Rock legends Led Zeppelin raid the archives
PARIS (AFP) – Rock legends Led Zeppelin are about to release a whole lotta archives onto the market, but the surviving band members insisted there will be no reunion concerts.
On May 27, the band who’s Stairway to Heaven once straddled the globe will release a two-disc DVD set featuring live performances from 1970 to 1979, and the three-CD “How The West Was Won,” drawn from June 1972 concerts in Los Angeles and Long Beach, California.
However Fifty-nine-year-old Led Zep guitarist Jimmy Page scotched any idea of a new concert tour.
“The reason Led Zeppelin was not reformed is because we lost a major ingredient, John Bonham. It would have been inconceivable to bring in someone else”.
Bonham, the group’s drummer, died in 1980 aged 31 after a heavy night of drinking, leaving fellow group members Page, singer Robert Plant and bassist-pianist John Paul Jones to pursue their own projects.
Page said that there was relatively little film of Led Zeppelin in action, no singles were released in Britain and the band rarely appeared on television, seeing themselves mainly as a live band. “As a result we have little visual documentation,” Page told reporters during a visit here.
The five hour twenty-minute film by Dick Carruthers, who has also worked with Oasis, the Rolling Stones and the Who, includes footage from half a dozen performances ranging from their appearance at London’s Royal Albert Hall in 1970 to their last concert appearance in Britain, in front of 400,000 people at the Knebworth festival the year before Bonham died.
Their classic songs including “Whole Lotta Love”, “Stairway To Heaven”, “Immigrant Song”, “Black Dog”, and “Rock And Roll” are all included along with a 20-minute version of one of their earliest compositions “Dazed And Confused”.
Page said he had paid the price for being a rock star in the 1970s.
“I was driven by Led Zeppelin, I was living, breathing, drinking L.Z, the price I paid for was a broken marriage”.
“Rock and roll is pure escapism. It should be taken like a good medecine,” the veteran rocker added.
The guitar virtuoso confirmed that he had played on three 1960s rock classics before Led Zeppelin was formed; “Gloria” by Them, featuring Van Morrison, “You really Got Me” by The Kinks and “I Can’t Explain” by The Who.
Led Zeppelin released eight albums which sold a total of 200 million copies worldwide, vying for supremacy in the 1970s with the Rolling Stones, whom Page admitted he had also played with.
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