For all of the great guitar riffs that Jimmy Page could lay down, he was never cut out to be a singer. He did have a few backing vocals on a handful of Led Zeppelin songs, but when you look at any of the records that he released since the end of the group, he was more interested in making the best guitar riffs that he could than going on the same vocal riffing that Robert Plant did. No one could match what ‘Percy’ did in his mind, but there were more than a few people that could get pretty damn close.  Because even when Zeppelin was first forming, Plant wasn’t automatically the first person that sprung to mind when Page was putting together the group. It was always going to be a bit of a jump for him to break free from The Yardbirds, but even if John Bonham pounded the drums like an absolute madman, Plant’s voice was what gave the group character. Those songs had a lot more depth thanks to Plant’s riffing, but those first records would be an extremely double-edged sword for him. Plant didn’t like the idea of everyone starting to copy what he had done throughout Zeppelin’s career. He was already willing to move on to better things after Bonzo passed away, but it’s not like Page was going to move on in the same way. Zeppelin was his baby, and if he was going to make any new music afterwards, he was going to need a halfway house between him flying solo and leaving his old band behind. And The Firm was hardly a bad place for him to start. Paul Rodgers was indebted to the blues from the first time that he performed with Free, and while Bad Company was already signed to Swan Song when they got together, Page figured that Rodgers could help him move on. He had the same kind of bluesy voice, and getting someone else to bounce off of was the perfect kind of foil that he needed. Page didn’t envision the band as taking over for Zeppelin by any stretch, but he did admit that Rodgers was up there with the greatest singers that he would ever work with, saying, “I don’t have any regrets about doing that at all. Paul Rodgers is one of the best singers this country has ever produced, and any musician would want him on a record. I don’t want to labor the point, but [The Firm] was the perfect vehicle for me to express everything I wanted to express and it had gone before its time.” But even if The Firm is Page’s story to a certain degree, it’s not like Rodgers didn’t have time to work out his own problems as well. Bad Company had been drifting for a little bit ever since the late 1970s, and even though Rodgers wanted to move on to something different, it was going to be a much harder task for him to make that kind of jump after having to lose two different bands over the course of a decade. When you look at some of their songs, though, Page is still the guitarist that everyone knew and loved from back in the day. It wasn’t out of the question for him to break out the double-necked guitar every once in a while or bring the bow on tour to add some theatricality to everything, but he felt that there was a lot more that he had to offer once he decided to fold the band after the album Mean Business. Both he and Rodgers managed to go their separate ways without many hard feelings, but it’s not like they were clamouring to get back together at every opportunity. They were only looking to have some fun and help each other through their dark times, and I imagine having someone like Page on your resume as a singer is probably going to do wonders for someone like Rodgers. ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE The post The 1980s band that gave Jimmy Page “one of the best singers” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.