Jimmy Page says previously unheard Led Zeppelin music will be released for band's 50th anniversary

Yup, probably why so many shows run fast or slow and have to be speed corrected.

 

I could be wrong but I thought they didn't use the makamachi deck untill the 77 tour and everything before that was on reels some people claim the reason there is such a down turn in the sound quality of the boards from 1975 to 1977 is because 75 was on reels and 77 was on cassettes. The 1980 boards were recorded on cassette as well.

 

You might be right. However, I don't see a great drop in quality from the '75 boards to '77 - '80. I don't think any of the soundboards from '75 are all that great. Some are very good, of course.

 

There's a possibility that those early Fillmore West shows will not make it out. If these are part of the stash that's missing from Jimmy's vault, then I would have to assume that any other copies or original masters were possibly lost in the arson fire at Graham's office. That would mean that the only copies in existence are the ones fans got for themselves. Please keep in mind that this is all a guess on my part. I hope I'm proven wrong.

 

Zeppelin does have sound board tapes in the vault and that Seattle tape is just a sooundboard. Page will very likely not release soundboards. The question is what multitrack recordings do they have.

 

Really? While they may not reach the levels of a professionally mixed and mastered release, many of those board tapes sound incredible, especially given the circumstances and time that they were recorded.

Back in the olden days , just obtaining a low quality recording of the mighty Zep was a joyous occasion! These days it's almost an embarrassment of riches. I'm an old dude though, who used to trade tapes of badly recorded bootleg LP's, or overpay (big dollas) for a poorly dubbed cassette.

Thing is, after hearing some of the live stuff (especially Blueberry Hill) when I was in high school it made me appreciate how great Led Zep was, how much they spread their wings, took risks, and just went for it live.

While it didn't always work, or sound good, there weren't that many bands (a handful - the Dead, Springsteen, Allman Bros) who got after it like that.

It was a Pandora's Box! Now, my hard drives are full, my CD's are burned, and I still prolly (sic) don't have enough time, or years, to listen to all the stuff more than once or twice.

Damn. I freakin' love Zeppelin! Please Jimmy surprise me, US, with something NEW!!!

 

A new zeppelin soundboard tape comes out on bootleg every year sometimes 2 a year .

 

Those 75 boards are great quality for what they are and are better then many other bands boards from that era. Considering they are just recordings of the p.a feed and are not really true stereo mixes and had no effort put into them they sound amazing for what they are. Are they as good as a betty board greatful dead sb? No are they official release quality ? No but they are amazing for what they are. In terms of sb recordings I think they are fantastic

 

I think you're exaggerating just a tad. They really aren't that great by any stretch of the imagination. Some of the worst I've heard in fact, considering what a major act they were.

 

Most soundboards are not great because they were not meant to be they were for reference purpose only and only had to be good enough for the band's to evaluate their shows even properly mixed boards like betty boards were not created for release. The dead just wanted an enjoyable mix for their own listening. Most band's had no effort put into those tapes and considered them no better then demo tapes.

 

Really?

Yeah, really. None of them sound incredible. Not one. And no, Southampton doesn't count. That's a multitrack mixdown. Some of them do sound pretty good, good enough for repeated listening.

Now, that doesn't mean I don't appreciate them. I'm very happy to have 'em. And I'm sure I'm just as old as you, or within a few years. I picked up my first Zeppelin bootleg in 1979, not counting hearing BBC recordings.

Cicumstances??? The Zep 'boards were recorded by the Zep crew. They are actually somewhat disappointing in that regard, but they are all most likely from an FOH mix, which is going to be unbalanced from the get-go.

It's the better audience recordings of Led Zeppelin that are truly remarkable to me.

 

Jimmy page has stared many times he regrets that he didn't have a multitrack machine running more or hire video cameras more often but he said he never dreamed there would be these things called cds and or the home video explosion or that people would even be interested in their live performances decades down the road grant and page had that policy of no live records to build to limit exposure and build the mystic .and if you want to see zep you have to buy a ticket in hind sight it probably seems like a mistake to page but at the time that policy worked.

 

Those 1971 and 73 boards are just o.k soumdwise . The 75 boards are the best overall but they are still just board tapes. Kept in the context of what they are they are great but compared to release quality they don t hold up but they are incredible to have. Think what we would have without all those 73 to 1980 boards . It would be pretty depressing without those boards.

 

Yeah it's really hard to beat the Millard recordings or blueberry hill when it comes to live zep.

 

In October 2014 Dave Lewis of the Tight but Loose magazine conducted a short interview with Jimmy Page (at the same time as the deluxe IV and Houses of the Holy was released):

DL: Have there been things that you thought were in the tape archive that you could not locate?

JP: What do you mean, like Jennings Farm Blues? I knew that had been nicked. I tell you what I didn’t think I had. I didn’t think I had what was going to be the overture for The Song Remains The Same. I didn’t think I had that, I thought that had got nicked along with the Bombay sessions and all of that. I mean I did have stuff that got lifted right back in the day – the analogue tapes disappeared. But I did have that. It was for my own reference with all the guitars on it. It wasn’t a detailed mix but it’s got all the elements on and that’s what’s important really"

DL: Are there any plans to release further Led Zeppelin live sets?

JP: Well, I remember talking to Ahmet Ertegun many years ago. I said to him about putting out bootlegs and he liked the idea of having bootlegs of the bootlegs, he thought that was fun… but it didn’t really come to much. Everyone would have thought ‘Yeah, that’s a good idea’. You just see what’s voted the top ten bootlegs and you just put them out. I know it’s been done now by other acts but at the time I thought of it, nobody had actually done it. A lot of ideas I had did not necessarily come to fruition and that was one of them.

DL: So you could put out something like Japan 1971?

JP: I could, but I’ve been doing so much Led Zeppelin work… and it’s not just compiling it , but it’s promoting it. That all takes time. I mean I’m not 40-years old or even 50-years old – where I can say ‘I’ve got at least another 25 years’. I maybe don’t have another 25 years and it comes to the point where you look at everything you’ve got and for me the website was the first thing I needed to do.

Full interview can be found at www.tightbutloose.co.uk

A few years later and we can look forward to Led Zeppelin again addressing the balance between studio recordings and live recordings.

 

Uh, my point was it's still ZEP and when I was young all there was - were the LP's - LIVE ZEP? Where???

Now "we" bitch about the quality and possible "new" releases?

Slag away.

 

How much promoting really goes into all of this stuff.I mean Metallica is not Zeppelin but they just put out this massive box with soundboards from the same tour warts and all cuts and all missing members and all.We heard various stages of completion works in progress.Are we flaming their "Legacy" into oblivion?No we are are celebrating the darn music like never before!!!!!!!!!!

 

aroney, as a fellow Zephead I don't want to get your hopes up, but a US gossip blog recently shared that "a permanent A list rock band have just said privately they will do something they said they'd never do: reform with (most of) the original line up". Lots of speculation it might be Guns n Roses with Izzy etc, but the wording "won't be like the half hearted reunions of the past" sounds an awful lot like Zep, so speculation on social media is frenzied! Said blog does talk a lot of nonsense so I'm not getting my hopes up but it's always fun to speculate.

 

Jimmy was always aware of what was stolen, and by whom.

He had copies of all those recordings returned in early 1999.

 

You should check out the soundboard from the 2/12/75 show in New York. Great quality and best sounding soundboard of the tour. Also a killer show!

 

There's a blast from the past, I haven't heard his name in years. His books were kind of like a bible for me back when I was trading Zeppelin shows on cassette. I met Mr. Rey at a Led Zeppelin convention in Niagara Falls in 1996.

 

For a really Schadenfreudelicious thrill, I'd give anything to hear one of the full shows when they opened for Vanilla Fudge (in their first US tour in the Rockies and West Coast) that the Fudge bailed out on because "Len Zefflin" was tearing it up and making the Fudge look like the steaming pile of excrement that they were.

 

There's long been a rumour a tape exists of the Boxing day '68 show supporting the Fudge in Denver. Supposedly the guy hoards it to this day!

 

The O2 show was anything but half-hearted. It was monumental. They put the time in and killed it.