It seems Jimmy Page has conceded defeat in trying to persuade former bandmate Robert Plant to take Led Zeppelin back out on the road, but may fill the void by revisiting his long career with a brand new set of musicians.
“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,” Page told NME and others during a playback ofthe remastered versions of ‘Untitled’ (Led Zeppelin IV) and ‘Houses Of The Holy‘ in London yesterday (September 30th). “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?”
“If I was to play again it would be with musicians that would be…some of the names might be new to you,” he continued. “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 has been busy restoring and re-releasing Led Zeppelin’s back catalogue this year. The two latest versions are due out on October 27th.
Sigh. JP’s been saying he’ll play new material live since 1999. But all we got was re-hashes of the past, save a brief five minutes at Netaid. It really is heartbreaking to see a true pioneer of music just living in the past and trying to re-live the glory days. It’d be great if he and Plant reunited and never played a Led Zep song again. Laugh if you want, but their creativity shone on the Walking Into Clarksdale album, and I for one would love to see what they could do together before it’s too late. Don’t get me wrong: I think Plant’s new band, the Sensational Shape Shifters, are tremendous! Incredibly dynamic and talented, their enthusiasm is infectious. But seeing Page, the prince of cool lost without a groove, is sad. Here’s hoping he’s really going to do something new this time and not just talk about it again.