“Fifty per cent of that was good”: The one album Jimmy Page only enjoyed half of
No artist is obligated to be in love with everything they create. The artistic process is always going to be a hard life for anyone to lead, and as much as some people love chasing their muse wherever it leads, it can become like pulling teeth trying to find the right chord for a tune or even changing one minuscule line in the middle of a song. Although Jimmy Page usually only needed a decent riff to get him through most of Led Zeppelin’s catalogue, he did remember that a handful of his records didn’t wow him like they did in his prime.
In a band like Zeppelin, Page was always going to have the final say to some degree. The band were presented as equals most of the time, but given how much he gave to the band with every lick he spat out, it felt like a malevolent dictatorship where Page would play, produce and live out the rock and roll lifestyle more often than anyone else in the group.
Although John Paul Jones would also have the odd riff that he would sprinkle into the mix, a lot of what made the band so magical came down to the way that Page and Robert Plant wrote melodies together. They had a certain symbiosis when it came time for ‘The Golden God’ to write some lyrics to the song, and from ‘Black Dog’ to ‘Going to California’, Plant manages to dance around the riff whenever he starts singing, which is incredibly difficult if you’re not prepared for it.
When John Bonham passed away in the 1980s, everyone had the image of what a Zeppelin reunion would look like. It would have to be a good idea to bring all of them back together, but outside of various one-off gigs, the only time that many people heard that magic back together again was when Page and Plant started working together during the 1990s.
While Unledded was a chance to inhabit their old tunes again, the reunion wouldn’t have been as authentic as Walking Into Clarksdale. Steve Albini was already a perfect choice given his habit of keeping everything dry, and listening to the way Page and Plant are bouncing off each other, it’s almost like the album is a document of them in a rehearsal space instead of those polished records Zeppelin made in their later years.
Even though Page was proud of what he accomplished on the record, he did admit that only half of the record held up over time, saying, “I think that the Walking Into Clarksdale album, fifty per cent of that is really, really, really good. I’m super-critical about stuff I listen back to, but I think there’s some superb stuff on there… He’s singing great, I’m playing well, the band’s gelling and we’ve got some good ideas on it.”
But that may have been a case of Page being pragmatic. The idea of two members of Led Zeppelin capturing the same energy that the full band did would have been foolish on anyone’s part. However, given the fact that years had passed, they managed to still sound pretty damn good even without one of the most thunderous rhythm sections of all time backing them up.
It’s a shame that Jones couldn’t have joined the party during that go-around, but it might have been for the best that he never got the call. It might have hurt like hell to see his old bandmates making up and playing together again, but if they had 75 per cent of Zeppelin together on one album, it would only take a few press photos for people to start wondering whether a reunion was in the works.
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