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Guitar World
Guitar World
Entertainment
Janelle Borg

“He said, ‘Caleb, I like what you're doing. I've got all this work lined up for Jimmy Page, but he doesn't want to do it anymore’”: How Elton John and Hall & Oates guitarist Caleb Quaye inherited the Led Zeppelin legend’s studio work

ROUNDHOUSE (CAMDEN) Photo of Caleb QUAYE and HOOKFOOT, Caleb Quaye performing on stage.

To say that Caleb Quaye has had just “an illustrious career” would be an understatement. The English guitarist has played with the who’s who of the music industry, sessioning for Elton John, Mick Jagger, Pete Townshend, and Hall & Oates, to name a mere few. However, it was thanks to a certain Jimmy Page dropping out of studio work at the last minute that Quaye's playing became imprinted on some of rock's most iconic tracks.

Quaye recalls how a friend of his, singer-songwriter Billy Nicholls, was signed to Rolling Stones manager Andrew Oldham's Immediate label. As luck would have it, Quaye had helped Nicholls engineer some demos, so when the latter eventually recorded his first album, he enlisted Quaye to play on it.

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