Jimmy Page slams Phil Collins’ playing in Live Aid show
Jimmy Page slams Phil Collins
Jimmy Page has slammed Phil Collins contribution to Led Zeppelin’s set at Live Aid in 1985. Some let bygones be bygones and some hold onto a grudge for years, 36 years after Live Aid it looks like Jimmy Page holds onto a grudge.
Page was interviewed by The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival in front of an audience of 1,203 people about his book Jimmy Page: The Anthology. He admitted Led Zeppelin’s performance at the Live Aid concert in 1985 “was really not very clever”.
Referring to drummer Phil Collins who performed at the Live Aid shows. One in London for his solo gig. On the same day he flew over to perform at the Philadelphia live aid, one for his solo show then right after with Led Zeppelin. He played alongside with alongside Tony Thompson. Phil Collins joined the surviving members of Led Zeppelin filling in for John Bonham, who had died in 1980.
Jimmy Page said We had two hours’ rehearsal, not even that, and the drummer just could not get the beginning of Rock and Roll”. We were in real trouble so that was not very clever.” In an interview in 2014 Collins recalled “You could sense I wasn’t welcome”. He added “I thought it was just going to be low-key and we’d all get together and have a play. But something happened between that conversation and the day — it became a Led Zeppelin reunion. I turned up and I was a square peg in a round hole. Robert [Plant] was happy to see me, but Jimmy wasn’t.”
Led Zeppelin Merch
If you’ve seen the show the Led Zeppelin reunion at Live Aid was a bit of a disappointment. In the recent comments by Page, it seems like the blame is put on Phil Collins. Collins says “It was a disaster, really. Robert wasn’t match-fit with his voice and Jimmy was out of it, dribbling. It wasn’t my fault it was crap,” Collins adds. “If I could have walked off, I would have. But then we’d all be talking about why Phil Collins walked off Live Aid — so I just stuck it out.”
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Led Zeppelin couldn’t happen nowadays
In other news Jimmy Page spoke to U.K’s The Times about Led Zeppelin couldn’t happen in today’s musical landscape.
“We used to throw songs into the live set that we hadn’t recorded yet, just for fun. We did that with ‘Immigrant Song’ at Bath Festival in 1970, and nobody had heard anything like it. You don’t have that freedom now because it would be posted online immediately. It was a fun time as a creative musician, a fun time to be in a band.”
Well there you, some technology advances are good, and some not so. Maybe they can rerecord “Rock and Roll” and change the opening line to ‘It’s been a long time since I wasn’t old’
