Legendary Led Zeppelin guitarist, Jimmy Page was the subject of discussion during this Q104.3 interview appearance wih Alice in Chains singer/guitarist William DuVall. Here, Duvall dicussed honoring Page during a chairty event in Seattle and how it initially almost didn’t happen. Jimmy Page rejected this stunning Led Zeppelin 2020 offer.
“It was Barrett Martin [ex-Screaming Trees] on drums, [Guns N’ Roses’] Duff McKagan on bass, [Jerry] Cantrell played guitar, Kim Thayil on guitar in a couple of songs, Rich Robinson from The Black Crows was on some songs. So it was, like, the core band, I think, was mostly Cantrell, Barrett, and Duff with some local Seattle musicians who were great filling out things, and then the revolving door of guitar players and singers and whoever else would come on and off. And the singer thing was, you know, they’d had a whole roster of singers to come up and do, like, a song or two, maybe three at the most, a piece; it was gonna be pretty evenly divided, and at the last minute, several of those singers pulled out and so, like, 30 hours for getting on a plane, I get this call and was, like, ‘Would you want to do, like, seven or eight songs?’ [Laughs] Jimmy Page called out Robert Plant ‘lip syncing’ in this video a couple of days ago.
“It’s, like, ‘Okay.’ Once again, like, ‘No pressure or anything; I’ll just do all these songs unrehearsed with a band assembled just for this in front of Jimmy Page. Killer, all right.’ But it was great, though.”All day long, that was the word from his people: ‘Don’t even mention it, it’s not gonna happen, he’s just here to watch.’ So, I was on stage and I would occasionally joke with him. “I was, like, ‘Yeah man, not feeling any pressure or anything, this isn’t nerve-racking at all. Jump up any time, feel free.’ And he was laughing and stuff, and man, eventually, he got up and played ‘Rock N’ Roll’ with us, and that was so cool.
Duvall concludes: “A sunburst Les Paul appeared out of nowhere, and he’s just up there doing his moves, he’s making the faces; it was just, like, ‘Oh my god, this is crazy!’ And I’m looking over, I’m, like, ‘Oh my god,’ and there were tables to the side of me, and I was, like, ‘You know what? I’m just going, when I’m not actually singing on this song, I’m gonna crouch down so that one, I’m not blocking folks who paid a lot of money for a plate and they want to see this cat, and also just so I can enjoy it. And sure enough, he’s rocking out right here and I’m crouched down, and he looks at me, just gawking at him, at one point he makes this face, ‘Yeah, I know, right? Killer, isn’t it?’. It was great.” The Black Crowes ripped a Robert Plant performance not too long ago.
Credit to UG for the transcription.
