JIMMY PAGE Hopes To Hit The Road In 2017

Jimmy Page has told the U.K. digital radio station Planet Rock that he is hoping to hit the road in 2017 with a brand new band.

The LED ZEPPELIN guitarist appeared on "Mojo Rocks" with Phil Alexander on Saturday night to talk about the expanded version of the band's 1997 "BBC Sessions" album and he joked that he has been "quite rightly" criticized for not releasing any fresh material.

"The 'BBC Sessions' was an epic, when you think everything has to be listened to in real time and all of that," Jimmy said. "It's an epic, but it's an epic I was really prepared to take on, because, historically, it was really important for people to have all that information about what was going on in the studio at that point of time. It took a lot of time, and I must say that I hoped by this time that I would be sort of playing with other musicians. I've said that to you before but I still hope to do that. Clearly now it's not going to materialize until next year. That's not that far away now!"

Page previously told Guitar World that the live band for his upcoming shows would be "totally different" from LED ZEPPELIN.

"There will be all sorts of material from different eras," the guitarist told the magazine. "Right across the board; that's the way I'm seeing it. But like I said, there will be surprises. It won't be entirely what people might be expecting."

"I haven't got another 20-30 years left in me," Page told Billboard in 2014 year, "so I really need to get out there and present myself the way that I like to present myself, and to be seen and be heard."

Page's last tour was alongside Robert Plant in 1998.

The guitarist, who was also involved in remastering the entire LED ZEPPELIN back catalog for re-release, didn't rule out restoring more of the band's material.

"I'm sure there will be some [restored] releases over the next few years," he told "Mojo Rocks". "But it's the sort of thing where we need to have a good old chat with the band, y'know. A few band meetings to discuss the ideas. So I hope so."

Jimmy also said that he's in contact with his former bandmates in the seminal British blues-rock group THE YARDBIRDS about releasing restored versions of their works.

"I'm in touch with the members of THE YARDBIRDS and I hope to be seeing them relatively soon and then the material I've got we'll see how much of it comes out. Hopefully all of it will come out, but they haven't heard all of the things, they've just heard certain samples of things, and they were really thrilled with what they heard, which is cool.

"It's all stuff that was done right in the last stages of THE YARDBIRDS, it's more or less almost in that last year that we had together. It's got things that were really sort of crossover.

"I'm just really keen to do that and do it with them… so we're all involved, bits of memorabilia and all of that. I'm very very hopeful that it will come together. I'm confident that it will."

You can listen to "Mojo Rocks" at this location.