Jimmy Page Admitted His Solo Album Required More Work Than Any Other Record He Made
Jimmy Page’s work ethic was quietly on display in Led Zeppelin. He financed and produced their debut album, which they needed only 30 hours to record. The guitarist finished recording and mixing Presence in less than three weeks. Yet Page said his solo album was the hardest record for him to make.
Jimmy Page’s solo album ‘Outrider’ was harder work than any Led Zeppelin record
Despite decades spent as one of the world’s elite guitar players — first as a sought-after session ace, then with the Yardbirds, then with Led Zeppelin — Page has just one proper solo album to his name. The 1988 record Outrider is the only one with his name front and center (OK, top left) on the cover.
Page self-recorded the soundtrack to Lucifer Rising during his Led Zeppelin years. He recorded the band’s second record between dates of a grueling international concert. He curated various Zep curios — posthumous album Coda, an expansive box set, the band’s Live at the BBC collection — yet Page’s solo debut required more work than all of them. Thank goodness for him he resisted his initial urge to make it a double album (the fact that several demos disappeared from his house reinforced his choice).
“Because I was shaping ‘Outrider’ as I went along, I put more work into it than any other album I’ve ever worked on. Consequently, I didn’t fancy doing a double — it would’ve been a masochistic task.” Jimmy Page
As you might guess, Page had his hands on nearly every aspect of Outrider. He wrote or co-wrote eight of the nine songs (the outlier being a cover of Leon Russell’s “Hummingbird”). He came up with the cover art concept. As usual, Page produced his solo record after assembling a band to support him. Vocalists Chris Farlowe and John Miles co-wrote and sang songs.
The record was something of a Led Zeppelin reunion, too. Zep singer Robert Plant wrote “Liquid Mercury” along with Page and sang it on the album. It channeled some of Zep’s late 1970s energy a decade later. Meanwhile, Jason Bonham, the son of dead Zep drummer John Bonham, drummed on the record. Critics dismissed Page’s solo effort, but just like Led Zeppelin, the fans reacted positively.
How did Page’s only solo record perform in England and the United States?
Despite Page being the common thread, Outrider barely resembled a Led Zeppelin record.
His production aligned with the 1980s standard of bright sound with each instrument virtually sitting on top of the other. It was a far cry from the open and more organic sound Page and his Led Zeppelin bandmates captured on their records. Unsurprisingly, the seven-minute “Prison Blues” was probably the closest approximation — in terms of tone, sound, subject matter, and length — to Led Zeppelin.
Still, the album performed reasonably well on both sides of the Atlantic. Outrider spent 20 weeks on the Billboard albums chart, rising as high as No. 26. Page’s solo debut performed nearly as well in England, where it peaked at No. 27 during a six-week run, per the Official Charts Company.
Jimmy Page’s first and only solo album required more work than any Led Zeppelin record. The guitarist created virtually on the fly after several demo tracks were stolen from his house, but the results (in terms of chart performance) speak for themselves.
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