4 Jimmy Page Guitars Owned By Other Musicians
Jimmy Page is one of the most famous guitar players ever. His Led Zeppelin riffs are some of the most recognizable in classic rock. Thank goodness he developed his sound beyond what we heard on his first solo song. Several Page guitars created those riffs, and many were played and owned by other musicians.
1. Fender Telecaster
Page often wielded Gibson guitars with Led Zeppelin, but he used a Fender Telecaster for nearly every song on Led Zeppelin I. The guitar dated to his Yardbirds days, but he wasn’t the original owner. It belonged to his friend Jeff Beck first.
After Page turned down an invitation to join the Yardbirds and recommended Beck for the job, his grateful friend gave him his Fender Telecaster. It was a gift for not taking the job. Beck’s brief Yardbirds stint launched his career.
Page wielded the Telecaster — first adorned with several circular mirrors and later painted with swirling red and green paint — in the Yardbirds and on Led Zeppelin I. “You Shook Me” is a rare Led Zeppelin song because Page used a Gibson Flying V on the track — the only time that model shows up on a Zep song.
2. Sunburst Gibson Les Paul
Besides his custom double-necked Gibson, Page’s most famous guitar is his 1959 sunburst Gibson Les Paul standard. One of the major changes he made before recording Led Zeppelin II was putting the Telecaster on the shelf and switching to the Les Paul.
Yet another musician played it before Page — future Eagles member Joe Walsh. The Led Zeppelin guitarist shared the origin story in a lengthy Instagram post in 2023:
“Back [in the Yardbirds days], Joe brought a Les Paul standard along to a Fillmore East gig on the first leg of the American tour and said, ‘You’ve got to have this guitar.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t need it, Joe, I’ve got a Les Paul custom.’
“I knew that Les Paul guitars were very user-friendly, insomuch as they put out a lot of level when you plugged them into the amplifier because they had a double-coil pickup, whereas the Telecaster had a single-coil pickup. With the sort of volume that I now needed to put out in live situations, although I was using controlled feedback, I found that the Telecaster was starting to squeal a bit.”
3. Black Gibson Les Paul
Of all of Jimmy Page’s guitars, his 1960 black Gibson Les Paul custom might have the best story behind it.
Page owned the guitar, dubbed the Black Beauty, first, but it disappeared during Led Zeppelin’s 1970 North American tour. It vanished somewhere between Minneapolis and Montreal. Left behind by a roadie? Stolen? Either way, it remained out of Page’s hands for decades.
In that time, the two extra toggle switches Page installed were removed, and the body refinished. As Guitar World writes, the repair job was so good that experts inspecting Page’s guitar didn’t believe it was his. It was almost as if it went into the witness protection program.
Twin Cities-area guitarist Paul “Bleem” Claesgens eventually purchased and played the guitar., It wasn’t until he broke it and it needed repairs that he and the world realized it was Page’s guitar. The Led Zeppelin star searched for his Black Beauty for decades. It came home to him years after Zep folded.
4. Red Gibson Les Paul
Like the sunburst Gibson, another of Page’s guitars belonged to someone else first. When Page heard another guitarist, Michael Corby, owned a black Les Paul custom just like his missing Black Beauty, he invited him to jam with Led Zeppelin in their rehearsal space in 1974.
Page took a liking to Corby’s red Les Paul custom. He kept The Babys guitarist close at hand, asking Cobry to play with the band several times. Page continued asking about the red Les Paul. He pressured Corby to sell the Les Paul, and Page eventually got his way.
The sunburst Les Paul might have been the most famous of Jimmy Page’s guitars played by other musicians. Page made the red Gibson famous by wielding it in Led Zeppelin for several years.
These days, aspiring rock stars can play Page’s guitars, albeit in replica form. Fender sells the mirrored and green and red Telecasters that Page made famous.
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