In June 1980, Led Zeppelin embarked on a 14-date tour of Europe. Beginning on June 17, in Dortmund, Germany, the tour would also wrap up in Germany, with a July 7 show at Eissporthalle an der Jafféstraße in Berlin.

Tragically, that Berlin show would prove to be the band's last ever performance with drummer John Bonham, who passed away on September 25, 1980, after a day of heavy drinking. He was just 32 years old.

Though Bonham's health was already in decline throughout the summer trek (he collapsed three songs into the band's June 27, 1980 show in Nuremberg, Germany, forcing the band to cancel the rest of the show), you can't hear any evidence of it in the soundboard recording – posted below – of the band's July 7 gig.

Throughout the 14-song set – which included a number of tunes (In the Evening, Hot Dog and All My Love) from the band's 1979 In Through the Out Door album, alongside classics like Black Dog, Kashmir, Whole Lotta Love, and Stairway to Heaven – Bonham was in typically thunderous form. Like the rest of the band, Bonham was all too eager to show audiences that – even after a decade-plus at rock's pinnacle – the mighty Zepp still had plenty of gas in the tank.

Though their commercial standing had never been higher at the dawn of the ‘80s, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and Bonham were jittery about the band's place in rock at the time.

The band's August 4 and 11, 1979 mega-shows in Knebworth, England – designed to be a triumphant live return to their home country after an absence of four years – were polarizing. Many fans felt that the gaudy production of the concerts – which were attended by hundreds of thousands of people in total – distracted from the music itself, which was more than a little ragged at times.

Of course, by this time, punk and especially new wave had gone from buzzy sub-genres to the kings of the hill, rendering the long-form, blues-based music of Zeppelin and their late-‘60s/early ‘70s contemporaries largely out of fashion.

With that in mind, the quartet viewed their summer 1980 gigs as a reset. No big light show, no lasers, no white smoke – not even any lengthy stand-alone solos or flamboyant outfits.

Even the venues on the tour were significantly downsized, the small Western and Central European arenas the band tore through on it being a far cry from the masses at Knebworth and the enormous arena and stadium American crowds the band had entertained on their last tour, all the way back in 1977.

The success of the 1980 European tour gave the band a jolt of momentum, and persuaded them to book a North American tour for the fall of 1980, with a similarly scaled-down approach.

It was during rehearsals for that tour – which was scheduled to begin on October 17 – that Bonham passed away.

We'll obviously never quite know how Led Zeppelin would have evolved from 1980 forward had Bonham lived, but the soundboard recording from their last show with him certainly suggests that they had plenty of musical fire left.

Since emerging alongside singer-songwriter Lyle Lovett in the 1990s, Viktor Krauss has forged a formidable reputation as a modern-day session player on both the electric and acoustic bass.

His intuitive bass work can be heard on Bill Frisell’s Gone, Just Like A Train and James Taylor’s American Standard, while his talent pool as a gifted multi-instrumentalist has been tapped by Alison Krauss in support of her collaborative work with Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant.

“Stuart Duncan and I became the utility players in that band,” says Krauss. “I played electric guitar, acoustic guitar, six-string Danelectro bass, tic-tac bass, keyboards – whatever was needed. Stuart was doing the same thing with banjo, mandolin, fiddle, and a whole range of instruments. It was a lot of fun.”

High points of his career are many, but working alongside Plant ranks among the highest. “The thing that struck me most is that he's exactly the person you'd hope he'd be. He's incredibly smart, gracious, and makes eye contact with everyone. Nobody feels left out of the conversation when he's around.

“Every now and then I’d see footage of Led Zeppelin from 1973 and suddenly remember, ‘Oh right – he actually lived all of that.’”

“Sometimes he'll instinctively create a little extra tension before a phrase resolves, and everybody has to react in real time. His intuition is incredible, and you have to stay on your toes because he's constantly improvising.

“As someone who grew up as a huge Led Zep fan, there were moments where he'd play a phrase that sounded like something straight out of a Zeppelin record.

“I remember one rehearsal Robert asked, ‘Do you know a Led Zeppelin song called The Ocean?’ I just casually answered, ‘Yeah, I think I know that song.’ Those moments were all pretty amazing.”

How did you get the gig with Lyle Lovett?

Even before I moved to Nashville, I'd heard The Large Band record and started thinking seriously about where I wanted my career to go.

I'd spent a lot of time playing big band music, but what Lyle was doing felt unique. He was blending swing, country, and a lot of other influences, and I remember thinking as early as 1989 that I'd like to play with him someday.

When I moved to Nashville in 1992, I started trying to figure out who was on his team. Through various connections, I eventually got to know some people around his management.

At the time, I was playing with Peter Rowan, who was connected to both the bluegrass world through Bill Monroe and the West Coast scene through Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. Peter was this fascinating combination of influences, and through that network I met people who knew Lyle's camp.

Eventually I called, and introduced myself. The response was, ‘Lyle doesn't need anybody now, but I'll keep you in mind.’ So every once in a while I'd check in.

I had a really lean summer in 1994. Peter wasn't working much, and I just thought, ‘Let me call and see if there's anything going on.’ Before I could even finish my sentence, the manager said, ‘Oh yeah, Lyle might need a bass player.’

I didn't know if it was actually going to happen, but about ten days before the tour started, I got the call: ‘You've got the gig.’

This was around the I Love Everybody record, which had come out in 1994. It was a huge amount of material to learn. The band was essentially a trio with occasional horns, and the bass parts were pretty demanding. Fortunately, a lot of it featured upright bass, which played to my strengths.

I learned all the material, and from that point on I stayed with Lyle for most of the next 10 or 12 years. There were a few breaks when we were raising kids, but I worked with him regularly until 2022, when I started working more with Robert Plant and Alison. It was an incredible run. I still occasionally do shows with him. I played a couple this year, and every time it's just fun.

Can you share some insights on your recordings with Bill Frisell?

Working with Bill was amazing. It's funny – if people know me for anything, it often seems to be those records, especially Gone, Just Like A Train. That's the one that comes up most often.

I didn't know Bill before working with him. When he was making the Nashville record, a few people recommended me because I had experience in both jazz and bluegrass circles. They thought I might be a good fit.

I remember talking to him on the phone, then meeting in the studio in September 1995. We started playing together and I immediately thought, ‘Wow. What is this?’ We seemed to hit it off right away.

We made several records: Nashville, Gone, Just Like A Train, Good Dog, Happy Man, The Sweetest Punch, which was a collaboration involving Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello. That's the most overtly jazz-oriented thing I did with Bill.

That record featured Brian Blade, Curtis Fowlkes, and Billy Drewes. I remember feeling like I was part of a very special group of musicians. We also did projects like Disfarmer and some soundtrack work.

Those records were all wonderful experiences because everything made sense to me. I had enough experience in the different musical worlds he was drawing from that I felt very comfortable in that environment.

What was your goal on Gone, Just Like A Train?

On that album, it was just Bill, Jim Keltner, and me. Jim could go way out, Bill could go way out, and I was perfectly happy being the thing that held it all together. That role was more enjoyable to me than playing lots of solos.

Some of the bass parts he wrote out very specifically, almost like piano music, with split staves showing melody and bass movement, but what I really enjoyed was being the anchor.

How about James Taylor?

I initially overdubbed on one or two songs for his American Standard album, but it eventually turned into nine tracks. Some of those overdubs were even recorded from a hotel room while I was out on the road.

I only spent one day with him in person, but he was everything you'd hope he'd be – kind, thoughtful, and easy to work with. He was another one of those people who completely lived up to the image you have of them.

I'd listened to him so much growing up that when I started playing on those tracks, I realized all I really needed to do was listen to the lowest note of his guitar part and support that. It was a really fun way to fit into the music.

Do you have a go-to bass tone?

My favorite bass sound is actually the live bass tone on No Quarter by Led Zeppelin. John Paul Jones was using those Fender bass pedals, and I have a set myself. They're organ-style pedals, which give you a huge, thick fundamental low-end. That's what I'm often chasing on upright bass.

For bass guitar, a lot depends on right-hand placement and how much attack you want. I tend to like flatwound strings with a strong lower-mid-range presence. Something warm and substantial that can be shaped easily in a mix.

How do you setup in the studio?

For upright bass, I have a default microphone position that I like, and I always run a direct signal at the same time. Then I leave it up to the engineer to decide how much of each source they want in the final mix.

I use a Fishman BP-100 pickup. It has a lot of upper-mids and top-end, which helps me hear the pitch more clearly. It's an insurance policy for playing in tune.

Electric bass is more variable. It depends on the project. Is it a modern record? Something vintage-sounding? Does it call for a short-scale bass? A Precision Bass? A Jazz Bass? Something active? Usually the song dictates the choice.

What skills do musicians need to be successful?

It's interesting because when you look at successful musicians versus incredibly talented musicians who never quite get the break they're hoping for, talent alone isn't usually the deciding factor.

In places like Nashville, it's almost assumed that you're a good musician. That's the minimum requirement. A lot of success comes down to professionalism. Being prepared. Being on time. Being pleasant to work with. Showing genuine enthusiasm for what other people are doing. People want to be around people who seem excited to be there.

Networking matters too. Years ago, I would regularly go through my address book and call people I hadn't spoken to in a while. I'd reconnect, catch up, and maintain those relationships. Today that often happens through texts and emails, but the principle is the same.

How about from a playing perspective?

From a playing perspective, I think it's important to stay open and listen to lots of different music. I don't really have a strict practice routine. I just enjoy playing.

Even if I'm playing guitar instead of bass, it's all connected. The more you're playing, the more alert and responsive you become musically.

I always felt my best after a long tour. It's like exercising a muscle. If you're in shape, you're always going to play better.

Charlie Jones has had long-term bass gigs with Page and Plant, Robert Plant and The Cult – but he admits his arrival in the four-string world “sounds stupid.” He explains: “When I was young I bought an ‘electric guitar’ with money from delivering papers, so I could join my friend’s band.

“I’d thought to myself, ‘Wow, this sounds weird…’ But I went to his place, all ready to go, and he said, ‘This is a bass – you’re a bass player!’ I went, ‘Okay, then…’” Luckily he took to the instrument. “I learned very quickly. Within three years I was learning upright.”

Jones has gone on to play on a host of records, most notably on Page and Plant’s No Quarter (1995) and Walking into Clarksdale (1998). But he’s also heard on records by Goldfrapp, Siouxsie, and most recently The Cult.

Working with formed Led Zeppelin icons Page and Plant was, of course, “a very big deal,” he confirms. “It was very informative. I had to have a deeper understanding of blues, learn to be quick, make decisions and listen. They really worked on instinct. There was equality there; I was given freedom to express myself. Those guys were very generous.”

Jones adds: “My musical tastes are eclectic. Once I left Robert and got into Goldfrapp – a primarily electronic band – it opened up my potential further.”

What led you toward the acrylic bass?

When I started, all the basses around England were Japanese or Korean copies. Some were good, some weren’t. I used English gear – an HH cabinet and whatever else I had knocking around. The acrylic bass thing came about because I was very into glam rock, and I’d seen the Dan Armstrong basses.

I loved them, but I couldn’t get on with the short-scale neck. Before I got the gig with Robert I was using a Fender Precision Bass. I asked Fender if they could make me an acrylic bass then, but they couldn’t – though they did later.

But basically, what led me to the acrylic bass was the desire to have a long-scale Precision Bass with the aesthetic of those ‘70s Dan Armstrong basses

What led to the gig with Robert Plant?

I’d done a record with a producer called Tim Palmer in Austin, Texas. He recommended me for that gig when I was doing sessions. I had to give Robert lots of demos I’d played on. I had a taste for crossover artists from the Middle East, and you know how Robert’s into that stuff.

He heard that, and some of the other stuff I’d done, and it was quite eclectic. That appealed to him. I wasn’t strictly a rock bass player; and, of course, Robert’s tastes are pretty eclectic.

What gear did you pair with the acrylic bass once you joined Robert?

Robert was very gracious because I didn’t have the budget to buy the type of gear I needed for the touring he was doing. I needed a good rig, but the popular rigs at the time were Trace Elliot, which weren’t for me.

I was allowed to buy anything, and I went for the Marshall Jubilee for bass because I loved it. They had these big cabinets and massive transformers, and they weren’t valve amps. They had transistors with huge headroom with no breakup, and were very focused.

It informed my gigs live, though not necessarily for recording. I generally don’t use large valve heads; I use rigs with good weight transformers and plenty of headroom. The Jubilee series was bulletproof.

What was it like transitioning from working with Robert to adding Jimmy Page for the No Quarter - Unledded show?

Jimmy had his own viewpoint when he started working with Robert again, so there was a bit of a transition. The word "re-audition" is a bit big; but it was a different production working with Jimmy so that he felt comfortable. It meant having to dive much deeper into the Led Zeppelin catalog.

Jimmy is a fantastic bandleader. And his knowledge of the Led Zeppelin material – he’d study the bootlegs and say, ‘Hey, I wanna do this extended version of this song.’ So it was pretty intense. It was like a big apprenticeship.

And you were learning bass parts laid down by John Paul Jones, which is no easy feat.

That’s exactly right. Sometimes they’d say, “Your playing is not exactly like John Paul Jones’ on this tune. But we like it, so stick with what you’re doing.“ They were flexible. As long as it was working, they were happy.

They weren’t necessarily trying to do a reproduction of Led Zeppelin, because that’s not possible without the original rhythm section of John Paul Jones and John Bonham. It had to be genuine, and that meant adding a bit of your own flavor to it, and they were open to that.

Which led to you working on Page and Plant’s collaborative album Walking into Clarksdale.

That was different – when we did the Unledded record it was a huge Egyptian-style ensemble. We’d just get our heads together on the spot. But with Walking into Clarksdale we had to go into a room and write together. Writing with those guys was very organic. But it was no bowl of cherries!

Notably, you co-wrote Please Read the Letter during those sessions.

We rehearsed and wrote a rough arrangement for it. Then when we got to Abbey Road, Steve Albini was producing, which was a thrill for me. That was crafted between all of us, meaning we all had big input on the song. Robert took the lead in terms of the top line, and how the chords would fall within the arrangement, but I always believed it was a special song.

Still, it must have been a surprise when the song netted you a Grammy after Robert re-recorded it for his Raising Sand album.

Truthfully, it was! I was in this weird situation. I’d come off tour and said, “I’m not gonna open any of my mail for three months. I don’t give a shit. I don’t care what comes through. I’m shutting myself away.” Then my manager called and said, “Do you realize you’ve got a Grammy for this song?”

I went, “Really?” My manager said, “Yeah; your certificate’s come through.” I had to go outside to the garbage bags to find the certificate ‘cause I’d thrown it away! So it was a surprise; but to Robert’s credit, he always had a vision for that song and it never dwindled.

In 2022 you had the Fender Custom Shop build you an acrylic bass. Is that now your main instrument?

Yes, but it lives in America. I love that bass; it’s a copy of a ‘70s Precision. I found that some of those old basses from ’75 to around ’80 are slightly heavier, with thicker necks. They really lend themselves to rock compared to the '60s basses. So I had Scott Buehl copy that.

He made it lighter than the one I’d used with Goldfrapp, which weighed a ton. He chambered it, so it has a different sound. I use that one a lot with The Cult paired with Aguilar amplifiers and cabinets, but I leave it in the States. When I fly home, I use a ‘70s-style Antigua or a flat-body Precision.

Not everybody takes the so-called “plastic basses” seriously, but you’ve done a lot to alter that way of thinking.

I can’t be specific, but you assume a lot of musicians don’t take the instrument very seriously. They think it’s a novelty or an oddity. I understand why people think of it like that. But it really does have a sound, and I love that sound.

It doesn’t fit solely into one genre. Combined with the visual aspect and working with lots of different artists, it made my viewpoint as a player. You can’t pigeonhole what I do. That’s always been the case, and I’m happy about that.

How did you get the gig with The Cult?

It was kind of a homecoming because I’ve always loved The Cult; I always wanted to join, or at least do some recording with them. Tom Delgety, the producer, asked me to play on Under the Midnight Sun, and I got on so well with them that they asked me to join. It’s great – but I really had to concentrate on playing with a pick again.

The Cult have announced a hiatus from touring. What’s next?

I don’t really know what’s next for The Cult. I think they’re gonna take this time out, and there’s maybe some box set coming out of the Death Cult and Cult material from Beggars Banquet. And they may well want to do some recording, so that may happen this year.

Other than that, I’m gonna be doing my own stuff, and some other sessioning and recording. I’ll be concentrating on my bass playing, working hard to dig deeper into the lane that I’m in.”

• Stay up to date via Jones’ website.

Sometimes it takes a bit of time before a song gets its dues. Sometimes a song can have a second life, and this second life can even take its writer by surprise. For example, take Charlie Jones, bassist for the Cult, formerly of Page & Plant, and his relationship with Please Read the Letter.

You might remember this track from Page & Plant’s 1998 studio album, Walking Into Clarksdale. Produced by the late, great Steve Albini,Walking Into Clarksdale was the sound of Page & Plant going back to their roots (referencing the roots of blues guitar in the process).

It was reportedly a one-take affair. Albini, the punk whisperer, was an inspired choice as a producer. Jones was on bass guitar, Michael Lee on drums. It was met with mixed reviews. Some people slept on it. Most High got all the attention, taking home a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance.

But there was one track Plant couldn’t shift from his mind for years after – one he co-wrote with with Jones, Please Read the Letter.

Almost a decade later, he revisited it, recording it with Alison Krauss for their 2007 debut, Raising Sand, and what do you know? It got a Grammy.

Speaking to Guitar World, Jones says he was the last to know. He was hibernating. To say it was a surprise was an understatement.

"Truthfully, it was!” he says. “I was in this weird situation where I’d come off tour, and I said, ‘I’m not gonna open any of my mail for three months. I don’t give a shit. I don’t care what comes through. I’m shutting myself away.’ And then, my manager called and said, ‘Do you realize you’ve got a Grammy for this song?’ [laughs]”

There’s a moral to this story. You make a record, write a song, you never know what’s going to happen next. But also, the touring musician should always keep on top of their mail.

“I went, ‘Really?’ My manager said, ‘Yeah… your certificates come through…’ I had to go downstairs and outside to the garbage bags, open them up, and find the certificate ‘cause I’d thrown it away!” says Jones, laughing at the memory.

He also says its a testament to Plant’s tenacity. He believed it could be something more, and that was why he revisited it with Krauss.

“I was surprised, but to Robert’s credit, he always had a vision for that song,” says Jones. “And it never dwindled.”

Please Read the Letter? The irony is a little too on the nose.

You can read the our full interview with Charlie Jones coming soon to Guitar World.

25 years ago, electric guitar legend Jimmy Page and the Black Crowes teamed up on Live at the Greek – a historic live album that celebrates both Page’s and the Crowes’ rich repertoire, with some old blues and rock standards thrown in for good measure.

Most of the tracks were recorded at L.A.’s Greek Theatre (thus the album name) on October 18 and 19, 1999 and released a year later. The resulting album captured some of Page and co’s most thunderous live performances together.

In a new mini-documentary celebrating the anniversary of the historic team-up, Page sits down with Crowes’ Chris and Rich Robinson to reminisce about how the opportunity to play together came about.

“We were in London, we were doing a couple nights at the Royal Albert Hall,” Chris recalls. “Robert [Plant]’s like, ‘Can I bring Jimmy down?’ We were like, ‘We’d love to meet Jimmy! Of course!’ And we just hit it off like that.”

To which Page adds, “It was really good for me to meet them because I really admired them from the recording work that they’d done. They were definitely from the same school I come from.”

As opposed to – as the Zeppelin guitarist puts it – “just hustling a few jams together”, the collaboration transpired into something “more epic”.

For Page, one of the most standout moments was re-interpreting the track Rick Rubin famously likened to “nature coming through the speakers” – Ten Years Gone – from Led Zeppelin’s 1975 record, Physical Graffiti.

“Ten Years Gone was something I’d worked on at home,” he explains. “[It] had all this sort of guitar orchestration on it, but I’d never heard it like that, apart from on record, because in the days of Zeppelin, I’d try and do as much as I could just with the one guitar.

“And suddenly I had all these harmonies going on, like I died and gone to heaven! And I mean this for sure – [it was] really emotional moment.”

Page also contributed his guitar chops to one of the Crowes’ signature tracks, 1990’s She Talks to Angels. It was a pivotal moment for the band that led them to perceive the song differently.

“[It’s] definitely our most popular song, and Jimmy, adding something that was different, took on something else musically,” Chris recounts. “She Talks To Angels was never the same after that, because he elevated this thing [to the point] of, ‘Oh, this is what it could be.’”

An expanded and remastered version of the live album dropped on March 14 – and it includes Crowes songs that were omitted from the original release due to contractual restrictions from their record company, plus a previously unreleased soundcheck jam.

In more recent Jimmy Page news, singer-songwriter Jake Holmes – hailed as the original songwriter of Dazed and Confused, later popularized by Zeppelin – revived a copyright lawsuit against Page over songwriting credits and royalties.

If you could describe Marc Ribot's career with one word, it would have to be “storied”. The veteran electric guitar and acoustic guitar player made his start transcribing jazz solos, and earned $50 a session recording novelty albums for kids' characters, such as Barbie and Strawberry Shortcake.

Joining the eclectic outfit the Lounge Lizards in the ’80s opened up the doors that Ribot had relocated to New York for, and the move eventually lead to a long spell with Tom Waits. As Lounge Lizards bandleader John Lurie later wrote in his memoir, “Marc is a musical genius. So many ideas are coming out of that guy that it is actually often a problem.”

The “problem” Lurie jokingly referred to manifested itself in a session for Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s 2007 album Raising Sand, which came by way of T Bone Burnett. Ribot tells The Guardian that he was “totally intimidated” by the gig – so much so that he went to the session slightly over-prepared.

“My junior high rock band was called Love Gun! Like every other guitarist in the world, I always dreamed of playing Whole Lotta Love! I took 20 different fuzzboxes in with me: finally, I get to play some metal!”

Raising Sand, however, turned out to be a folk record, and although the direction caught Ribot off guard, his versatile chops were still well-suited for the job at hand.

“Still, whenever I’d hear Plant’s voice in my headphones, I was like Dr Strangelove when he can’t stop doing the Nazi salute, my foot twitching towards the fuzzbox. But Alison’s such a great singer and storyteller. I was so carried away by her voice and the story she was singing that I straight-up forgot to play. That had never happened to me before.”

Ribot had previously spoken about his work on Raising Sand with Guitar World, detailing the gear he ended up using on that record and speaking about composing parts that captured the spirit of the music and “whatever they wanted and whoever they were trying to be.”

Four albums into a music career built on reviving the trappings of traditional, old-time rave-up rock ’n’ roll, JD McPherson gave himself one directive for the songs that ended up on his latest album, Nite Owls.

“I love guitar music, and I love busy guitar players, but my favorite players have either a thing that they’ve invented or keep it pretty sparse, like Bo Diddley, Daniel Ash [of Love and Rockets and Bauhaus] and Ricky Wilson from the B-52s,” he says. “I love when the guitar is distilled down and focuses on a sound.”

The particular sound in McPherson’s head as he set out to make Nite Owls, his “surf-noir” record, was based around a motif of single-note riffs with a generous helping of spring reverb.

“How many sort of different ideas can you convey with that being the glue that holds everything together? In my mind, that was obviously surf guitar, and Duane Eddy and [Ennio] Morricone spaghetti Western soundtracks, and even a wee bit of Depeche Mode – Martin Gore and the big Gretsch hollowbody stuff,” he says.

But much to his frustration, it took three tries to finally get Nite Owls right.

McPherson first began recording the songs pre-pandemic, but when Covid restrictions and life changes splintered his longtime band, he was left at square one. “The pandemic happened and everybody started to rethink their priorities in life,” he says. “Restaurants closed down, bands broke up – that’s a pretty universal story. But it happened, and I was sitting with this unfinished thing.”

After another false start in 2022, McPherson shelved the project and signed on as guitarist and opening act for Robert Plant and Alison Krauss on the duo’s first tour in 12 years. The opportunity to walk away from his solo career and do something completely different, where he describes his role as being “a rubber mallet in a drawer full of scalpels,” arrived at the perfect moment.

“I really can’t overstate what they did for me,” he says. “They grounded me at one of the worst, darkest times in my musical life and handed me this incredible gift, to be able to commune with those musicians and with Robert and Alison.

“Playing Zeppelin songs and playing songs from the Raising Sand record, which is one of my favorite records of all time, with Marc Ribot, another one of my very favorite guitar players. It was just bananas.”

The trek allowed him to road test the songs he’d been trying to record, such as Just Like Summer and Sunshine Getaway, which McPherson says became favorites for the crowd and band alike during his opening sets. It also reset his thinking about how to record them for Nite Owls.

“I was wrestling with whether or not I was even gonna finish it and keep doing music, honestly,” he says. “And then I got the call from the Plant/Krauss crew to come play – and talk about a shot in the arm. Just playing other people’s music for a while with one of the greatest bands ever put together, real icons of music, was exactly what I needed at the time.”

Inspired by the musicianship and spontaneous live setting, McPherson gathered a few trusted musicians from his inner circle, including his musical director Doug Corcoran, and returned to Reliable Recorders (formerly Hi-Style) in Chicago, where he recorded his 2011 debut, Signs & Signifiers. The sessions reunited him with another frequent collaborator, Alex Hall. “Alex is one of my favorite engineers and a fantastic drummer. I wanted those drums.”

The skeleton crew committed the 10 songs on Nite Owls, his first proper studio album in seven years, to analog tape with as much recorded live as possible using only a small stable of guitars, amps and effects.

“If I don’t limit my palette a little bit, I’ll get really distracted and waste a lot of time, and on that third attempt at making the record, time was of the essence,” he says. “We had to knock it out pretty quick, so I kept my arsenal pretty low – just a couple of amps, a couple guitars and a spring reverb unit, and off to the races.”

McPherson limited his focus to playing a Fender Jazzmaster and a Gretsch White Penguin reissue through vintage amps like a 1940s Epiphone and a National that were kicking around the studio. For the all-important reverb, he went with a Surfy Industries SurfyBear Reverb.

“If you’ve ever played like a real old Fender reverb tank, it’s exactly that,” he says. “Those are insane amounts of money now, but the SurfyBear is worth every penny.”

The guitar sounds on Nite Owls are classic surf rock, especially on the instrumental track The Phantom Lover of New Rochelle, with blistering single-note lines finding space alongside simple garage-rock riffs designed to land with maximum impact under McPherson’s tuneful vocal melodies. The stomping Sunshine Getaway, built around a riff plucked with his fingers, is one of his favorites.

“That riff is really fun,” he says. “I have a habit of playing with my fingers on pretty heavy tunes, like peddling away with my thumb on the lower strings. It’s just a real old blues move, but it’s sneaking its way into a lot more songs these days.”

• Nite Owls is out now via New West Records.

Chibson USA – known for its wildly popular guitar gear memes on social media – has released its first feature-length documentary, which focusses on Robert Plant's “favorite band”.

Dread Zeppelin: A Song of Hope is currently free-to-air via Chibson’s YouTube channel, and it tells the story of, erm, a Led Zeppelin reggae cover band that is fronted by an Elvis impersonator.

It’s a match made in heaven, in truth. If there was ever a band that embodied the Chibson spirit – the lovable lunatics that have brought you the Humbuckle, the treasure map guitar, and cease/desist toggle switches for Gibson Les Pauls – it most certainly has to be them.

“Here’s what's great about Dread Zeppelin,” journalist Kyra Phillips quips at one point in the doc. “They create this illusion. They want people to look at them and say, ‘Is this for real, or is this a joke?’”

Steel Panther’s pun-loving vocalist Michael Starr narrates the film, which, across just shy of 90 minutes, “chronicles the unlikely journey of the ’90s cult sensation… a band known for their revolutionary mashup of Led Zeppelin’s music with a reggae beat, led by the unforgettable 300-pound Elvis impersonator.”

The thing is, the documentary smartly touches on the fact there is more than just satire behind the band and their Dracula-meets-Elvis singer: they rose to fame in the late ’80s as the “comedic break” between rock and grunge, and offered a reprieve during a period when “people were looking for something authentic”.

As the trailer shows, they’ve also been described as “anti-rock ’n’ roll” during their time, with many people clearly failing to see the appeal. At one point, a news anchor asks them: “What would be worse, if someone told you you were lousy musicians or lousy comedians?”

Yet, despite the adversary they faced, Dread Zeppelin achieved impressive success, and a host of oddball hybrid bands have followed in their wake – most notably Elvana, an Elvis-fronted Nirvana tribute.

Chibson USA trawled through “hours of unreleased archival footage, personal tape recordings, and hundreds of unpublished photographs” to put the documentary together. It also features sit-down interviews with various band members and others who have been caught up in their madness along the way.

“Chibson USA is proud to bring this incredible untold story to the digital screen and celebrate a band that changed the face of satire in music,” it says.

Head to the Chibson USA YouTube channel to watch the doc in full.

The first trailer for the long-awaited Becoming Led Zeppelin documentary – which tells the story of the hard rock icons’ early years – has finally arrived, years after the film’s official premiere.

Becoming Led Zeppelin is one of the most anticipated guitar and music documentaries of recent years. The film, which will be the first-ever authorized Led Zep doc, was announced back in 2019, and received its first airing at the Venice International Film Festival in 2021.

However, it wasn’t until early 2023 when eager fans received an update, when it was reported by ledzepnews.com that the film was being re-named and re-edited.

Now, more than a year after that development – and over three years after the film was shown at Venice – Becoming Led Zeppelin (which has seemingly retained its original title) has finally received its first trailer.

It’s only just over a minute long, but there’s enough in there to further fan the hype flames, with archive footage of Led Zep on stage, modern-day interviews with the band’s surviving members, and never-before-heard audio of an interview with late drummer John Bonham all mixed together.

As the film’s name would suggest, Becoming Led Zeppelin charts the group’ early years, which – as the trailer makes clear – was far from plain sailing.

“Everyone said, ‘You’re mad. You’re completely crazy,’” says John Paul Jones. “We knew we were on the right track.” “I knew this was gonna be the way to go,” adds Jimmy Page. “I wanted it to be something that they hadn’t heard before.”

However, for all of the band’s confidence, the rest of the music world was slow to catch on to what they were doing. As John Bonham notes in an audio clip at the start of the trailer, “You could tell it was gonna be a good group, but people wouldn’t even book the band.”

Such obstacles, and how Led Zeppelin overcame them on their way to becoming one of the greatest rock bands of all time, will all be the focus of Becoming Led Zeppelin.

Directed by Bernard MacMahon, the documentary will be limited exclusively to IMAX theatres when it receives its general release on February 7. Two days prior, preview screenings will be held in 18 theaters across US and Canada. There’s been no official release date confirmation for elsewhere.

As the first authorized Led Zep documentary, with a never-before-heard audio interview with John Bonham, it’s set to become essential viewing for music fans.

“We spent five years flying back and forth across the Atlantic scouring attics and basements in pursuit of rare and unseen film footage, photographs and music recordings,” says writer/producer Allison McGourty.

“Then we transferred each piece of media with custom techniques so that in IMAX, these 55-year-old clips and music would look and sound like they came out of the lab yesterday.”

Visit the Becoming Led Zeppelin website to find out more.

Reverent references to Duane Eddy, Pops Staples, Scott Walker and other giants of the vinyl era are never far from Richard Hawley’s lips. But with his new album, In This City They Call You Love, Hawley has produced a work that deserves to stand alongside that of the legends he has always admired.

You’d never hear him say that himself, of course, as there’s a genuine and abiding humility in his approach to music. But the tender, yearning ballad I’ll Never Get Over You is a song that Roy Orbison might easily have penned, while Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow sounds like a lost, lovelorn Eddie Cochrane ballad.

Yet Hawley somehow manages to wear his influences lightly, like a well-fitting jacket that suits him and that he makes his own. And if the past looms large in his work, its main purpose is to highlight the unbroken threads of memory, pride and love that stretch from childhood to the present day and imbue it with meaning.

A particularly enduring theme in Hawley’s music is his home city of Sheffield – he’s named several of his albums after its landmarks, and the place and its people are a continuing wellspring of inspiration. Ironically, however, it was a chance encounter with visitors from out of town that gave his latest album its name.

“It was something I overheard some people saying,” Hawley recalls. “They weren’t from Sheffield and one of them said, ‘Oh, in this city everybody calls you love,’ and it went in like a missile. I just heard that, literally walking past a cafe and I went, ‘Whoa, I’m having that.’ You know?”

Hawley acknowledges that songwriters have to have something of the magpie about them, always ready to snatch up a golden phrase and wing home with it, to be tucked away for later use.

He adds that the best songs come from that part of our mind that isn’t caught up in mundane, day-to-day decision-making. Words and phrases overheard by chance can open the taps to a sudden, instinctive flow of inspiration that yields better songs than conscious effort, he argues.

“You can hit the bullseye without aiming for it. But if you aim for the bullseye, you’re probably not going to hit it. Technically, music is numbers and letters, mathematics and literacy. But actually it’s something that you cannot define. You can’t bottle it. You know what I mean?

“I write all the songs walking the dogs now because there’s something about putting one foot in front of the other, where something flips in your mind… with rational, normal thought, that you need to survive on Earth, your yes/no synapses are flipping all the time in your mind.

“But there’s something that happens when you’re doing something rudimentary, like walking the dogs, washing the pots or whatever… you hit the bullseye without aiming for it. And that’s the best advice I can give anybody who’s going to write a song. If you try to write a song, it’ll probably be shit.”

We can only conclude that Richard’s dogs must have had plenty of exercise recently because every song on the album hits home emotionally. The production is simple yet beautiful, a touch less orchestral than some of his previous records perhaps but all the more direct and powerful for it.

A key theme is memory and how we live with it – of loves and loyalties that fade all too quickly into the past, yet from which we can never wholly free ourselves.

“I think music gives you the ability to accept the fact that maybe we are mortal, but also to hover like a kestrel in time,” Richard reflects. “You’ve got more time than you realise, to think about things.”

The songs on the album are often deceptive in their simplicity. Deep Water, for example, is a kind of secular gospel song – a prayer for acceptance of the kind that people tend to write as life experience accrues and an awareness of mortality colours one’s thoughts.

“The thing about records, I realise as I’ve got older, is that I listened to stuff when I was younger and I just thought, ‘That’s rubbish,’ and then later in life, I got it,” Richard reflects.

“And it’s because you’re not ready for it, as a person. Events and time and ageing and stuff like that… you’re not swimming in the fucking shallow end any more. You haven’t got a choice.

“So music is an accompaniment to the passage of your life, and some songs you’ll hear when you’re 16 you’re not ready for, but you might hear them when you’re 40 or 60, or whatever, and you get it.

“A lot of folks, you know, when they hit 30, they think it’s over, you know? But when you approach 60 and you see a picture of yourself at 30, you just go, ‘Didn’t I look young?’ [laughs] Do you know what I mean?

“Nick Banks, actually, one of my dearest friends, the drummer out of Pulp, he sent a picture of me and him backstage at Finsbury Park in ’98, and we were in our 30s then, and I look back and I just go, ‘Whoa, man, we look like little kids.’ And we were off our heads as well. I just thought, ‘Stupid, stupid boy.’ [laughs]”

Guitar Man

Fittingly, Hawley’s guitars are as steeped in time and memory as his songs, especially his gorgeous 1950 Gibson J-200 bought from Tony Werneke at Replay Guitars, which has a sweet yet expansive voice that is what that guitar is all about, at its best.

“Martin Simpson found this for me,” Hawley explains, referring to the celebrated fingerstyle folk guitarist who is a good friend of Richard’s. “Because my dad had a J-200. And it was a ’60s one – I think it was a ’62, or something like that. And during the steel strikes he had to sell it, to feed us, you know?

“There was always this thing in my mind [ever afterwards] that it was an injustice. And so I looked around for one for years and years and years. It’s funny – because it’s part of mine and Martin’s story – he just says ‘Oh, you don’t want one of those, you want one of these’ – a PRS or a Fylde or one of these really mental high-end guitars.

“But I couldn’t get on with them at all… maybe it’s an ergonomic thing, but they just didn’t feel right. I think it’s down to sonic memory. Because when you play something when you’re young there’s a part of your brain that works in a certain way…”

Richard strums the first few bars of Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow to demonstrate, then grins at the wonderfully evocative sound coming out of the J-200.

“And that’s it,” he smiles. “It’s a great guitar to play and the neck’s not as slim as a lot of the modern ones. But it’s to do with ergonomics, isn’t it? It’s bit like if you go into a shop and you want to buy a new shirt or a jacket or something like that, don’t look in the mirror – put it on and see how it feels first, you know? And it’s the same with any musical instrument.

“Close your eyes and just listen – you were given these [points to ears] by nature for a reason and you can read all the reviews you want, you can you can be fooled into buying something because you think it’s going to be this, that and the other. But you’ve got to use these, your ears – they’re the greatest asset you’ve got.”

Does Richard use the J-200 a lot when he’s recording, we enquire?

“I use it when I’m frying eggs,” he laughs. “Or whatever… It’s on the wall [ready to hand at all times]. It’s just such a great guitar to play.”

No Richard Hawley record would be complete, of course, without the lonesome shimmer of a Gretsch electric. Accordingly, Richard shows us a beautifully figured natural finish 1954 Gretsch Country Club that is a go-to for studio work.

“I love that – it sounds like Pop Staples to me,” he says, strumming the big archtop through the beautiful tremolo circuit of his 1958 Watkins Scout combo.

“That’s one of the problems with the Gretsches, but I’ve always found it an asset,” he observes as the guitar teeters on the edge of incipient feedback. Like some other vintage guitars among Hawley’s collection, the Gretsch was bought locally.

“I got this from a local store in Sheffield called Rich Tone Music and it’s run by people who subsequently became friends of mine – James and Dylan Ferguson – and they’ve always got amazing stuff.

“Again, actually I owe Martin Simpson again for this because he’s in and out of there all the time and I’m always on tour or travelling and stuff, and he’ll just [tell me] they’ve got this such and such guitar…

“He called me up and said, ‘They’ve got this Country Club and it’s insane – it’s a 1954, you’re going to love it.’ I went down with him and I literally just played a couple of chords on it and I’m done. In my mind I was sold.

“I ended up using it on the Jools Holland show [only days later] and I got asked to play with Robert Plant and Imelda May. It was the last song of the show at the Hammersmith Apollo, when they did it there, and it’s quite fun because it wasn’t anything that we’d rehearsed.

“I was playing with Jools doing Fats Domino stuff and we’d had this idea to play an A- and B-side from the same single, back to back, so we did those two tunes and Robert heard me play. I’ve known Robert on and off for many years, he’s a lovely fella, and so afterwards he just called me over to the piano and said, ‘Do you want to do a song with us?’ It was nothing to do with management and completely unscripted.

“So I said, ‘Yeah, what is it?’ and Robert said, ‘We’re going to do rock ’n’ roll.’ I said, ‘Yeah, what song?’ And he said, ‘Rock ’n’ roll…’ and I go, ‘Yeah, yeah, I can play rock ’n’ roll, but which song? And he says, ‘No, you silly fuckwit [laughs], Rock And Roll by Led Zeppelin.’ I said, ‘No, I’m not doing it because I don’t want to be in Jimmy Page’s graveyard,’ you know – nobody can play like Jimmy, he’s the don of that [style of guitar].

“And he said, ‘No, we’re going to do it like Johnny Burnette and the Rock ’N’ Roll Trio. So I said, ‘Okay,’ and we did it like that – and that was the first time I ever used the Country Club. I’d only bought it a week or so before and I had it plugged into an old 50s Magnetone amp, which has got this really… it’s not a tremolo, it’s a vibrato, which is actually different and it sounds like liquid. Bo Diddley used one, and Eddie Cochran – it’s got this liquid sound to it, like moving water. It’s amazing.”

Great Scott 

One testament to the bond music can create is the fact that many of Hawley’s heroes later became personal friends – notably the late, great Duane Eddy, with whom Hawley recorded the beautiful album Road Trip in 2011.

Hawley also became friends with one of the most interesting figures in 20th century pop, Scott Walker, who after huge initial success as a mainstream ’60s orchestral pop star developed into one of the most nuanced, innovative and experimental artists working in contemporary music.

Walker and Hawley met while working on Pulp’s 2001 album, We Love Life, which Walker produced, and their friendship blossomed after a rocky start when Hawley turned up late to a session with the fastidiously punctual Walker. Hawley’s reason for being late – rescuing a stack of rare records from a closing-down sale – earned

Walker’s forgiveness, however, and their friendship grew from that moment forward. Though Walker passed away in 2019, his white circa mid-70s Telecaster features prominently on Richard’s latest album, as Hawley explains.

“Three days into recording the new record, I got a phone call from my old friend Cathy [Negus-Fancey], who was Scott Walker’s manager,” Richard explains. “Scott and I were friends, we used to play darts and sup Guinness together and there was no discussion of music – it was just darts and Guinness and occasionally a game of pool, but he was shite at pool so I’d always hammer him.

“So he preferred darts because I was crap at darts – I still am [laughs]. Anyway, Lee, his daughter, said one of last requests was to [feigns a parody of Scott Walker’s drawl] ‘Give that tosser Hawley one of my guitars…’ and this is it.

“It arrived three days into recording the new record and I must say it was in quite a parlous state. It had been unplayed and my long-suffering guitar tech, Gordon White, who is a genius, [took on the job of fixing it up] and the hardest decision was to actually do anything with it at all.

“Because basically, [traces of] Scott blood’s was on there – his physical remnants were on the guitar. But Gordon said, ‘Fuck it, it’s got to be playable,’ and he fixed it all and made a beautiful thing and it was very, very close to me recording the new record; I recorded all the mad shit on it.”

Hawley says Walker’s impeccable musicality and rigorous high standards made him such a formidable artist and producer.

“We did this track on We Love Life called Bob Lind (The Only Way Is Down) where I had to play acoustic 12-string guitar. Jesus, he [Scott] whipped me like a racehorse, I’m telling you. He made me do it again and again. He was saying, ‘Bite in, bite in – play deeper, like really dig in…’ And my fingers at the end of that session literally bled. But the end results were great.

“I learned a lot from Scott, especially about microphones. His ears were immense: he could hear subtle inflections in the sonic quality of microphones or guitars or whatever it was, and his sonic palette was so expansive… I mean, I’m not really a musician. I just collect sound, you know, that’s what I do. And I think Scott got that… but he was still shit at pool [laughs].”

• In This City They Call You Love is out now via BMG.

In December 2012, Ann and Nancy Wilson took to the stage at the Kennedy Center in front of Led Zeppelin themselves to perform one of the most famous covers of Stairway To Heaven.

The evening was a special occasion: Zeppelin were receiving the Kennedy Center Honor – the prestigious award given to those who have had a significant impact on the world of American culture – from President Barack Obama.

Previous recipients include Ella Fitzgerald, Leonard Bernstein, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and many more, with each awards season culminating in a mammoth event at the Kennedy Center every December.

At this particular show, the Heart sisters treated the surviving members of Led Zeppelin – Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones – to an emotionally charged cover of their iconic 1971 track, complete with a fully fledged choir, orchestra and the son of their late bandmate, John Bonham, on drums.

The Wilson sisters were also backed up by guitarist Shane Fontayne – a seasoned session guitarist whose credits include Graham Nash, Mick Ronson, John Waite, Joe Cocker and a live stint with Bruce Springsteen in the early ‘90s.

While Fontayne was given the unenviable task of playing the iconic guitar solo in front of the guitarist who penned it, Nancy ushered in the performance by dealing with the track’s timeless riff.

The onstage assembly knocked it out the park. Highlights include Wilson’s soft solo opening, Fontayne’s admirable solo effort, and the goosebump-inducing outro section that merits a visible “Wow” from the onlooking Page. In fact, the performance was so powerful, it reduced Robert Plant to tears.

Despite the polished performance, the pressures of the occasion were (understandably) sky high. Speaking to Howard Stern in April 2024, the Wilson sisters revealed they’d only had the chance for one rehearsal, plus a soundcheck, before the live show.

As for the band members’ reactions – and Plant’s in particular – Ann was quick to theorize it was the occasion, rather than the cover, that so visibly moved them.

“[Robert Plant] wells up a little bit. He’s emotional, but my theory is he gets emotional for a bunch of reasons,” she observed. “Like, he looks down and sees Jason Bonham playing drums, who was probably just a little kid running around at their band practice when they were writing Stairway to Heaven.”

That’s not to say the cover didn’t blow them away, though. At the after-ceremony dinner, Heart shared a table with Led Zeppelin, who let their feelings be known.

“Plant let us know he usually hated people’s covers of Stairway,” Ann continued in her Stern interview, “but he liked that one.” As for the guitar playing, Nancy added: “Jimmy Page goes, ‘You nailed the guitar part!’”

Plant has spoken about the cover on numerous occasions. In fact, just last year the vocalist revisited the cover, which had been earmarked as one of the highlights of his career during an interview with Vulture.

“Look at the company I was keeping that night,” Plant said. “Who was I sitting next to? What was going on? I didn’t even know the people anymore. How did we move across from being a British blues band to this ridiculous achievement?

“We’re talking here about one song from 50-plus years ago. It’s just a magnificent performance to watch and it kills me every time. It kills me in two or three different ways. It’s just like, Oh my God.”

In a previous interview with LA Weekly, Plant had dubbed the entire experience “humbling” and “mind-altering”.

The Wilson sisters have also discussed the famed performance in the past, with Nancy once telling Classic Rock: “Before we went out there, I had to get my fingers really warmed up. It was winter, and it was cold and drafty backstage. You can’t play Stairway to Heaven with cold fingers in front of Jimmy Page! 

“It was really well put together. If anybody deserved a tribute like that, it’s Led Zeppelin.”

In the early '70s, Led Zeppelin pulled up to a crossroads. After five albums and years of rigorous touring, the band’s bass guitar player, John Paul Jones, was poised to take a step back from the fray, with the intention of spending more time with his family.

As such, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page braced themselves with the very real possibility that they’d need to recruit someone to stand in Jones’ shoes – to hold down the Led Zep low-end for the foreseeable future.

One particular individual who apparently came close to getting the gig was Lita Ford – the glam metal guitar icon, who at the time was the 17-year-old lead guitarist of the all-female rock outfit, The Runaways.

Rumors of Ford almost joining Led Zeppelin to replace Jones – on what wasn’t even her main instrument, no less – have permeated through popular guitar lore, with the guitarist addressing the story at various points across the years.

Now, speaking in an upcoming interview with Guitar World, Ford once again dove into the exchange, and recalled how she came close to joining Led Zeppelin as Jones’ replacement after Page and Plant came to watch The Runaways at The Starwood Nightclub. 

“Jimmy Page and Robert Plant came to see the show, and The Runaways were quite the novelty, being teenage girls that could rip it up, kick-ass, and rock the house,” Ford recalls. “The places were always packed with fans, and so, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant came to the show.

“Our manager at the time, Kim Fowley, said, ‘Okay girls, gather 'round and get a picture with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page,’” she continues. “And, of course, I was scooched in there like, ‘Oh yeah, great! I love them!’ I grew up listening to them and was still growing up; actually, I was only 17.”

However, Page and Plant weren’t just there for the show. Whether by design or not, the evening turned into a scouting expedition for the two, who then swiftly sounded out Ford about the possibility of joining them in the band to fill Jones’ boots.

“Robert Plant said, ‘We’re looking to replace our bass player, John Paul Jones,’ and I thought, ‘I’m not hearing this. I refuse to believe that this is really coming out of his mouth,’” Ford goes on. “And I thought, ‘He’s got to be joking,’ because John Paul Jones is God on bass, as far as I’m concerned. 

“But that’s what he said. And I walked away just thinking, ‘Oh, that was nice. That was nice of him to look at me like that,’ because, in those days, a lot of people didn’t look at us as musicians because we were female, and we were young. 

“They never took us seriously as musicians. For me, guitar playing was always my main priority; I didn’t really care about much else. I just wanted to play guitar.”

As for why the move never fully transpired, Ford has previously discussed how her admiration for Jones proved to be a particularly challenging hurdle to overcome, despite the fact she initially accepted Plant’s offer. 

In her 2016 memoir, Living Like a Runaway, Ford wrote: “I didn’t even try. I love John Paul Jones. He’s one of my favorite bass players. I couldn’t imagine myself replacing him, but the fact that they thought about a female in their band, I thought was pretty cool.”

As things would turn out, Jones did not leave Led Zeppelin, and ultimately decided to remain in his role as the band's bassist. Before long, he was back in action when work on their 1975 album, Physical Graffiti, commenced.

Keep your eyes peeled on GuitarWorld.com for the full interview with Lita Ford.

Though he doesn’t think of himself as such, Marc Ribot is a session ace. He’s played sideman to Tom Waits on records such as Rain Dogs (1985) and Franks Wild Years (1987), lent a hand to Elvis Costello on Spike (1989), and Robert Plant & Alison Krauss on Raising Sand (2007), and even appears on the Black Keys’ Attack & Release (2008), just to name a few among the hundreds.

Most recently, Marc has injected his angular riffage and jagged yet buttery solos into Ceramic Dog’s mix, with whom he’s been recording since 2008’s Party Intellectuals. As for the latest, 2023’s Connection, released on Knockwurst Records, it’s a bit of Ribot-driven bliss, which runs the gamut of free jazz improvisation, off-the-wall, tribal rhythms, and straight-up rock and blues jams.

While traveling in a van en route to gig in Philadelphia in support of Connection, Ribot dialed in with Total Guitar to talk new music, working with Tom Waits, and the unique gear and approach that inspired it all…

Connection is a tour de force in genre exploration. How did you approach it?

“I picked up my guitar, just like yesterday! But on this record and the touring I’ve been doing so far since the summer of 2023, I’ve mainly used my [Gibson] SG. I’ve regressed to my childhood in that way. It’s like I’m back in my early teenage years.”

What spurred you to break the Gibson SG out?

“Well, you were kind of saying the record is eclectic, but to us, we felt like it sounded like a rock album. So, I wanted access to more metal and rock sounds. It’s not traditional to some, but it’s our version.”

Tell us about the title track Connection. Aside from the SG, what went into it?

“That’s a lot to ask of my poor memory! But I usually use an [Analog Man] King of Tone for some extra distortion. I ran that tune through that, and now that I think of it, Connection was recorded with my [Fender] Jaguar.”

Did any other pedals play a significant role in your signal chain?

“I also had a newer [EHX] Memory Man [Analog Delay], which I’m a big fan of. I like it as a preamp, even if the echo isn’t a very quick slapback. I’d advise people to go with the vintage ones. But they always break during gigs, so pedals can be an expensive habit. The new ones have a titanium crystal, and are more roadworthy, but the sound of the original is unmatched.”

Soldier in the Army of Love has some pretty district flourishes. How did you come up with that?

“Truthfully, I don’t have a process. I sit around, and it usually takes me days to come up with anything. I’m lazy! It’ll take me 10 hours to do one hour’s worth of practising! But I do wind up sitting with my guitar, I’ll play shit, and next thing you know we’ve got a hit record!”

As far as tone goes on, what gear choices impacted things?

“It’s more about playing really loud, and I think I tuned down to D. I tend to use heavy strings, like 0.011s. But sometimes, and this was the case in this instance, I go with light tops and heavier bottoms, and I pair it with that King of Tone pedal. And then I ran through a [Fender] Deluxe Reverb and cranked the fuck out of it!”

And how about your elongated solo on Order Of Protection?

“Order Of Protection originally had lyrics, but we decided that it was in the best interest of society to leave the lyrics out. People don’t get the concept of unreliable narrators these days, so if you say horrible, disgusting stuff, that automatically means you’re horrible and disgusting, rather than trying to draw an accurate picture of a horrible and disgusting person.

“Anyways, it wound up as an instrumental, which made the world a better place! I approached it from a rock, blues, and jazz perspective, which I guess makes sense. With the solo, I was trying to convey the same message that the lyrics would have. I’m not sure it worked, but that was the idea of it, anyway.”

How would you measure what you’re doing now compared to recording Rain Dogs with Tom Waits?

“Nothing’s changed. I still go into the studio, listen to the song, catch the vibe, hear the words, and think, ‘Okay, what kind of guitarist would be playing along with that? What does this need?’ Sometimes, I hate it, and if I do, I’ll say, ‘How can I destroy it?’ And if I can’t destroy it, I’ll think, ‘How can I make this something I wouldn’t laugh at?’”

And what’s the secret to doing what you’ve just said on those classic Tom Waits songs like Clap Hands and Jockey Full Of Bourbon?

“With Tom, he thinks – at least, when I work with him – kind of dramatically. He thinks of the guitar as a character in a play, you know? It’s the voice of one of the characters in a story he’s writing. So, if the guitar is the voice, and let’s say that voice is very dry, with no reverb, that implies someone is talking closely or maybe in your ear at a bar.

“But what if they’re yelling? Is there a band playing in that bar? If so, what are they playing? So, I had to think dramatically about those songs and on Rain Dogs. I’d think, ‘Okay, what country are we in? And what decade is it? What side of town are these people on?’ Those things influenced what pickups I used, how much reverb, for example, I used, and what sort of reverb I used.”

What was your setup like while working with on Rain Dogs and Franks Wild Years?

“Poverty accounted for many of my choices back then! And God, this is terrible, but I had this old Tele, and I can’t remember the name of it. It was a knockoff, fake thing – I believe it was by ESP. But that’s the guitar I used on Rain Dogs and Franks Wild Years. It was made in Japan, and it was awful but also beautiful. It was a knockoff and not a Fender, but looking back, maybe it was a strong fake Tele.”

Keith Richards also played on Rain Dogs. Did you collaborate with him during those sessions?

“No, not at all. We might have been in the studio together once, but not working together. I literally walked in one day as Keith was leaving. I met him later in life, and I’ve always been a huge fan of his playing, but no, there was no collaboration. Keith maybe did some basic tracks that I’m on for Rain Dogs, but I would have come in after to do overdubs. But there were plenty of instances where we weren’t even on the same tracks.”

How about your signal chain, specifically on Waits’ 1987 song Hang On St. Christopher?

“Back then, I’d just plug into a lot of cheap pedals and hope for the best. That hasn’t changed much, but with my EHX and Analog Man stuff, I’ve upgraded some. But I still have some things from the old days – primarily those focused on true bypass. Most of the nameplates have come off over the years, but they’ve served me well. I like dealing with things that could plausibly come through a distorted Deluxe Reverb.”

Pushing forward to your work on Robert Plant & Alison Krauss’s Raising Sand, how had your rig progressed?

“Not by much! I had my ’60s Fender Jag by then; I believe it’s a ’62. And I had gotten into the EHX stuff by then. By that time, I also had my Lehle [Mono] Volume Pedal, the one all the pedal steel players use. But the approach stayed the same because I always try to think about what sonically blends and sticks out.”

And with Robert and Alison, what stuck out most?

“With Raising Sand, it was more about what historically blends and sticks out. I had to think, ‘Is this a record like the past? Are they going for a classic Nashville sound from the ’50s?’ I wanted to ensure I referenced whatever they wanted and whoever they were trying to be. I wanted to be in the right decade, country, race, and gender, you know?”

How does shifting from a knockoff Tele to a Fender Jag to an SG alter what you do?

“There’s a lot that goes into inspiration. There’s more nuance in the Jag than the Tele, where there are slight changes in what I do with my left or right hand. That can make a big tonal difference. As for the SG, I don’t know; I guess the Jag seems to inspire less predictable and weirder tones than the SG.”

And what’s the secret to balancing being a successful session player with your solo career?

“You’d have to ask someone else about being a successful session player! Tell all the musicians out there that I’m available – that I’m the president of Overdubs ‘R’ Us! Call my manager – I’m home all week!

“But I don’t know… Session work and my stuff are entirely different animals. The studio puts time under a microscope, and you feel it on a granular level. But with my stuff – especially when I play live, it just grooves, and there are no limitations. I like it that way.”

• Connection is out now via Knockwurst Records.

The Black Sabbath Ballet opened on Friday (September 23) at the Hippodrome in the metal legends’ hometown of Birmingham, UK, only for the lucky attendees to be treated to a surprise guest appearance from Tony Iommi.

Iommi joined the ensemble onstage to play guitar for the ballet’s closing performance of Black Sabbath classic Paranoid, performing in front of a star-studded first night crowd that included the likes of fellow local heroes Robert Plant and ELO/one-time Sabbath drummer Bev Bevan.

Of course, Iommi’s role as a pioneering force of metal guitar playing has seen him honored with all manner of trinkets and plaques: from having a fossil named after him, to signature Gibson guitars, platinum records and a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 

However, when it comes to physical expression it’s hard to rival the medium of dance, and fan footage of the ballet’s first night shows a touching moment of tribute from the ensemble. 

Watch the clip above and you’ll see the guitarist take to the stage with the group of 30 or so performers clapping him on. As the (notoriously humble) metal icon walks through the ensemble, they part at the middle and bow to his feet as he passes, thumping the floor in applause, in the process.

The remarkable achievement that has seen the music invented by Iommi and Sabbath in the city’s darkest corners being performed in its most celebrated and high-brow cultural spaces will not have been lost on Iommi. 

“I’d never have believed it,” Iommi told The Guardian earlier this month, when asked how he would have responded to the suggestion of a ballet at the outset of his career. “Especially remembering how we were looked on when we first started: no one wanted to know.”

The show has been created by Birmingham Royal Ballet director and renowned dancer Carlos Acosta. Like Iommi, the director is a working class icon himself – albeit one that hailed from the tropical climes of Cuba, as opposed to the smokestacks of Britain’s post-war industrial landscape.

“I’m working class – I am Black Sabbath,” Costa told The Guardian. “I’m trying to do the same things Black Sabbath achieved. The essence is the same. I understand why the music means so much to the fans, and why they crave it and how relevant they are.”

After the show, Iommi wrote on Instagram that he was “honoured to be involved with these talented dancers”. 

Hopefully we’ll have some complete footage of the track to come, but in the meantime you can check out the fan-shot clips of Iommi’s guest appearance above.

And, if you fancy revisiting the ’Sabbath guitarist’s journey in the company of an equally revolutionary player, check out the time Tony Iommi and Eddie Van Halen discussed the highs and lows of their careers and their evolution as guitarists.

Every guitarist has their own designated sweet spot on the fretboard. Whether it be the A minor pentatonic box or something more exotic, every player has a comfort zone they immediately gravitate towards as soon as they pick up their electric guitar or acoustic guitar.

Well, according to Robert Plant, Jimmy Page’s go-to spot on the fretboard was anything in the key of E. Not surprising, really, given that Whole Lotta Love, Communication Breakdown and a wealth of other Led Zep songs are all rooted around that open string.

But Page apparently favored it so much that the keys of the band’s tracks – and, consequently, Plant’s vocal parts – were wholly dictated by his guitar playing.

Plant made the admission while in conversation with Rolling Stone Music Now, saying that he often found the high notes in Zeppelin to be particularly challenging, as the songs were geared towards Page’s playing as opposed to his own vocal range.

“In Zeppelin, quite often everything was in E because you got much more out of the bottom of the guitar,” he said. “I should have gone to one of those castrati schools in Northern Italy to try and get it right.”

Safe to say Plant had a totally different experience with Alison Krauss – serial Grammy-winning vocalist – both of whom recently released their second collaborative album and their first since 2007, Raise The Roof.

Reflecting on his first time singing with Krauss, Plant commented, “It was quite weird to actually sit there [with Krauss] and say, ‘Right, here’s a song. What key shall we play it in?’ I’d never thought about what key things should be in.”

Elsewhere in the interview, the pair teased there won’t be another 14 year wait for their next team-up, with Plant adding, “We’ve still got about 6,000 songs. So if it feels good and there’s nothing to stop the flow, once we get on tour, maybe we pull up in some little town somewhere and set up and record.”

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss's Raise The Roof is available now.

The sun has risen on yet another Thursday, meaning it’s time for us to share our harvest of the past week’s best and most exciting guitar-heavy offerings.

Mitski is back, and in typically phenomenal form, on Working for the Knife, Los Bitchos color irresistibly dance-y rhythms with vivid guitar textures on Las Panteras, Deap Vally bring the fuzz on Magic Medicine, and Trivium show their melodic and brutal sides on The Phalanx.

All that and more guitar-driven greatness awaits you in our playlist below, so press play and turn that ol' volume knob to the right.

Los Bitchos – Las Panteras

Following in the footsteps of Khruangbin – who, as it turns out, are already fans – London collective Los Bitchos fuse world music rhythms and evocative guitar textures that are already proving irresistibly danceable.

They’ve got the credentials to back it up, too, as each member hails from a different corner of the globe. Guitarist Serra Petale seeks to make her Eastwood sound “like Van Halen and Cocteau Twins – but from Turkey”, and judging from the taunt rhythm syncopations and chorus-drenched tones in Las Panteras, she succeeds in her ambition.

Produced by Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos, the track is certain to appeal to anyone who digs the otherworldly sounds of Mark Speer, but Los Bitchos give that cosmic-disco sound a shot of adrenaline that takes it into altogether friskier, up-tempo territory. We can’t wait to hear more. (MAB)

Trivium – The Phalanx

Trivium are one of the most bankable metal bands in the world right now. And as they gear up to unleash their 10th studio album, In The Court Of The Dragon – out tomorrow (October 8), it’s clear why.

From the album thus far, the Orlando metallers have released its destructive title track, second single Feast of Fire and now seven-minute heavy metal onslaught, The Phalanx. Of course, Trivium are no strangers to songs of seven minutes and above, and their expertise in the area is more than apparent on this number.

The Phalanx is equal parts melodic, brutal, and jaw-dropping, featuring an abundance of winding solos which weave themselves between the track’s copiousness of guitar riffs. (SR)

Mitski – Working for the Knife

Given the euphoric reception of her effortlessly genre-blending 2018 masterpiece, Be the Cowboy, and the sold-out tour that followed, it couldn’t have been easy for Mitski to settle on the song with which she would re-emerge after the two years out of the limelight that followed.

Working for the Knife though, shows the singer-songwriter in as brilliant form as ever, with turns of phrase that cut deep immediately, and deeper still with further listens and study.

Though driven by synths, the song has all sorts of guitar goodness to sink your teeth into – whether it’s the sunny acoustic strums, the gnarled electric chords that jut out from time to time or the funky rhythm work that comes to fore in the song’s devastating final verse, it’s all cleverly done and fitted perfectly to the song.

Mitski’s meteoric rise from indie obscurity in just a handful of years has been well-deserved, but still remarkable to witness. Something tells us that Working for the Knife – the video for which has racked up over a million views in two days on YouTube – will only fuel it further. (JM)

Deap Vally – Magic Medicine 

This week, LA-based duo Deap Vally announced their first studio album proper in five years – save their 2020 collaborative effort with Flaming Lips – and ushered in the news with this three-and-a-half-minute fuzz-a-thon.

Unsurprisingly, Julie Edwards and Lindsey Troy are on top form, clearly buoyed by their recent collaborative escapades with artists such as Peaches, KT Tunstall, Jennie Vee and more. It’s a no-holds-barred effort that features a boatload of gorgeous guitar playing – check out the quick-fire wah-laden guitar solo at the 2:20 mark – and equally enticing effects work, propped up by some truly arena-sized overdrive sounds.

Likening being in a band to the ups and downs of domestic partnership, the album – aptly titled Marriage – is set to pit Edwards and Lindsey together in a bid to reinvigorate their musical identity by pushing “the limits of what has previously defined us”. Naturally, they’ll succeed, and naturally, it’s going to be great. (MO)

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss – High and Lonesome

With the imminent arrival of their first album in 14(!) years, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss have teased the odd excerpt from its tracklisting – which is predominantly composed of covers of the likes of Merle Haggard, Allen Toussaint, the Everly Brothers, and Bert Jancsh – but High and Lonesome marks the record’s sole original composition.

Written by Plant and producer T-Bone Burnett – who also handles guitar duties alongside Marc Ribot – High and Lonesome more than recaptures the magic of Raising Sand, as gently chugging six-strings and pushed-tweed leads underpin orchestral sweeps that recall Plant’s Unledded days. Add in the fact that his lower register just gets better with age, and this is sublime stuff. (MAB)

Gov't Mule - Snatch It Back And Hold It

The blues’ presence has always been significant in the music of Gov’t Mule, but the band’s upcoming LP, Heavy Load Blues, is the quartet’s first album to be dedicated wholly to the genre.

The first single from the album, Heavy Load, was as bare-bones as it gets, serving as a showcase for the acoustic side of Warren Haynes’ enviable six-string skills. 

On their new version of Junior Wells’ Snatch It Back And Hold It though, this world-class jam band stretches out. Loose but absolutely smoking, the eight-minute cover gives Haynes plenty of room to light up the fretboard of his gorgeous vintage SG with massive bends, biting lead stabs and deliciously melodic scalar runs.

Haynes doesn’t match the speed of say, Herman Li, but every note he plays on this extended blues workout has a place and purpose, and he never fails to bring proceedings back home and back to the main tune with class and elegance. Haynes can do plenty more, as a guitarist, than pure blues, but when he does take things all the way back to his roots, it’s a joy to behold. (JM)

ERRA – Vanish Canvas (feat. Courtney LaPlante)

In somewhat of a departure from their usual brand of ultra-brutal, technical heavy metal, Alabama stalwarts ERRA have teamed up with Spiritbox’s Courtney LaPlante for a markedly slower and more melodic offering.

Lending his clean vocals to the track’s verse sections while decorating them with crystalline arpeggio lines, guitarist Jesse Cash displays his versatility throughout, serving up those characteristic drop-tuned riff lines in the choruses, and offering an enveloping two-handed-tapping passage around the 2:50 mark. (SR)

Wallows – I Don’t Want to Talk 

LA-based trio Wallows returned this week for their first new music since February’s Remote EP with yet another supremely infectious indie rock romp, I Don’t Want to Talk.

Fronted by Dylan Minnette – who’s also a dab hand at acting, having starred in Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why – the three-piece have recruited Vampire Weekend, Haim and Adele producer Ariel Rechtshaid for their latest release, which arrives jam-packed with just about all the guitar goodness you could want from a Wallows track.

It’s as easygoing as Wallows gets, featuring a pounding drum beat, twangy guitar hook and catchy vocal motif that are propped up by some quick-fire harmonica cameos that intermittently decorate the track.

Boasting a charming Young Chasers-era Circa Waves-esque vibe thanks to its breezy guitar parts – super-charged with the production maturity that Rechtshaid brings – I Don’t Want to Talk easily surpasses the sonic heights the band set with their 2019 debut album Nothing Happens. No mean feat, given how good that album actually was. (MO)

An official first-look clip from the debut, band-sanctioned Led Zeppelin documentary, Becoming Led Zeppelin, has been released online after it was shared during the Venice Film Festival on Saturday (September 4).

The all-too-brief, just-under-a-minute trailer comprises a teasing archival montage, splicing together some live show action with footage of a zeppelin, which takes flight before bursting into flames while the film’s title crops up on screen.

Good Times Bad Times serves as a fitting trailer soundtrack, with those mammoth opening chords and chordal flourishes merely building our anticipation for the film.

Per AP News, Led Zeppelin’s own electric guitar legend Jimmy Page was in attendance at the Venice Film Festival and revealed he turned down a handful of “pretty miserable” offers to make a documentary, before partnering with producers Bernard MacMahon and Allison McGourty.

After appraising the proposed storyboard for the film, the band agreed to the pitch, appreciating the film’s creative direction that places greater emphasis on the music and storytelling interviews.

Said Page, “When we first met we were probably a little nervous of each other. But the conduit was the storyboard. And I thought they’ve really got it, they really understand what it was about.

“This one, it’s everything about the music, and what made the music tick,” he continued. “It’s not just a sample of it with a talking head. This is something in a totally different genre.”

The documentary itself is set to include newly obtained, never-before-seen live show footage, previously unreleased photos, and archival interviews with the late John Bonham, obtained by MacMahon after a year-long search comprising 30,000 unmarked video reels.

Contemporary interviews with the band’s three surviving members – Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones – will also be included in the film, which will focus on the band’s formative years and early career.

It’s the first time we’ve been able to feast our eyes on some Led Zep documentary footage since the project was first announced way back in 2019. An update earlier this year reported that production on the documentary had been completed, though a release date is still yet to be announced.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss have announced their upcoming studio album, Raise The Roof – a 12-track effort that will see the pair line up alongside an impressive list of electric guitar heavyweights.

Set to be released on November 19, the effort sees Plant and Krauss recruit six-string slingers Marc Ribot, David Hidalgo, Bill Frisell and Buddy Miller, with pedal steel player Russ Pahl joining the fold. 

Drummer Jay Bellerose and bass guitar players Dennis Crouch and Viktor Krauss are also set to feature, with previous Plant/Krauss producer T Bone Burnett heading up production duties for the record.

To usher in the news, the pair have also shared the record’s lead single, a cover of the Randy Weeks-written track Can’t Let Go, which was first recorded by Lucinda Williams in 1998.

Swapping the swampy acoustic guitar parts of the original rendition for a Western-esque electric guitar melody, Krauss and the former Led Zeppelin singer spend the duration of the track flexing their celebrated, range-exploring vocal chemistry.

Raise The Roof will be the duo’s first collaborative project in 14 years since the release of 2007’s Raising Sand, which debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 and went on to scoop six Grammy awards.

The album's tracklist will feature a number of cuts composed by “legends and unsung heroes”, including songs from Merle Haggard, Allen Toussaint, The Everly Brothers, Anne Briggs, Geeshie Wiley, Bert Jansch and more.

Other notable additions include a Plant/Burnett original, High and Lonesome, with the rock icon citing English folk traditions and inspirations as the driving forces behind assembling the album’s material.

Of the record, Krauss commented, “We wanted it to move. We brought other people in, other personalities within the band, and coming back together again in the studio brought a new intimacy to the harmonies.”

"You hear something and you go, 'Man, listen to that song, we got to sing that song!'” added Plant. “It's a vacation, really – the perfect place to go that you least expected to find."

You can find the Raise The Roof tracklist below:

1. Quattro (World Drifts In)
2. The Price of Love
3. Go Your Way
4. Trouble With My Lover
5. Searching for My Love
6. Can't Let Go
7. It Don't Bother Me
8. You Led Me to The Wrong
9. Last Kind Words Blues
10. High and Lonesome
11. Going Where the Lonely Go
12. Somebody Was Watching Over Me

Raise The Roof is available to preorder now ahead of its November 19 release.

The copyright battle over Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven, in which the estate of late Spirit guitarist and songwriter Randy Wolfe (aka Randy California) accused Led Zeppelin of lifting the song's iconic opening acoustic guitar intro from the 1968 Spirit instrumental, Taurus, has seemingly gone on forevermore.

But now it appears that the case is finally over, and Zep – or, more specifically, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant – have emerged victorious, with an announcement that the US Supreme Court has declined to take up the case.

This means that a March 2020 decision by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which ruled in a 9-2 decision that Zeppelin did not steal the intro, will stand.

That ruling affirmed a decision by a Los Angeles jury in 2016. But at that time, a new trial was ordered after errors were found in the jury instruction process.

In particular, jurors had not been allowed to hear sound recordings of Taurus and Stairway, due to the fact that a judge had determined that only Wolfe’s sheet music, and not the actual sound recording, was protected under the 1909 Copyright Act. Taurus was written before federal law covered sound recordings.

The 2020 ruling, however, reaffirmed the earlier decision based on the 1909 Copyright Act, determining that the court was not in error for not allowing the jury to hear the Taurus sound recording at the original trial.

“The trial and appeal process has been a long climb up the stairway to heaven,” circuit Judge Margaret McKeown stated at the time.

Led Zeppelin have yet to comment on the decision.

The protracted copyright battle over Stairway to Heaven appears to have come to an end, with the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruling in a 9-2 decision on March 9 that Led Zeppelin did not steal the song's iconic opening acoustic guitar intro.

The ruling affirmed a decision by a Los Angeles jury in 2016. That case saw a trustee representing the estate of late Spirit guitarist and songwriter Randy Wolfe (a k a Randy California) accuse Led Zeppelin of lifting a piece of the 1968 Spirit instrumental, Taurus, for the intro to their own 1971 song. 

The 2016 case was decided in Zeppelin’s favor, but in 2019, a ninth circuit panel ordered a new trial after finding errors in the jury instruction process at the first trial.

In particular, jurors had not been allowed to hear sound recordings of Taurus and Stairway, due to the fact that a judge had determined that only Wolfe’s sheet music, and not the actual sound recording, was protected under the 1909 Copyright Act. Taurus was written before federal law covered sound recordings.

In 2019, plaintiff's attorney Francis Malofiy argued that the copyrighted musical composition of Taurus should also include the song as it was recorded, rather than just transcribed on paper.

But on March 9 an 11-judge panel in San Francisco reaffirmed the 2016 ruling based on the 1909 Copyright Act, determining that the court was not in error for not allowing the jury to hear the Taurus sound recording at the original trial.

The appeals court also elected to ditch what is known as the inverse ratio rule, which states that the more access songwriters have to previously written works, the lower the bar for proving substantial similarity. 

In the case of Zeppelin and Taurus, the original lawsuit claimed Robert Plant and Jimmy Page were familiar with Taurus because Spirit and Led Zeppelin had played shows together in 1968 and 1969.

The new ruling would seem to signal the conclusion of the case.

“The trial and appeal process has been a long climb up the Stairway to Heaven,” circuit Judge Margaret McKeown stated.

After a years-long legal battle regarding whether Led Zeppelin plagiarized the 1968 Spirit instrumental Taurus for their own Stairway to Heaven – centered specifically around the descending Am chord sequence at the beginning of the latter tune – the case continues to wind on down the road.

On September 23, a group of 11 judges convened at the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to determine whether a new trial would be required.

The original 2016 case saw a trustee representing the estate of late Spirit guitarist and songwriter Randy Wolfe (a k a Randy California) accuse Led Zeppelin of lifting a piece of Taurus for the intro to their own 1971 song. 

That case was ruled in favor of Zeppelin, though two years later a 9th Circuit panel ordered a new trial after finding errors in the jury instruction process at the first trial.

While a previous judge’s ruling stated that copyrights of musical compositions prior to 1972 are only protected as sheet music, on September 23 plaintiffs' attorney Francis Malofiy argued that the copyrighted musical composition of Taurus should also include the song as it was recorded, rather than just transcribed on paper.

According to a Fox News report, several judges expressed skepticism toward Malofiy’s argument.

"You've got to get your sound recording in to win, don't you?" Judge Andrew D. Hurwitz said. "You lose the case unless you do. A hundred times out of a hundred."

Argued Malofiy, "I don't think it's the sound recording that's copyrighted; I think it's the composition embodied in the sound recording.”

The plaintiffs’ attorney went on to further argue for the inclusion of the sound recording by stating that Page, who composed Stairway to Heaven, does not even read sheet music.

As for why he has pursued this case so tenaciously, Malofiy explained to Variety, “When it comes to music, there has to be artistic and intellectual honesty. You can’t deny how great [Led Zeppelin] are as musicians. The issue that is going to haunt their legacy, however, is that they fail to give proper and necessary credit.

“That’s the black cloud hanging over their… what… blimp?” 

During his appearance at the Secret Solstice Festival in Reykjavik, Iceland last month, Robert Plant wrapped his 13-song solo set with a run through of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”—the first time the singer has performed the classic track since 1996.

Plant likely pulled out the song due to its Icelandic roots—he penned the lyrics after Zeppelin traveled to Iceland for a gig at Reykjavík’s Laugardalshöll Hall on June 22, 1970. “We weren't being pompous—we did come from the land of the ice and snow,” he once explained.

Plant’s Secret Solstice set with his band, the Sensational Space Shifters, also featured several other Zeppelin tracks, including “Ramble On,” “Black Dog” and opener “When the Levee Breaks.”

Led Zeppelin have announced the imminent release of a new documentary celebrating the band on their 50th anniversary. 

The still-untitled film, directed by Bernard MacMahon (who also helmed the 2017 documentary American Epic, about the first recordings of rural music in the U.S.), “traces the journeys of the four members through the music scene of the Sixties, their meeting in the summer of 1968 for a rehearsal that will change the future of rock, and culminates in 1970 when their second album knocks the Beatles off the top of the charts and they become the number one band in the world.”

The documentary features brand new interviews with Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones, as well as rare archival interviews with the late John Bonham. There's also never-before-seen archive film and photographs, state-of-the-art audio transfers of the band’s music, as well as some of the music that helped to shape Zeppelin's sound.

The film marks the first and only time the band have participated in a documentary.

Said Jimmy Page: "When I saw everything Bernard had done both visually and sonically on the remarkable achievement that is American Epic, I knew he would be qualified to tell our story.”

Added Robert Plant: “Seeing Will Shade, and so many other important early American musicians, brought to life on the big screen in American Epic inspired me to contribute to a very interesting and exciting story.”

“The time was right for us to tell our own story for the first time in our own words, and I think that this film will really bring that story to life,” said John Paul Jones.

For more information head to LedZeppelin.com.

Ever want to know what an early Led Zeppelin concert experience was like? We've got you covered.

Here, you can check out some vintage, high-quality video from a March 17, 1969, Led Zeppelin TV appearance.

In the U.S., Led Zeppelin’s self-titled debut album was only three months old—and it wouldn't be released in the U.K. for another two weeks.

The band—Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham—was on a tour of the U.K. and Scandinavia when it visited TV-Byen studios in Gladsaxe, Denmark, to play four tracks from the new album. You can check out one of these, their blistering performance of "Communication Breakdown," above.

Page is playing his 1959 Fender Telecaster, a gift from Jeff Beck and a holdover from Page’s Yardbirds days. Page fans are in luck, because there's lots of close-up camera work during his guitar solos, including his enjoyable “Communication Breakdown” Tele-shred workout. Enjoy!

Our semi-recent story about Jimmy Page's five best guitar solos as a member of the Yardbirds got us thinking about another legendary pre-Led Zeppelin recording featuring Page.

This project, however, features all four members of Led Zeppelin—Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham—recording together before there even was a Led Zeppelin. While still in "New Yardbirds" mode, the four pre-Zeps took part in the August 1968 recording sessions for P.J. Proby’s 1969 album, Three Week Hero.

Page and Jones were successful session musicians at this point, and when Jones got the Proby gig, he invited his fellow New Yardbirds along. A recent Dangerous Minds story quotes Jones as saying, “I was committed to doing all the arrangements for the album. As we were talking about rehearsing at the time, I thought it would be a handy source of income. I had to book a band anyway, so I thought I’d book everybody I knew.” The sessions started August 25, 1968, and led to an album that didn't cause much of a stir when it was released the following April.

“The boys told me they were going over to play in San Francisco and all that, and I said, ‘Look, from what I’ve heard and the way you boys played tonight, not only are you not going to be my backing band, I’m going to say goodbye right now, because I don’t think I’m ever going to see you again'," Proby says in the DM story.

"'That’s how successful you’re going to be. You’re exactly what they want, you play all that psychedelic stuff and everything.' I said, ‘You’re going to go over there and go down so great I don’t think you’re ever going to come home.’ They didn’t ever come back until they changed their name to Led Zeppelin and stayed over there and came back huge huge stars. … I said goodbye that day when I cut that album, and I haven’t seen one of them since.”

Check out some samples from the album (and a non-album B-side) below.

"Jim's Blues"

Is there any doubt this is Led Zeppelin? This is part of the eight-minute medley that closed the album. I admit, this track really "shook me" ... all night long

“The Day That Lorraine Came Down”

Here's track two from the Proby album, which was released on CD in 1994. It's easy to picture Plant on vocals—not that there's anything wrong with Proby's voice.

"Mery Hopkins Never Had Days Like These"

Here's a non-album B-side from the same sessions. This song is interesting because Proby calls out each member of the band, who then plays a little solo, starting with bassist John Paul Jones. By the way, for a little more info about about the album, check out good ol' Wikipedia. (PS: It seems the word "Mery" in the song title is supposed to be spelled like that; it's obviously a fun reference to then-popular Welsh singer Mary Hopkin.)

A rare guitar, signed by an all-star cast of musicians that includes Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Brian May, Peter Frampton, Robert Plant, Pete Townshend and many, many more is headed to auction.

The sunburst acoustic—which was handcrafted by master luthier Alister Atkin and Atkin Guitars of Canterbury, England—was modeled after Buddy Holly's beloved Gibson J-45, and donated by the Buddy Holly Educational Foundation. According to a statement, the guitar is expected to fetch more than $250,000.

All proceeds from the guitar will go toward UCLA Health and Teen Cancer America, a non-profit created by the Who's Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend that provides support and resources to teens and young adults diagnosed with cancer.

You can learn more about the guitar, and the auction, over at entertainment.ha.com.

Led Zeppelin are rounding out the reissue series of their classic albums by revisiting The Song Remains the Same. The deluxe reissue—which is set for a September 7 release—was remastered with supervision from Jimmy Page.

The reissue of The Song Remains the Same follows the band's recent reissue of How the West Was Won, and closes out the reissue series of their catalog, which began in 2014.

The Song Remains the Same will be released in multiple formats from Atlantic/Swan Song, including the full album's debut in hi-res 5.1 surround sound on Blu-ray. The Super Deluxe Boxed Set will be the most exquisite and elaborate release in the reissue series, recreating the intricate embossing of the set's original issue, and will also mark the first time the full -length film and soundtrack have been available in the same package. On the 4-LP set, Page made a change to the track sequence, allowing the epic, 29-minute version of "Dazed And Confused" to be featured in its entirety on one side of vinyl for the first time.

The Song Remains the Same is the soundtrack to the legendary concert film of the same name, which was released in 1976. The performances in the film were recorded July 27-29, 1973 at Madison Square Garden during the band's tour for its then-current studio album, Houses Of The Holy.

You can preorder the set right here.

Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters have premiered their new performance video for "The May Queen." You can check it out above.

The video for the song—the first single from Plant's 2017 album, Carry Fire—was shot at Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters' concert at the O2 Apollo Manchester last November, and directed by Ryan Mackfall.

Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters also recently announced a new live DVD, Robert Plant & The Sensational Space Shifters Live at David Lynch’s Festival of Disruption. You can pick up a copy of the DVD here.

For more on Plant, be sure to follow along on Facebook.

Robert Plant—he of Led Zeppelin, Honeydrippers and Band of Joy fame—recently commented on the somewhat familiar sound of up-and-coming rockers Greta Van Fleet—especially the impressive pipes of their lead singer, Josh Kiszka.

"There's a band in Detroit called Greta Van Fleet. They are Led Zeppelin I," Plant told Loudwire. "Beautiful little singer, I hate him! He borrowed [his voice] from somebody I know very well, but what are you going to do? At least he's got a bit of style, because he’s said he based his whole style on Aerosmith [eye roll]."

Considering their big, riff-heavy sound, the Frankenmuth, Michigan-based foursome have been compared to mighty Led Zep several thousand times over the past few years—not that they mind.

“Are you kidding me? I embrace it!” guitarist Jake Kiszka (Josh's brother) told Guitar World. “That big riff style that [Jimmy] Page pioneered is something that always excited me. I think it’s a little sad that huge rock riffs are lacking in a lot of today’s music. Maybe if people see what we’re doing and how cool it is, we can help make it come back.”

As for Plant's Led Zeppelin I comment, Jake indirectly agrees. As he told Guitar World in March, “We have certain debut records that are like benchmarks to us—Van Halen’s first record, Zeppelin’s first, even the Black Crowes’ Shake Your Money Maker. Those records really seemed to sum up each band so well. Those albums are like the gold standard, and they give us something to shoot for. It’s like, ‘Can we be that good?’ ”

By the way, Greta Van Fleet also have captured the attention of Joe Satriani, who told NJ Arts in February: "I've been listening to this young band, Greta Van Fleet, and I'm really enjoying that exuberance that I'm hearing. When I first heard them, I sent their album to all my friends that were in my high-school band. We're still good friends and we stay in touch and, I swear, that's what we were trying to do when we were 15 years old.

"We were just trying to be like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and The Stones, but these guys are really good at it! [Laughs] They have that same kind of... it just sounds like they love music and they love what they're doing and yeah, I've been listening to that quite a bit."

Led Zeppelin have released "Immigrant Song," the first excerpt from the upcoming super deluxe box set edition of their 2003 live album, How the West Was Won. You can listen to it above.

The super deluxe box set edition of How the West Was Won was remastered under the supervision of Jimmy Page, and features three CDs, four LPs, a DVD with 5.1 Surround audio, a digital download card, a book filled with rare and previously unpublished photos of the band and a high-quality print of the original album cover.

The album was recorded during the band's performances at the Forum in Los Angeles and the Long Beach Arena on June 25 and 27, 1972. The performances were edited together to give How the West Was Won the feel of a single, continuous live performance.

The How the West Was Won box set will be released March 23 via Atlantic/Swan Song. You can preorder it here.

Last night, Robert Plant stopped by the Late Late Show with James Corden. During his appearance, he performed "New World"—a meditative cut from his new album, Carry Fire—with his band, the Sensational Space Shifters. You can watch the performance above.

For the show, Plant also sat down for an interview with Corden, during which he told an amusing anecdote about the the time he sang Elvis at a karaoke bar in Hong Kong.

Plant was visiting the city with his son and had admittedly "had too much to drink." After choosing his Elvis song, he noticed a Taiwanese Elvis impersonator go up to the table and, of course, choose an Elvis song.

"I was neck and neck with this guy," Plant joked. "But all the time, the Chinese were going for the Taiwanese guy, and I was really, really good."

You can watch the interview below.

In celebration of their 50th anniversary, Led Zeppelin have announced a limited edition 7" featuring previously unreleased versions of "Rock And Roll" and "Friends."

The 7"—which, as a Record Store Day exclusive, will only be available on April 21 at independent music retailers—was produced by Jimmy Page himself and pressed on yellow vinyl. It features two previously unheard studio mixes, handpicked by Page himself; the "Sunset Sound Mix" of "Rock And Roll" b/w the "Olympic Studios Mix" of "Friends."

The previously unreleased version of "Rock And Roll" provides an additional peek into the fabled "Sunset Sound Mixes" of Led Zeppelin IV. Only two previous "Sunset Sound Mixes" have been released, the first being the version of "When The Levee Breaks" on the original album and the second being the "Stairway To Heaven" mix that debuted on the 2014 deluxe edition. The previously unheard "Olympic Studios Mix" of "Friends" is a stripped-down version, without the orchestration of the final mix.

The 7" follows the news that the band's 2003 live album, How the West Was Won, would be getting the remaster/super deluxe box set treatment. The album was recorded during the band's performances at the Forum in Los Angeles and the Long Beach Arena on June 25 and 27, 1972. The remaster will be available March 23 via Atlantic/Swan Song. You can preorder it here.

For more Led Zeppelin news, be sure to follow along on Facebook.

In this classic GW lesson, you can learn how to play the intro to Led Zeppelin's classic track, "Immigrant Song."

In the video—which is hosted by our own Jimmy Brown—you can learn the deceptively complex intro riff piece by piece, from the difficult picking pattern to the finger placements.

Check it out, and be sure to stay tuned for more classic lessons in the coming days!

Last month, Jimmy Page stated in an interview that new "product" would be arriving from Led Zeppelin in celebration of the band's 50th anniversary. Though we're just a few weeks into 2018, it certainly seems that Page is making good on his promise.

First, it was announced that an illustrated book would arrive this year in celebration of their semicentennial. Now, the band has announced that their 2003 live album, How the West Was Won, has been remastered under the supervision of Jimmy Page, and will be reissued as a super deluxe box set. This box set features three CDs, four LPs, a DVD with 5.1 Surround audio, a digital download card, a book filled with rare and previously unpublished photos of the band and a high-quality print of the original album cover.

The album was recorded during the band's performances at the Forum in Los Angeles and the Long Beach Arena on June 25 and 27, 1972. The performances were edited together to give How the West Was Won the feel of a single, continuous live performance.

The How the West Was Won box set will be released on March 23 via Atlantic/Swan Song. You can preorder it here.

Robert Plant & the Sensational Space Shifters have announced a new live DVD, Robert Plant & The Sensational Space Shifters Live at David Lynch’s Festival of Disruption.

The DVD—which covers the band's October 2016 performance at the inaugural edition of the legendary filmmaker's festival—is set for a February 9 release via Eagle Rock Entertainment.

The band's set that night included Led Zeppelin classics like "Black Dog" and "Whole Lotta Love" right alongside solo gems “Turn It Up," “The Enchanter/Rainbow” and “Little Maggie."

Proceeds from the sale of the DVD will benefit the David Lynch Foundation.

You can preorder the DVD here and check out the track list below.

Track listing
1. Poor Howard
2. Turn It Up
3. Black Dog
4. The Enchanter / Rainbow
5. Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You
6. Little Maggie
7. Hoochie Coochie Man / Whole Lotta Love / Mona
8. Going to California

A month or so ago, Robert Plant announced his return, detailing his 11th studio album, Carry Fire. Now, Plant has announced a 2018 North American tour with his band, the Sensational Space Shifters.

The dozen-show trek—set to begin in February—will take Plant across America (in addition to a stop at Toronto's Massey Hall). More shows will be added later this year.

"We've got a kind of communal drift, which has stayed with us no matter what other projects we do," Plant recently said to Rolling Stoneabout the Sensational Space Shifters. "It's like a brotherhood, really."

You can check out the tour dates, and re-visit Carry Fire's first single—"The May Queen"—below.

Pre-order Carry Firehere.

Robert Plant North American Tour Dates

• February 9 - Raleigh, NC @ Raleigh Memorial Auditorium
• February 11 - Charlotte, NC @ Ovens Auditorium
• February 12 - Norfolk, VA @ Chrysler Hall
• February 14 - New York, NY @ Beacon Theatre
• February 16 - Boston, MA @ Orpheum Theatre
• February 17 - Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall
• February 20 - Chicago, IL @ Riviera Theatre
• February 22 - Minneapolis, MN @ Orpheum Theatre
• February 24 - Denver, CO @ Temple Hoyne Buell Theatre
• February 26 - Phoenix, AZ @ Symphony Hall
• February 28 - Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater
• March 2 - Los Angeles, CA @ Orpheum Theatre

The React videos have been around for a long time, and—whether you want to admit it or not—they prove to be fairly popular among GuitarWorld.com readers.

Now, Fine Brothers Entertainment, makers of the popular “Kids React” videos, are back with a new clip showing how youngsters respond to hearing Led Zeppelin for the first time.

The video is worth watching almost solely for one of the subjects, an 8-year-old named Jake. His passion for the band—who he says he heard via his dad—can put virtually any self-proclaimed die-hard to shame. If anything, it'll remind you of the sheer power of hearing amazing music as a young, impressionable child.

Another highlight comes when 6-year-old Sophie says of the first lines of "Whole Lotta Love," "I have no idea what they said at the first bit. It sounds like 'I need oatmeal.'"

You can see all of the reactions—which run the gamut from euphoric to disinterested—below.

For more React clips, follow along on YouTube.

• Great guitars for kids: top electrics and acoustics for children

The last we heard from Robert Plant was 2014's excellent Lullaby And… The Ceaseless Roar, a record the former Led Zeppelin frontman recorded with his backing group, the Sensational Shape Shifters.

Now, Plant has announced his return with the Sensational Space Shifters, detailing a new album—his 11th—called Carry Fire. With the announcement also comes the premiere of "The May Queen," our first glimpse of the new album. You can check it out below.

“It’s about intention. I respect and relish my past works, but each time I feel the incentive to create new work, I must mix old with new," Plant said about Carry Fire. “Consequently, the whole impetus of the band has moved on its axis somewhat—the new sound and different space giving way to exciting and dramatic landscapes of mood, melody and instrumentation.”

Carry Fire is set for an October 13 release via Nonesuch/Warner. You can preorder (preordering the album includes the opportunity to gain priority access to pre-sales for tickets to Plant's upcoming U.K. tour) here. You also can look at Plant's upcoming tour dates below the video.

Robert Plant — UK Tour

• Nov 16: Plymouth Pavilions
• Nov 17: Bristol Colston Hall
• Nov 20: Wolverhampton Civic Hall
• Nov 22: Llandudno Venue Cymru
• Nov 24: Newcastle City Hall
• Nov 25: Liverpool Oympia
• Nov 27: Glasgow SEC Armadillo
• Nov 28: Perth Concert Hall
• Nov 30: Manchester O2 Apollo
• Dec 02: Belfast Ulster Hall
• Dec 06: Sheffield City Hall
• Dec 08: London Royal Albert Hall
• Dec 11: Portsmouth Guildhall
• Dec 12: Birmingham Symphony Hall

This past Sunday night (May 14), Robert Plant and former AC/DC singer Brian Johnson joined Paul Rodgers on stage for a performance of “Money (That’s What I Want)” at the New Theatre Oxford.

The performance, which was a complete surprise to the audience, was a highlight of Rodgers' ongoing Free Spirit tour.

The fan-shot video below features most of the Barrett Strong cover—which has been recorded by scores of bands, including the Beatles and the Flying Lizards—and captures Johnson, Plant and Rodgers trading off during the chorus.

Johnson was forced to abandon AC/DC’s Rock or Bust world tour early last year because of potential hearing loss. Axl Rose of Guns N' Roses appeared in Johnson's place, marking first time AC/DC used a lead vocalist other than Johnson since January 1980.

There's a rumor going around—and that's all it is at this point, folks (a rumor)—that Led Zeppelin will reunite for this year's Desert Trip Festival in Southern California.

Feel Numb first mentioned it last week, revealing that "some well placed sources in the industry" are reporting that Robert Plant is indeed "in."

There has been no mention of the band's other members—Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham. In fact, the 2017 Desert Trip Festival hasn't even been officially scheduled.

"Rumor has it they turned down a reported $14 million payday to play at last year's festival and that this year there are 'millions and millions' of more reasons why they should do it," says the Feel Numb story. "Sources tell me [Plant] has finally agreed to do it because of the impending 50-year anniversary of Led Zeppelin."

The internet also is abuzz because Plant's website has gone black—except for three words: "Any time now... ." (Of course, this could simply mean his website is undergoing a redesign, and his webhelp team are dragging their feet; hey, I'm just trying to see it from different angles.)

The 2016 Desert Trip Festival, which took place in Indio, California, last October, featured performances by the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, Roger Waters and the Who. So it's not like Led Zeppelin wouldn't fit right in.

Zep haven't performed together since December 2007, when they rocked London's O2 Arena. That performance was later released as Celebration Day, a bit of which you can check out below.

Stay tuned for more details—assuming there are more details.

Robert Plant performed Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” for the first time without former bandmate Jimmy Page on Tuesday, March 14.

The performance took place when Plant made an appearance at violinist Nigel Kennedy’s concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall. The gala event was billed as Nigel Kennedy and Friends and featured classical performers, making Plant’s appearance a peculiar, but welcome, event of the evening.

Plant preceded his performance by explaining that he met Kennedy in the early Nineties when Plant was making his solo album Fate of Nations. The singer had recruited a group of Indian musicians to perform on the song “Calling to You” but was unhappy with what he heard. Kennedy was brought in to contribute to the music, and “this guy saved our lives,” Plant said. “I don’t know whether this is payback or what.”

The version of “Kashmir” that Plant presented on Tuesday night was unique from Led Zeppelin’s original, which appeared on their 1975 album, Physical Graffiti. The performance featured a symphony and classical Indian musicians and opened with a droning intro, over which Plant quietly sang, before the song kicked into full gear about two minutes in. Plant is known to have last performed “Kashmir” at Led Zeppelin’s 2007 reunion at London's O2 Arena.

His performance at the Royal Albert Hall opened with a rendition of the rock and roll classic “Hey Joe,” included below as an audio file. Plant originally covered the song on his 2002 album, Dreamland, his first with his group Strange Sensation.

Robert Plant and his band, the Sensational Space Shifters, were headliners for David Lynch’s Festival of Disruption last October, and their performance comes to AXS TV 10 p.m. EST March 5.

Robert Plant & The Sensational Space Shifters—Live at David Lynch’s Festival of Disruption captures the band’s unique headlining set at the visionary film director’s fully immersive creative gathering to benefit the David Lynch Foundation. The hour-long concert shows the former Led Zeppelin frontman and his band performing classics like “Black Dog,” “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” and “Whole Lotta Love,” as well as selections from his solo career, including “Turn It Up,” “Rainbow” “The Enchanter” and “Little Maggie.”

Speaking with Relix magazine about his music and its connection to Led Zeppelin, Plant says, “I want people to know I’m pulling points of reference from other times and other places—incongruous and out of step and kilter—into another world. I’ve done it with Zeppelin lyrics, as well—‘if the sun refused to shine’ and ‘the road remains the same’ and all the shit. There’s so many bits like that, because I like the idea of spinning the bottle. And if one or two people pick up on it, that’s the justice—that’s about right.”

Below, you can watch a preview from the upcoming program showing Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters performing “Whole Lotta Love.”

On May 14, 1988, Led Zeppelin—Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham (the 2007 Celebration Day lineup, for you youngsters out there)—reunited for Atlantic Records' massive 40th-anniversary party at New York City's Madison Square Garden.

Below, you'll find a video of Led Zeppelin's complete set from that night, starting with "Kashmir," moving into "Heartbreaker" (complete with a variation on Page's guitar solo), followed by an updated version of "Whole Lotta Love" (Note the change in the riff).

After that, you'll hear "Misty Mountain Hop" and other goodies; in all, it's 30-plus minutes of pure, late-Eighties Led Zeppelin.

I watched their set on TV that night, and I remember the horrible mix the band—or maybe it was just the TV viewers—were subjected to. The faulty mix is most obvious on "Kashmir." (Can anyone hear Jones' keyboards? I can't.) Luckily, the more guitar-heavy tracks sound better.

Other acts performing that night included Foreigner; Crosby, Stills & Nash; Genesis; Emerson Lake and Palmer; Wilson Pickett and Ben E. King.

Three years earlier, the band got together for Live Aid; you can read up on that interesting show right here.

Late last year, Phil Collins published his autobiography, Not Dead Yet: The Memoir, via Crown Archetype.

In the book, the drummer pulls no punches—about himself, his life or the ecstasy and heartbreak that’s inspired his music. He starts things off with his brief appearance in the Beatles' 1964 film, A Hard Day's Night, works his way through the Genesis years, producing Eric Clapton in the Eighties, his successful solo albums and beyond.

But he also touches upon a little something called Live Aid. Or, to be more exact, Led Zeppelin's much-maligned reunion show at Live Aid.

In past interviews, Collins has revealed that he considered quitting—mid-performance—during Led Zep's show in Philadelphia on July 13, 1985.

In 2014, he told Q that he realized “this is a mistake” just as the set got under way. Collins was filling in, along with Chic drummer Tony Thompson, for the late John Bonham, who died five years earlier.

“It was a disaster, really," he said. "Robert [Plant] wasn’t match-fit with his voice and Jimmy [Page] was out of it. It wasn’t my fault [that] it was crap. If I could have walked off, I would have. But then we’d all be talking about why Phil Collins walked off Live Aid—so I just stuck it out.”

Classic Rock recently published an excerpt from the book, wherein Collins reveals the following tidbits about the show:

"I know the wheels are falling off from early on in the set. I can’t hear Robert clearly from where I’m sat, but I can hear enough to know that he’s not on top of his game. Ditto Jimmy. I don’t remember playing 'Rock and Roll,' but obviously I did. But I do remember an awful lot of time where I can hear what Robert decries as ‘knitting’: fancy drumming. And if you can find the footage (the Zeppelin camp have done their best to scrub it from the history books), you can see me miming, playing the air, getting out of the way lest there be a train wreck. If I’d known it was to be a two-drummer band, I would have removed myself from proceedings long before I got anywhere near Philadelphia."

He goes on to say:

"Onstage I don’t take my eyes off Tony Thompson. I’m glued to him. I’m having to follow—he’s taking the heavy-handed lead and has opted to ignore all my advice. Putting myself in his shoes, he’s probably thinking, 'This is the beginning of a new career. John Bonham isn’t around any more. They’re gonna want someone. This could be the start of a Led Zeppelin reunion. And I don’t need this English fuck in my way.'"

Check out the full excerpt at teamrock.com. For more about the book, head here and here. And, of course, be sure to watch the videos below (including a very interesting interview clip). Enjoy!

BY THE WAY ... Here's the band's complete Live Aid set:

I know what you're thinking: "What the hell is a 'near-Led Zeppelin moment'?" Good question.

Four out of five scientists seem to agree that a near-Led Zeppelin moment is a post-1980 live performance by one—or two—members of Led Zeppelin that captures—in any number of ways—some intangible spark of a classic Led Zeppelin performance.

Note that this does not include group performances by all three living members of the band, because that particular collection of musicians—whether it's Live Aid in 1985 or the O2 Arena in 2007—is Led Zeppelin. And something can't be "nearly" something if it is that thing.

The criteria I used to compile this list involves song choice, personnel, gear, the element of surprise, the quality of the performance and, of course, that certain je ne sais quoi.

Anyway, here they are, the Top Five Near-Led Zeppelin Moments (according to one writer with a bit too much time on his hands). And, because our math isn't too good, there are actually six songs here. Enjoy!

John Paul Jones with Paul Gilbert, Nuno Bettencourt and Steve Hackett: "Nobody's Fault But Mine"

Here's John Paul Jones fronting a talent-packed lineup featuring Steve Hackett (Check out that harmonica solo!), Nuno Bettencourt, Paul Gilbert, Mike Szuter and Pat Mastelotto. Simply put, this is a rocking performance of a classic Presence tune. You've got a very happy-looking Jones wailing away on steel guitar in front of some Marshall stacks—plus it's an instrumental, so you don't have to deal with the whole unspoken "Robert Plant doesn't quite sound like Robert Plant anymore" issue.

Coverdale/Page: "Black Dog"

This 1993 performance of "Black Dog" by Coverdale/Page in Osaka, Japan, benefits from several factors: First, you get some bonus Zeppelin, since the band teases the audience with several bars of "Out On the Tiles" from Led Zeppelin III (just like Zep used to do it). Then you have the ageless David Coverdale's very convincing vocals. Last but not least, there's the presence of one Jimmy Page, who launches into a lengthy—and very Led Zeppelin-esque—solo on a Gibson Les Paul at around 5:37.

Page & Plant: "Kashmir"

In the Nineties, still-brooding, still-misty-eyed Led Zeppelin fans were treated to a nice surprise: two albums (one live, one studio) and two tours by the officially-working-together-again Jimmy Page and Robert Plant (No comment on how John Paul Jones felt about all this). In 1994, the duo, dubbed Page & Plant, took part in a 90-minute MTV project called UnLedded, which was recorded in Morocco, Wales and London.

In addition to a few new songs and several other Led Zeppelin classics, the show featured a brilliant rendition of "Kashmir." This is not that version (it has disappeared from YouTube). It is, however, equally impressive; it features a fine-voiced Plant, a massive orchestra and Jimmy Page—with another very nice Les Paul.

Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins with Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones: "Rock and Roll"

One thing the previous songs on this list lack is the distinctive, heavy bass playing of John Paul Jones. That's not the case with this one. Throw in Jimmy Page (with yet another Les Paul) and the drumming of Dave Grohl (Check out the spot-on drum solo at the end of the song), and you've got something that sounds quite a bit like Led Zeppelin—at least in terms of the instruments. To be brutally honest, Taylor Hawkins should never, ever, sing Led Zeppelin songs outside of his shower.

Grohl sums it up nicely near the end of the video when he says, "Welcome to the greatest fucking day of my whole, entire life." I'm sure he spoke for all the random Zeppelin fans who happened to have been in the audience at London's Wembley Stadium that night in 2008.

Do yourself a favor and jump ahead to 3:18.

Robert Plant with Jimmy Page: "Wearing and Tearing"

Before there was Page & Plant, there were the increasingly frequent late-Eighties Page-and-Plant pairings, including "Tall Cool One" and "Heaven Knows" from Plant's 1988 Now and Zen album and "The Only One" from Page's Outrider album, also from 1988. From that same era comes this almost-note-perfect rendition of Led Zeppelin's "Wearing and Tearing" from the In Through the Out Door sessions, which was finally released on Coda in 1982.

Led Zeppelin never performed this tune live, but Plant—with surprise guest Jimmy Page—more than made up for it at Knebworth in 1990. Imagine you're in the audience, and you've come to see Plant's band, when all of a sudden, Page comes walking out with a red Les Paul. The oddball song choice just adds to the surprise.

Robert Plant with Very Special Guest Jimmy Page...by ZEPPELINONE1

Jimmy Page & The Black Crowes, "The Wanton Song"

On August 14, 2000, Jimmy Page & the Black Crowes appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to promote their new album, Live at the Greek, and their ongoing tour, which wrapped up that October. They decided to play "The Wanton Song," one of many standouts from 1975's Physical Graffiti. The performance is interesting because it includes all of Page's guitar parts—his overdubs and all—from the original Led Zeppelin recording, sort of like a very good Led Zeppelin cover band. And—especially after catching Get the Led Out's show this past New Year's Eve in Pennsylvania, I mean that in a very good way.

Damian Fanelli is the online managing editor at Guitar World. He writes things.

When Led Zeppelin were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, they got on stage with fellow Rock Hall inductee Neil Young and performed a new arrangement of "When the Levee Breaks," a classic Led Zeppelin IV track.

You can relive the, um, magic by watching the top video below.

Because Jimmy Page's Les Paul and Young's Les Paul weren't quite enough, vocalist Robert Plant grabs a Les Paul of his own at the 2:00 mark. You can watch him truly go to town on his Gibson at 4:36 as Page looks on.

Page and Plant were in full-on Page & Plant mode at this time; in fact, they'd just released a successful live album called No Quarter, which was packed with Led Zep tunes. However, they didn't ask the other surviving Led Zep member, John Paul Jones, to take part in the project.

That's why Jones—during the band's now-legendary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame acceptance speech, which you can watch in the bottom video—says, "Thank you, my friends, for finally remembering my phone number" (jump to 6:31).

That's Michael Lee on drums.

Robert Plant and his band, the Sensational Space Shifters, marked their triumphant return to Austin City Limits for the first time in 14 years last March, which included new renditions of Led Zeppelin classics.

The concert was broadcast this past weekend. We’ve included a fan-posted video of the full show below, but since these have a tendency to disappear, we’ve also included official videos of several songs, including “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You,” “I Just Want to Make Love to You”/“Whole Lotta Love” and “No Place to Go,” which was not included in the official broadcast.

“This is where the path has taken me,” Plant said of the Sensational Space Shifters in an interview with ACL’s Terry Lickona. “This is where we’ve gone. I am virtually and totally reliant on the magic that we've created. It’s a really, really great place to go. I’ve been in a lot of different incarnations of using my voice in the last 10 years, and this is a great place to be.”

Plant is on tour with Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Patty Griffin, Buddy Miller and others as part of the Lampedusa: Concerts for Refugees tour. Funds raised by the tour will support Jesuit Refugee Service’s educational programs for refugees around the world. Head here to see the tour’s remaining dates.

Robert Plant and his band, the Sensational Space Shifters, will be featured on Austin City Limits this weekend.

The eight-song televised set, which the former Led Zeppelin singer taped at the tail end of his Southern Journey tour in March, includes songs from throughout his epic career, including several Led Zeppelin classics. Speaking of which, you can watch him perform his own extra-bluesy, somewhat spacey version of "Black Dog" below.

The set also includes Zeppelin's "The Lemon Song," "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" and "Whole Lotta Love," among others.

"I've passed through here so many times," Plant told Rolling Stone. "Texas doesn't normally carry a particularly good reputation a hundred miles further on outside the state, but I've been playing around Austin on and off over the years, and when I started working with Patty Griffin, I found far more depth to this area around Austin. I really enjoyed my time here."

Plant is on the road now—with Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Patty Griffin, Buddy Miller and more—as part of the Lampedusa: Concerts for Refugees tour, which heads to Chicago tonight. Funds raised by the tour will support Jesuit Refugee Service's educational programs for refugees around the world. Head here to see the tour's remaining dates.

Plant's Austin City Limits episode will premiere Saturday, October 15, on PBS stations across the U.S.

Led Zeppelin have announced the release of The Complete BBC Sessions, an updated, three-disc collection of live recordings from the band's appearances on BBC Radio from 1969 to 1971.

This version, remastered from the original 1997 release with supervision by Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, will feature eight previously unreleased BBC recordings, including three from a session in 1969 that were previously thought to be lost.

The collection will be released via Atlantic/Swan Song September 16 in the following formats:

• Deluxe Edition (3CD) - Remastered original album plus a third disc of unreleased audio.
• Deluxe Edition Vinyl (5LP) - Remastered original album, plus a fifth LP of unreleased audio, on 180-gram vinyl.
• Digital Download - Remastered album and unreleased audio will both be available.
• Super Deluxe Boxed Set (3CD/5LP) - This collection includes:
o Remastered album. 2 CDs, each in a replica sleeve.
o Unreleased audio on CD in a separate card sleeve.
o Remastered album on 180-gram vinyl.
o Unreleased audio on 180-gram vinyl.
o High-def audio download card of all content at 96kHz/24 bit.
o 48-page book filled with photos of the band, the recording locations, BBC memorabilia, and session information.
o High-quality print of the original album cover, the first 30,000 of which will be individually numbered.

"The BBC Sessions show in graphic detail just how organic the group was. Led Zeppelin was a band that would change things around substantially each time it played...We were becoming tighter and tighter, to the point of telepathy," said Page in an interview with Guitar World.

THE COMPLETE BBC SESSIONS
CD Track Listing

• Disc One
• 1. "You Shook Me"
• 2. "I Can't Quit You Baby"
• 3. "Communication Breakdown"
• 4. "Dazed and Confused"
• 5. "The Girl I Love She Got Long Black Wavy Hair"
• 6. "What Is And What Should Never Be"
• 7. "Communication Breakdown"
• 8. "Traveling Riverside Blues"
• 9. "Whole Lotta Love"
• 10. "Somethin' Else"
• 11. "Communication Breakdown"
• 12. "I Can't Quit You Baby"
• 13. "You Shook Me"
• 14. "How Many More Times"

Disc Two
1. "Immigrant Song"
2. "Heartbreaker"
3. "Since I've Been Loving You"
4. "Black Dog"
5. "Dazed and Confused"
6. "Stairway to Heaven"
7. "Going To California"
8. "That's The Way"
9. "Whole Lotta Love" (Medley: Boogie Chillun/Fixin' To Die/That's Alright Mama/A Mess of Blues)
10. "Thank You"

Disc Three
1. "Communication Breakdown" *
2. "What Is And What Should Never Be" *
3. "Dazed and Confused" *
4. "White Summer" *
5. "What Is And What Should Never Be" *
6. "Communication Breakdown" *
7. "I Can't Quit You Baby" *
8. "You Shook Me" *
9. "Sunshine Woman" *

* Previously Unreleased

Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you're aware that the writers of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven"—Jimmy Page and Robert Plant—were recently embroiled in a headline-grabbing court case and trial to determine if the song includes a passage from "Taurus" by Spirit.

Well, as of Thursday, the verdict is in: Led Zeppelin are off the hook.

The jury said the Led Zep members indeed heard “Taurus” at some point, but that there was no substantial similarity in the extrinsic elements of "Taurus" and “Stairway.”

But let's get real here: The chord progression in question—as heard in the descending acoustic guitar intro to "Stairway"—is an ancient one, an "obvious" one, a natural one, and it has been employed in popular and folk music since long before Page first picked up a guitar in the Fifties.

Below, we present five songs that—over the years (even before the just-ended trial)—people have accused Page and Plant of "ripping off" and incorporating into "Stairway to Heaven."

As a bonus, we've included a 2014 video featuring a guitarist who calls himself TJR, who breaks down the similarities (and differences) between "Taurus" (1968) and "Stairway to Heaven" (1971). We'll start things off with that clip, followed by the other five songs. We're fond of the first one—Davey Graham's impromptu 1959 acoustic cover of "Cry Me a River." Should we round up the representatives of Spirit and drag them to court for stealing this song? Of course not; it's ridiculous.

TJR | "Taurus" Vs. "Stairway to Heaven"

The guy makes some interesting points.

DAVEY GRAHAM | "Cry Me a River"

Twelve years before "Stairway to Heaven" and nine years before "Taurus," there was Davey Graham's acoustic cover of Arthur Hamilton's torch song, "Cry Me a River." This clip is from a 1959 BBC documentary called The Guitar Craze.

SPIRIT | "Taurus"

Sorry, but we had to include this one—especially in light of the recent trial. Hey, it's always fun to give it a listen!

GIOVANNI BATTISTA GRANATA | “Sonata di Chittarra, e Violino, con il suo Basso Continuo”

Giovanni Battista Granata used the "Stairway" chord progression—and nearly the same melody. The work was composed in 1659. The passage, which occurs at the 0:32 mark in the video, is strikingly similar to the “Stairway to Heaven” intro and has more in common with it than “Taurus.”

DEREK LORIN | "My Funny Valentine"

Here's a 2015 performance of the classic 1937 Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart tune "My Funny Valentine" by an acoustic jazz artist named Derek Lorin (and his bassist). Even as Lorin is playing the intro, he notes, "That sounds like 'Stairway to Heaven!'"

"Chim Chim Cher-ee" from Mary Poppins

At this point, we could've included any song with those familiar-sounding descending minor chords, but we thought it would be a hoot to include "Chim Chim Cher-ee" in a GuitarWorld.com story. Other candidates include "Michelle" by the Beatles, "Summer Rain" by Johnny Rivers and ... well, so many more.