Damian Jones of NME reports:
On September 30th, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page sated that he ruled out any chance of the band playing together ever again.
Page was hosting a playback of his remastered versions of Houses Of The Holy and Led Zeppelin IV at Olympic Studios in London when he confirmed the news.
Asked directly by NME if remastering the albums made him want to reform the band again, he said, “I don’t think it looks as though that’s a possibility or on the cards, so there’s not much more I can say about that. I’m not going to give a detail-by-detail account of what one person says or another person says. All I can say is it doesn’t look likely, does it?”
When pressed on whether this was down to frontman Robert Plant, Page added, “I’ve just said it doesn’t look very likely.”
His comments come after Plant recently said that he felt “disappointed and baffled” after Page dropped repeated hints about wanting to play with the band again. The guitarist also said that he was “fed up” with his bandmate for delaying his plans. Led Zeppelin last played together in 2007 for a one-off tribute to Atlantic Records’ Ahmet Ertegun at London’s O2 Arena.
But Page did today confirm that he is likely to form his own band and play live material right across his whole career, including his Zeppelin work, in the near future.
He told the Q&A session, “If I was to play again it would be with musicians that would be… some of the names might be new to you. I haven’t put them together yet but I’m going to do that next year. If I went out to play, I would play material that spanned everything from my recording career right back to my very, very early days with The Yardbirds. There would certainly be some new material in there as well.”
Page added, “I love playing live, I really do. Live concerts are always an interesting challenge because it means you can always change things as you’re playing every night. You can make it even more of an adventure. I would play all of the things I’m known to play – instrumental versions of Dazed And Confused etcetera, etcetera…”
The playback saw a selection of remastered tracks from the latest reissues aired in a theater against a backdrop of old tour posters and photos of Led Zeppelin.
It followed a reissue campaign earlier this year of the band’s first three albums. Various formats of ‘Led Zeppelin IV’ and ‘Houses Of The Holy’ will be released on October 28th.
source: nme.com
72 Responses
All Jimmy has to do is start working with David Coverdale again and Plant will come running back just like the last time. Coverdale, Page Bonham and add a bass player and there off!
By George, you’re right! (LOL!) Actually, I agree whole-heartedly!
In my opinion, as soon as Plant heard what Page could do with yet another great vocalist, as the 1993 Coverdale/Page CD rocks, Plant came a-callin! And while I liked No Quarter and Walking Into Clarksdale and both accompanying tours a lot, I think that the Coverdale/Page CD is better than anything Plant has done since LZ’s Presence. In Through the Out Door was spotty, with both some great songs (e.g., Carasalambra, In the Evening) and some weak songs (e.g., Southbound Suarez, Hot Dog); Coda was certainly better than I expected; and I liked 4 of Plant’s 6 solo CDs a lot, along with the two accompanying Plant tours that I saw in ’88 and ’90. However, I consider the Coverdale/Page CD to be a near masterpiece and the album that Led Zeppelin should have made after a respectful time away from music in mourning for and in recognition of John Bonham’s untimely death.
Hope to see you on the road soon Jimmy!
I would love Jimmy Page to put “The Firm” back together.
hmmm, very interesting!!
I thought The Firm was pretty bad.
I don’t know about the Firm, but I’d love to hear him with Paul Rodgers again! I think he would sound great on Zeppelin stuff, different but great. His voice sounds as good today as it did years ago. I wonder in retrospect if Page and Rodgers regret the decision to not play Zep and Bad Co. stuff on the two Firm tours? I saw both those tours and thought they were damn good! I was young and it was my first opportunities to see Jimmy Page. Loved both shows! I also liked both records. Nothing brilliant, but I thought were still pretty good.
Bonham, Kennedy, Jones. Plant’s ’14 set has Zeppelin. I hear Plant refuses to sign Zeppelin stuff.
No Myles Kennedy please. The guy has no individuality.
I’d love to see Page and Paul Rodgers together again. The Firm were great, and the chemistry they had was fantastic.
If Jimmy puts a band together and then puts out an album and tours, that will be great. If Robert Plant doesn’t want to be involved with Zeppelin, that’s his loss. But Jimmy needs to get on the ball and get something going instead of remastering the Zeppelin albums again. How many times over the years has he done that aleady?