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Jimmy Page on Plant, Zeppelin, The Yardbirds and his session work

An archive interview to celebrate the great man's birthday

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNuQPTzuof4

Would you consider playing with The Yardbirds again?
Byron Lewis, Barry, Vale of Glamorgan
But who would sing? Keith Relf died all those many years ago. He’d done a couple of other things, Renascence and Medicine Head. Keith Relf was really damn good. Could Jeff Beck do it? Sing? He doesn’t want to sing “Hi Ho Silver Lining” let alone sing “For Your Love”. That’s unfair, that’s really unfair! But I can’t sing, so there we are. Maybe Eric would like to sing? No, don’t say that because then it’ll start all that stupid rumours. I’m not starting. I’m just thinking who’s going to sing. At least you got 3 of the original guitarists still there and the current ones that have been since.

Where does Zozo come from?
Preston Currie, Sudbury, Suffolk
It comes from me, everyone had a symbol. Originally, there was going to be no information on the album, Led Zeppelin 4. Then somebody had suggested having a sort of mark, a craftsman mark. But it wasn’t going to be so easy because everyone’s going to have their idea on maybe what that one symbol should be, so it came down to everyone should choose their own symbols. Because it’s the fourth album, all the others have been I, II and III in Roman numerals, so then we’ll have four characters, if you like. Having been working on it along with all the re releases, I think of it as IV and actually I think of Houses Of The Holy as V. That said, everyone chose their own symbol and I chose mine. What does it mean? It means I chose my symbol and put it on there. If I do a book, then that’s probably the right time to describe the whole process of it if you don’t mind.

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A telephone can be clearly heard ringing in the studio on Zeppelin’s “The Ocean”. Who was on the phone?
Phil Tate, South Shields
I don’t know. Do I find it strange that people pick up on these very specific points of records? No. I’m thrilled that the records are recorded in such a way that the hifi quality, even though it’s tough – the music’s not light and wimpy – that you can hear detail on it because that’s what you’re supposed to do. It was supposed to be something whereby you could hear everything that was going on and yet there would still be an intensity and a character for each number. Each one separate sound, very different in its approach almost in its performance so you can hear those sorts of things and it’s great that you can. I think that’s got a lot to do with the analogue recording, I really honestly do. All of those things were done from analogue. On IV, you’ll hear a version of “Stairway To Heaven” that is absolute hifi, that’s exactly what hifi is all about. It was done well in the first place, it was executed really superbly well, and of course when you’ve got these great musicians you want to make sure you can hear what they’ve done.

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