Jimmy Page has said he will be returning to live performance in 2016, with a new band playing in a manner “totally different” to his work with Led Zeppelin.
“There will be all sorts of material from different eras,” he told Classic Rock. “Right across the board – that’s the way I’m seeing it. But like I said, there will be surprises. It won’t be entirely what people might be expecting.”
Page said he had been unable to record a new album or put together a touring band because he had been too involved in the remastering, repackaging and reissuing of the Led Zeppelin catalogue.
“It was a question of having time,” he said. “And the only way to have time is to shut down and then do what you want to do. I’ve been doing so much Led Zeppelin stuff over quite a number of years now … So it’s not been so easy to think about anything else in the tail end of this year. But okay, next year – bang!”
Before fans get too excited, however, Page has been talking about returning to performance for nearly two years. In May 2014, he told the Boston Globe it was “time to get together with some musicians and be seen to be playing” and said to Rolling Stone he had plenty of new material written. “I do have material and a passion for it. I need to work towards it, and now I can without all the other side issues going on,” he told Rolling Stone.
In September 2014, at a playback of tracks from Led Zeppelin IV and Houses of the Holy, he said he would be putting a new band together in 2015. “I would play material that spanned everything from my recording career right back to my very, very early days with the Yardbirds,” he said. “There would certainly be some new material in there as well.”
Our advice, then, is don’t hold your breath.