George Pimentel/WireImageLed Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page recently has been busy promoting the band’s just-released archival collection The Complete BBC Sessions, an expanded version of 1997’s BBC Sessions compilation, but the rock legend says he still is planning to get back to doing new music. In a recent interview with the U.K. digital radio service Planet Rock, Page admitted that he’d initially expected to be “playing with other musicians” by this time, but that likely now won’t happen until 2017.
“Clearly now it’s not going to materialize until next year,” he told Planet Rock. “That’s not that far away now!”
The 72-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer says he “quite rightly” has been criticized for delaying his plans to start a new musical project, but explained that putting together The Complete BBC Sessions was a time-consuming endeavor.
“The BBC Sessions was an epic, when you think everything has to be listened to in real time and all of that,” Page noted. “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.”
In addition, Jimmy revealed that he’s hoping to prepare new archival releases featuring performances by his pre-Led Zeppelin band The Yardbirds.
“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,” he explained, adding the his ex-band mates were “really thrilled with [the material] they heard.”
The Complete BBC Sessions features recordings of Led Zeppelin taken from radio programs or concerts that aired live over the air from 1969 to 1971. It includes eight previously unreleased performances.
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