[MUSIC PLAYING] JIMMY PAGE: It's such
a thrill to be here. It really is. It's actually the first
time I've actually been to a guitar factory. And it's pretty
amazing experience to be at the Fender
Custom Shop in Corona. Wow, this is just
absolutely amazing. I wasn't prepared for this. I don't know whether you were. No, I wasn't. I mean, I knew it was going
to be really detailed, but to actually see the old
machines and how this works, it's too much. Sorry, I just-- do
you mind if I just have a look at that poster? Oh, wow. There's Alvino Rey. I was telling you
about Alvino Rey. Oh, Arthur Smith,
"Guitar Boogie." I love that. This is cool. I think it's priceless. Well, I was part of a
whole generation of people who were seduced by the
sounds of rock and roll through their radios. You know, they heard
this wild music, whether it was the sort
of the Little Richard, you know, sort of
big band stuff, but certainly the
aspects of what was coming from the more
rockabilly side of it-- so that sort of Elvis Presley,
and Bill Black, and Scotty Moore, and that sort of nucleus. The Rock 'n Roll Trio
is just something that was like a seminal event
to hear something like that. There weren't many guitarists
in the area at that point. You'd hear of other guitarists
or meet other guitarists, but nobody was in a really
close proximity to you. But there was an art
college at Epsom. Jeff Beck's sister was
attending that art college. There was a record collector
who collected rock and roll and rockabilly records. And they were having
a conversation, and she said, my
brother is really rich, and he plays records,
and he's sort of trying to learn
guitar from them, but he's only got
a homemade guitar. Then he said, well, we've
got one of those here, you know, who lives in Epsom? Well, I think they cooked it up. Maybe we should get
these two together. And there was a
knock on the door, and there was Jeff's
sister, and there was Jeff holding his homemade guitar. And we just bonded immediately. But curiously
enough, I get sort of headhunted to play on sessions. And it was a very
interesting sort of time really because I would go
into the session line-up with these guys who were
considerably older than I was. I mean, a good seven
years older would probably be the youngest one. OK, so I was a studio musician. And I'd done sessions
for this fellow called Giorgio Gomelsky, who actually
was a manager of the Yardbirds. And he'd asked me to join
the Yardbirds at one point. I didn't feel very
comfortable about it because I knew Eric didn't know. And I said, no. And then it came
up another time. And by that time,
I was a producer. I had worked my way up. Being a studio musician,
I took it on board as almost like an
apprenticeship because I wanted to learn from
the recording engineers for certain techniques. I really wanted to learn
how things were done. By this time, I
could read music, which meant that I could
write it and do arrangements. And then I was
producing as well, so I was in a really
good sort of zone. And when I had this
second request to join, I said, well, I know somebody
who'd be really good for this and it's Jeff-- Jeff Beck. And of course, he went in
there and did some amazing work with the Yardbirds. I mean, yeah,
absolutely amazing. Out of this world then and
is out of this world now. It's just fabulous. So what happens as a
result of this, Jeff being in the Yardbirds, I'm
still living with my parents at the time in Epsom. And I hear this
sort of car roar up. And I thought, what's that? I didn't know it was a car. I just heard this
thing roaring up. And I looked out
the window and I saw that it was a
Corvette Stingray outside. And there's somebody
getting out. Of course, it's Jeff. And Jeff's coming out and
he's holding this guitar. And he's kind of, oh, he's
come to have a play, you know? And he knocks on the door. And I'm, come in, Jeff. He's saying about that they've
just done a sort of a new deal and he bought the
Stingray with it. He said, here, this is yours. And he gave me the Telecaster
that he'd been using. He said, this is yours for
getting me in the Yardbirds. Well, obviously, I
was really moved. Oh, you know,
because there's a lot of love in that gesture
of giving it to me. I happened to be
with Jeff one night at a concert where there was
a bit of a fuss on the stage. And Keith Relf,
he was really sort of shouting at the audience. What could only be described
as a punk performance. It was fantastic, actually. And I went to the dressing
room to congratulate them. And there's this
massive row going on. And Paul Samwell-Smith, the
bass player, quit the band. And he was trying to get
the drummer to go as well. And he said, no, no,
no, I'm going to stay. And he stormed off. It was a pretty odd situation
to have to sort of witness. But we've got the Marquee
coming up on Thursday or whatever it was. He said, we can't do this. I said, well, I'll play
then because, you know, he'd left his bass behind. He just quit. Jeff and I had spoken before
about playing together, and so here was an
opportunity to do it. And I started off on bass,
and then quickly recruited Chris Dreja to
take over the bass so I could do the sort of
guitar stuff with Jeff. So there was a bit of mix and
matching in the early days. But then Jeff sort
of left the band. And that was a
complete surprise. And the five
Yardbirds became four. And so I started playing
the Telecaster in that role. I got to the point
where I wanted to consecrate this guitar
and really make it my own. Being there in the
Yardbirds, I was having to build my own
identity within that group. And to make it feel
like my own instrument, I sort of started
putting mirrors on it, so that that would be quite
interesting in the light, so you could use it in an
optical way with the lights and shine the mirrors on
people while you were playing. It was something that then
became quite kinetic as well. And then I had the idea
that I'd want to actually have a complete consecration of
it, and strip it, and paint it. So the whole of the
dragon artwork, that was the overall idea
of approaching it. And I wanted to use sort
of poster paint, which was used in the production
of those psychedelic posters. So it becomes quite
a psychedelic guitar. And that's just absolutely
what the idea of it is. And the year of 1968
is when the Yardbirds decide that they want to fold. So it comes to the point where
I make a decision that I'm going to start my own band. And I could see what way it
ought to go at that point. No one knew what way I
was going to take it. Something that's
radical at that time that involved acoustic,
and electric guitars, and this orchestration
of the same of guitars. We have a rehearsal in
London, and then I get them to my house to
rehearse everything that we're going to need
for a set and everything that we're going to
need for Led Zeppelin I. So when we went
in the studio, we were going in on the
downtime of the studio. The first one is in
at 11:00 at night, then the next one is
at 10:00 at night. And you know, it's
definitely in the downtime. And we were sort of going
into there collectively. The whole album is
done in 30 hours. And the Telecaster is employed
all the way through that album. And it's just a little
small amp that I'm using, and the overdrive box, and
a wah-wah pedal at times. But it just goes to show the
versatility of the Telecaster and what could be achieved
with the minimal amount of equipment. It's 1969 or 1970. I go on tour. And I leave my Telecaster
behind with somebody who made ceramics and was
also a bit of an artist. And he was going to
look after my house. So I went off and did the tour. And the tour was
absolutely amazing. So I came back home. And he said, I've got
a present for you. I said, oh, what's that? And I figured it was going
to be a bit of ceramics. He said, the guitar. So I looked at the guitar. And I didn't for
one moment think it was mine because it was
a now, it was a Telecaster and it had been painted with
all these modulating lines with very earthy
colors all over it. And I said, yeah,
where's my guitar? He said, oh, no, that it. That's my present. I repainted your guitar for you. Now, I would have
probably smashed the guitar over his head. 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 just had it all taken off. You know, I couldn't
live with the fact, you know, this
idiot had done this. And I didn't want to look at it. It didn't relate to the
guitar, which is Jeff's guitar that had been given
to me that had been painted in the Yardbirds and
Led Zeppelin and mucked about like this. So I just had it stripped. I just sort of put the
guitar back as it was. I wanted to give it some TLC
and bring it back to life. This guitar, it's so special. It's got such a
history to it that it needs to be able to travel
in its own way and be cloned. It's just the
journey that it has and the way that everything
comes together so quickly. It's given to me by Jeff,
but it's got a journey like I've got a journey too. That journey of
that guitar through is pretty extraordinary stuff. Indeed, it's that magical
Telecaster, isn't it? [MUSIC PLAYING]
