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Reunions and ongoing success (1982-present)
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After embarking on a successful solo career in 1982, Plant teamed with Page in 1984 for the commercially successful EP The Honeydrippers: Volume One, which also featured another former Yardbirds guitarist, Jeff Beck. Plant also made an appearance in 1982 at the Prince's Trust Concert in London, sharing the stage with numerous other British acts.
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In 1983, Page embarked on a short tour with the ARMS project, a charity event for multiple sclerosis. The tour also included former Yardbird guitarists Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Each artist performed separately, with Page performing tunes from his Death Wish 2 soundtrack along with an instrumental version of Stairway to Heaven. For the finale, all three guitarists shared the stage, trading blues solos. The event is available on video. During the tour Page looked extremely thin and frail. According to the book "Hammer of the Gods," Page reportedly told friends that he'd just given up heroin after seven years of use. In a 1988interview with Musician Magazine, Page took offense when the interviewer noted that heroin had been associated with his name, and insisted that "I'm not [an addict], thank you very much."
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In 1984, Page teamed up with Paul Rodgers (of Bad Company and Free fame) to record two albums under the name The Firm. The first album included an epic song called "Midnight Moonlight" which had originally been intended for Led Zeppelin.
Plant toured in 1983 and 1985, but refused to perform any Led Zeppelin songs. Similarly, The Firm refused to perform any Led Zeppelin or Bad Company tunes, though Page played part of the "Kashmir" riff during "Midnight Moonlight", as well as his trademark violin bow solo.
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On 13 July 1985 Page, Plant and Jones reunited at the Live Aid concert at JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, for a short Led Zeppelin set featuring drummers Tony Thompson and Phil Collins. The performance, which included three songs ("Rock and Roll", "Whole Lotta Love" and "Stairway to Heaven"), was marred by such factors as bad broadcast sound, poor drumming, Plant's sub-standard vocals and Page's apparent inebriation and badly tuned Gibson Les Paul guitar (the Gibson EDS-1275 was in tune). When Live Aid footage was released on a four-DVD set in late 2004, the group unanimously agreed not to allow footage from their performance to be used. However, Page and Plant donated proceeds from their Unledded DVD to the Live Aid charity, and Jones donated a portion of the profits from his United States tour with the Mutual Admiration Society.
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In 1986, Page, Plant and Jones gathered at Bath, in South West England, for rehearsals with Thompson with a view to playing as a group again, but a serious car accident involving Thompson put an end to that plan.
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1988 turned out to be a significant year for Led Zeppelin, with much talk about a reunion tour. A Rolling Stone critic commented at year's end that "1988 was the biggest year Led Zeppelin ever had, and they only played once." A newer band, Kingdom Come, had a hit single called "Get It On", which sounded so much like Led Zeppelin that many listeners thought that the band had reformed, and the song received heavy airplay. Additional excitement was generated by Page's appearance on Plant's album Now and Zen, where he performed on the tracks "Heaven Knows" and "Tall Cool One" (the latter also featuring samples of Page's guitar riffs from the original Led Zeppelin recordings). Plant later sang on track four ("The Only One") of Page's album Outrider, released in June.
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For the first time since Bonham's death, Plant began performing Zeppelin tunes on his solo tour. When Plant's European tour visited London's Hammersmith Odeon on April 17, 1988, Page joined Plant on stage for several numbers. Both Page and Plant mounted tours in the United States later in the year, each performing Led Zeppelin numbers to ecstatic audiences.
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Led Zeppelin reunited again in May of 1988, for Atlantic Records' 40th Anniversary concert, with Bonham's son, Jason Bonham, on drums. The performance was again flawed, this time by a lack of keyboards in the mix, and by Page's poor performance during "Heartbreaker". Page and Plant performed with Jason Bonham again at the 21st birthday party of Plant's daughter, Carmen, and at Jason Bonham's wedding. The media published countless articles about Led Zeppelin, with speculation about a reunion tour.
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On June 30, 1990, while Plant was touring in support of his album, Manic Nirvana, Page joined him for a brief set at the Knebworth music festival. The set included "Wearing and Tearing", "Misty Mountain Hop" and "Rock and Roll". The concert was broadcast by radio stations around the world, and highlights of the event, including the entire Page/Plant set, were later shown on MTV. On other dates of the tour, Plant performed wearing a Jimmy Page t-shirt.
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Page and Plant reunited in 1994 for an MTV Unplugged performance (dubbed Unledded) which eventually led to a world tour with a Middle Eastern orchestra, and a live album entitled No Quarter. The bass player was Charlie Jones, who had been the bassist with Plant's own band for several years (and was now his son-in-law, having married Carmen Plant). Many see this as the beginning of discord with John Paul Jones, who was upset with Page and Plant for touring without asking him first. Tensions were further increased when Plant was asked at a press conference where Jones was, and he jokingly replied that Jones was parking the car. Jones later commented that he was unhappy about Plant and Page naming the album after a Led Zeppelin song which was largely his work. In a 1995 interview with Spin magazine, Page kicked the interviewer out of the room simply for mentioning Jones.
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On January 13, 1995, Led Zeppelin was inducted into the United States Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. At the induction ceremony, the band's inner rift became apparent when Jones joked upon accepting his award, "Thank you, my friends, for finally remembering my phone number," causing consternation and awkward looks from Page and Plant. The three jammed with Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and Joe Perry on "Bring It On Home" and "Baby Please Don't Go", and with Neil Young on "When the Levee Breaks." This would be the last time that all three surviving Led Zeppelin members would perform in public together (as of 2006).
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November 11, 1997 saw the release of Led Zeppelin BBC Sessions, the first Led Zeppelin album in more than fifteen years. The two-disc set included almost all of the band's recordings for the BBC.
In 1998, Page and Plant continued their collaboration with Walking into Clarksdale, the pair's first album-length collaboration on entirely new material since Led Zeppelin disbanded in 1980. The subsequent tour featured Led Zeppelin songs (including the epic "How Many More Times") along with a few songs from the new album.
On May 30, 2000, Atlantic released a single edit of "Whole Lotta Love", making it the only Led Zeppelin CD single.
In October 2002, The British press reported that Plant and Jones had reconciled after a 20-year feud which had kept Led Zeppelin apart, and rumours surfaced of a reunion tour in 2003. This was later denied by Plant and Page's management company.
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2003 saw a resurgence of the band's popularity with the release of a live album, How the West Was Won, and a video collection, Led Zeppelin DVD, both featuring material from the band's heyday. At the year's end, the DVD had sold more than 520,000 copies.
Around Christmas 2004, "Stairway To Heaven" was voted the best rock song of all time by Planet Rock listeners, in a poll conducted on the station's website. Two other Led Zeppelin songs featured in the top ten - "Whole Lotta Love" at number six and "Rock and Roll" at number eight.
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In 2005, Led Zeppelin received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, they were ranked #1 in US cable channel VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock" special, and readers of Guitar World magazine voted the guitar solo from "Stairway to Heaven" to be the best guitar solo of all time in rock history.In Rolling Stone magazine's tabulation of the greatest guitarists of all time, Jimmy Page was ranked number nine.
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On the cover of their February 2006 issue, Guitar World magazine called Led Zeppelin the "world's greatest band." The band, and Jimmy Page especially, have been featured in the magazine numerous times, whether in articles about the band itself, about topics that include the band, or in articles where other musicians cite the band as a powerful influence.
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In November 2005, it was announced that Led Zeppelin and Russian conductor Valery Gergiev were the winners of the 2006 Polar Music Prize. The King of Sweden presented the prize to Plant, Page and Jones, along with John Bonham's daughter, in Stockholm in May, 2006.
Page and Plant are slated to appear on June 30th, 2006 at the Montreux Jazz Festival for a tribute to Ahmet Ertegun, Atlantic Records' founder. They had previously performed at this venue in 2002.
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