Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page recently revealed to Rock Cellar Magazine how he, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and The Beatles ripped off the style of Lonnie Donegan. Jimmy Page just leaked the first ever Led Zeppelin tour dates in 2020.
“But it gets to the point where I get to hear the [Elvis] Presley stuff, the Sun singles, where he’s playing incredible rhythm guitar. So I could appreciate that there was acoustic guitar going on. And I heard this guy called Lonnie Donegan who was doing Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie type music, but he had like a sort of beat to it, and it was called skiffle. And he would be on television on a Saturday evening; sort of prime time viewing for young people. He was the only one really worth watching.
And he really captured the imagination of the youth. Everybody seemed to really be enamored by his performances, because he was so passionate with the songs that he was doing, like ‘Rock Island Line’ and ‘Cumberland Gap.’ It was like that. I’d say pretty much most of them, if they played a stringed instrument — guitar, or bass — like The Beatles, Jeff Beck, myself, Eric Clapton, pretty much everybody, we first saw it when we saw Lonnie Donegan. There he was. So he’s playing this stuff and he was playing these things that were really, really, really sort of cool. Very passionate music.”
Jimmy Page recently revealed how Robert Plant was disrespected on a plane. Page also recently posted on his social media, “On this day in 1969, I played at the Grande Ballroom, Detroit with Led Zeppelin.
I returned with Led Zeppelin to play three nights at the underground venue, The Grande Ballroom in Detroit, and this was the second of three nights. These were spirited shows to a spirited audience and on each night we extended our set with encore after encore. I played the Grande with The Yardbirds eight months earlier.
Setlist
Songs performed during this period include:
Train Kept a Rollin’
I Can’t Quit You Baby
Dazed and Confused
As Long As I Have You
Killing Floor
White Summer / Black Mountainside
Babe I’m Gonna Leave You
You Shook Me
How Many More Times
Communication Breakdown
Pat’s Delight (drum solo).”
You can read the full Jimmy Page interview at Rock Cellar Magazine.
