6. Led Zeppelin
Probably one of the first bands that I learned how to play was Led Zeppelin. As I got more and more into them, Jimmy Page increasingly became a hero of my mine to the point that he’s by far my biggest hero. If you listened to those records, and you were able to isolate all the guitar tracks, you’d probably say, "Wow, this track sounds awful. Wow, that track sounds awful too." Not the performance, but the tone of it. But he was such a master at what he did, they were able to blend those things and give it such a unique sound. Simple, simple things like the sound of a Fender Rhodes in ‘Misty Mountain Hop’ – the way that they worked all those things together. When you think Fender Rhodes, for me at least, you don’t think heavy rock. You think Hall & Oates. But Led Zeppelin IV was one of those records that completely blew my paradigm apart regarding what rock music could be. And then from that point I went backwards in their catalogue. To this day Robert [Plant] and Jimmy are the consummate pair of frontman/guitar hero. My playing style is probably more similar to Jimmy’s than anyone else’s. I was influenced by people like Michael Schenker and Uli Jon Roth but Uli was always a bit too exotic. Jimmy is at the absolute top.
