Plant on Zep Tour, EVH on DLR

Plus some of EVH’s standard fibbing!

Quick tidbits, starting with Robert Plant on not wanting to the the Zep reunion — via a radio interview you can listen to here:

“The reason [Led Zeppelin] stopped is because we were incomplete, and we’ve been incomplete now for 28 years,” Plant said, of course referring to the September 1980 death of original Zeppelin drummer John Bonham. “No matter what you do you have to really guard the discretion of what you‘ve done in the past and make sure that you have all the reasons in the right place to be able to do something with absolute, total conviction. I don’t want to do anything where we challenge what we did in the first place by just going back and visiting it without having a new, fresh makeover start.”

“To visit old ground is an incredibly delicate thing to do,” Plant said, “and the disappointment that could be there once you commit to that, and the comparisons to something that was basically fired by youth and a different kind of exuberance to now, it’s very hard to go back and meet that head on and do it justice.”

Edward Van Halen on a new disc with David Lee Roth (but still no Michael Anthony):

“Dave, Wolfie, Alex and I are a band,” he tells Spinner in an upcoming Spinner Interview. “I hope that after Janie and I get married, and Wolfie graduates, that we sit down and discuss recording new music, which I have tons of. If Dave’s up for singing … then do another tour, and just see where it takes us. Actually, next week or the week after Wolfie, Alex, and I are gonna start jamming. Maybe we’ll give Dave a call and see what he’s up to. He’s off, always doing his own thing, and he checks in every now and then to see how we’re doing.”

On a new tour with DLR via a CNN interview:

CNN: How was it touring with David Lee Roth after all these years?

Van Halen: It was great.

CNN: No smackdowns?

Van Halen: No, no. Everything went great. It went smooth.

CNN: Is there going to be another Van Halen tour?

Van Halen: Oh, I know so. I mean, we’re a band! That wasn’t just a one-off thing. It’s officially a band. And Wolfgang Van Halen is the bass player. Janie and I are getting married in June, and my son’s going to graduate, and we’ll pick it up after that. Obviously, I hope we record some new stuff. I’m writing, and just doing the same thing I always do.

If the quotes are accurate, Ed also did some of his trademark misdirection in the CNN interview:

It kind of started when I went to a Radio Shack-type of store in Pasadena. They had a 12-string guitar hanging there, and I didn’t want 12 — I wanted six. And so I asked the guy, “Could I take six strings off and try it?” And the guy said, “No, not unless you buy it.” So I borrowed the money from my parents, bought it, took six strings off and voila — did what I wanted. The guitar — it’s on the first album cover. It’s called Frankenstein.

On playing piano as a kid – and he can definitely read music, as he has said previously.

I can’t read music. Instead, I’d do stuff inside the piano, do harmonics and all kinds of crazy things. They used to put me in these annual piano contests down at Long Beach City College, and two years in a row, I won first prize — out of like 5,000 kids! The judges were like, “Very interesting interpretation!” I thought I was playing it right.

Category: Jimmy Page/Zep, Van Halen