Com-Page-riots: Jackie DeShannon...She Just Satisfies!

Jackie DeShannon

Page's trysts with groupies from Los Angeles to New York and everywhere in between are the stuff of legends. Many former groupies, such as Pamela Des Barres, have even written books detailing their personal dalliances with the dashing young Jimmy Page. However few are aware of the personal and professional relationship Page had with American singer Jackie DeShannon early in his career.

Jackie DeShannon was born Sharon Meyer in Kentucky. She began her music career under an array of names beginning around 1960, until finally settling on her now famous moniker. DeShannon's big break in the music world came in 1964 when she was picked to open for The Beatles on their American tour that year. It was after this brush with success in 1965 when she relocated to England and met Jimmy Page.

DeShannon was working as a background singer on a session one day and happened upon the young guitarist, "He showed up at a recording session with paint on his jeans and he was the youngest player in the room. I went over to him to play a few of my piddling cords and he when played them back to me, I was almost knocked out of the room. Even than, he was spectacular." The two later collaborated again together on a few Marianne Faithful numbers and Faithful recalls in her autobiography that the two became heavily involved in a mad love affair.

Jackie playing Jimmy a few piddling chords

The two were an item almost all throughout 1965, and collaborated on several recordings including,  "Dream Boy", "Down Turn Your Back on Me"Also, as well as a song for Marianne Faithfull, "Come and Stay with Me". DeShannon also convinced Page to write and record a song under his own name, the result is the obscure "She Just Satisfies", the only known number to feature Jimmy on lead vocals; DeShannon backing him up of course. Jackie even took Jimmy on his first trip to America when the two visited Los Angeles that year.

Sadly, the young love was not meant to last, Jimmy was becoming bogged down by the music business and wanted to go off to art school, whereas DeShannon wanted to focus on her career. She later described the ending of their relationship, "He wanted to split from the music world because he was getting disillusioned. Jimmy wanted to go to Cornwall or the Channel Islands and sell pottery. He couldn't stand the business, the strain and I couldn't stand his dream of quietness so we split, but I guess he's changed a lot since then".

DeShannon left England and moved to New York City shortly thereafter, her career subsequently took off on the back of such monster hits like "What the World Needs Now is Love"and "Put a Little Love in Your Heart". The two met up again at some point later after the split when her career was on the wane, and Led Zeppelin was soaring high, Jimmy described the meeting in 1977, "We got together afterwards (...) she said 'I've got a copy of Bob Dylan's new album if you'd like to hear it' and I said 'Would I like to hear it?" 

"Hey Jimmy, check out this Dylan record!"