The one musician Jimmy Page said “changed the world”
Posted: November 7th, 2025, 10:54 pm
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/one-musici ... the-world/
Tyler Golsen
@TylerGolsen
Fri 7 November 2025 17:11, UK
Like all good rock and roll fans, Jimmy Page had plenty of influences that helped him find his path toward music. There is no musician who can come out of the womb like a complete original, but Page was particularly good at channelling the widespread influences into making himself a legend.
The Led Zeppelin guitarist has counted everyone from Link Wray to Hank Marvin as important starting points for his eventual embrace of music, but some figures meant more to Page than others. Along with many of his fellow British peers, Page was bowled over by the charisma and power of Elvis Presley.
“In 1998, I played at Tupelo, where Elvis was born and raised, when there were no local attractions apart from the cotton fields or getting to Memphis,” Page wrote on his Instagram account in 2019. “When Elvis grew up, it must have been pretty bleak, but the white and black picked the cotton side by side, and the local indigenous music provided the soundtrack to this tough environment. So it took the visionary genius of Elvis to blend those musical sources and change the world.”
Almost immediately upon forming Led Zeppelin, Page and the rest of the band began incorporating Elvis songs into their live sets. Robert Plant was another massive Elvis fan, taking cues from his role as the original frontman of rock and roll.
For that reason, the group were happy to include it in their performances. Songs like ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ occasionally made their way into Zeppelin’s live sets, and Plant would sometimes incorporate Elvis’ lyrics into the jams and medleys that filled out Zeppelin’s concerts in their earliest days.
Zeppelin was even given an audience with the King in 1974. The band were in Los Angeles to celebrate the founding of their own record label, Swan Song, and made it over to The Forum to see Presley play. Bootlegs from that night catch Elvis telling his band to play well since Zeppelin was in the audience, a rare acknowledgement from Presley that another major titan in rock music was paying attention.
After the show, Zeppelin made it back to Elvis’ hotel, where things got weird. Plant remembers breaking the ice by singing ‘Love Me’ as a duet with Presley. Other stories persist in the rumour mill, including Presley asking the members to sign some memorabilia for his daughter, Lisa Marie. At a later meeting, Presley was said to have joked with John Bonham, offering to swap pants with the drummer before dropping his trousers.
When the surviving members of the band sat down with David Letterman in 2012, the three reminisced about that fateful early 1970s meeting with Elvis. “He had a lot of chicks,” Plant recalled. Letterman observed that Zeppelin had that particular element in common with Elvis, which the three demurely chuckled along to. No need to be getting too racy on national television, after all.
It might seem a little trivial for Page to single out Presley as an icon. After all, he is routinely noted as such by a whole plethora of performers. But as we speed away from the decades in which Presley was a true icon, the memory of him becomes ever more faded. It is, therefore, more important for him be remembered than ever.
Tyler Golsen
@TylerGolsen
Fri 7 November 2025 17:11, UK
Like all good rock and roll fans, Jimmy Page had plenty of influences that helped him find his path toward music. There is no musician who can come out of the womb like a complete original, but Page was particularly good at channelling the widespread influences into making himself a legend.
The Led Zeppelin guitarist has counted everyone from Link Wray to Hank Marvin as important starting points for his eventual embrace of music, but some figures meant more to Page than others. Along with many of his fellow British peers, Page was bowled over by the charisma and power of Elvis Presley.
“In 1998, I played at Tupelo, where Elvis was born and raised, when there were no local attractions apart from the cotton fields or getting to Memphis,” Page wrote on his Instagram account in 2019. “When Elvis grew up, it must have been pretty bleak, but the white and black picked the cotton side by side, and the local indigenous music provided the soundtrack to this tough environment. So it took the visionary genius of Elvis to blend those musical sources and change the world.”
Almost immediately upon forming Led Zeppelin, Page and the rest of the band began incorporating Elvis songs into their live sets. Robert Plant was another massive Elvis fan, taking cues from his role as the original frontman of rock and roll.
For that reason, the group were happy to include it in their performances. Songs like ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ occasionally made their way into Zeppelin’s live sets, and Plant would sometimes incorporate Elvis’ lyrics into the jams and medleys that filled out Zeppelin’s concerts in their earliest days.
Zeppelin was even given an audience with the King in 1974. The band were in Los Angeles to celebrate the founding of their own record label, Swan Song, and made it over to The Forum to see Presley play. Bootlegs from that night catch Elvis telling his band to play well since Zeppelin was in the audience, a rare acknowledgement from Presley that another major titan in rock music was paying attention.
After the show, Zeppelin made it back to Elvis’ hotel, where things got weird. Plant remembers breaking the ice by singing ‘Love Me’ as a duet with Presley. Other stories persist in the rumour mill, including Presley asking the members to sign some memorabilia for his daughter, Lisa Marie. At a later meeting, Presley was said to have joked with John Bonham, offering to swap pants with the drummer before dropping his trousers.
When the surviving members of the band sat down with David Letterman in 2012, the three reminisced about that fateful early 1970s meeting with Elvis. “He had a lot of chicks,” Plant recalled. Letterman observed that Zeppelin had that particular element in common with Elvis, which the three demurely chuckled along to. No need to be getting too racy on national television, after all.
It might seem a little trivial for Page to single out Presley as an icon. After all, he is routinely noted as such by a whole plethora of performers. But as we speed away from the decades in which Presley was a true icon, the memory of him becomes ever more faded. It is, therefore, more important for him be remembered than ever.