One day, maybe soon, geologists and hydrographers will perform studies in and around Surrey, England, to divine the magical compounds that have contributed to a strange and almost unbelievable phenomenon: Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton — three of the most terrifyingly talented guitarists the world has ever known — all grew up in this dull, prim section of Britain, where they lived within 20 miles of one another.
TWO OF THESE guitarists, Page and Beck, met as teenagers, and became fast friends, spending hours trading information and jamming together at Page’s house, learning all the latest Scotty Moore, James Burton and Cliff Gallup licks. Using Jimmy’s two-track tape machine — a rarity in those days — they started making their own primitive recordings. And they got pretty good at playing their guitars — frighteningly good, in fact. Every note they played was unequivocal, brimming with force, passion and purpose.
It’s a fascinating tale how these two players, by using the fundamentals they’d taught themselves and then by merely following their artistic impulses, came to throw off the dull, mannered strictures of ’60s pop and pioneered guitar techniques and sonic advances that would revolutionize and define a new era of rock. Distortion, feedback, power chords, extended jamming, false harmonics, exotic tunings, and the controlled use of the whammy bar — all sprung from the minds and fingers of the two guitarists from the suburbs of Surrey.
Both of you started playing the electric guitar when it was
