Jimmy Page and The Black Crowes:

it was not an unlikely pairing last year, when former Led Zeppelin guitarist Page invited the younger American group to play a benefit concert with him in London and the Crowes reciprocated with an offer of an all-too-brief six-show swing in the United States. As Crowes frontman Chris Robinson points out, "There's always a little bit of Led Zeppelin somewhere in our records." But the teaming proved to be even better than expected, resulting in a series of roaring, guitar-drenched rock assaults that covered Zeppelin and Crowes favorites, blues chestnuts, and raving renditions of British Invasion touchstones such as the Yardbirds' "Shapes of Things" and Fleetwood Mac's "Oh Well." The performances — most of them, at least — have been preserved on Live at the Greek (from the ensemble's Los Angeles shows), which itself has become something of a groundbreaker. It's been released solely on the Internet (at www.musicmaker.com) and has been setting music download records since it became available Feb. 29 — it's been so popular, in fact, that the first day's download demand temporarily crashed the site. That also makes it all the more likely that Page and the Crowes will go out together again this summer, though they're remaining circumspect on details for the time being. Meanwhile, the two established outfits are basking in the glow of being trendsetters. Who'd have thunk it? Wall of Sound talked with Jimmy Page, Chris Robinson, and Crowes guitarist Rich Robinson about their foray into high-tech and more.

There must have been labels champing at the bit for Live at the Greek. Why did you go the Internet route? Jimmy Page: We never dreamt of anything like this when we first started this up. Of course, there were record labels and this, that, and the other. At the end of the day, this particular avenue was the best one to follow, and I'm really pleased that we did, because we don't have to compromise anything, which we'd have done through the regular channel of releases. Chris Robinson: I think given the nature of the whole reason that we did this thing, this made the most sense. It wasn't a project that someone at a record company put together — you know what I mean? We did it for music's sake, for people who love music. We're not trying to win over anybody. That's why it was done, and I think this is the best avenue to release it. You know how difficult it would be in a more traditional label setting? This turnaround was pretty quick, and we put it out in a new way, without any hassles and without A&R guys telling us what to do and without people trying to beat it over people's heads.

You weren't allowed to put any Crowes tracks on it. Who's the bad guy here — Rick Rubin? Columbia? Chris Robinson: It's a contractual thing; I guess it's pretty standard in most bands' contracts. I don't think [Columbia] was happy after the By Our Side record; they made a clerical error and thought that it was the first of two albums that we owed them, but actually it was the second of two and we were free agents. But still … it's not enough they make more money than you. They can tell you what to do with your songs, too. It's a weird thing. Page: It's too bad, because I really enjoyed playing the Crowes' numbers. It was really cool. Rich Robinson: The thing I wasn't confident about at first was how our songs would hold up next to his. And when they did, I was like, "Wow!" And I was also really proud and happy that he showed interest in doing our songs. He even wanted to learn some other songs that we didn't get a chance to do because it was only six days, but maybe next time.

Had the decision been made to record the shows before you started playing last fall? Page: No. The whole thing was organic, really. We knew it was a promising concept, but I had no idea how good it was going to be when we actually got together and rehearsed and played the first gig. It was absolutely electrifying. By the third gig, it was like, "We really ought to record at least one of the shows. It's just too good to lose this and it would be good to have a record of it, a testament of it." And that's how it went. Chris Robinson: By the time we ended up recording those two shows in L.A., we didn't even really realize we were recording them. That's how in the moment we were. And now we have this record. Page: Normally, for me, whenever there's going to be a live recording, it's the kiss of death. I get really nervous and you go out there and play something and you make a mistake and the second mistake and it compounds and you never feel comfortable. But with this, and I guess the sheer fact of having the might of the Crowes behind us, everything was locked in, everybody locked in and gelled. Everybody, bar none, forgot about recording. It was only when we came off afterwards and [producer] Kevin Shirley came up grinning and said, "Hey, you sounded fantastic," that we went, "Oh yeah, that's right — we recorded it, thank God," because it was just one of those evenings. It was brilliant.

Jimmy, what was it like for you to come into playing with a band that was already fully formed and well-established in its style of doing things? Page: One of the things that was really amazing was it had been proposed that we do "Ten Years Gone." It was great because we'd played "Ten Years Gone" with Led Zeppelin onstage, and of course there was one guitar trying to do its best to sort of fill in for a whole guitar army that was on the record. With the Crowes, all of a sudden I was in the middle of this whole ambient thing that was going on; all this music was living. It was a fantastic experience, and what it went to show was these guys had really committed themselves to really learning these numbers and understanding all the subtleties of them.

How were the guitar parts arranged between the three players? Rich Robinson: What happened was Jimmy and I and, I think, Chris picked out a bunch of songs we thought it would be cool to play. Once we picked the songs, Audley [Freed] and I, and Sven [Pipien], and Steve [Gorman] started learning some of the parts. Audley really picked apart everything; he learned all four or five parts to some of the layered guitars. I picked out some parts, too, and we learned as much as we could before Jimmy came. So when we got together, we left a lot of it open for when Jimmy came in. We were like, "Hey, we don't know what parts you want to play. These are the things we can do, or we can back you up here." Page: I was amazed they had all the parts down, because they're difficult to play, and they're also difficult to hear in some places. It just really showed the measure of what good musicians they are. They had all the subtleties of the Led Zeppelin thing, but they also brought The Black Crowes to the party. You can tell by Chris' vocal approach to everything that it's the Crowes and Chris Robinson.

Compare Chris and Robert Plant. Page: Actually, after the Greek Theater, somebody came up to me and said, "Hey, Chris did a really good job doing Robert." And I was furious, absolutely furious, because Chris was Chris, and he sang as Chris. He sang the melodies to the songs, which obviously one would do … but as Robert improvised his way at the time, outside the melodies, so did Chris. He's a singer, and the band is a band that's used to improvising. His whole vocal style is around that just as much as my guitar playing is; I try to change the solos every night, and he changes his vocals every night, as he has done throughout his musical career. And he just applied himself to singing these songs, but his way. I think that shows. Chris Robinson: I learned something from Jimmy — that I improvise vocally a lot more than Robert does and stuff like that. It's different because they're not my lyrics; that kind of puts a weird thing on it. Even though I'm a different singer, I wanted to make sure I stayed true to the songs. You don't want to mess with those songs; everyone knows every little inflection in those songs — and those were the things I really love, too, all of us. So I wanted to stick to the melody, which was a little weird, but I just kind of went for it.

What's the status of Page and Plant these days? Page: We finished our last date together [in November 1998], and I spent most of my time since trying to propose scenarios whereby we could do this, we could do that, and Robert didn't want to do anything and kept postponing this and postponing that and canceling this and canceling that. In the end, I just lost patience. I can't keep trying to motivate somebody if they just definitely don't seem to want to know. The one thing I felt was after having played two sets of tours, with the "Unledded" and also the Walking Into Clarksdale, two radically different approaches, and we won a Grammy for "Most High," I felt that we had one good album, at least, left inside us and we should have done that. But at the moment, there are no plans to do anything with Robert.

There are plenty of rumors about another tour this year, but what about the prospect of you guys recording together? Page: Let's put it this way; I'd really enjoy doing something more. There's lots of different things that have been discussed. It's all a question of, yeah, what music? Are we going to write music from scratch? Am I going to hear stuff they've already got? There's so many different options. And the thing is, when the time comes, we'll let everybody know what we're doing. Rich Robinson: We probably have 16, 17 songs done for a new album — not done but sort of really close. We just need someone to come in and for us to figure out what we're doing and make decisions. We're talking to Kevin [Shirley] about producing, but we also might want to talk to other people. We might want to have Jimmy play on some stuff on the record, who knows. I don't think we're done with each other yet.

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