Although Led Zeppelin were known for the forays into hard rock, folk, and even funk — they will always be remembered for being one of music's greatest blues ensembles.
During a recent chat with Classic Rock, Jimmy Page spoke about why the blues still matters — 100 years after its greatest legends were born: “The blues is scary. It’s threatening. It’s saying: 'I’m coming to get you.' The blues. . . it’s just undeniable. It was just an undeniable element of everything that was (going on in Led Zeppelin). If there hadn’t been that sort of movement in Chicago, back in the '50s, and that sort of riffing, then you wouldn't have got what came through in various bands later. Certainly for me and how it affected Led Zeppelin.”
Page spoke about the originators of blues: “I owe it to all of them. That’s how I learnt. My breakthrough was when I understood how to do bottleneck guitar. That’s the point when open tunings first come in for me. Boom! That’s it. And that whole world opened itself up for me. I wasn’t actually trying to play note-for-note what anyone else had done.”