Review Week - Day 5: Brad Tolinski's Light and Shade: Conversations With Jimmy Page

Brad Tolinski, as Editor-in-Chief of Guitar World Magazine, has had the opportunity to interview Jimmy Page a number of times. He has edited those conversations to create a Jimmy Page career timeline, and rolled them out as a biography of Page.

Light and Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page is a fairly comprehensive Jimmy Page biography told mostly in Page's own words. Each chapter presents Page in interview form talking about a point in his career: studio, Yardbirds, forming Zeppelin &tc. Each chapter is introduced by Tolinski, and supplemented with an interview with a relevant figure from the era. i.e. Jeff Beck on the early days; John Paul Jones on forming Zeppelin; Paul Rogers on The Firm.

Tolinski manages to tie all the interviews together without bogging the book down in technical details, as often happens when two guitar players get together. Although Tolinski's interviews are originally intended for an audience of fellow guitar players, they will be easily readable to the average fan. What emerges from all the conversation is a fairly clear picture of Page the artist and player, much less so Page the man.

Having read a number of the interviews before, one fear I had when I first heard about Light and Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page was that it would just be a rehash of the old interviews. However, Tolinski manages to re-edit the interviews to make them seem new and fresh. As well, the supplemental interviews, or "musical interludes," provide enough fresh material to keep things interesting.

Brad Tolinski's Light and Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page is a fairly quick easy read, broken into enough sections that it can be put down and picked up at leisure. Every Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin fan will enjoy it, and it would make a perfect Christmas gift for the Led-Head in your house.

Buy on Hardcover

or Kindle