Not obvious to me I guess. He played well, sometimes great, at O2. And he's flawless on the latest video of him playing Kashmir acoustically.

Wow, my wife and I have bought stuff from the Pierson Gallery in Cape May (one of our favorite towns)! We'll look for your stuff. Thanks for posting, very cool!

He occasionally offered backing on the live versions of That's the Way, you can see this on the DVD...

Thought Ringo liked Bonham, do you have a direct quote?

I don't view it that way. If it was a list of guitarists who are playing RIGHT NOW you'd have no Hendrix, Duana Allman, etc. Page earned top three in my opinion.

I think it will continue, Page's career arc is so long I'd bet they had little problem documenting numerous events for each date. The only way it stops is if Jimmy gets sick of the a$$pipes on this forum constantly bitching about it and says, "f**k this"!

There was nothing wrong with his playing on the 98 tour, and he was in great form as a lead guitarist on the summer 2000 tour with the Crowes, I saw three of those shows. As for the O2, he didn't have the benefit of any warmup gigs, and I can't imagine a more pressure packed gig for him. And frankly he sounded great on the faster parts of GTBT, the outro of Black Dog, the 12 string picking of TSRTS, and others. He definitely played it safe on SIBLY. I also thought he sounded great on all three of his guest gigs last year, especially with Roy Harper. Is he as dexterous as he was in 73? I'm sure he's not. To be fair, I don't think the other guitarists you mentioned were ever as "rubber fingered" as Jimmy in his prime. But he can still play. I think we're all looking for a logical reason he's NOT out there playing, and it's a head scratcher. It's interesting to me that him finally cleaning up has coincided with this lack of activity. Makes me wonder if he feels he can't be creative without substances, or if touring would present too many temptations.

You make some good points. Many of us think of a new album as being the only thing that would "count" as doing something. But after years of doing very little publicly, he's actually done quite a bit in the last year and a half going back to the book, the website launch, remastering and rereleasing DW2 and LR, etc. Hopefully new music is something he'll get to. Unfortunately (for us) I think we've seen that last of him on the road playing. He's closer to 70 than he is to 60, I can't believe he's dying to hit the road at this point, if he was he could have done it at any point in the last 12(!) years. Never thought when I saw him at Jones Beach with the Crowes in July 2000 that would be my last chance to see the man play live!

This is an interesting, and illuminating, statement in the context of Jimmy's well-publicized addiction. From time to time interviewers have asked him about it and he has never gone the repentant, Eric Clapton route when addressing the topic. For sure he seems happy to have kicked it, but he also seems to be unapologetic about his use of drugs back in the day.

There was a great YouTube clip of Townshend talking about attending the ARMS concert in NY and seeing the kid next to him point to the stage and yell, "IT'S JIMMY...F***ING...PAGE!!!", as the building literally shook. It was a great anecdote and I wish I could find it, it was from an interview around the time of the O2. Pete has had plenty of nice things to say about the guys in Zeppelin, even if he's not overly fond of their music...

Great pic, am I the only one who's never seen a picture of Jimmy wearing a cross? Also, is that a young Dave Lewis with him?

I enjoyed your book on Page and I look forward to this one too. Best of luck, George! And nice score getting Danny Goldberg to write the forward!...

Boy, that is just classic, what an era. Love the contrast between Hef's swingin' sixties cocktail party and these dirty hippies from California!

I regret that I never saw The Firm, I'd buy a ticket in a heartbeat if they ever toured. I think some of their stuff aged very well, and Satisfaction Guaranteed was an instant classic as far as I'm concerned...

Robert did the music he wanted to do in the 80's, and I'm sure David did too. Does anyone think for a second that David really wanted to do Shaken N Stirred but settled on Whitesnake? Personally I prefer Robert's music but that's besides the point. I thought Robert diminished himself by going after Coverdale the way he did. Robert's a legend and that was beneath him IMO.

Jimmy played on "It's Not Unusual", not sure if he played on any other Tom Jones songs...

What a cool picture! I've had that jam on CD for a few years, it's fantastic...

Good call! There's also a dash of Derek Smalls in there IMO!

I'm surprised you're including Afghanistan in this, Kneb. The Taliban made it possible for Al Queda to do what they did. And being a woman in Afghanistan under the Taliban is quite literally a hell on earth. Do you really think we had no business being there? It appears to me that Afghanistan may be beyond helping but I have no question that the US was trying to do the right thing for the right reasons. Iraq is certainly much more complicated.

I hear you Kneb, but Hitler didn't quit because the allies sent him flowers.

I've seen numerous reports from varied media sources today. All reported that the US did not tip off the Pakistanis until it would have been too late for them to do anything about it.

I'm not knocking the Pakistani people at all, just their government. There's a good reason we didn't tip them off about this operation until it was over.

I hear you but they are out to attack us anyway. Every day since well before 9/11, that has been their focus. We can't worry about so-called "martyrs". We need to be smarter about securing our nation at home and take the fight to Bin Laden's followers wherever they are.

Thanks Steve, hats off to the writer.

well said on both counts. The Seals are the badasses' badasses. And Pakistan is the worst "ally" one could imagine.