Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page recently spoke about Unledded and Walking Into Clarksdale, his reunion albums with Jimmy Page. During a recent interview he was asked if he had any notion that the band might reunite back in 1998.
Jimmy Page opens up on the Led Zeppelin reunion
Here is what he said[via Louder Sound]: In ninety-five, when we toured the Unledded project, the idea was to represent some of the songs in a different way, which we’d do every night when we toured with Led Zeppelin. There was always something different to each number. But to give the material a whole new suit of clothes we applied the orchestra and the Egyptian orchestra along with other exotic sounds, like the hurdy-gurdy player. Robert and I did the lion’s share of the writing in Led Zeppelin, so we were both keen to do something with the two of us, so that’s basically what we did.”
The interviewer noted that Page and Plant had dropped ‘Walking Into Clarksdale’ around that time. Page then went on to speak about Walking Into Clarksdale, which is the only studio album by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. It was released by Atlantic Records on 21 April 1998. During the same interview, Page talked about the idea of the album which released in 1998.
“The idea of Walking Into Clarksdale was to do an album without the guitar overdubs that I’d usually use for textures and dynamics, just do things with the one guitar. So I took that on as a bit of a challenge, and I thought it was really successful.”
He went on to add: “There were moments of such suspense: Robert’s vocals coming on with the guitar, just a ghosted chord as a song is building toward the chorus… there was really some good work on that album. I really enjoyed both of those projects. And the connection I had with Michael Lee, the drummer was exhilarating and fulfilling in every way really, because there was lots of improvising going on.”
