Legendary LED ZEPPELIN guitarist Jimmy Page has told Total Guitar magazine in a new interview that he has been using the coronavirius downtime to reconnect with his instrument.
“Under the circumstances of having a lockdown and isolating, I picked up the guitar and made a point of playing the guitar every day,” he said. “Whereas before the lockdown, it had gotten to the point where I was always complaining that I didn’t have enough time to play the guitar because there was all this other stuff that was going on.
“It’s surprising how many things there are, even with LED ZEPPELIN, so I was not finding enough time to play the guitar as much as I would like,” he explained. “It was there, but not being played. I thought, that’s not going to be the case. I’m now going to play it. I don’t want to make it sound like I’d locked the guitars away. That wasn’t the case. But there were so many things that kept getting in the way of playing — or playing the way that you need to if you’re exploring the instrument still.”
When the interviewer pointed out to Page that a lot of people would love to see him play again, the guitarist responded: “That was the idea before we locked down. But — but — there’ll be a time when we’ll be able to play, so the thing to do is to think how you’d do it if you did do it, and have some surprises up your sleeve, you know?
“I did think about it,” he confirmed. “But I thought, I better do some serious practicing first [laughs], because it’s been a long time since [LED ZEPPELIN‘s concert at] the O2. I hope we’ll meet up one day, when I’m doing this mythical show one day.”
Last year, Page said that he was planning to tell his life story in the form of a book. Speaking to Uncut magazine, he said: “I will definitely do an autobiography. Every six months brings new things for me to write about or comment about. I have a number of ways I plan to approach it. But I am determined that I’ll write it first and then go to a publisher, because I don’t want to be held to a deadline.”
In October 2018, LED ZEPPELIN released its first and only official illustrated book, “Led Zeppelin By Led Zeppelin”. It was a unique collaboration between Page, singer Robert Plant and bassist John Paul Jones, who gave Reel Art Press unrestricted access to the LED ZEPPELIN archive.
ZEPPELIN last performed in December 2007 in London, with drummer Jason Bonham filling in for his late father John Bonham.