Jimmy Page reveals the best songs that Led Zeppelin never released
It’s the kind of thing that drives fans mad—wondering about all the songs their favourite artists have hidden away, never to be heard by the world. There are David Bowie tracks that will remain unheard, Beatles songs lost to time, and, like any artist with a long career, Led Zeppelin have a vast archive of unreleased material. But if Jimmy Page were to open the vaults for just one portion of it, he knows exactly what it would be.
With nine studio albums, four live albums, and ten compilations, there’s no shortage of Led Zeppelin material out there. Their albums weren’t short either—the band never starved their fans, keeping them well fed then and now. New stories and documentaries continue to emerge, along with fresh material from the remaining members. There are countless live videos to explore, along with niche treasures like alternative studio takes or isolated vocals for the most dedicated superfans. Yet, no matter how much exists, there will always be a hunger for more.
That’s what makes the idea of an archive so compelling. Some artists have chosen to open theirs, while others have their unreleased work unveiled posthumously, offering a glimpse into the vast collections of music they left behind.
Of course, some artists are more comfortable with it than others. The Beatles, for example, have released countless studio outtakes and demo versions—never shy about letting the public hear their rough or unfinished work. On the other hand, Prince’s legacy is carefully protected, with any posthumous releases being polished and complete, just as he would have wanted.
It seems like Led Zeppelin sits somewhere between the two. All nine of the band’s albums have been rereleased with additional, previously unheard music. But this was a way for them to somewhat regain control of that music, grabbing it back from bootleggers who would circulate rougher cuts or live tracks, allowing Page’s perfectionism to feel slightly more soothed as the band shared their own proper takes.
Out of all of it, some of it truly stands out to him as great work, despite the fact the band didn’t originally release it. In particular, Page looks back with fondness as a 1972 stint in the studio in India.
“I love the Bombay session from ’72,” Page told Louder Sound, considering the recordings captured then as the band’s best-unreleased songs. However, the whole band aren’t even on them. “It was just Robert [Plant] and I that went out there,” he explained as the two musicians went out to India alone on an impromptu trip when they could slip away from a hectic schedule.
It was a wild moment in their history. “You know why we came?” Page told Junior Statesman, a local youth magazine in Bombay, “To see if we could set up a recording studio. But the customs regulations are tough, man. Like, it will take us six months to get our equipment out of Bombay airport.” So, as they were unable to get their gear in, the two worked with what they had, which was local musicians and a state-of-the-art Stellavox quadraphonic tape machine that Page had managed to smuggle in.
“I was so mad keen to do something with Indian musicians. They were the equivalent of what you would now call the Bollywood musicians, except in those days it was really insular,” Page said to Louder Sound about that period. Eager to engage with the culture surrounding them, they began to lay down some demos in a fascinating collaboration with a bunch of players who really had no idea who they were.
“They were classical players, and they’d never heard Led Zeppelin music before,” he said as the experiment was to see how their ideas could translate from musician to musician, culture to culture.
But none of it was released. All those tapes simply ended up in the archive in some storage box as they were pretty much forgotten about. However, eventually, in 2014, they found a home on the re-release of Coda as Page finally let people in on what he believes to be the best of their unreleased material.
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