If it hadn’t been for a low-key auction of rock memorabilia, the world might never have heard about the hook-up that never was. In 2016, former Red Hot Chili Peppers road manager Louie Mathieu was sifting his jumble for saleable items when he came across an old letter. Written in a chaotic, childlike hand, it could easily have been mistaken for a stray fan-club missive. Yet a closer inspection revealed a heartfelt message – believed to date back to 2004 – from Chilis guitarist John Frusciante to Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page.
Frusciante’s admiration for Page’s guitar work had loomed over his entire musical life. As a teenager, he’d studied every last Zeppelin lick (he has cited their second record, II, as his favourite album). In his late 20s, as a recovering heroin addict returning to the Chilis lineup for 1999’s Californication, Frusciante had relearnt the instrument by challenging himself to play along with I Can’t Quit You Baby from Zeppelin’s posthumous Coda album. “I thought if I could do that,” he told Total Guitar, “then I was going to be good enough to go into the studio.”
