Jimmy Page

Few artists have done more with two hands and six (or twelve) strings than Jimmy Page. A touring guitarist by his mid-teens, the Middlesex, England–born Page once worked as a studio musician, clocking as many as 15 jobs a week—playing on everything from elevator music and film soundtracks to sessions with The Who and Petula Clark’s “Downtown.” Later, Page joined The Yardbirds, helping stretch the band's hybrid of blues and psychedelia in daring new directions. That laid the foundation for what would eventually become Led Zeppelin—where as the principal songwriter and in-house producer, Page helped create a craggy, mythical world in which American blues mixed with British folk and Eastern modalities, the outer reaches of mysticism meeting the visceral wallop of rock ’n’ roll. His riffs and solos, especially on Zeppelin songs like “Black Dog” and “Stairway to Heaven,” exploded the form's possibilities, in the process paving the way for everyone from Van Halen to Queens of the Stone Age to Foo Fighters. As Dave Grohl once quipped, “Heavy metal would not exist without Led Zeppelin, and if it did, it would suck.”