MC: We all love “Stairway To Heaven,” of course. Talk about the shaping and construction of that song, please.
Page: We were all out at Headly Grange at the time, living in the same house, and eating, sleeping and making the music and recording it—there might even be some eating in the music, too. We had this sort of work ethic where we were all together, and the possibilities were limitless, really.
So the idea was to have a song which would actually change as we went through it, layers would unfold with the instruments as they were coming in and the drums would be coming in later as the song progressed and there’d be this movement to the guitar solo that took you through and the momentum would unfold as the pace accelerated.
I knew something like that wasn’t necessarily the done thing in popular music. It was done in classical music but it was tricky with sort of rehearsing it and routining it until Robert had gotten the lyrics, and then it came together, really.
The performances of it were more complete once it had the lyrics there, but it gave us the opportunity to really build something and shape it to perfection.
MC: Is this everything? Have you tapped out the Zep archives?
Page: Well, I’ve been archiving material from when I was at home doing multi-track recording when I was a kid, living at my parents’ house, before I was a studio musician. So I’ve got stuff that goes right across really. None of it’s any good, of course. Maybe some of the songs that I wrote were okay, but the lyrics weren’t so cool. (laughs)
MC: There’s kind of a dichotomy between what the fans want, which is everything, and what you feel comfortable putting out, isn’t there?
Page: Yeah. You want them to hear the best, and that’s what it is. There’s no other discussion on that, really.
MC: Would you like to give a similar reissue treatment to The Firm albums you did with Paul Rodgers?
Page: Possibly, yeah. Certainly with The Yardbirds, but possibly for The Firm. But, you know, it’s quite a time-consuming process, and I’m ready to get on to something new and now, if you will.
MC: Such as?
Page: I want to be putting together something whereby I will be going out and playing live. That’s an important thing. I’ve got new material, too. I’ve certainly got a past, and I would be able to play with just that material, too. So that’s something I want to do, really.
MC: Tell us about your new material.
Page: I can’t tell you much. (laughs) One of the things that’s awful is when you tell people you’re gonna do this, that and the other is they’ve already worked out in their minds what exactly you’re going to do and then people present you with this whole package of, “Oh, are you working with this thing? Are you doing this? Are you doing that?” Let’s just say that I know what I’m going to do, without a shadow of a doubt. I’m going to be playing guitar—that’s absolutely, definitely.
MC: Has working on the archival material informed the new music in any way?
Page: I’ve had new music together for quite awhile; I just haven’t committed it to any sort of recordings because I didn’t want to date it. But I’ll date it and I’ll put a brand on it at the time that I do it. Then I’ll make a point of playing that live, and that’s about as far as the story goes on that.
MC: Is it worth even asking how many guitars you own?
Page: Well, I don’t know, really. I should know, but I can’t because I’ve got a lot of various instruments, a lot of string instruments that go from sitar to five-string banjos to mandolins to acoustic guitars, tabla drums blah de blah de blah. There’s about 120, 130 instruments, I think. That’s a lot, isn’t it? But I can tell you one thing; I haven’t got ’em all in my bedroom at once. Please do understand that.
