Paul Stanley says his guitar hero Jimmy Page “paints with sound”.
The KISS co-founder, 70, says the Led Zeppelin legend, 78, is far more than a guitarist, comparing his music to paintings.
Taking part in a Q+A on the ‘Kiss Kruise’, he said: “The guy who I respect the most and had the most impact on me is Jimmy Page … Jimmy’s 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.
He continued: “There’s lots of guys … They say, ‘Well, who’s better: [Eric] Clapton or…?’ Jimmy Page is in a class totally by himself.
“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.”
Paul added of the complexity hidden in Zeppelin’s tunes: “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 a 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. And I think that too often in all kinds of things that we do in life, we think it’s what we see, and it’s very often what’s behind what we see, and it’s very often what’s behind what we hear. It’s not what we think it is. That’s where I think a lot of people fail.”
He concluded: “[Jimmy is] brilliant. What he’s done is just crazy.”