Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck were close friends and briefly shared the stage in the Yardbirds. But as Page recently revealed, his role in getting Beck into the band resulted in a special gift from his fellow guitarist — one that would remain with him through one of the most important chapters of his career.
The story goes back to 1965, when Eric Clapton left the Yardbirds to join John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Clapton recommended Page as his replacement, but Page, then barely 21 and already making a name for himself as a session guitarist in London, turned the opportunity down. Instead, he suggested Beck for the job.
It proved to be an inspired recommendation. Beck joined the Yardbirds and quickly began pushing the band into more adventurous territory, helping establish them as one of the most innovative groups on the British rock scene.
Beck evidently didn’t forget who had put his name forward. After the Yardbirds signed a new record deal, he paid Page a visit at his parents’ home in Epsom — arriving in a newly purchased 1963 Corvette Stingray with an electric guitar in hand.
“I was still living with my parents at the time in Epsom. And I heard this car come roaring up,” Page recalls in Fender’s new documentary, The Fender Telecaster: The One That Started It All.
“I looked out the window and I saw this blue Stingray outside… and Jeff’s coming out and he’s holding this guitar. [I thought] ‘Oh, he’s come to have a play.’
“He knocked on the door and explained that [the Yardbirds] had just done a new deal and he bought the Stingray with it. Then he said, ‘Here, this is yours’ and gave me his 1959 Telecaster. He said, ‘This is yours for getting me in the Yardbirds.’ Well, obviously, I was really moved, you know, because there was a lot of love in that gesture of giving it to me.”
The 1959 Telecaster had already played a part in Beck’s early career. He had used it with the Deltones after borrowing it from bandmate John Owen, before moving on to the 1954 Fender Esquire that became his primary guitar. During his time in the Yardbirds, the Telecaster served as a backup and alternative to the Esquire.
By the time Beck handed it to Page, he had moved on to other guitars, making the Telecaster a particularly generous gift for a young British guitarist at a time when Fender instruments were difficult to come by in the U.K.
Page used the guitar throughout his time with the Yardbirds. Then, in 1968, it followed him into the next chapter of his career when the Yardbirds dissolved and he formed the New Yardbirds with John Paul Jones, John Bonham and Robert Plant.
By then he had customized it by adding round mirrors to the body, to reflect light back at the audience. But he soon stripped the finish off the guitar and painted it himself, with a psychedelic design.
“I painted it in one go over the course of an evening, finishing it the next day,” Page explained. “The pattern took on the imagery of a dragon. I was quite happy with the way it ended up. Now it was the Dragoncaster.”
The New Yardbirds soon became Led Zeppelin, and the Telecaster remained an important part of Page’s early work with the band.
“I played it on the last Yardbirds recordings at the Anderson Theater in New York and on Led Zeppelin,” Page says. “Once it was created and painted it became like the legendary Excalibur as it traveled from the Yardbirds to Led Zeppelin.”
