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So is Jimmy Page a 'sloppy' player?


osoz

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The evidence is all in from the boots from early on to the 1980 tour. Page was definetly sloppy at times but at his highest technique level

Page COULD play 7/8 as fast as most shredders. Just listen to the many 73'-75' D&C double time sections after the vocal verses

ended. I am a guitarist and these are murder to figure out, Page is not only burning but jumping all over the place. And as many have

pointed out when he plays slower he plays with much more creativity and emotion than 95% of all other famous guitarists.

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I've never liked the word sloppy unless the word "joe" immediately followed it. Page wasn't sloppy, and to say that he was is to somehow imply that he was willfully lax in his playing or otherwise chose to play like sh!t, and that just seems like a stupid thing to say.

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  • 2 weeks later...

It's a good thing few if any have ever complained that Bonzo can sometimes recreate the chaos and din of battle. Page's sloppiness

ultimately is not just "incorrect", it's another device among many others that is often used artistically, obviously naturally.

Of course sometimes the sticky fingers were at times sabotaged by various demons, but as a whole you can't pigeonhole him as

sloppy.

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Page was also focusing on being a showman and putting on a good show, but I think some of the things about touring got to him. A lot of the guys that make it say they eventually fall into the trap that in the beginning said they would never do, but there's also a "lot of people depending on you" and the responsibility that goes with being a bandleader. When the man who put the band together is having problems, they're all in big trouble.

2-3 hour shows night after night...by their standards, they're not going to knock every show out of the park, but when it becomes a chore, the passion starts fading. When they became a stadium band, it becomes less about the music quality and more about $$$$. It gets too big, and you also become a big target. I'm sure they had a lot of death threats, so I'm sure whenever someone lit off a cherry bomb or firecrackers, they probably had frayed nerves from all of that going on.

Even if drugs were to be blamed, Jimmy also said he had health issues from touring in the early days. I think he enjoyed aspects of touring, but there was probably a lot about it that he didn't enjoy. For all the praise people give Hendrix, he was as "sloppy" as Jimmy ever was, but he could also deliver a devastating solo.

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Page is my fave, but I have to sort of comment on Hendrix. Hendrix overall took much more drugs, etc., than Page . But Hendrix was

known even up to the last days to practice at least a few hours a day , if not 5-6. I find it impossible to believe that Page after 1973 was

consistently practicing daily, let alone for hours and hours. Plus Hendrix was constantly wrangling with his whammy bar, constantly

throwing the guitar out of tune . Just listen to "Wild Thing" , from 1967 Monterey Pop.. And Hendrix's rhythm guitar style was far more

complex than Page's ; What Page is doing on the Rain Song Hendrix is doing live every few songs, ballad or rock. And although

Hendrix could get "sloppy", he always quickly recovered, and kept the thread. Your'e talking about totally different types of

sloppiness, although again Page is multifaceted, not simply sloppy overall.

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Page is my fave, but I have to sort of comment on Hendrix. Hendrix overall took much more drugs, etc., than Page . But Hendrix was

known even up to the last days to practice at least a few hours a day , if not 5-6. I find it impossible to believe that Page after 1973 was

consistently practicing daily, let alone for hours and hours. Plus Hendrix was constantly wrangling with his whammy bar, constantly

throwing the guitar out of tune . Just listen to "Wild Thing" , from 1967 Monterey Pop.. And Hendrix's rhythm guitar style was far more

complex than Page's ; What Page is doing on the Rain Song Hendrix is doing live every few songs, ballad or rock. And although

Hendrix could get "sloppy", he always quickly recovered, and kept the thread. Your'e talking about totally different types of

sloppiness, although again Page is multifaceted, not simply sloppy overall.

Hendrix drug use has been insanely blown out of proportion. Sure he did drugs, but about the typical usage of the time. If Hendrix tried to do 1/10th of the dope Page was shooting on a daily basis from 77' - 82' Hendrix would have been dead long before Sept 1970. FWIW, the jury is still very much out on Hendrix's death with many people thinking he was murdered. No one, and I mean no one can ingest more than two gallons of wine and that is the volume of wine they found in this body, not including quite a bit more which he aspirated during his transport in the ambulance.

I also play guitar and have been doing so for over 30 years. Hendrix played and practiced constantly, he always had that damn guitar with him wherever he went. He was sloppy for the same reasons Page was sloppy, emotion trumped technique and experimentation and pushing his own boundaries live took precedent as well over technique.

Now Page 77 - 82, that drugs baby, for as much booze & smack Page was doing in those years it is a bloody miracle he was able to play as well as he did. Hell, the man almost died on stage April 9th, 1977 in Chicago (according to Richard Cole). Food poisoning my foot.

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Damn right he is sloppy. You know who's not sloppy? Steve Vai. I hope my point gets through :bubble:

Steve may be clean, but he is boring. After only a few listens he gets old real fast. Jimmy Page is 20 years older than Vai and is STILL far more widely known. I hope that gets my point through.

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Steve may be clean, but he is boring. After only a few listens he gets old real fast. Jimmy Page is 20 years older than Vai and is STILL far more widely known. I hope that gets my point through.

Steve Vai is incredible period. A little odd, but his technical ability and musicianship is top notch. I love Page and all he does, but I can certainly appreciate Vai Malmsteen Satriani Eric Johnson etc for what they do.

Hell, I loved Johnny Ramone and Ricky Wilson for their limitations that made them incredibly unique.

The possibilities on guitar are so many that it doesn't make sense to me to close out players for being too technical..or not technical..

There's a time and place for all of it. Same with drummers..A direct solid drummer like Phil Rudd can be as fun to listen to for me as a great technical player like Tony Williams .. Depends what I'm in the mood for.

As far as sloppy, there's 1973 Page sloppy, which was edge of your seat mastery of a genius pushing himself to the limit ... And there's 1980 sloppy .. which for the most part was inexcusable.. I'm just glad he survived it and got it back together.

Edited by the chase
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Steve Vai is incredible period. A little odd, but his technical ability and musicianship is top notch. I love Page and all he does, but I can certainly appreciate Vai Malmsteen Satriani Eric Johnson etc for what they do.

Hell, I loved Johnny Ramone and Ricky Wilson for their limitations that made them incredibly unique.

The possibilities on guitar are so many that it doesn't make sense to me to close out players for being too technical..or not technical..

There's a time and place for all of it.

As far as sloppy, there's 1973 Page sloppy, which was edge of your seat mastery of a genius pushing himself to the limit ... And there's 1980 sloppy .. which for the most part was inexcusable.. I'm just glad he survived it and got it back together.

Good post.

Vai, Malmsteen and the whole Shrapnel Records speed guitarists have their place. Hendrix is #1 all time IMO, Page #2, completely different styles

Yes there is a difference between JP sloppiness in early 1970s vs late 1970s, different causes, different results. Both good, frankly Jimmy Page tuned up is still better than most.

That said, trying to compare Hendrix/Page/Santana/BB King/Zappa/Malmsteen/Clapton etc is futile. All good guitar players in their own ways/styles and all different levels of feeling and sloppiness. I personally think that sloppiness or urgency in the music is why we listen to Hendrix and Zeppelin now and our great-great-grandkids will too. Bonzo has something to do with it too me thinks....

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For me, I either have an emotional response to someone's music or I don't.

Jimmy's playing says something to me.

Steve Vai's doesn't.

Vai's technical ability and musicianship is utterly irrelevant to me, cos what he's playing just leaves me cold.

No big deal - that's just me.

Other guy's have the same emotional response to what Vai plays as I do to Jimmy.

Again, no big deal - that's them.

It's not a contest .

Is Jimmy sloppy?

Who cares.

Do you like it?

There you go, then.

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I think a major point missing here is many(not all) of the shredders/technicians tend not to be the best composers/songwriters.

I mean, quick, how many of the "burners" around(Let's say Vai, Malmsteen, and Johnson)can you off the top of your head name two

well known songs ??? 99% of people, can't. Basically the SOLO is the song, whereas with Page/Hendrix/Halen/Allman,etc. you are

getting songs with each part having equal importance (or reasonably so).

Nothing wrong with liking shredders and amazing technique, it's just that this sub genre demands the guitarist spend a great deal of

time just keeping up their chops, usually diminishing compositional quality. To get back to Page, there are certainly jams/solos from

72'/75' where Page plays solos almost at shredder speed and precision. And then slop here and there, but you can't pigeonhole him.

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I never got into Steve Vai, Satrani or Malmsteen. Anyone into Andrés Segovia ??

I don't know why everyone pigeonholes these three players. Only because they once played together as G3? They are all totally different. Malmsteen is a neoclassical shredder. He doesn't know what the word "feeling" means. Vai is more of a whammy bar player it seems. Never got into his style of playing.

Satriani is and was never a shredder. He has a beautiful tone and has a nice feeling. He was the perfect fit when Blackmore left Deep Purple. Anyone listened to bootlegs from then?

I like Segovia. He was the pioneer of classical guitar. He was a purist though and thought every other guitar playing than classical was crap.

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The Jimmy Page pre 1974 is one of my favourite players. After that it seemed that he lost his passion for playing the guitar and was more interested in getting the next shot of heroin and the next bottle of Jack Daniels. He never got his playing together like it was before. This is so sad. His generation of guitar players like Blackmore, Iommi, Beck and Clapton has done a lot better than him. They still play really good these days. IMO Jimmy wasted his talent.

When I first stared playing guitar, Jimmy was my undisputed hero. After many years of playing myself I found it hard to listen to many bootlegs from 1975 onwards because Jimmy was so "off" on a lot of shows. It hurt to hear him play like he did. Still there are a lot of good shows from the later days.

I don't get why everyone thinks that good technique and feeling don't fit together. There are many examples of players who play technically at a high level and have a lot of feeling. Especially outside rock music.

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If you listen to what Page did during the Page/Plant tours of the mid to late 90's anyone can see that Jimmy can play his own music at a very high level. He was on fire during those tours.

He began falling apart with Zeppelin during the down times with Robert's car accident in 1976.He completed Presence so quickly but his addictions probably accelerated the process as well. Hence leading to the train wreck of what was the 1977 tour of the US. Despite a few excellent shows, '77 was a disaster on and off stage for Zeppelin and Jimmy's playing showed every aspect of the toll and recklessness of that year.

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If you listen to what Page did during the Page/Plant tours of the mid to late 90's anyone can see that Jimmy can play his own music at a very high level. He was on fire during those tours.

He began falling apart with Zeppelin during the down times with Robert's car accident in 1976.He completed Presence so quickly but his addictions probably accelerated the process as well. Hence leading to the train wreck of what was the 1977 tour of the US. Despite a few excellent shows, '77 was a disaster on and off stage for Zeppelin and Jimmy's playing showed every aspect of the toll and recklessness of that year.

Yes I agree.

Jimmy played great during the 1998 P&P tour and ok during the 1995 tour. But IMO it was not even close to his playing from 1968-1973. His right hand technique changed in the late 70s / early 80s. He started using the whole arm instead of just using the wrist for alternate picking.

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Very illuminating points. Vai, Satch, and Malmsteen can't be fairly grouped together. Satriani is far more versatile than the other two, and

can lay back a little and be bluesy, but also play very complex and be avant-guarde. Vai is great but IMO plays a lot of stuff that sounds

almost like cartoon music. Absolutely innovative, no doubt. Listenable for more than 1/2 hr ??? debate able. Malmsteen took what

Blackmore did and took it much further, the classical solos can be amazing. But weak compositions/songwriting has been an enormous

problem.

Ocean 87 has said many truths about Page's playing. One of my biggest disappointments was that I somehow thought after Zep

Page would pickup the pieces and continue to make brilliant, awe-inspiring music. There was no net then and being that Jimmy

was such a secretive person few if any knew about his addictions . Also at that time there weren't even many boots from the 77'

tour to show Page's serious decline. If you heard the solos on ITTOD, Page seemed alive and kicking. And I agree that compared to

many peers, Page wasted a ton of talent with drugs and not practicing.

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The Jimmy Page pre 1974 is one of my favourite players. After that it seemed that he lost his passion for playing the guitar and was more interested in getting the next shot of heroin and the next bottle of Jack Daniels. He never got his playing together like it was before. This is so sad. His generation of guitar players like Blackmore, Iommi, Beck and Clapton has done a lot better than him. They still play really good these days. IMO Jimmy wasted his talent.

When I first stared playing guitar, Jimmy was my undisputed hero. After many years of playing myself I found it hard to listen to many bootlegs from 1975 onwards because Jimmy was so "off" on a lot of shows. It hurt to hear him play like he did. Still there are a lot of good shows from the later days.

I don't get why everyone thinks that good technique and feeling don't fit together. There are many examples of players who play technically at a high level and have a lot of feeling. Especially outside rock music.

Hmm, not sure if the boots support your position there. Some of Page's fines playing was on the 75' US tour, the whole month of March in particular blows away anything he had done live prior. I would agree from 77' - 83' Page was pretty bad about 50% of the time which is, well, pretty bad if you were one of the unlucky 50%. However outside of the Atlantic 40th show his playing was pretty damn good 84' on, especially during the 94' Japanese tour and the 98' Page / Plant Tour. In fact I would wager Page did some of his best playing of his whole career during the 98' - 2000 timeframe. He may have slowed down a bit, but what he lacked in shredding he more than made up for in technique and emotion which for me, emotion is the key.

Edited by IpMan
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