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In My Time of Dying


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I was watching a video this evening, and just noticed that he used a Les Paul. Everytime I've ever seen IMTOD live, he's played it on his Danelectro. Any reason he didn't use it that night?

It's actually not a Les Paul. It's a Gibson with what they call an F Hole. Also known as an Archtop. It looks similar to some of the guitars I've seen B.B. King use... my guess is it's a new axe for Jimmy and he just wanted to use it that night.

In Zep he used to play Kashmir on the Danelectro too... well, not the same Danelectro as for In My Time, but a Danelectro just the same. But in 1995 he started playing Kashmir with his Transperformance Les Paul and if memory serves he used the TP Les Paul for that song at O2 as well.

Could be he's just finding other options and enjoying new toys...

In Zep his In My Time Of Dying Danelectro had a much smaller pickguard. Always easy to spot if you couldn't see the slide on his finger.

2nsxj4k.jpg

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It's actually not a Les Paul. It's a Gibson with what they call an F Hole. Also known as an Archtop. It looks similar to some of the guitars I've seen B.B. King use... my guess is it's a new axe for Jimmy and he just wanted to use it that night.

In Zep he used to play Kashmir on the Danelectro too... well, not the same Danelectro as for In My Time, but a Danelectro just the same. But in 1995 he started playing Kashmir with his Transperformance Les Paul and if memory serves he used the TP Les Paul for that song at O2 as well.

Could be he's just finding other options and enjoying new toys...

In Zep his In My Time Of Dying Danelectro had a much smaller pickguard. Always easy to spot if you couldn't see the slide on his finger.

2nsxj4k.jpg

I never knew he had two danelectros. I know he played Kashmir on the White Summer/Black mountainside guitar because he leads into it at the Knebworth concert. Interesting :D

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I never knew he had two danelectros. I know he played Kashmir on the White Summer/Black mountainside guitar because he leads into it at the Knebworth concert. Interesting :D

His main Danelectro had what I would describe as a Whale Pickguard... 'cause it resembles a whale... to me...

35hic0l.jpg

His In My Time Of Dying guitar, still a Danelectro, had a much smaller pickguard, as evidenced here...

24euc6e.jpg

And here...

2lkbbyw.jpg

Notice the slide on his finger in each of those...

It's funny, 'cause on his 1988 Outrider tour, where each of those black & white photos is from, Jimmy would introduce In My Time by saying... "I've got the same guitar as I had on Midnight Moonlight, but we're not going to play that again. Here's one, let's see if you remember this one..." What was so funny was he didn't have the same guitar, just another Danelectro.

His Kashmir Dan was always in the tuning of DADGAD, from low to high. He played White Summer - Black Mountain Side - Kashmir and Swan Song... later to become Midnight Moonlight, on this guitar. He also wrote the intro to Over The Hills on this guitar.

His In My Time Dan was tuned to Open A and was used only for that song. And again, the pickguard gives them away.

EDIT: Going through some old video I see that he did use the Whale Guitar on In My Time... Earls Court, etc... but at some point he did get the second Danelectro...

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And here is where JRomero throws Dr. Death a curveball:

The Danelectro you have pictured above must have only been used post-Zeppelin. Either that, or the pickguard was changed. Here is a photo of Jimmy using his Danelectro at Earl's Court for In My Time of Dying:

imtoddanelectro.jpg

The pickguard remains the same.

Here are the possibilities:

1. Jimmy used the same Danelectro for In My Time of Dying and Kashmir during his days with Led Zeppelin, and used an second one later on his Outrider tour.

2. Jimmy had two different Danelectros from In My Time of Dying and Kashmir during his days with Led Zeppelin, and changed the pickguard on one of them for his Outrider tour.

3. Jimmy had three different Danelectros.

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And here is where JRomero throws Dr. Death a curveball:

If you'll notice I added an EDIT to my post, simply because I could picture in mind him using the... uh... Whale Guitar on In My Time... so I rummaged through some old videos and sure enough he did use it for that.

My guess is he changed pickups on it after Zep and had two different Danelectro's while in Zep. I know retuning a guitar isn't a major ordeal. But most musicians with money... ie; Page... won't go from DADGAD to Open A on the same guitar each evening.

The rest of us go through a plethora of tunings and abuse the two guitars I have in doing so... LOL

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I have a theory which can explain his 2007 choice of guitars.

For Kashmir and IMTOD he would use a Danelectro and a Fender whenever he needed a Whammybar, the rest of the set would usually only require the Gibson Double Neck, the les paul and a Gibson acoustic guitar (or something). But in the O2 gig he only played various Gibson guitars.

Is there a slight chance that Jimmy has signed a contract with Gibson, which provides him with Gibson guitars, but forbids him to play guitars made by other companies in gigs?

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I have a theory which can explain his 2007 choice of guitars.

For Kashmir and IMTOD he would use a Danelectro and a Fender whenever he needed a Whammybar, the rest of the set would usually only require the Gibson Double Neck, the les paul and a Gibson acoustic guitar (or something). But in the O2 gig he only played various Gibson guitars.

Is there a slight chance that Jimmy has signed a contract with Gibson, which provides him with Gibson guitars, but forbids him to play guitars made by other companies in gigs?

It's a theory, but I kind of doubt it. Page is synonymous with the Gibson Les Paul and the ES-1275 Doubleneck... no matter how many times he has played a Strat, a Tele or even the Paul Reed Smith, which he also used on the Outrider Tour.

Why would Jimmy sign an exclusive contract w/Gibson now? He doesn't need the money and he certainly doesn't need to pigeonhole himself at a time when he's not exactly out playing all that often.

My guess is that when Gibson was making all those Custom Jimmy Page Models... the Les Paul, the twin-neck, the Black Beauty... he just saw one of those Archtop's and got to playing it and liked it.

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It's a theory, but I kind of doubt it. Page is synonymous with the Gibson Les Paul and the ES-1275 Doubleneck... no matter how many times he has played a Strat, a Tele or even the Paul Reed Smith, which he also used on the Outrider Tour.

Why would Jimmy sign an exclusive contract w/Gibson now? He doesn't need the money and he certainly doesn't need to pigeonhole himself at a time when he's not exactly out playing all that often.

My guess is that when Gibson was making all those Custom Jimmy Page Models... the Les Paul, the twin-neck, the Black Beauty... he just saw one of those Archtop's and got to playing it and liked it.

But I find it kind of funny that Jimmy would play a gig entirely consisting of Gibson guitars, when his choice of guitars has been so different 30 years earlier.

Yes, Jimmy is synonymous with the Gibson Les Paul and the Double Neck, and he has been since he first picked up the guitars, but it doesn't explain why he would suddenly pick up a completely different guitar, just to recreate the sound of the originally used instrument, which in this case has been a danelectro or a fender instrument, and has been performed in 2007 with a guitar collection exclusively consisting of Gibson guitars.

The thing is that, it is very odd that an artist like Jimmy Page would spontanously swap all his non-gibson out with similarly sounding guitars only based on one distributors repertoire.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Kashmir in 1975 was played on a Les Paul, it wasn't until 77 that he started using the Dano. Since White Summer was always played on the Dano in the early days, when they brought it back in 77, it made sense to go right into Kashmir, since it had the same tuning, and use the same guitar. Knebworth and the 1980 tour had the same transition. I guess Jimmy liked it, since he continued to use the Dano for Kashmir for the 1988 Atlantic Records reunion show. At the O2, he used the red b-bender Les Paul; the Transperformance was used on WLL.

And one slight other correction, IMToD is in open A on Physical Graffitti, but live was played a step lower, in open G. At least it always was with Zep, don't know about Outrider or the JP/Crowes.

Sorry for all this guitar-nerdy stuff... :D

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  • 2 weeks later...
Kashmir in 1975 was played on a Les Paul, it wasn't until 77 that he started using the Dano. Since White Summer was always played on the Dano in the early days, when they brought it back in 77, it made sense to go right into Kashmir, since it had the same tuning, and use the same guitar. Knebworth and the 1980 tour had the same transition. I guess Jimmy liked it, since he continued to use the Dano for Kashmir for the 1988 Atlantic Records reunion show. At the O2, he used the red b-bender Les Paul; the Transperformance was used on WLL.

And one slight other correction, IMToD is in open A on Physical Graffitti, but live was played a step lower, in open G. At least it always was with Zep, don't know about Outrider or the JP/Crowes.

Sorry for all this guitar-nerdy stuff... :D

No, I like the "guitar-nerdy stuff". That red Gibson sure did sound great on Kashmir

at the 02.

I actually prefer the Les Paul sound over the Dano for Kashmir when played live.

Did Page use the Dano on the Physical Graffiti cut of Kashmir?

Kinda sounds like he did.

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Guitar-nerd?

Did someone call? :)

Some corrections & additions here...

First Page only had one Danelectro in the Zep days. Yes it was retuned if necessary by his roadie. IMTOD and Kashmir were always several songs apart in the set, so it was easy to to this. Similar to the days when the double neck would have to be retuned after The Rain Song to get back to standard tuning for STH.

The second Dano only showed up on the Outrider tour, precisely because he was playing IMTOD & Kashmir back to back.

Second, the O2 guitar is an ES-350 that used to belong to Chuck Berry. I have to say that for me personally, the tone of that guitar suited that song better than the Dano ever did - it just seemed like the song grew in stature as a result. An old blues guitar for an old blues song...

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  • 2 years later...

His main Danelectro had what I would describe as a Whale Pickguard... 'cause it resembles a whale... to me...

35hic0l.jpg

His In My Time Of Dying guitar, still a Danelectro, had a much smaller pickguard, as evidenced here...

24euc6e.jpg

And here...

2lkbbyw.jpg

Notice the slide on his finger in each of those...

It's funny, 'cause on his 1988 Outrider tour, where each of those black & white photos is from, Jimmy would introduce In My Time by saying... "I've got the same guitar as I had on Midnight Moonlight, but we're not going to play that again. Here's one, let's see if you remember this one..." What was so funny was he didn't have the same guitar, just another Danelectro.

His Kashmir Dan was always in the tuning of DADGAD, from low to high. He played White Summer - Black Mountain Side - Kashmir and Swan Song... later to become Midnight Moonlight, on this guitar. He also wrote the intro to Over The Hills on this guitar.

His In My Time Dan was tuned to Open A and was used only for that song. And again, the pickguard gives them away.

EDIT: Going through some old video I see that he did use the Whale Guitar on In My Time... Earls Court, etc... but at some point he did get the second Danelectro...

He used the same Danelectros on IMTOD on the Earl's Court Shows and Kashmir (Knebworth). I mean 1961 Danelectro 3021.

Page had 3 Danelectros: 1958 Danelectro 3021 (the one on the pictures you posted), 1961 Danelectro 3021 (the only Danelectro he had in the Zep days (1968--1980)), and Danelectro DC-12.

Here's the proof:

617200a0a02fb1b4e2ba7aa8d1bd9992.png

182455c6c3d85a9c4d69fb69d3a347e8.png

Kashmir in 1975 was played on a Les Paul, it wasn't until 77 that he started using the Dano. Since White Summer was always played on the Dano in the early days, when they brought it back in 77, it made sense to go right into Kashmir, since it had the same tuning, and use the same guitar. Knebworth and the 1980 tour had the same transition. I guess Jimmy liked it, since he continued to use the Dano for Kashmir for the 1988 Atlantic Records reunion show. At the O2, he used the red b-bender Les Paul; the Transperformance was used on WLL.

You're 100% right. He used Danelectro on Kashmir because he wanted to segue White Summer/Black Mountain Side into Kashmir. Both songs have the same tuning, and Kashmir sounds better on Danelectro than on Les Paul. But I still don't understand why he played Kashmir on Les Paul in 2007. This could really be a pertinent reason:

I guess that the Danelectros lipstick case pick-ups wouldnt sound as good in a loud arena like the O2.

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