Jimmy who?

Bass and Drums locked down!!!!!!!!

This seems like almost a dumb ass thing to say, but I find looking back and after hearing decades of drivel from wanna be bands, there was a reason why the big rock bands were so big: they could really friggin play !!

One of my favourite hendrix licks is a little outake during a documentary: his strat di'd nothing on it and he plays this beautifully lyrical sublime sole looking like he's thinking about washing the car

That's pretty damn good

Page and Plant were the brains and sole Bonham the heart of Zep, but when it comes down to all out talent and musicianship it's John Paul Jones,

Page was never great as a player but they wrote very well. Bass and drums were covered by legends... shoot vocals for that matter, too. Guitar... great for writing.

yeah, i never got that, page was ridiculously good, he was on a majority of hit records that came out of england in the 60's as a studio musician. They were all amazing in their own right, the craziest thing about it is how it all fit together to make such a unique sound.

Page was a huge star in the musicians' world when he put together 'The New Yardbirds'. He had his choice of who he wanted and put together those who worked best with him... and 'lo and hehold' they worked best with each other too! JPJ was definitely the most gifted musician in the band. So was Bonzo! So was Plant! And so was Page!

IMHO:

I find the endless debate surrounding Jimmy Page fascinating: he's a plagiarist, but also wrote or co-wrote profoundly original material such as Kashmir, Over The Hills and Far Away, The Song Remains the Same, The Rain Song,  Dancing Days, What Is And What Should Never Be, The Ocean, Ramble On, Achilles Last Stand, etc etc etc. He's a sloppy player but nevertheless managed to pull off sublime solo work on songs such as Since I've Been Loving You, Black Dog, Tea For One, Good Times Bad Times, No Quarter, Stairway To Heaven, etc etc etc. He had poor technique as a live player but somehow managed to have a critical role in filling stadia with millions of ecstatic fans for nearly a decade.

I am not a Page apologist. He stole riffs and failed to credit songwriters where credit was due, and that's BS. He made plenty of mistakes over the course of several hundred shows put on by Zeppelin over the years. His live technique had a "pinched" quality where many notes and chords come out as choked or even ghosted/muted, a characteristic that became more pronounced during the 1977 tour when he seemed to be in the arms of Morpheus (or something). But to deny his influence is to deny the reality of the times and their music, and of his greatness as one of Rock's first generation of superstars.

I witnessed their show on 20 July 1977 as a 16 year-old boy. The show was poor - they came on nearly an hour late, and there was no encore. Page looked like he could barely stand up. But John Henry was beyond monstrous, Plant's voice was fantastic, and the band sounded unlike anything I have heard before, or since. Truly HEAVY, they produced a sonic wall of blistering, psychedelic blues. At 120db+. As a young guitarist, Page's solo work had a meandering, raga-esque quality that I simply failed to understand. I can only describe his soloing style as Heavy Jazz, in the Bluest sense: risk-taking, like falling down a flight of stairs and landing feet-first. Repeatedly.  And his playing still sounds mystical to me today. Apparently the spell wears off rather slowly.

I just stumbled upon this Page interview from guitar world in the 90's. It's a good read, and covers a lot of the production side of things:

www.iem.ac.ru/zeppelin/docs/interviews/page_93.gw


Quote on engineers involvement:

"Glyn Johns was the engineer on the first album, and as I mentioned
earlier, he had a bit of an attitude problem. I'll tell you what he did.
He tried to hustle in on a producer's credit. I said, "No way, I put this
band together, I brought them in and directed the whole recording
process, I got my own guitar sound -- I'll tell you, you haven't got a
hope in hell". And then we went to Eddie Kramer for the second album and
Andy Johns after that. I consciously kept changing engineers because I
didn't want people to think that they were responsible for our sound. I
wanted people to know it was me."

People always want to have contests, but they were all great. All of them had an incredible range of talent, and the variety of their songs personified this.

I think I might have to steal this line for a song lyric 

(all in the spirit of Led Zeppelin of course) 

Yep, they knew it was impossible to get someone who could fit in the big hole his death left in the band.
it's very unfair. MoonTheLoon and Bonzo had to die young and we have to listen to guys like Lars Ulrich for decade after decade...sigh.