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Apologies if it seems a bit 'all over the shop', but the cut & paste method was a bit tricky & it was taking too long


  1. Zeppelin, Elvis, Butterfield -- Three Styles of Rock [PDF]
    LED ZEPPELIN II: Led Zeppelin. (Atlantic SD 8236) The most successful examples of rock music achieve a virtually unpredictable balance between musical elements -- rhythm, density, melody -- and an assertive performer's ego....View free preview

    December 7, 1969 - By DON HECKMAN - Article

Led Zeppelin Supplants Beatles in British Poll [PDF]

Melody Maker (Brit pub) poll finds Led Zeppelin has replaced Beatles as GB's most popular group, 1st time Beatles have not been number 1 in 8 yrs

September 16, 1970 - Article

LED ZEPPELIN BRINGS DRIVING STYLE HERE [PDF]

Led Zeppelin edged the Beatles out of the No. 1 popularity spot in a recent British poll, and it showed evidence of that popularity in two concerts in Madison Square Garden Saturday.

September 21, 1970 - Article

202,600 Stolen at Drake From Led Zeppelin's Box [PDF]

Cash receipts from the Madison Square Garden concerts of the Led Zeppelin rock group, said by the police to total $202,600, were reported stolen yesterday from a safety - deposit box at the Drake Hotel, 440 Park Avenue, in an as-yet unexplaned manner

July 30, 1973 - By JOSEPH O. HAFF - Article

Isaac Hayes, in Concert, Shows Command of Self and Audience; Led Zeppelin Rocks [PDF]

Isaac Hayes, to say the least, doesn't have your ordinary runof-the-mill soul music act. He may wear chest chains and red tights, and both fists might be clenched in a power salute, and he may move adeptly from organ to piano to alto saxophone, soulfully

July 30, 1973 - Article

Police Check Led Zeppelin Party for Clue in Theft [PDF]

A predawn party by the Led Zeppelin rock quartet in the Drake Hotel drew the attention yesterday of detectives investigating the disappearance on Sunday of $180,000 in cash concert receipts from a doublelocked hotel safe-deposit box

July 31, 1973 - By RALPH BLUMENTHAL - Article

Led Zeppelin Ticket Sales Stir Crowds and Disorder [PDF]

Inspector Ernest Tucillo of the Third Precinct of The Nassau County Police Department in Williston Park, L.I., said yesterday that it "was just a miracle no one was seriously injured" among the thousands of unruly fans of the British rock group Led Zeppelin

January 8, 1975 - By LOUIS CALTA - Article

There Art in the Led Zep's Heavy-Metal Hullabaloo [PDF]

The current recession has made even pop-land's most sucessful rock acts wary of setting out on those gran diose tours of yore, but the thunderous English hard rock-quarter, Led Zeppelin, has no reason to sing the blues

February 2, 1975 - By HENRY EDWARDS - Article

Led Zeppelin Excites Crowd at Garden But Somehow Delirium Wasn't There [PDF]

By every commercial index, at least, Led Zeppelin, the British band that opened a series of six sold-out performances in the New York area last night at Madison Square Garden, is the leading contemporary rock group, at least of those steadily touring and

February 4, 1975 - By JOHN ROCKWELL - Article

Led zeppelin Excites Crowd, but Loses the Delirium [PDF]

By every commercial index, Led Zeppelin, the British band that opened a series of six sold-out performances in the New York area Monday night at Madison Square Garden, is the leading contemporary rock group, at least of those steadily touring and putting

February 5, 1975 - By JOHN ROCKWELL - Article

Led Zeppelin Tour Put Off [PDF]

group postpones Aug-Sept tour of US because of injury to lead singer Robert Plant in auto accident (S)...View free preview

The Pop Life; 3 British Groups Cut New Rock Disks [PDF]

Rock may not be as significant or as trendy as it once was, but it still sells. At the moment three of the leading British groups have new records out, with Paul McCartney and Wings's "Wings at the Speed of Sound" and Led Zeppelin's "Presence" already top...View free preview

Screen: Song 'Remains the Same'; Zeppelin's Rock Pulverizes Eardrums at Cinema I [PDF]

"The Song Remains the Same" is a movie to listen to Led Zeppelin by. If you want to listen to Led Zeppelin. If you don't, there's no point going....View free preview

Led Zeppelin And the Alchemy of a Rock Group; The Alchemy of Led Zeppelin [PDF]

J Rockwell article on group on occasion of forthcoming 6 NYC concerts; illus (L)...View free preview

Led Zeppelin Puts Best Sound Forward [PDF]

EVEN THOUGH millions of young people have managed to acquire it, Led Zeppelin remains an acquired taste. The British rock quartet, which opened a run of six long-since-sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden last night, makes a monstrously loud, deliberat...View free preview

Zeppelin Soars [PDF]

EVEN THOUGH millions of young people have managed to acquire it, Led Zeppelin remains an acquired taste. The British rock quartet, which opened a run of six long-since-sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden Tuesday, makes a monstrously loud, deliberately...View free preview

Letters [PDF]

Jon Mack lr complains about ticket allocations for June Led Zeppelin concert in Madison Sq Garden; garden official replies...View free preview

Led Zeppelin Abandons Tour After Death of Son [PDF]

KIDDERMINSTER, England, July 27 (Reuters) The rock group Led Zeppelin today abandoned an American tour after the death of lead singer Robert Plant's 5-year-old son Karac from a mysterious infection. Mr. Plant rushed home to be with his wife, Maureen, afte...View free preview

Band Members Are Convicted [PDF]

Led Zeppelin (Rock Group): 4 members of rock group are convicted of battery in concert in Oakland, Calif, in July '77; are sentenced to indefinite term of probation (S)...View free preview

The Pop Life; Veteran British rock bands alive and well. [PDF]

THE Who's presence in town is a reminder that there are other veteran British rock bands, in greater or lesser states of togetherness. The Rolling Stones are winding up a new album, or so reports have it. And Led Zeppelin has just released its first studi...View free preview

John Bonham, 32, the Drummer Of Led Zeppelin, Is Found Dead; Nickname Was Bonzo [PDF]

John Bonham, drummer for the rock group Led Zeppelin, was found dead in bed yesterday in Windsor, England, near London. He was 32 years old....View free preview

September 26, 1980 - By JOHN ROCKWELL - Article

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Some of the articles above are available in the official timeline. Here's another:

The Pop Life - Coda

by Robert Palmer

New York Times

Published: Dec 8, 1982

AMERICAN record retailers have been waiting for several years now for a new album from the British supergroup Led Zeppelin. It doesn't really matter that the group has been officially defunct since the death of its drummer, John Bonham, in 1980.

Nor does it matter that Led Zeppelin's blues-based style and emphasis on flashy, bombastic guitar and drum solos have been reduced to cliche by younger heavy-metal bands and ridiculed as both excessive and hopelessly outmoded by punk and new-wave rockers. Out there in America's heartland, the majority of teen-age rock fans still prefer Led Zeppelin and bands that are even older - the Who, the Rolling Stones - to the current crop of rock performers. These teen-agers have made Led Zeppelin's early 1970's hit ''Stairway to Heaven'' the most requested song on FM radio, and they are the record buyers that retailers have been hoping to attract with ''new product'' from the band.

''Coda,'' recently released by Swan Song/Atlantic, is the first album of Led Zeppelin material since John Bonham's death, and a timely answer to the prayers of record-store owners, record executives dismayed by the continuing sales slump and America's white male teen-agers. It did not have to be very good to be just what the dfctor ordered, and it isn't. It consists of eight previously unreleased tracks, four from Led Zeppelin's early years, 1969-72, and four from 1976-78. These are essentially leftovers, tracks recorded for earlier albums and not included for one reason or another.

Most of the music on the album's first side is turgid British blues; some listeners will find the side skimpy at just under 15 minutes, but others will find it mercifully brief. The more recent material on Side 2 is much better. ''Darlene'' is the album's highlight, a simple, straightforward rock and roll number with echoes of the 1950's rockabilly so admired by Led Zeppelin's lead vocalist, Robert Plant. Jimmy Page, always a proficient guitarist, is much more impressive on ''Darleen'' and the somewhat similar ''Ozone Baby'' than he is recycling blues cliches on Side 1, and the more rocking material also suits the band's rhythm section better.

Nevertheless, there really isn't much first-rate music here for the price of an album. But try telling that to the teen-age rock fans who are flocking to buy ''Coda,'' which is already zipping up the bestseller charts and will almost certainly be one of the biggest hits of the holiday season. The album's success dramatically underscores the very curious state of pop music today. New music is appealing mostly to an older, more literate audience in the big cities, while the younger fans in the hinterlands cling to the groups and sounds that appealed to their older siblings and, in the case of bands like the Rolling Stones and the Who, to their parents.

At best, ''Coda'' is just what its title says, a coda, a kind of musical postscript to the band's career that ought to appeal primarily to die-hard fanatics and collectors. The fact that it was one of the most eagerly awaited rock albums of the past few years and is selling like hot cakes says more about the remarkable conservatism of today's pop music than it does about the accomplishments of Led Zeppelin.

Courtesy Steve A. Jones Archive

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CONCERT: ROBERT PLANT

By JON PARELES New York Times

Published: July 25, 1985

ROBERT PLANT sang a schizophrenic concert Tuesday at the Meadowlands' Brendan Byrne Arena. There was no mistaking the power and elasticity of his voice - now, as when he was Led Zeppelin's singer, a virtual heldentenor of the blues.

But he has not yet figured out how to turn his newer material into arena-size rock.

On his three solo albums, Mr. Plant - with the guitarist Robbie Blunt, the keyboardist Jezz Woodroffe and the bassist Paul Martinez - have written open-ended drones and vamps, with, often, an air of melancholy. The songs have plenty of room for improvisation, and Mr. Plant is one of the least predictable hard-rock singers; his band also includes a first-rate drummer, Richie Hayward. But onstage the group couldn't recreate the moodiness of Mr. Plant's albums. One problem was that the music was boosted to a uniform high volume, flattening dynamic contrasts; another might be the constraints of arena-rock, which thrives on big gestures, not musicianly subtleties.

For climaxes in his two-and-a-half-hour show, Mr. Plant switched to exuberant rhythm-and-blues oldies. He sang material from his ''Honeydrippers'' record with his band and the Uptown Horns and then, in an impromptu finale, was joined by the keyboardist Paul Shaffer, the guitarist Brian Setzer of the Stray Cats and Led Zeppelin's guitarist, Jimmy Page. Seeing Mr. Page with Mr. Plant elated the audience, although they performed a slow blues rather than Led Zeppelin material.

The oldies are sure-fire. But with luck and work, Mr. Plant should be able to make post-adolescent songs come across in concert.

Courtesy Steve A. Jones Archive

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ROBERT PLANT FINDS A NEW STYLE AFTER LED ZEPPELIN

By JON PARELES New York Times

Published: July 28, 1985

Robert Plant breaks away from Led Zeppelin once and for all on his third album, ''Shaken 'n' Stirred.'' That's not an easy move. Along with Jimmy Page's guitar, Mr. Plant's voice was a focal point of Led Zeppelin's songs, immediately recognizable in the way Mr. Plant wrenched words around the guitar lines. Beyond that, it must be tough to turn away from music that attracted one of rock's largest and most loyal audiences - as could be seen when a reunion of Led Zeppelin's surviving members galvanized the audience at Philadelphia's Live Aid concert.

Until its dissolution in 1980, when the drummer John Bonham died, Led Zeppelin had created, and continually toyed with, a blueprint for hard-rock. Its members started out in British blues bands, but together they evolved an eccentric, permanently overwrought heir to the blues - a style in which even the subtleties shrieked.

Led Zeppelin experimented continually - with funk, Middle Eastern music and multipart suites - but its legacy was lumbering big-bang rock, moans and blasts assembled with architectonic care. Songs written by Mr. Page and Mr. Plant were battles between roots and modernity in which blues phrases and British folk-style guitar figures were bolstered or crushed by blaring power chords. After Led Zeppelin's debut, its albums dependably zoomed into the top 10 upon release; one Led Zeppelin song, ''Stairway to Heaven,'' will be familiar to anyone who turned on an FM radio in the 1970's. Given Led Zeppelin's overwhelming and lasting popularity, it spawned innumerable imitators who tried to recreate the ever-escalating yowls of Mr. Page's guitar and Mr. Plant's voice.

While Mr. Page moved into simplistic hard-rock with his post-Zeppelin band, the Firm, Mr. Plant determinedly changed direction. Again he teamed up with a guitarist, Robbie Blunt, and Mr. Blunt reprised Mr. Page's chunky guitar chords for parts of Mr. Plant's first solo album, ''Pictures at Eleven.'' It turned out, however, that Mr. Blunt was far less beholden to Mr. Page's attack than to the sustains and slides of American blues and country music. Mr. Plant's second album, ''The Principle of Moments,'' was unexpectedly pastoral; songs such as ''Big Log'' floated by almost languorously. For diversion, Mr. Plant also sang on a mini-album of rock oldies, under the name the Honeydrippers.

''Shaken 'n' Stirred'' takes a new turn - into stomping but rhythmically supple funk. The new songs lean on synthesizers and drums instead of guitar, perhaps, in part, because Mr. Plant has found a full-time drummer for his band. Instead of the workaholic producer-drummer-singer-songwriter Phil Collins, who has his own career(s) to worry about, Mr. Plant has taken on Richie Hayward, formerly of Little Feat. Mr. Hayward is an inspired drummer, with his hands in New Orleans syncopation, his feet in Memphis soul and his head in the odd time-signatures of jazz-rock; by pile-driving a funk rhythm and then skipping a beat, he can make a listener feel like a trapdoor just opened.

Theoretically, the upfront keyboards and rhythm section make ''Shaken 'n' Stirred'' a more mainstream album, and two of its songs owe clear debts to pop hitmakers - to David Bowie (''Pink and Black'') and to the Cars (''Easily Lead''). But its songs are hardly geared to the formulas of commercial airplay. As with all of Mr. Plant's solo albums, atmosphere comes first, and instead of dodging and weaving around guitar lines, Mr. Plant now joyfully ricochets against the beat.

One thing Mr. Plant hasn't changed from his Led Zeppelin days is a willful disregard of lyrics (not to mention song titles unrelated to verse or chorus). Most rock bands will put sound before sense, but Led Zeppelin went to extremes. The play of textures - Mr. Plant's wildly stretched syllables versus Mr. Page's chords or blues licks or fingerpicking - defined the songs, and more often than not Mr. Page's parts were the ones on the beat, while vocals squeezed in between. Often singers who escape bands grab the spotlight, yet Mr. Plant clearly liked the status quo. He is one of the most abstract and instrumental of rock singers, taking pride in just how many ways he can warp a word.

That's good strategy, since Mr. Plant doesn't usually have much to say. Decoded after multiple listenings, most of the lyrics on ''Shaken 'n' Stirred'' are about romances breaking up; Mr. Plant is fond of the line ''You're breakin' my heart.'' While ''Too Loud'' seems to be about music and marketing, and ''Sixes and Sevens'' might be a comment on aging, Mr. Plant generally sticks to such rock staples as lust (''Doo Doo a Do Do''), loose but calculating women (''Easily Lead'') and lust (''Pink and Black'').

Yet the literary quality of Mr. Plant's songs is almost beside the point. ''Little By Little,'' his current single, sketches the aftermath of a breakup: ''Little by little I call your name/Little by little my tears flow/ Little by little everything changes.'' But in the course of four-and-a-half eerie minutes, Mr. Plant and his band sound like they're resurfacing from a bout of despair; repeating the line ''I can breathe again,'' Mr. Plant extends the final ''n'' until it turns into a hard-won ''now!''

Like many rock singers, Mr. Plant has obviously been studying soul and funk, learning how to be articulately nonverbal. And his band has come into its own, finding endless combinations of crunch and slide; in ''Doo Doo a Do Do,'' a typical funk vamp takes off because its repeating bass note glides instead of thumping. Other songs mix down-to-earth guitar riffs with futuristic, ominous synthesizers, or dovetail dependably mechanical synthesizer sequences with off-kilter rhythms.

By removing the lyrics from the center of his songs, and encouraging his band members (and co-writers) to fill every space differently, Mr. Plant conveys the sense that the songs are plastic, that anything can happen, even when he's riding a solid, danceable beat.

Mr. Plant has drawn the best possible lessons from Led Zeppelin's success. Basic rock mechanics might be good for a few hits, but quality and unpredictability will keep an audience coming back - and guessing.

Courtesy Steve A. Jones Archive

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Strange Clubfellows

by Neil Strauss

New York Times

Published: Nov 9, 1994

John Paul Jones, the former Led Zeppelin bassist and keyboardist, is scheduled to begin his first American tour since the band broke up 14 years ago. But he won't be performing with his former bandmates Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, who will be reinterpreting old Zeppelin songs on their own tour next year sans Mr. Jones. And he won't be playing stadiums either. Instead, he will be at the downtown club Irving Plaza performing avant-garde songs with the local singer and performance artist Diamanda Galas.

"I may miss the private plane," Mr. Jones said, speaking by telephone from Berlin, "but on the other hand, I'm much more interested in new, alternative music now."

Since Led Zeppelin's demise, Mr. Jones has received countless offers to work with what he described as "tedious formula rock bands." Though he recently produced a live acoustic comeback album for the 1970's Zeppelin-influenced pop group Heart, he has spurned most of those requests, preferring to collaborate with more cutting-edge bands and artists like the Butthole Surfers, R.E.M., Brian Eno and Ms. Galas.

"I first heard of Diamanda when my wife bought her 'Wild Women with Steak Knives' album in 1983," he said. "I was immediately impressed with her voice, and the power and the emotion. Our backgrounds are very similar. We both played in our fathers' bands when we were starting out, and we're both great fans of classical music, jazz, blues, Mediterranean music and Arabic music. A mutual friend suggested that we should work together, and I think she wanted to do a rock record."

The result, an album called "The Sporting Life" (Mute), is a lighthearted change of pace from the confrontational and challenging song cycles dedicated to people with AIDS that Ms. Galas has been performing since 1984.

Ms. Galas, also in Berlin, said: "I think that if you get together and decide to do an album called 'Homicidal Love Songs,' which is what I originally wanted to call it, you've got to have a sense of humor. What makes this album possible in terms of lyrics is real life experience. Every single song, and John knows it, too, has a particular person in mind with whom I have had various provocations and entanglements."

One can't help but wonder whom Ms. Galas has in mind when she sings "let's tie him up and cut him -- and then let's kill him" on the album's title track, but she isn't telling.

Though the pair don't perform any Led Zeppelin songs on the album, Ms. Galas said that she'd be singing the Zeppelin nugget "Communication Breakdown" in concert.

Mr. Jones, who was neither invited to perform with Mr. Page and Mr. Plant nor informed of the reunion in advance, said he was skeptical about continuing to perform Zeppelin songs. "It was a great band and I'm very proud of what we did," he said, "but it has its place."

Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, by the way, seem to be having some trouble planning their first American tour together since their Led Zeppelin days. With the fate of the hockey season still undecided, a source said, the group is unable to confirm dates in arenas in several key cities, including New York. Originally conceived of as a 50-date trek from February to April, the tour might have to be extended, with the duo playing smaller theaters in the spring and outdoor theaters in the summer.

Courtesy: Steve A. Jones Archive

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Obituaries

New York Times

Published: Nov 26, 1995

Peter Grant, a strapping British ex-wrestler who once managed Led Zeppelin and other rock groups, died on Tuesday. He was 60 and lived in Eastbourne on the Channel coast south of London.

The cause was a heart attack, said his press agent, Judy Totton.

In his prime, Mr. Grant, who stood 6 feet 5, was a heavyweight in the rock industry. He once said, "When it comes to 'heavy management,' they don't come any heavier than me."

Before he became active in the British music industry in the late 1950's, Mr. Grant had been a professional wrestler. The Daily Telegraph in London observed on Friday: "His fearsome physique blinded more than one business rival to the formidable vision, cunning, imagination and negotiating prowess which he applied to every transaction."

Mr. Grant managed Led Zeppelin -- the British group that many music critics have called the definitive rock band of the 1970's -- from the late 1960's until it disbanded in the early 1980's, when he retired as a band manager.

One of Mr. Grant's deals involving Led Zeppelin was recounted by two American historians of popular culture, Michael Uslan and Bruce Solomon, in "Dick Clark's the First 25 Years of Rock & Roll" (1981):

"October of 1968 found the quartet rehearsing in London, while Peter Grant flew to America to get his boys a deal with a record label. Atlantic signed them without ever seeing or hearing them. Grant returned to England, hustled his band into a studio, and one week later had 'Led Zeppelin' in the can. The band went to the States, started opening concerts for other groups, and methodically blew the headliners off the stage. Within months their first album was in America's top ten."

Mr. Grant was known for pushing hard to increase rock performers' incomes. The Guardian in London reported on Friday that Phil Everly, a singer and musician, said in introducing Mr. Grant at a party in London not long ago: "Without his efforts, musicians had no careers. He was the first to make sure the artists came first and that we got paid and paid properly."

Mr. Grant's career was not trouble-free. In the late 1970's, when he was 42, he and three Led Zeppelin colleagues were convicted in an Oakland, Calif., court of battery at a concert in Oakland. They were sentenced to probation after pleading no contest.

The four had been charged in an incident in which three security guards said they had been beaten with guitars and amplifying equipment.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Grant had managed another popular group, the Yardbirds.

Mr. Grant, a London native, had quit school in his early teens to help support his family. He initially took a job as a factory worker and then as a Fleet Street messenger before serving in the British Army and working as a wrestler.

He is survived by a son, Warren, and a daughter, Helen.

Courtesy: Steve A. Jones Archive

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Songs that Evoke Both Age and Eternal Youth

by Ann Powers

New York Times

Published: July 18, 1998

A transformation enveloped the crowd leaving Jimmy Page and Robert Plant's show at Madison Square Garden on Thursday night. As fans filed out, they let forth waves of booming cheers as spooky as the imaginary sounds made by mutating monsters or supermen. The tenebrous fury of Led Zeppelin, which Mr. Page and Mr. Plant have been reanimating since 1995, awakened some dormant urge within these people. The duo's weird magic still works.

Catharsis was always the punch line in Led Zeppelin's big show. That band crashed through the self-imposed limits of the blues form using the grandiose gestures of opera. Like opera, its music was both gaudy and beautiful. Jimmy Page expanded rock guitar to encompass medieval modalities and Indian tunings, and he made these shrewd steps with such flash and aggression that they seemed incredible. Robert Plant found the sexual magic within every landscape he pilfered, from the Mississippi Delta to King Arthur's court to the hippie love-ins and feasted on it, swelling with every bite.

That spectacle, of music seemingly bursting its own seams, can still inspire. Led Zeppelin itself, felled in 1977 by the death of its drummer, John Bonham, will never reunite. Mr. Page and Mr. Plant's current collaborators, the most notable being the drummer, Michael Lee, know not to aim for past glories. But Mr. Page and Mr. Plant have the right to do so. At the Garden, they stressed Zep songs and Zep gestures.

Re-enacting Zep's rituals poses a physical challenge for the duo, but it also solves the problem of their aging. The arcane imagery and primal thump of Zep's songs both hint at ancient wisdom and cast a spell of eternal youth. Because they trade in immortality, Mr. Page and Mr. Plant do not look silly when they reject maturity's decorum.

Mr. Plant exuded sexiness, spinning gracefully around the stage. His wails shattered the air as he hit every high note. Yet Mr. Plant's expressions of masculine hunger do not rely just on force; they tap his ever-deepening sense of desire's ebb and flow. On songs like ''Heart in Your Hand'' (from the intriguing new Atlantic Records album, ''Walking to Clarksdale'') or the classic ''Babe I'm Gonna Leave You,'' he deftly juxtaposed urgency with weariness, tenderness with rage.

Mr. Page questions his own virility less frequently. Still a fervent experimentalist, he rarely opts for introversion. He employed many crowd-pleasing tricks: he whipped out his bow for ''How Many More Times,'' and later mixed guitar feedback with the shimmery sounds of a theremin, a motion-sensitive electronic instrument. And his standard riffs dazzled. After years of self-imposed exile, Mr. Page seems fully rejuvenated, sipping gainfully from the cup of Led Zeppelin's catharsis.

Courtesy: Steve A. Jones Archive

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