Originally written in 2020 as a script to a mini-episode of the Rush Strutter Zep Magik podcast. Revised in 2025 to improve readability, etc.
The intersection where Jimmy Page and Nineteenth Century composer Frédéric Chopin meet is one of my favorite bits of Led Zeppelin minutiae. This nexus, so to speak, is Page’s affinity for Chopin’s Prelude in E Minor, Opus 28, number 4, referred sometimes as “Prelude” N. 4, or by Page himself as simply “Prelude.” In Hammer of the Gods – long-regarded as a Led Zeppelin bible of sorts in the pre-Internet days – author Stephen Davis refers to the piece as “Prelude No. 3 in G# Major. I’m not an expert on classical music, but that last one doesn’t sound right to me. Martin Power’s No Quarter: The Three Lives of Jimmy Page says the piece is “based on ‘Prelude in E Minor.’”
These days, info about the life and work of Jimmy Page is pretty much everywhere. But in the event that you don’t know a lot about Mr. Chopin, here’s a quick biographical sketch:
- Composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin was born in Poland in 1810. He apparently had some introduction to the piano by his mother, but he started getting formal instruction at the age of six or seven. He also took organ lessons starting at the age of 13.
- He studied at the Warsaw Conservatory from 1826 to 1829, studying music theory, musical notation, and composition. During this time, he spent time composing music and performing recitals. His first published work, Rondo Op. 1 was published during this period and it was met with critical acclaim.
- He found success and notoriety in Poland, Germany, and France early in his career.
- In France, he met composer Franz Liszt and although they became friends, their relationship was tainted by disagreements and – apparently – some degree of jealousy.
- He composed at least 230 works in his life – those are the known works at this point in time – including preludes, which are short pieces, as well as piano concertos, songs, and chamber music.
- Chopin published his 24 preludes – one for each of the twenty-four keys – in 1839.
- He became sick in 1842 –possibly from a variety of illnesses – and his work as a composer slowed. His popularity subsequently waned.
- He toured Great Britain in 1848 and made his final public appearance in November 1848, at which time he was visibly ill and apparently wasting away.
- He continued to give lessons and welcome visitors at his home in Paris until he passed away in 1849.
- His funeral was held at the Church of the Madeline in Paris and thousands of mourners from all over Europe arrived for the event. At his own request, “Prelude” was played at his own funeral, along with Mozart’s Requiem.
- There’s a lot of other interesting information out there regarding his life and his death – including information about his death mask and how his heart was persevered and examined as recently as 2017 in an effort to definitively determine his cause of death. Check out his biography on Wikipedia or look up the YouTube video “23 Fascinating Facts About Frédéric Chopin” that was put together for the “pianoTV” channel.
Now, I am sure there are a few other places in which the work of Jimmy Page overlaps with classical music. Maybe he was influenced here and there by a composer or piece or maybe he lifted a few bars from someone (as we all know he has done from time to time). But to my mind, his recording and subsequent performances of the Chopin prelude are the most prominent point at which Page and classical music – specifically from the Romantic period – come together famously.
Jimmy Page struggled after the death of John Bonham in September 1980 and the subsequent breakup of Led Zeppelin but in 1981, he was already at work on the soundtrack for the Charles Bronson film Deathwish II. Again, looking at Hammer of the Gods, Davis describes this as a “frightening sonic montage of scary sounds.” Maybe it’s hindsight, but I don’t think it’s quite that bad. It is a soundtrack, though, so it’s not like there are a bunch of catchy tunes with hooks and toe-tapping material. There are some standouts, though. There’s “Who’s to Blame,” which was sung by Chris Farlowe, “City Sirens,” featuring vocals by Gordon Edwards, and an instrumental called “The Chase.” Of course, “Prelude” was on this album as well and, somewhat true to form, Page gives himself the sole credit on this song. Looking at my own copy, I see that it literally says, for side two, cut 4, “Prelude” (Page). Maybe he was banking on Chopin not being much of a Charlie Bronson fan.
For my part, I was aware of the DeathWish II project around the age of 15 – that’d be 1988, by the way – because I’d read about it in Hammer of the Gods. But I had no way to get a hold of the record and for years, I had to wonder what the work as a whole sounded like, although I did pick up some bits and pieces along the way. The record wasn’t available at any of the places that I shopped at and I think it was a rarity by that point. In my college years, a friend sent me a copy of the movie on VHS that he’d found in New York, so I got a better feel from the material by watching it but I didn’t actually buy the record itself until eBay became a thing many years later. Incidentally, Page himself remastered the soundtrack a few years ago and it’s part of the Soundtracks package that includes the original Lucifer Rising score.
Before I had the VHS copy of DeathWish, I ended up getting a good sampling of some of the songs from the soundtrack when I rented a two-tape edition of “The ARMS Concert” from 1983. This was a star-studded series of events that included Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and others playing a benefit show for Ronnie Lane of The Small Faces (and later The Faces). I remember reading about this show in a Circus Magazine in ’84 or so, which I’d bought for a big spread on Quiet Riot, but I read the thing cover to cover many times over, and the piece on the ARMS show stuck in my mind even though I had yet to know anything about Zeppelin. Anyway, I rented the ARMS tapes in ’89 or so just to see the Page segment and I think I probably felt like a lot of the folks in attendance when I first saw it. I mean, most of the material was from DeathWish II and I hadn’t heard any of it before. But I have to say that the “Prelude” performance really grabbed me. This was the London show which – if you look it up online – is much better than the New York material. The setlist for Page’s portion of the show included “Prelude,” “City Sirens,” and “Who’s to Blame,” featuring vocals by Steve Winwood; and an instrumental of “Stairway to Heaven.” the latter of which is… actually pretty tedious. But he did that number a bit in the post-Zeppelin years.
So, “Prelude” includes an accompaniment by organ and the opening image is of the organist – James Hooker, I think – with his back to the audience. To this day, the image is still striking and almost reminds me of a statue of Buddha surrounded by a golden light. What follows a great, rich performance – not a perfect one, but pretty good, really – that adds much to Chopin’s original piano composition. Some of that has to do with Page’s technique, but I think a good deal has to do with his rig, as well. More on that shortly.
I think this is as good of a time as any to pause and hear “Prelude” as Chopin in the manner that Chopin had ostensibly intended. This version that I’m going to share is from the Internet Archive and it was updated by Jerzy Kulik in 2015. [Listen here]
It’s really a thoughtful but dark sort of piece, I think. And true to the idea of a “prelude,” it seems like much more could easily flow from this piece. I think the first time I heard the piano version of this piece, it was a few years after I’d rented the ARMS videos and it was in the background of a scene in a soap opera – I like soap operas – and I recognized the piece right away. I was already intrigued by Page’s version, but hearing it performed on piano as it was originally intended added another dimension.
Jimmy Page’s rig for both albums with The Firm.
Before the above musical interlude, I mentioned Page’s rig. Now, I really loved The Firm when I discovered them in ’88 or so and, of course, their stint lasted from ’84 to ’86. So the timeline here is that DeathWish II came out in ’82, the ARMS shows were in ’83, and then came The Firm. I’ll come back to the Firm in a minute. There’s a lot of synth on the soundtrack, as well as guitar synth, electric piano, orchestra, strings – not your typical Page fare, for sure. The guitar that Page used for “Prelude” in particular was his 1958 Fender Brown B-Bender Telecaster. I read somewhere recently that the neck and headstock of that guitar are from his original “Dragon” Telecaster. The B-Bender was the same guitar that he used for the ARMS show and for both of The Firm’s albums. If you don’t know what a B-bender is, it’s a guitar with a special mechanism that allows the player to bend the B-string by as much as a minor third, or, a step and a half, I think. And this is done by moving the guitar while it’s being worn on a strap, as the mechanism “trigger,” so to speak is the strap button. If you don’t know a lot about this or if I’m not describing it well, look it up online. It’s an interesting innovation. I saw an interview once in which Page actually said it took him about two years to get the gist of how it works, although he later walked that back and said it was more like a year.
You can really hear that string bending on “Prelude” and it’s pretty nice. It’s not overdone, and it definitely brings an added dimension to the performance.
Now, I can’t say with all certainty about the rest of Page’s equipment for Deathwish II, but what I do know is that in the years that followed, his work with The Firm consisted of a very simple and when I first saw a picture of what he used circulating on social media, I was really transfixed by what I saw, because the simplicity explained why the material from that mid-‘80s era was so distinct and consistent from one project to another. In addition to the B-bender, he used a Boss Super Overdrive SD1 and a Boss Chorus CE-2. He actually used these pedals into the Outrider years, too. For recording around this time, he was also using a 2-off Vox AC30.
Let’s look at some of Page’s more noteworthy performances of the Prelude piece after the Deathwish II soundtrack came out, returning to the series of ARMS concerts: He kicked off his set at the Royal Albert Hall with Prelude and he did two other Deathwish songs in the set, “Who’s to Blame” and “City Sirens.” It doesn’t show up on the Dallas setlists but it’s back in the mix for his Inglewood, California appearance, which was a set with Paul Rodgers in which they gave an early performance of the song that would become “Midnight Moonlight.” He also opened his New York ARMS set with “Prelude” – that’s the one where he uses the bow at the end – and although I’m no virtuoso, I think I’m in good company saying this was not his best showing. I should note that after performing “Prelude” in that particular set, he tells the audience, “Well, believe it or not, that was a piece by Chopin!” and then he laughs. In fact, Jimmy Page was in really rough shape during this period and it really shows in the material that’s out there, including the commercially released footage and what’s out there on YouTube.
The Firm bootleg LP.
Page’s period with The Firm was something of a “healthier” time and he kept “Prelude” in their live shows for both tours. I have a really weird bootleg of their material from Hammersmith and Frankfurt in ’84 – their first tour – and “Prelude” is performed mid-set, leading into “Money Can’t Buy.” I found it by chance at a Half Price Books store in Columbus, Ohio in the summer of ’92 and it has a weird collage of pictures of The Firm with comic book characters mixed in. It also looks like the cover graphics were printed on some kind of plastic or thin vinyl material and then pasted over some other record cover. I’ve never quite figured that one out.
I also want to note some side projects from around this time, including Page’s appearances on Robert Plant’s Honeydrippers project and the “Willie and the Poor Boys” project. “Willie and the Poor Boys” was a continuation of the ARMS project and there was a full length album released in ’85 that included two songs featuring Jimmy Page and his bandmate from The Firm, Paul Rodgers. Their contributions were “Slippin’ and Slidin’” and “These Arms of Mine.” There’s a great video that came out of “These Arms of Mine” that’s on YouTube – I guess it ran on MTV for a while – and Page actually uses the B-bender in the video, reminding us all that it was his weapon of choice in this era.
“Prelude” was again performed at concerts by The Firm on the Mean Business tour and what I’ve seen from setlist.fm, the setlist wiki, it was again used as a kind of segue – or prelude – for “Money Can’t Buy.” On at least one of the YouTube offerings of live material from this era, Paul Rodgers actually mentions that “Prelude” is a Chopin piece.
With all this talk about The Firm, I want to offer up another music clip at this point: before the guys from The Firm took to the stage during their first tour together, a segment from Gustav Holst’s The Planets would play over the PA to kind of announce their arrival. It was a short piece from “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity” and since that particular movement is over seven minutes in length, I’ll trim it down here to feature just a bit more than what they used at The Firm’s shows. Incidentally, The Planets suite was composed by Holst from 1914 to 1916 with the Jupiter movement being one of the earlier pieces, composed in 1914. The version I’m sharing is by Leopold Stokowski and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, performed in 1958 and this is from The Internet Archive. [Listen here]
That’s a really cool piece and that suite is really good driving music, especially for the morning commute to work.
Back to “Prelude”: Page performed this on his tour for Outrider in 1988 and that was actually the first show I ever attended when that tour came to Dayton’s Hara Arena. I was in the front row for a few seconds of that general admission show. I still remember that show kicking off with “Who’s To Blame” and then “Prelude” was the second number, followed by “Over the Hills and Far Away.” Being the first Zeppelin song of the night, that was when the crowd went wild.
I didn’t see Prelude on any of the setlists from the Coverdale/Page tours, which were pretty heavy on Zeppelin and Whitesnake material. But from ’82 to ’88 or so, the piece got some new life courtesy of one of rock’s most celebrated guitarists. Although Chopin wasn’t around to hear it, at least he eventually got credit where credit was due.
