Page’s surprising verdict: ‘Achilles’ over ‘Stairway’
Jimmy Page’s ranking of his own guitar solos, placing the Achilles Last Stand solo above the famed Stairway to Heaven solo, shows how an artist’s technical priorities and creative memories can differ sharply from fan expectations and critical consensus about the Led Zeppelin best solos. In 2016, when asked if the Stairway to Heaven solo was his greatest, Page replied, “No, but it’s pretty damn good,” before naming the 1976 epic Achilles Last Stand as his most outstanding solo. For listeners who have treated Stairway as the archetype of Jimmy Page guitar solos, this sounds almost heretical. But Page’s choice is not about nostalgia; it is about what challenged him, what felt nearly impossible, and what still makes him proud when he remembers how it was built and then fought through on stage.
Why the ‘Achilles Last Stand’ solo feels like a summit
Page’s love for the Achilles Last Stand solo comes down to scale, risk, and classic rock guitar technique pushed to a breaking point. Technically, Achilles Last Stand is “so bloody difficult” because he built it as a dense, multi-layered composition instead of a simple riff-and-solo structure. The central guitar figure blends tight picked notes, big chord shapes, and shifting accents, while the studio version stacks harmonised lines, doubled rhythms, and overdubbed textures, far more than one guitarist can physically reproduce live. Jimmy Page overdubbed six guitar tracks to create this massive sound, a feat he recalls with clear pride. According to one interview, “The solo was done in one evening,” underscoring how fast he had to make high‑stakes choices under pressure. For Page, this is a mountain he climbed in real time, and that difficulty is part of why it outranks Stairway.
Stairway to Heaven vs. Achilles: two different victories
The Stairway to Heaven comparison is inevitable: both solos are “jaw‑dropping and the kind of thing that guitarists strive for their whole careers to achieve”. Stairway is the crowd’s choice, the solo that radio immortalised and that fans can hum from memory. It is lyrical, singable, and fits the song’s slow‑burn structure so perfectly that it feels inevitable. Yet while casual listeners may forever see Stairway as Led Zeppelin’s archetypal solo tune, Page is more impressed by another piece that “pleased” him more. Achilles Last Stand is less about a single soaring melody and more about wrestling with a complex, layered architecture that he himself made nearly impossible to copy. When Page calls the Achilles solo “testy… to try and replicate, or at least to get a mean average of all the guitar parts on the record,” he is grading himself on difficulty, not popularity.
From The Yardbirds to Zeppelin: foundations of a perfectionist
Page’s preference for Achilles Last Stand also traces back to how he learned to value challenge over comfort. After years of lucrative session work, he knew he had to “get out in the real world and join a band” if he wanted to grow. He eventually offered his services to The Yardbirds in 1965 as a bassist after Paul Samwell‑Smith left, stepping into a group already defined by Eric Clapton’s ferocious live work on Five Live Yardbirds. Page later called The Yardbirds “a superb band” and praised how much groundwork Clapton laid on that record. Those shows taught him how to build intensity slowly and then fly off the rails based on audience energy, a trait that later surfaced in Led Zeppelin performances of Since I’ve Been Loving You. The Yardbirds era gave him a blueprint: take blues roots, add risk, and keep pushing the solo beyond what feels safe.
What Page’s ranking reveals about elite guitarists
Page’s choice of Achilles Last Stand as his top solo says more about elite musicians’ values than about any fan poll. He is not measuring sing‑along appeal; he is measuring how much of himself he had to pour into a performance. Calling the Achilles solo “testy… to try and replicate” shows that he prizes parts that stretch his limits and demand intricate control over multi‑tracked arrangements. For him, the best Jimmy Page guitar solos are the ones that nearly break him. Meanwhile, he can sit back knowing that both Stairway and Achilles “came from his magical hands,” even if fans cling to one more than the other. In the end, his ranking is a reminder: the artist’s favorite work is often the piece that cost the most effort, not the one that won the biggest applause—and that gap is where a creative legacy is really defined.
