Robert Plant and Jimmy Page first met on a summer day much like today in 1968. The 19-year-old singer, with beautiful long locks and an even better voice, was tall (6’1″), slender, engaging, and arrived carrying a small collection of blues and folk records when he knocked on Page’s door in the affluent village of Pangbourne on the River Thames.
Page was five years his elder, but with a baby face, a sincere smile, and a pedigree as one of the go-to studio guitarists in London.
Plant noted that upon that first meeting, Page had an air about him—a sense of a man who had traveled and seen things. It was something he admired, because his own journey had yet to fully take off.
Page had played on hundreds of records through the early and mid-1960s, contributing to hits by The Who (“I Can’t Explain”), Them (“Baby Please Don’t Go,” “Here Comes the Night”), Donovan (“Sunshine Superman”), Petula Clark (“Downtown”), Marianne Faithfull (“As Tears Go By”), the Nashville Teens (“Tobacco Road”), Lulu (“Shout”), and Tom Jones (“It’s Not Unusual”), and had even worked on early sessions with the Kinks and the Rolling Stones before joining the Yardbirds in 1966.
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