Creativity Quote by Jim Sullivan

Rock mythology loves a clean origin story: the first fuzzbox, the first riff, the first moment electricity turned feral. Jim Sullivan punctures that tidy narrative with a grin you can hear in the punctuation. The line is a miniature stage act - set up the expected culprit (Jimmy Page, patron saint of gear lore), then swat it away, then wrong-foot the listener again with the quick second denial: "it wasn't me either". It’s comedic timing, but it’s also a quiet critique of how credit gets assigned in popular music: not by circuitry or chronology, but by the gravitational pull of fame.

The specific intent feels twofold. First, Sullivan is correcting a record without turning it into a lecture. Second, he’s refusing the bait of self-mythologizing. Plenty of musicians would seize the opening to claim the crown; Sullivan points at the crown and keeps his hands visible. That restraint is the subtext: authenticity here isn’t staking a claim, it’s admitting the story is messier than the fan forums want.

Context matters because fuzz - like so many "innovations" in rock - was less a singular invention than a convergent accident: blown speakers, hacked circuits, regional tinkerers, and producers chasing a sound that radios couldn’t ignore. By jokingly declining both Page’s legend and his own potential brag, Sullivan exposes the real engine of the era: a collective scramble for texture, where history later pretends it was destiny.