JIMMY PAGE Says LED ZEPPELIN Remasters Trump All The Original Albums

According to The Pulse Of Radio, Jimmy Page says the new remastered versions of LED ZEPPELIN's albums easily trump the sound of the original albums and previous CD masters. Coming on February 25 is the sixth and latest ZEP reissue supervised by Page — 1975's "Physical Graffiti". The new edition features seven previously unissued alternate tracks and outtakes — in addition to remastered versions of such ZEPPELIN classics as "Kashmir", "Trampled Under Foot", "Houses Of The Holy", "In My Time Of Dying", "Down By The Seaside", "Boogie With Stu" and "The Wonton Song", among others.

Page explained that when pressing the ZEPPELIN albums into LP records back in the day, as the process went on, sound quality was compromised the further the music got from the original tapes — a situation that has been rectified by modern technology. "What happens is, with these albums [is] that you find that the first test pressings are pretty good, but once they get them on the production line, then the quality, sort of, it starts to disappear a bit — or lack," he said. "With all of the advance of technology, that has sort of, preceded the point that we can… that I can revisit the albums and re-cut them; then it gave the opportunity to give the best possible quality at this point. And really, actually — by hi-fi standards, this in, like reviews in hi-fi magazines — [they say] they're better than what the original ones were; which of course, that's always the object of the exercise."

The Pulse Of Radio asked Page if while handling the band's classic masters while upgrading their quality, he was ever tempted to throw them back up on the board and do some minor tweaking to them. "I'm not into re-writing history, I'm just re-presenting," he explained. "All of the music that you hear across the companion disc is all basically mixes from the time. I thought it was essential to have mixes from the time, because you've got the mindset, it's showing the mindset of what's being done. To go to the multi-tracks and start remixing, then that's a whole different total ballgame. I wasn't into that. I really wanted something whereby totally reflected what was going on at that point of time — of the time capsule, if you like, of when these things are being recorded. That's what the idea was of this."