JIMMY PAGE Talks About His First-Ever Official Web Site

Ahead of the launch last Thursday (July 14) of legendary LED ZEPPELIN guitarist Jimmy Page's official web site, JimmyPage.com, rock writer and journalist Pete Makowski interviewed Jimmy about the site, the story behind its inception and his vision for the "On This Day" section of the site.

Q: When did you start thinking about putting together a web site?

Page: I've had the domain name for a number of years. I've just been sitting on it and a number of people had made approaches about setting something up and it got to a point that it felt it was the right time to put one together.

Q: Were you aware of the other Jimmy Page web sites and did that add to the importance of doing your own?

Page: Well, not really, because they were clearly fan web sites and that's really great. When you've got fans and especially ones committed to doing web sites, it's OK. The only problem I have is when inaccuracies pop up and gain a life of their own. Over the years, with the Internet and forums, urban musical myths start to change what actually happened at the time. And then it comes into the world of Twitter and blogging, of which I'm going to be doing neither. Another reason for doing the web site is if you talked to people generally who aren't switched on to what I've done they probably think, "Oh yeah, he was the guitarist in LED ZEPPELIN, wasn't he? And they did the O2." And if they said anything else about me it would probably relate to that BBC clip where I'm about thirteen. That's all they really know about me and I've had a really long career, seriously active for over 50 years. Having recently done the book for Genesis, which was a chronological history, it gave me an opportunity to revisit all of the various projects I've ever been involved with and I thought I could do something similar on the web site.

Q: How did you go about setting it up?

Page: Well, when I came to the arrival of the decision to do it, I asked other people what they found frustrating with web sites and they came up with two main things; navigation and the fact that they don't change every day. Well, I had the navigation sorted out but it was the criticism that the sites don't change that concerned me.

Q: Is that how the idea for "On This Day" came about?

Page: I had the idea for a long time and I proposed to use it on the LED ZEPPELIN web site, because I thought it would be an ideal way to portray LED ZEPPELIN's history. Curiously enough, there are now sites popping up doing this everywhere. So I knew I had a sound idea. It's an interesting concept because every day you are going to have an event from my life and it will go all the way back to me being a teenager, still at school and playing in London bands while I lived in Epsom which at the time seemed miles away. So it starts from there and the next day it could be when I played at the Olympics, because my career spans several decades. It looks random, but it isn't. I love the idea that there will be a "splash" page every day and nobody will be able to guess what's coming next.

Q: Any final words on JimmyPage.com?

Page: I think this is the ideal vehicle to present my past, present and future work.