Page and Plant: Difference between revisions

The initial plans for a reunion were made in 1993, with talk between the two of collaborating emerging from casual small talk and then an invitation to perform on MTV Unplugged. Music producer Bill Curbishley, who had been managing Plant since the 1980s and who assumed management of Page in 1994, was integral in the reuniting of Page and Plant. Curbishley persuaded the previously reluctant Plant to work again with Page. In an interview he gave in 2004, Page recounted the background:

I was going to play in Japan with David [Coverdale], the only time we played live, and I had a call from Robert's management to pop in and see Robert in Boston on the way to LA to rehearse. Robert said, "I've been approached by MTV to do an Unplugged and I'd really like to do it with you, so I said OK. It gave us a chance to revisit some numbers and use that same picture with a very, very different frame.^[1]

Plant's recollection of the reunion was as follows:

By that time I didn't feel like I was even a rock singer anymore ... Then I was approached by MTV to do an Unplugged session. But I knew that I couldn't be seen to be holding the flag for the Zeppelin legacy on TV. Then mysteriously Jimmy turned up at a gig I was playing in Boston and it was like those difficult last days of Led Zep had vanished. We had this understanding again without doing or saying anything. We talked about the MTV thing and decided to see where we could take it.^[2]

Led Zeppelin's main songwriters reformed on April 17, 1994 as a part of the Alexis Korner Memorial Concert at Buxton, England. On August 25 and August 26, they taped performances in London, Wales, and Morocco with Egyptian and Moroccan orchestration of several Led Zeppelin tunes along with four new songs. The performances aired on October 12, and were so successful commercially and artistically that the two coordinated a tour which kicked off in February 1995. The Unplugged performance was released as an album in November 1994 as No Quarter: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Unledded.

Their tour took them across the world with a lineup including

It was heroic to take something like that around the world, because it was using two orchestras: one Western, one Arab orchestra, with a hurdy-gurdy. It was great going around the world to turn people on to sounds they hadn't heard. It wasn't an easy thing to do, but it was worth it.[1]

Afterwards, the two artists entered the studio with

There could have been a follow-up [to Walking into Clarksdale]. I certainly had about a dozen numbers written for a third album. Robert heard them and said that some of them were really good, but he just wanted to go in another direction. That's fair enough.[3]

In an interview he gave to Uncutmagazine in 2005m Plant recounted:

We had some good songs [on Walking into Clarksdale], but I wasn't sure about the production. I felt kind of marooned. We were still surrounded by the protective shield of who we were, and it meant we were playing big arenas around the world. And I realised once again there had to be another way ... I knew I had to get back to playing clubs and remember what pulse was all about. To say goodbye to those large arenas that I played with Jimmy was a very purposeful move.^[2]

They reunited once more in July 2001 for the Montreux Jazz Festival.

Main staff

• Jimmy Page - Acoustic and electric guitars, mandolin, producer
• Robert Plant - Vocals, producer
• Charlie Jones - Bass guitar, percussion
• Michael Lee - Drums and percussion
• Ed Shearmur
  - Orchestral arrangements, organ
• Porl Thompson
  - Banjo, guitar
• Nigel Eaton - Hurdy gurdy
• Joe Sutherland - Mandolin, bodhran

Discography

Albums

Singles

DVDs

See also

• Coverdale & Page

References