In 1961 Jimmy Page Teamed up With a Poet to Score His Performance Art With Rock ‘N Roll

Guitarist Jimmy Page is a household name because of his role in the rock band Led Zeppelin. When he was a teenager, Page played in a band called Neil Christian & the Crusaders. According to Bob Spitz’s 2021 biography Led Zeppelin: The Biography, Page also performed with a poet when not performing with Neil Christian & the Crusaders.

Jimmy Page met a poet named Royston Ellis

While a teenager, Page played gigs with a band called Neil Christian & the Crusaders. According to Led Zeppelin: The Biography, playing with the band led Page to meet a poet named Royston Ellis.

Spitz writes, “In late 1960, following a gig at the Harrodian, a social club for the employees of Harrods in the basement of the company’s warehouse, the Crusaders were introduced to a young, bearded poet named Royston Ellis, who recited some pseudo-Beat verse he called ‘rocketry’ to guitar accompaniment provided by Jimmy.”

After playing with Ellis that one time, Page was intrigued and wanted to keep performing with Ellis.

“We knew that American jazz musicians had been backing poets during their readings,” Page said in Led Zeppelin: The Biography. “Jack Kerouac was using piano to accompany his readings. Lawrence Ferlinghetti teamed with Stan Getz to bring poetry and jazz together.”

Jimmy Page performed with Royston Ellis

After their first performance together, Spitz writes that Page and Ellis “began an alliance” and kept performing together “along with a bongo player.”

Because Page was already busy performing in Neil Christian & the Crusaders, Spitz writes in Led Zeppelin: The Biography that Page and Ellis had to perform “at a series of informal and staged events throughout 1961, on the Crusaders’ days off.”

So what did the music Page and Ellis make together sound like?

According to Led Zeppelin: The Biography, “Jimmy composed original moody music to accompany leaden elegies like ‘Body Parts,’ ‘vaguely provocative verse about nipples, thighs, and pubic hair’ found in Ellis’s anthology, Jiving to Gyp.”

How the guitarist joined Neil Christian & the Crusaders

A great deal of Page’s early success in music came from his work in Neil Christian & the Crusaders. Page first joined the band when he was still in high school. When Page originally joined the group, it was called Red E. Lewis & the Red Caps.

In the 1950s, Page was playing in a band called The Paramounts, and he and his bandmates often opened for Red E. Lewis & the Red Caps quite often.

When the guitarist of Red E. Lewis & the Red Caps left, Page was brought in as a replacement and took on the stage name Nelson Storm.

After Red E. Lewis & the Red Caps underwent more lineup changes, the band became known as Neil Christian & the Crusaders.