YouTube video). In Lifeson’s case, it left a thick residue that ruined his guitar strings.
Lifeson revealed Page was one of his biggest influences as a guitar player. Still, he also had a soft spot for Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Deep Purple’s Steve Morse. Yet like many guitar maestros, Rush’s founder synthesized those influences to create a unique style of his own, and it paid off.
Rush entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. Lifeson, Geddy Lee, and Neil Peart entered the hallowed ground nearly 20 years after Led Zeppelin achieved the same honor. The Canadian rockers might not have achieved the same level of success as Zeppelin (few bands ever did). Still, Rush’s intricate prog rock epics inspired generations of musicians just like Lifeson’s idol Jimmy Page did with his band.
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