JIMMY PAGE Says He Will Start New Band, Perform Material Spanning His Entire Career

According to The Pulse Of Radio, Jimmy Page got pretty peeved at the by-now-obligatory LED ZEPPELIN reunion question earlier today (Tuesday, September 30) at London's Olympic Studios. Page met with a select group of reporters to preview his deluxe remastering job on the band's fourth and fifth albums, 1971's "Led Zeppelin IV" and "Houses Of The Holy", which are coming on October 28. When asked by a NME.com reporter whether the process of going back to the band's original tapes made him want to reunite LED ZEPPELIN, he said, "I don't think it looks as though that's a possibility or on the cards, so there's not much more I can say about that. I'm not going to give a detail-by-detail account of what one person says or another person says. All I can say is it doesn't look likely, does it?" When pressed as to whether the hold out in a ZEP reunion was Robert Plant, a terse Jimmy Page snapped: "I've just said it doesn't look very likely."

Page — who hasn't toured as a solo act since 1988 — spoke about his prospects for hitting the road. "If I was to play again it would be with musicians that would be… some of the names might be new to you," he said. "I haven't put them together yet but I'm going to do that next year. If I went out to play, I would play material that spanned everything from my recording career right back to my very, very early days with THE YARDBIRDS. There would certainly be some new material in there as well…"

He continued: "I love playing live, I really do. Live concerts are always an interesting challenge because it means you can always change things as you're playing every night. You can make it even more of an adventure. I would play all of the things I'm known to play — instrumental versions of 'Dazed And Confused' etcetera, etcetera…"

Plant, who's busy promoting his new album, "Lullaby And… The Ceaseless Roar", was recently asked by Billboard if he heard anything revelatory in Page's archival snapshots in the reissues of "Led Zeppelin IV" and "Houses Of The Holy". Plant dismissed the unreleased tracks, saying, "No, not really. Because it's so long ago. What you're hearing there is mostly work-in-progress stuff. Things on their way to completion, and maybe there's some little quirk or something that led to an either/or moment. But it's nothing relevant, really. Not to me, at least."

Coming on October 28 will be the Page-remastered editions of 1971's "Led Zeppelin IV" and 1973's "Houses Of The Holy", which will both be released with previously unreleased audio content in a variety of packages — including a limited-edition "Super Deluxe" box set.

Plant spoke about his use of ZEPPELIN material in his current live act, but hinted that it was the modern approach to the material that delivers the point across. "I think it's a way to enjoy the music," he said. "We do 'Black Dog' and 'Whole Lotta Love' and these other ones, and our approach is driven mostly by trance and psychedelia and the musicians' relationships to African music. In each case, one of the guys in the band will take dominance, and that kind of determines where it goes."