Him On Others

Here are various things John said on other musicians and various people. If there’s a nice quote you’d like to see here, please contact me and I’ll see what I can do:)

“Jimmy Page’s playing in Led Zeppelin was the perfect rock guitar playing and he himself was the perfect rock guitar player. Jimmy Page was the first person that made me want to play guitar. Four years before I started I was taught the beginnig of Stairway To Heaven and stopped learning because my teacher could not show me the solo. Of course, I got around to it eventually…and not only Led Zep stuff,but I also studied his wonderful playing in The Yardbirds and all the sessions he did in the ’60s. The way his music developped leading up to Led Zep was beautiful. It seems like he had an endless flood of good ideas and then when he found the right people to play with the flood gates just poured open. I don’t believe that a rock band could carry around more power than they did. When i was seven years old in 1977 somebody had somehow spray painted on the freeway overpass for all to see, ‘Led Zep Rules’. It was up there for a long while and then taken away, but I believe it will be true forever.”

“Just looking at the expression on Chad’s face and seeing the way he plays a drum fill can make me play a certain way. Recording at separate times is more clinical and playing with other people is divine inspiration.”

“There’s a world of things in modern classical music that he inspired me to listen to—people like Eric Dolphy, who could be my favorite musician of all time, next to Jimi Hendrix. Anybody should go out and buy an Eric Dolphy record if they want to understand what pure expression is all about. There’s an Andrew Hill record called Point of Departure that’s probably my favorite. Eric Dolphy plays on many great things. But before I heard that album I just couldn’t imagine that four guys could get into each other’s heads so much. It’s so ‘out’ sounding, but they’re all playing together.”