Jimi has just risen in my estimation a hundredfold.
If he was still alive, I'd offer him a job with Deep Purple, no less!
Those thieving magpies. All musicians steal, but the Zep guys always pretended not to while bands such as the Stones, Aerosmith or Deep Purple would admit to it. Zep had to be taken to court for every co-credit they reluctantly gave.
So Jimmy Page says he never saw Hendrix. Just like he never heard Spirit though they were Zep's opening act. I have my doubts: Clapton, Beck, Blackmore, Trower, Alvin Lee, they all saw Hendrix and all were floored by him and everyone of them nicked a little bit off him (and admitted it).
But Page's dismissive attitude kind of fits the picture. When the Coverdale Page project was underway, Coverdale wanted to contribute a song in a Hendrix vein (he was a great Hendrix fan, getting into fights at youth clubs in his home Northern England to have Hendrix played by the DJs). Page refused:
"Oooh, that is a little too hendrixy for me." Coverdale subsequently released the song on his Into The Light solo album.
So the Hendrix/Zep schism might have been mutual. Zep were always an arrogant bunch, I do not remember that they ever said anything positive about one of their peers. Not about Purple or Sabbath (collectively derided by them as "Deep Sabbath"), not about The Who ("a musical dictatorship under Führer Pete Townshend", a quip by Page that enraged John Entwistle at the time) and not about the Stones or The Faces (who invented sloppiness for them!).
Meanwhile, back in the elderly retirees' home:
