Jimmy Page is “far beyond” just a guitar player, says Paul Stanley: “Jimmy is Beethoven… He paints with sound.”
“What he’s done is just crazy.”
Image: Francesco Prandoni / Tim Mosenfelder / Getty Images
KISS frontman Paul Stanley has once again sung the praises of Jimmy Page, this time, describing the man as not just a guitar player, but a “brilliant cinematographer” who “paints with sound”.
Stanley was speaking during a Q&A session aboard this year’s Kiss Kruise, when he gushed about the Led Zeppelin icon and his apparently ‘Beethoven-like’ musical prowess: “The guy who I respect the most and had the most impact on me is Jimmy Page,” Stanley said. “Jimmy is Beethoven. Jimmy is so far beyond.”
“When people say, oh, all respect to a lot of other hotshot guitar players — they’re guitar players. Jimmy Page is a brilliant cinematographer; he’s a brilliant arranger. He paints with sound.”
“There’s lots of guys… They say, ‘Well, who’s better: [Eric] Clapton or…?’ Jimmy Page is in a class totally by himself,” Stanley continued. “And there’s loads of great guitar players, but he’s so far beyond that. Plus, it’s amazing, ’cause I was a 17-year-old kid seeing them in 1969 and it was life-changing. It changed my life. I couldn’t believe how great they were; I couldn’t believe that the bar could be that high.”
“And to be at this point in my life where I go out to dinner with Jimmy, or Jimmy sends me texts, or says to me, about KISS he goes, ‘You guys are a serious, kick-ass rock and roll band.’ Well, it doesn’t get better than that.”
The longtime Led Zeppelin fan also spoke about the artistry behind Page’s music, saying “It’s not always the obvious thing that makes a song, and it’s not always the obvious thing that makes anything great, whether it’s a painting or a song.”
“When people say, ‘Oh, Zeppelin, that’s, like, heavy metal or something,’ give me break. Those songs are paintings. You think you’re hearing one big guitar. You’re not. You’re hearing a little guitar with another guitar behind it, and it’s all layered. And that’s the brilliance.”
“[Page is] brilliant. What he’s done is just crazy,” Stanley concluded.