He then turned to his second love, art. Page attended art college in Sutton, Surrey for eighteen months, but still maintained a strong love for music (York 27). "Jimmy was a freak for the guitar but he didn't play one. He just used to draw strip cartoons of rock bands, starting from 1955. Then I discovered that I"d already met Jimmy through his gigs with the Crusaders but I didn't know him then on a personal basis," recalls Jeff Beck (York 28). His love for both music and art were conflicting. "I was missing lectures, taking days off and I finally had to make a choice. I suppose at that particular point I was really enjoying the session work. Many of the sessions were really good and I was allowed to do the solos which I found to be really constructive work. So it was down with painting or playing. It wasn't too difficult a decision to make. Art college days were over," Jimmy said about those times (York 32). In 1965, he was offered a position by the Yardbirds, but declined because he believe he made more money doing session work. A year later, he accepted the invitation ("Jimmy Page Biography"_). The Yardbirds spawned three of the world's finest guitarists: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page (York 49). Beck, Clapton and Page initiated almost every technical guitar innovation of the era, including feedback and fuzz tone (Romanows and George-Warren 1101). When the Yardbirds broke up in 1967, Page formed the New Yardbirds to fulfill contractual obligations ("Led Zeppelin Biography"_). Page would come to shape one of the most renowned bands of the late sixties and seventies. .
Keith Moon of The Who used the phrase "going down like a lead Zeppelin" to coin disastrous gigs, and Page was very fond of that saying. So fond that he dropped the "a" and renamed the group Led Zeppelin after a short spell as the Yardbirds featuring Led Zeppelin (Rees and Crampton 581). Led Zeppelin was a definitive heavy metal band that incorporated mythology, mysticism, and other genres (mainly British folk and world music) into their sound("Led Zeppelin"_).