Unfortunately, for all those dreaming of a starry-eyed Ziggy Stardust crossing paths with the wild man of Led Zeppelin during the hedonistic 1970s and sitting down to create a song together, we have to burst your bubble. The duo’s collaboration came before either man truly tasted success, pitching Bowie as a struggling blues hero and Page as a session master. (Farout)
Before Bowie becam Ziggy Stardust, he had a local band and they recruited a local session musician for the day. The gun for hire would turn out to be a 21-year-old Jimmy Page.
While Page would feature on The Manish Boys’ recording ‘I Pity The Fool’, his more potent contribution would come in the form of a riff that Bowie would utilise on two future songs under his own name. The riff would be prevalent on his The Man Who Sold The World cut ‘The Supermen’, and again on Dead Man Walking from Bowie’s 1997 album Earthling, separated by over a quarter of a century; the dark and brooding riff feels entirely in-tune with Bowie’s internal artistry.
Bowie remembered working with Page that day and the guitarist’s excitement over a guitar development that would change the course of rock history: “He was wildly excited about [the fuzz box], and he was quite generous that day. He said, ‘Look, I’ve got this riff, but I’m not using it for anything, so why don’t you learn it and see if you can do anything with it.”
