Jimmy Page Says The TIme For a Reunion Has Passed

In the last podcast I was fairly clear on how I felt the guys in Led Zeppelin had been doing a poor job of communicating what seemed obvious to most observers, no reunion is coming:

[caption id="attachment_2053" align="alignright" width="179" caption="Photo: Nech Tytla"][/caption]

For the life of me, at this stage I don't know why they just don't say..."at this time we have no plans. we see no foreseen circumstances in the upcoming future... so the short answer is no! However, we don't rule out the possibility of something somewhere down the road. Of something coming up somewhere down the road that we feel is big enough, important enough to do.

The answer to "will there be a reunion?" has been no for some time time, no. And while I understand they don't want to shut the door 100%, they don't have to. Just be honest, and say, no reunion that we can foresee, but never say never.

With those words ringing in Jimmy Page's ear, he talked recently to Rollin Stone, and on teh issue of a reunion, he said:

I think if there had been any more concerts to be done, we'd already be talking about them. So I don't see it.

See Jimmy, that's all you had to say.

On The Cover of the Rolling Stone

The current edition of Rolling Stone Magazine features an article on the 100 greatest guitar players of all time. Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page comes in at #3, behind top guitarist Jimi Hendrix and #2 Eric Clapton, and ahead of Keith Richards and Jeff Beck, who came in at #4 & 5 respectively.

The issue hit the new stands this week with four covers, one depicting each of the top four guitar players.

The Jimmy Page picture has a shot of him in full guitar slinger action, holding his Les Paul out to his left. His dress indicates it was a post-Zeppelin shot, possibly from the Outrider tour.

Inside, there is a short article on each guitar player. Joe Perry wrote the 190 word piece on Jimmy Page, stating:

Listening to what Jimmy Page does on guitar can transport you. As a lead player, he always plays the right thing for the right spot – he's got such remarkable taste...

He had this vision of how to transcend the stereotypes of what the guitar can do.

Will he buy five copies to send to his mother?

Page has appeared on the cover of the legendary magazine at least six times previously, so I doubt he'll be buying five copies to send to anybody.

Alison Krauss Speaks to Rolling Stone

Last month, Robert Plant told Rolling Stone Magazine that a second album with Alison Krauss had been planned but, “The sound wasn’t there.”

He was referring to sessions on the follow up to their Grammy winning album, Raising Sand. Plant went on to record Band of Joy instead of continuing with the Krauss collaboration. Alison Krauss returned to her band, Union Station, and recorded their sixth studio album.

In a piece in Rolling Stone this week, Krauss agreed with Plant that the sound wasn’t there. However, she wants to be clear that’s not the fault of the  musicians they were working with:

I don’t want to make it sound like we’re saying that someone else’s performance wasn’t there -  the band was fantastic, the same as the first record.

They traded compliments in their Rolling Stone stories as well, Plant saying:

Alison’s the best. She’s one of my favourite people.

Krauss is more backhanded in her return compliment:

He’s a delightful person, and I’ll never meet another like him.

Krauss’ new album, Paper Airplane is available April 12th. It is their first album since 2004’s Lonely Runs Both Ways.

Robert Plant’s Same Tricks: The Rolling Stone Feature

“I see your still up to the same tricks,” John Bonham’s 81 year old mother Joan announced to Robert Plant backstage at a recent concert in Birmingham: “People who have written their story - they’ve got to the point where nothing moves. I don’t deal in that,” he later says about his musical contemporaries still playing the same songs.

Robert Plant is an enigma, a feature of the singer that comes through more than any other in a Rolling Stone magazine feature hitting newsstands Monday. Plant is at once talking about “the occasional tryst,” next telling Led Zeppelin fans the old Led Zeppelin groupie days are over:

Tell people the mud shark is dead and Buddy Miller’s got 86,000 songs on his laptop.

Plant talks about looking ahead when it comes to Led Zeppelin, but about Alison Krauss, “we’ll come back to it.” About travelling to Morocco, revisiting the famous trip he and Jimmy page took in 1973 (not 1978 as stated in the article), “I wanted to go back down that road.”

Frustratingly inconsistent as Robert Plant can be, make no mistake to his intent in this article: he has no intention of revisiting Led Zeppelin. And considering Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham recorded six or seven songs together in the aftermath of the 2007 reunion show, the most significant quote in the Rolling Stone article may be his one on writing:

I’ve kind of given up writing. All my writing is sort of meandering. The last time I lifted a pen was when Tony Blair became a Roman Catholic (Dec 2007)

The Rolling Stone article, Robert Plant’s Mystical Mountain Hop, has been getting a lot of press this week. It is, in reality, a disappointingly thin article, with almost all the quotes released in the articles pre-press, and the other 90% reviewing his recent career.

What you really want to know about Robert Plant circa 2011 is, he sees himself as a teacher, teaching music fans about old American music:

“You stay,” he tells the articles author Stephen Rodrick as he’s leaving the Cecil Sharp House, a repository for British folk music and dance. “Learn from this.”

Rolling Stone Calls Band of Joy #8 in 2010

Rolling Stone Magazine has released it's list top 30 albums of 2010. Along with other albums of the rock genre by Kid Rock and Kings of Leon, and by established artists such as John Mellencamp and Elton John, Robert Plant's Band of Joy comes in at #8.

Keep waiting, Jimmy Page — he's not coming back. Plant followed up his dreamy roots-romp Raising Sand (2007) with an album that was edgier and rootsier: Plant and his bandleader, guitarist Buddy Miller, pursue ancient songs and modern tangents with a black-light glow on this psychedelic exploration of blues and country, covering Los Lobos, Townes Van Zandt, the slow-core band Low and public-domain gospel as if they are all stops on the true road to nirvana.

Rolling Stone's top 10 of 10:

• Kanye West: My Dark Twisted Fantasy


• The Black Keys: Brothers


• Elton John & Leon Russel: The Union


• Arcade Fire: The Suburbs


• Jamey Johnson: The Guitar Song


• Vampire Weekend: Contra


• Drake: Thank Me Later


• Robert Plant: Band of Joy


• Eminem: Recovery


• LCD Soundsystem: This is Happening