Jimmy Page hoping to finally record new music in 2017

The music legend appeared on MOJO Rocks with Phil Alexander on Saturday night to talk about Led Zeppelin’s Complete BBC Sessions album and he joked he’s been “quite rightly” chastised for not releasing fresh material sooner.

“The BBC Sessions was an epic, when you think everything has to be listened to in real time and all of that,” Jimmy said. “It’s an epic but it’s an epic I was really prepared to take on because historically it was really important for people to have all that information about what was going on in the studio at that point of time.

“It took a lot of time and I must say that I hoped by this time (September 2016) that I would be sort of playing with other musicians. I’ve said that to you before but I still hope to do that. Clearly now it’s not going to materialise until next year. That’s not that far away now!”

Having remastered Led Zeppelin’s back catalogue and released The Complete BBC Sessions, Jimmy also refused to rule out restoring more of the band’s material.

“I’m sure there will be some (restored) releases over the next few years,” Jimmy continued. “But it’s the sort of thing where we need to have a good old chat with the band y’know. A few band meetings to discuss the ideas. So, I hope so!”

Jimmy also told Phil that he’s in contact with his former Yardbirds band members about releasing restored versions of their works.

“I’m in touch with the members of the Yardbirds and I hope to be seeing them relatively soon and then the material I’ve got we’ll see how much of it comes out. Hopefully all of it will come out but they haven’t heard all of the things, they’ve just heard certain samples of things and they were really thrilled with what they heard, which is cool.

“It’s all stuff that was done right in the last stages of The Yardbirds, it’s more or less almost in that last year that we had together. It’s got things that were really sort of crossover.

“I’m just really keen to do that and do it with them… so we’re all involved, bits of memorabilia and all of that. I’m very very hopeful that it will come together. I’m confident that it will.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Jimmy spoke in great detail about the BBC sessions, having to audition for the corporation before going on air, how Led Zeppelin’s career took off “like a bushfire” in America, the “amazing synergy” the band utilised and explored, the fabled ‘lost session’ and much more.

You can listen to the show again right here.

MOJO Rocks is also repeated at 8pm this coming Wednesday (21st September).

Led Zeppelin: The Complete BBC Sessions is out now.