PAUL STANLEY Pays Tribute To LED ZEPPELIN Guitar Legend JIMMY PAGE

The December 2007 issue of Classic Rock magazine features the story "Rock's Sonic Architect" in which a number of musicians pay tribute to LED ZEPPELIN guitarist Jimmy Page, the man who many believe shaped the very sound of rock music.

In the article, KISS guitarist/vocalist Paul Stanley had the following to say regarding Page's influential guitar-playing style:

"What was interesting about the guitar players in THE YARDBIRDS is how they all took their love of the blues and took it in different directions, particularly when you listen to Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, who seemed less purist and more adventurous. It's interesting to note that both THE JEFF BECK GROUP, which he formed after his stint in THE YARDBIRDS, and LED ZEPPELIN came about at virtually the same time. LED ZEPPELIN's first show as LED ZEPPELIN was October of 1968, and they were rehearsing before that. The Jeff Beck ['Truth'] album came out in August '68. So both, in a sense, were incubating at the same time.

"It's interesting to see how much broader and wider Jimmy Page's vision was of what was possible. Jimmy understood the complexities and subtleties of producing and arranging and brought that to his band. As brilliant as Jeff Beck was, that's something he couldn't do, whether it was the limitations of the people he played with, which he himself has said he found frustrating, or just the fact that consistently Jimmy Page turned out to be a visionary. Jeff Beck had to use his phenomenal guitar talents to try and compensate for a lack of interesting or original material.

"The great thing about somebody like Jimmy Page is he brought a lot of influences and flavors to the pot. He was able to realize that for something to be heavy didn't mean that it had to be crude; that part of what makes something heavy was the depth and the ontricacy or the lightness. Here's a guy who knew Celtic music, rockabilly, American folk and international music forms, besides the obvious admiration for Robert Johnson and everyone who followed in his footsteps. They [ZEPPELIN] were all fans of Sandy Denny and FAIRPORT CONVENTION. He understood that for something to be truly bombastic, it had to have depth, and depth doesn't come from cranking up an amplifier.

"The idea of being able to paint sonically, to paint with light and dark and to see things cinematically, almost so that your canvas is large and your color choices — you're not afraid to use the whole palette. That's what makes those songs so dramatic. If 'How Many More Times?' was just one guitar cranked, it wouldn't have anywhere near the drama that it has. To a listener sho doesn't really understand what they're listening to, that's what it might sound like. But in fact it's so much more. And that becomes evident when you hear somebody trying to emulate it by just taking a guitar ande cranking it up through an amplifier."