Led Zeppelin Remasters in 2014+ to include 2nd disc of bonus material (Pt 8)

grumpy pants on today, I see

Sabbath fans were always cooler

 

You mean ... "Jimmy Payge-Per-View"?

 

Well, I have to admit, that made me smile. You are right, sorry about that! I have just changed into my happy-mellow pants.

The Presence companion material contains one new, unreleased track. And the Coda companion discs contain a good deal of truly different stuff - the Bombay session versions of Friends and Four Sticks; a totally different version of Levee; and a few other unreleased tracks and what appears to be truly different versions of previously released tracks (like Bring It on Home and The Wanton Song). In Through the Out Door is more uncertain, although the alt. version of In the Evening has been released, and it too is really different from the official version. So thus far, it appears these final three reissues might contain the most interesting companion material of the whole campaign (although I still think the Zep III companion disc is pretty terrific).

You're lucky I'm wearing my happy-mellow pants!

 

Agreed. There's something delightfully uncomfortable about that album.

 

Quick! Change!

 

Yeah, the Zep III companion disc is the one to beat. I think these last three have a pretty good shot at equaling it ... and perhaps even surpassing it.

 

Just don't let JETman hear you say that!

 

Agree. But they will really have to be good to beat the III companion disc.

 

The only one I have.

 

Just heard from BullMoose, my order has been processed and is shipping tomorrow!

 

Funds are tight, so I will probably be getting these one at a time. Gonna be tough waiting to get Coda (I have to get them in order ... I know everyone here understands!)

 

I decided to keep the Diaments for Presence, Out Door, and Coda, as these are not faves of mine, and funds are tight.

 

I'll pick up the Deluxe CD sets Friday, but I will wait on the vinyl until a good number of reviews/opinions are out there. I don't want to get stuck with a flawed first run like what happened with HOTH.

 

I purchased the first (4) Deluxe CD's and single vinyl re-issues. I'll be buying just the Coda 3cd Deluxe and that's it for me. Kept the full catalog of Originals and Marino remasters on cd, plus whatever else (lps/ compilations, 45's etc)

 

For the record, I am far from the only one here or anywhere who feels that way. When each of the last 4 were released, one could hear the collective "MEH" from a million miles away. So get over yourself, and leave me out of it.

 

Very cool! I ordered the deluxe CDs from Bull Moose but haven't gotten a shipping notification yet. I'm wondering if it's because you're on the west coast and I'm on the east - perhaps they don't send east coast orders out as much ahead of Friday because they don't want to risk people receiving them before Friday...?

 

Probably so. if it ships tomorrow, it is very unlikely I would get it before Friday.

 

I'm going to pick mine up on Thursday.

 

I think after all is said and done CODA will stand as the one with the best bonuses. And I knew this was gonna happen months ago!!!

 

http://radio.com/2015/07/28/jimmy-page-led-zeppelin-future/

Jimmy Page Looks Back on Led Zeppelin, and Towards the Future
July 28, 2015 6:11 PM

By Brian Ives

On Friday (July 31), Led Zeppelin will release expanded reissues of their final two albums, 1976’s Presence and 1979’s In Through the Out Door, as well as the posthumous outtakes collection, Coda. Thus bringing to a close a project that the band’s guitarist, producer and leader, Jimmy Page, has been working on for the past few years.
Many artists of his generation are content to allow their record label to repackage and remaster their seminal albums; others have no choice in the matter, as their labels are legally able to do whatever they want. But Page has always been firmly in charge of Led Zeppelin the band and the brand, and takes that responsibility exceedingly seriously. Indeed, over the course of three interviews in the past year and a half, I always detected a combination of irritation and disbelief that his former bandmates, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones weren’t very involved in working on, or promoting, the reissues.

Although now Page may be ready to move on, satisfied that the definitive versions of Led Zeppelin’s albums are now available in varying formats. In our interview discussing the upcoming three reissues, he also spoke about the possibility of releasing the long-abandoned XYZ project (which featured former Yes members Chris Squire and Alan White) and hinted at some new music, which would be his first group of new songs since his 1998 collaboration with Robert Plant, Walking Into Clarksdale.
~
Coda was the first Led Zeppelin album that I bought when it was new; I was too young to really be aware of the band when you were around, but it was so exciting to know that a “new” Zeppelin album was coming out. But what prompted you to release a collection of outtakes in 1982?

Coda had to be put together, it was a sort of… we owed the record company another album. I don’t even know how [Led Zeppelin’s late manager] Peter Grant managed to broach the subject to me, it was quite a while after we’d lost John [Bonham]. But to me, it still felt like we’d just lost him yesterday. So it was a difficult album to put together, but there was the backbone of it: “Bonzo’s Montreaux,” which was recorded between Presence and In Through the Out Door. I’d worked on it with John. The other members weren’t there. That, for me, was the backbone of the album. Under the circumstances, there couldn’t be anything better than having a drum orchestra of John Bonham.

Compiling the music for these companion discs, I knew I wanted to arrive at two extra discs for Coda. To make it a total celebration of Led Zeppelin and its music, and the quirkiness of it. I’d surprised the band with some of this stuff, because they’d not heard it. I just really wanted to show so many colors and textures, and it does.

How involved were Robert Plant and John Paul Jones in the reissue process, did you send them tapes?

I’ll tell you how it worked. I knew there were some key pieces [that I wanted to include], but this was going to be such a complete picture [of the band]. The whole depth and length of the project became quite clear, but I couldn’t invest hundreds of hours of listening to tapes without the help of the others.
What I did was, I played them the companion disc for Led Zeppelin III separately: Robert first. And then the companion disc for Presence. I outlined what the project was going to be. Robert thought it was great. Then I played it for John Paul Jones, and same deal. Robert sent a few tapes that he had, he had a couple of those things were of use.

When I spoke to you last year, you told me that you had some concern that you wouldn’t be able to find bonus material for Presence. When did you find the tracks that make up the companion disc?

It was when I was trawling through stuff, and it sort of turned up. At one point I thought, “Oh boy, we might have to use a live tape.” I wasn’t that happy about having to use live stuff for the first one [the companion disc on the first Led Zeppelin album was a concert recording], but it was what it was. Anyway, I wasn’t going to go through hundreds of hours of tapes to find something, but it magically turned up.

“Nobody’s Fault But Mine” was probably the most popular song from Presence; what do you remember about the recording of that?

It was meant to be tricky, with the stops and the pauses and the phased guitar. When you hear that, you say, “My goodness gracious, these guys are on fire here.” And then you listen to “Tea for One,” and it’s so poignant. And you listen to “For Your Life,” that was made up in the studio. That’s getting more into an avant grade thing, and the whole sort of guitar orchestra, which was “Achilles Last Stand”… I’m personally on fire on that, but not more so than anyone else.

Robert Plant tells a story about falling off of his crutches [the singer had been recovering from a car accident] in the studio, and says that you raced from the control room to help him out.

That actually is true and you’re the only person to say it. He was in a wheelchair, but he was perched up on a stool to sing. Yeah, it’s true. He said, “I never saw him move so fast.” Well, that’s probably quite true.

Besides Robert’s injury, you were dealing with a pretty strict deadline to finish the album, right?

From what you’ve read and from what I’ve been told, we had 18 days in the studio. Well, what I do know is that it was coming to the point where I knew we were going to go over our allotted time. To do all the mixes and the sequencing of the album. The others had gone home, fair enough, they’d done all their parts, and I was doing the mixing and the guitar overdubs and solos here and there. These were the days you had to mix an album manually: it was the engineer’s hands, and my hands, doing everything. You couldn’t just take the files away, these were analog tapes. And the days were ticking by. The Rolling Stones were due to use the studio next. so I asked Mick if we could have a couple of more days. They were trying all different guitarists out at the time, they were doing Black and Blue there, so Mick said, “Yeah.”

Was your solo on the Rolling Stones “One Hit (To the Body)” your way of returning the favor?

That was recorded here in New York. But no, it wasn’t like that. Maybe they owe me a favor! But it was great fun to do that.

You started using modern synthesizers on In Through the Out Door.

That was John Paul Jones. We’re going into rehearsals, and he shows up with this massive theater organ, it was called a Dream Machine. It was a Yamaha Dream Machine, Stevie Wonder had one too. John had it at home and had been working on it, and lo and behold, he’s got these songs together. He’d never written complete songs for Led Zeppelin before. But now he had. It was cool. Because the album before, I’d written it all. It was a guitar driven thing. There’s keyboards on the first Led Zeppelin album, and over the years. But it made obvious logical sense that if he had numbers that he’d written on this new state-of-the-art keyboard, let’s do an album which focuses on the keyboard and features it at the forefront, and that’s how it went.

This was the first time there were Led Zeppelin originals that weren’t co-written by you; “South Bound Saurez” and “All My Love” were written by John Paul Jones and Robert Plant.

John Paul Jones had written complete songs, and I was quite happy about that. If he has a complete song, I’m not going say, “Oh by the way, I want to be credited as a writer” and then change the song. I couldn’t be bothered with that! I wrote the lyrics in the early days, but I wasn’t so happy doing the lyrics, I was happier doing the rest: writing the music and doing the production. Robert was super-established as a lyricist by In Through the Out Door, so obviously he’s going to write lyrics. And that’s how you get a couple of songs written by John Paul Jones and Robert.

Did you play harmonica on any Led Zeppelin songs?

I did play harmonica, but never on Led Zeppelin albums. I was a harmonica player when I was a studio musician. But Robert was a good harmonica player, he could do the country blues style, Sonny Terry or Sonny Boy Williamson, but I don’t think he’d played through an amp before he met me.

So, now you’re done with the remasters, how do you feel about the project?

I feel that it was an important thing to do in the historic picture of Led Zeppelin because, I’ve sort of said this before but it’s a fact… If you say “Led Zeppelin” to somebody, they’ll think of a riff or a vocal, but what I guarantee is that it’s from the studio albums. There’s so much love and affection out there from the audience for the recordings, that I thought that it was only right and proper to release the recordings in a way that had some dignity to it, and that had some context to it, with companion discs that gave a snapshot into the time that these things were recorded. Everything is on the companion disc for a really definite purpose. What it does, in effect, is doubles up the amount of studio information out there. It just gives the people who have been liking Led Zeppelin for so long, it gives them more music to enjoy and I thought that was an important thing to do .

You mentioned not wanting to use live stuff for the Presence companion disc, even though you did so for the companion disc to Led Zeppelin (I). I’m guessing you have more live stuff in the vaults; is that something you plan on addressing in the future?

Um, I’m not going to be looking at that in the immediate future. Because one of the reasons for concentrating on the studio stuff, was because I felt that there was an imbalance. There was the Led Zeppelin DVD [the 2003 DVD of live material] and How the West Was Won [a 2003 album of live material recorded in 1972]. We were on fire on How the West Was Won. And then there was Celebration Day [the 2012 release recorded at Zeppelin’s one-off reunion concert at the O2 Dome in 2007]. In a way, the O2 performance was really good because we look like what we look like now. The only problem is then we became quite recognizable in the street [laughs]. But those projects were all live stuff, so it was important to do this.

I wanted to ask you about the late Chris Squire from Yes…

That was really sad, he was a phenomenal bass player.

I interviewed him about a year and a half ago, and he told me he was hoping that you would release the XYZ tapes at some point [XYZ was a project that involved Page, Squire and Yes drummer Alan White].

Absolutely, but I haven’t worked on it. It’s a series of multi-tracks, it was something that I was wanting to do after all of the Led Zeppelin stuff was out, I wanted to contact Chris and Alan. It’s really sad that we’ve lost him. The music was really good. It’s the first thing that I did after we lost John Bonham. I had a studio at the time, and they wanted to get together, and I thought this was like laying down the gauntlet… I’m not curling up under a rock and hiding [after Led Zeppelin’s breakup]. And these guys are really, really good so I had to be really good too. It was really an interesting blend, and really good music.

You’ve been a vocal fan of Royal Blood – what was it about them that turned you on.

Let’s talk about Royal Blood, I’d seen them on a late night show in England. I thought, “That’s really interesting.” They did two songs and it really stuck with me. I thought “How are they doing that?” And they played so tightly, and were really passionate. I was here in this hotel, and I met the manager of the Arctic Monkeys—who are another really fine band I might add—and I said, “Hi, how are you doing?” I thought he was here with the Arctic Monkeys, and he said he manages Royal Blood. I said, “Do you? I know who they are.” There was quite a buzz going on about them in London. He said they’re playing at the [New York club] Mercury Lounge. And I said, “Can I come? I’ll come to the show!” He said, “Yeah, come, they’d love to meet you!” And I went there, and I wanted to get near the front [of the stage] to see what they were doing, but there were a lot of people who were trying to get to the front. It was phenomenal to feel their music and to feel what they were doing. There were riffs, but with a really intellectual attitude. And it was amazing.

Do you find yourself impressed with new bands often?

That’s the reason I mentioned them, because I had an experience. They don’t fail to impress.

Last year I spoke to Paul Rodgers, who told me that you always go to his shows at Royal Albert Hall, but he can’t get you to get on stage. Would you ever work with him again?

I don’t know. One of the reasons why I didn’t want to get on stage with anybody was simply that, then people would say, “Oh, he’s playing again!” and then I’d wake up the next morning and I’d be flooded with people asking “Can you do this?” or “Can you do that?” Well, I actually managed to engineer a situation whereby I’ve been able to battle that stuff off. It wasn’t about not playing with Paul.

I was concentrating on a number of things: doing my website, I wanted to launch a website, I did that. I wanted to put a book out, which was a lengthy project, I did that. I wanted to make sure that this Led Zeppelin studio work came out, I’ve done that. I’ve set the scene up now, for me to be able to do the thing that everyone wants me to do, and what I want to do, which is take all that energy that I put into everything else, focus that into the guitar. And that’s what I want to do.

Meaning, new music?

New music, and to be seen playing.

 

"New music and to be seen playing.......... cards"

 

Solo tour !

 

Perhaps the rumor that an Earls Court set has been tentatively scheduled for next year is not very accurate. Either way, Japan '71 and Earls Court '75 should receive some sort of official release sooner rather than later.

 

Got all three Super Deluxe tonight. It's going to be a late night!!