Led Zeppelin News

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss appeared this morning on BBC One’s morning show BBC Breakfast to discuss the new album Raising Sand.

Hi there Achilles Last Stand!

I’m working on a project through Led Zeppelin’s record label to help promote the release of The Mothership boxed set in a few weeks time.
I’ve set up a blog to run a few online campaigns to get some Led Zeppelin presence in as many places on the web as possible and am currently getting in touch with fans and people who run their own sites to see if they’d like to get involved…

I’ve also managed to arrange a cool animation through Netdisaster where you can smash Zeppelins through any site you like See your site attacked at:
http://test.netdisaster.com/go.php?mode=zeppelin&sound=on&url=http://www.led-zeppelin.org

I’ve linked to your site from the blog at www.thezep.net, it would be great if you could come and have a look at the ‘projects’ we’ve set up, let me know what you think and also if you’d like to get involved.
Some of the campaigns, like googlebombing, will take large numbers of people to make it work so I’m trying to mobilise a militia of Zep heads!

Thanks for your time, if you’re interested then do get in touch and come back to the blog, we’ve got some great things lined up to do over the next few weeks.

Cheers,

Ian

Rock journalist Ritchie Yorke takes you backstage with Led Zeppelin bass player John Paul Jones, who is adamant a world tour is not on the agenda after the band’s reunion concert in London next month.

I’m here to assure you from the inside out that the band is taking this show very, very seriously.

“Well yes, we are pretty excited about this and also a bit daunted,” Jonesy nods during an interview at London’s sumptuous Landmark Hotel.

“Initially I was invited to join in a memorial concert for Ahmet in New York performing with the likes of Ben E King last January. Then Robert let it be known that he would rather do something for Ahmet in England,” recalled Jones.

“Originally we were going to play the Royal Albert Hall, along with another night with some other acts. Then the Royal Albert was deemed too small and it moved to the Dome (re-named the O2 arena).

“At first, we would be playing 40 minutes, then it went to an hour. I was a bit reluctant along the way because I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to part of getting that whole circus on the road again. But I was persuaded to try out a rehearsal to see if we really wanted to play together.”

In a union of musical spirit and muse, the recent rehearsal harked back to that first prophetic time when the band originally played together for the first time in 1968 with Jason’s father the incomparable John “Bonzo” Bonham on drums and created hard rock magic.

“That first rehearsal this month was just amazing,” reflected Jones. “It took us back to that first meeting in ‘68. So we decided to go ahead and we will be putting in some serious rehearsal sessions right up until the show itself.”

“At the first rehearsal, we sounded pretty hot,” Jones claimed. “Amazingly so. We were amazingly tight. Gaps in the right place and so on - it was really really tight.

“And to really really get into the material so that we can be really tight: that’s what we’re aiming at.”

Don’t say that you haven’t been warned folks. Read the entire story here

Thanks to William McGlynn

“Raising Sand”, the collaboration between Led Zeppelin legend Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, is on track to sell between 80,000 and 90,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 2 on The Billboard 200 chart (behind “American Idol” and Grammy Best New Artist winner Carrie Underwood), according to Hits Daily Double.

According to Tennessean.com, Plant and Krauss taped an episode of “CMT Crossroads” last Thursday at The Mill at Lebanon in Tennessee that will air at a later date.

Produced by T Bone Burnett, “Raising Sand” includes versions of the Everly Brothers’ “Gone, Gone, Gone (Done Moved On)”, Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan’s “Trampled Rose” and “Please Read the Letter”, first released on the 1998 Plant/Jimmy Page album “Walking Into Clarksdale”.

Listen to the first single, “Gone, Gone, Gone (Done Moved On)”, at this location (Real media). Additional samples are available at Amazon.com.

According to Billboard.com, Plant and Krauss first performed together in 2004 at a Leadbelly tribute at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, but it took several years before they found time to team up in the studio with Burnett in Nashville and Los Angeles.

http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=83509

According to NME.com, Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant has said that the reunion of the band has made him feel “like Superman.”

The singer went on to add that he was overwhelmed by the anticipation.

When asked about how he felt, he said: “I just want to have fun. And if it’s fun, it’s fun. This is fun. This a big day today. It’s one of the biggest days.”

Plant told U.S. radio station WNYC: “Having fun in England is having fun. I just hope we all have fun. Let’s face it. So many people want to go to the thing. How about if it’s fantastic?

“The anticipation is incredibly overwhelming for me. I’m carrying it around like some kind of kryptonite, you know? And all I want to do is have some fun.”

The band is set to reform for a one-off show at the O2 Arena in London on November 26.

The Pulse of Radio reports: Robert Plant insists that Led Zeppelin’s reunion show next month in London is not a dry run for an upcoming world tour. Plant told Uncut, “There’ll be one show and that’ll be it. We need one last great show because we’ve done some (reunion) shows and they’ve been crap.”ROLLING STONES
When asked if the one show will lead to the temptation to take the show on the road, Plant said, “Not for me, but I can’t speak for anyone else.”
Plant was asked if he ever thought about touring with Zeppelin, if only to blow the band’s longtime competitors The Who and The Rolling Stones away: “We weren’t in competition with anybody. We were Led Zeppelin. We were at that time the biggest band in the world. There wasn’t anyone else. There was no one near us. We were out there on our own. And blowing everybody away isn’t the issue anymore. Blowing myself away is the issue. That’s what it’s all about now.”
He went on to knock The Who and the Stones, who have carried on pleasing fans over the years despite losing founding members: “They’re doing what they’re doing. It keeps them off the streets, I suppose.”

Apple Inc. has announced that a special digital box set containing Led Zeppelin’s entire discography, “The Complete Led Zeppelin”, is now available for pre-order exclusively on the iTunes Store.

Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes, said, “Now you can get all of the band’s albums with one click for a $99.”

In addition to “The Complete Led Zeppelin” and “Mothership”, Led Zeppelin’s entire catalog of songs and albums will also be available for individual purchase and download beginning November 13.

iTunes Store customers who order either collection will automatically be entered to win a chance to see Led Zeppelin’s reunion performance at London’s O2 Arena on November 26. The winner receives two tickets to the show, round-trip airfare and hotel accommodations.

http://www.apple.com/itunes/

MSNBC’s website has Robert Plant & Alison Krauss scheduled in studio for their Today Concert Series on Wednesday, October 24, 2007. Check your local listings for airtimes.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3041478/

The three surviving members of Led Zeppelin are reuniting next month for their first full concert since disbanding 27 years ago.

What everyone wants to know, though, is this a precursor to a world concert tour? Or a new CD of original material? Or both?

Neither guitarist Jimmy Page nor bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones ruled out anything Tuesday, in separate telephone interviews with Sun Media.

Page, Jones, singer Robert Plant and drummer Jason Bonham, son of the fourth member of Zeppelin, John Bonham, who died in 1980, are playing a two-hour set Nov. 26 at the 02 Arena in London, England, as part of a tribute concert in aid of the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund. Ertegun was the forward-thinking Atlantic Records executive who signed Zeppelin to a record deal in 1968.

So is this show actually a, well, trial zeppelin for a full-blown reunification?

“Basically, we are concentrating on this show,” Jones, 61, said. “That’s where all the energy is going. I mean, who knows, but one step at a time.”

Page, 63, was much more circuitous in answering the tour question. He said that all three surviving band members, as well as Jason Bonham when he tours with Foreigner, always play Zep material whenever they perform live.

“So you’ve got the four individual members playing Led Zeppelin in four different capacities,” Page said. “When they unite, you’ve got the key members. You can’t play it any better, as they’re the people who actually played it and wrote it in the first place … (The Nov. 26 concert) is what we’re working toward. At the moment, we’re still on our way toward that, although we feel very confident about it. That’s what we have on our horizon at this point. I know you want to hear other answers, but I’m afraid that’s all I can give you.”

Page, though, was less vague as to the prospects of new material from the new Zeppelin lineup.

“Look, I’d be really surprised if there wasn’t. you know, I mean I just know the way we are,” the riffmaster said. “We’re musicians. It’s a good observation, and very true, that as we’re playing we’ll probably be coming up with all manner of things. And that will be fun. And that’s part of being musicians on a collective scale. I mean, that’s what it’s all about. But as far as it going any further, I don’t know. Let’s do the 02 show, shall we? And then we’ll speak to you afterwards.

It was at a jam session back in June, yes, those reports back then were accurate after all, that the four musicians gathered to see if they could make a go of it.

“We had a very, very secret tryout in June, just to see if a) it was possible, and b) if anyone wanted to do it, to see if the will was there,” Jones said. “And it was pretty exciting, I have to tell you. We made all the musical cues, and we were pretty hot.”

Page said it was the crucial moment.

“The hardest step, or the most tentative step, was to actually be able to get together, the four of us, in a rehearsal room to actually play with the instruments, to kick it over, and just fire up that machine, play the music, and keep the whole damn thing under wraps. Which can be kind of tricky, because the minute anyone even sees two of you together on the street, there’s stories of reunions or tours. And there has been for (decades). So this was the trickiest part of the whole operation.

“(Then it was) really hoping that for each of us, individually, that it was going to be a really, really good experience. And if it wasn’t, then we’d all shake hands and nobody would hear about it … As it was, we did manage to pull it off, and we didn’t have to shake hands and say, ‘Well, at least we sort of know that it might not be a good idea.’ It was quite the opposite. It was really exhilarating, it was really thrilling to be playing together again.”

New Zeppelin reissues will soon hit stores: a two-disc best-of CD titled Motherlode (Nov. 13), and bolstered CD and DVD reissues of their 1976 film The Song Remains the Same (Nov. 20). This week, the band also announced that its entire catalogue will be available for full-album or singe-track download on Nov. 13, and that ring tones and wallpapers through Telus are available now.