“I felt Jimmy's excitement for music... He played with absolute conviction and passion and power at all times”: Rich Robinson reflects on the time Jimmy Page performed with The Black Crowes

The Black Crowes dropped in on the Howard Stern Show recently and discussed their October 1999 performances with electric guitar icon Jimmy Page – famously captured on the 2000 double album Live at the Greek.

The final set released on that live album was almost entirely dominated by Led Zeppelin material, including Whole Lotta Love, Out on the Tiles, Celebration Day and In My Time of Dying. 

Now a clip from the Howard Stern Show shows the band discussing the shows and perform another Led Zeppelin song featured in the same set, Hey, Hey What Can I Do. 

Ahead of the cover, Stern asks guitarist Rich Robinson about what he took from his experience of playing guitar alongside Page at the time.

“I felt Jimmy's excitement for music and his passion,” responds Robinson. 

“He’s just kind of free with it, you know what I mean? He just he taps in. And I watched him onstage jumping around. He played with absolute conviction and passion at all times – and power.”

In addition to the memories and playing insight, the reunited band also reveal that they have a more concrete memento of the performance: unreleased recordings of Page performing Black Crowes songs with the band at the same 1999 live shows. 

“The Black Crowes are re-releasing [Live at the Greek] and adding the Black Crowes songs that Jimmy Page played on with you guys…” notes Stern, before vocalist Chris Robinson takes up the prompt. 

“Yeah we're going to do a boxset next year,” adds Robinson. “It will be the 25th anniversary of that record. [It’s] been released a couple times, but without any of The Black Crowes songs that we did with him.”

The original Live at the Greek was released in February 2000, so you can likely pencil in, er, ‘some point from February’ next year for that one.

In the clip above, Rich Robinson appears to be using the same beaten-up Fender Telecaster Deluxe he used to repel a stage invader at a Black Crowes show back in 2022.

More recently, Robinson told Total Guitar about his long-suffering 1968 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop, which he salvaged from Hurricane Sandy – and has come back in better shape than ever.