Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page Readies ‘Physical Graffiti’ Deluxe Edition & Live Stream

Tune in Thursday, Feb. 19 at 11 a.m. PT/ 2 p.m. ET for the 40th Anniversary Led Zeppelin Physical Graffiti Deluxe Edition Premiere from London’s Olympic Studios, exclusively streamed by Yahoo Live!

All these years later, Led Zeppelin’s impact is still being felt — and the pioneering rock group, who formed in 1968 and disbanded after the death of drummer John Bonham in 1980, is selling their very popular catalog all over again.

Spearheading this reissue campaign is no less than Jimmy Page — the band’s iconic guitarist, who has overseen the production and remastering of the band’s hugely successful catalog and is now, uncharacteristically, out there promoting it.

The world can watch him this Thursday, when Page unveils the newly remastered Physical Graffiti — the 16x multi-platinum double album issued 40 years ago next week — via an exclusive listening session/question & answer live stream from London’s Olympic Studios, the same studio where the band often recorded in their heyday. The 40th Anniversary Led Zeppelin Physical Graffiti Deluxe Edition Premiere will be exclusively streamed by Yahoo Live  at 2pm ET and feature a live playback of seven previously unreleased audio tracks that will accompany the deluxe edition of the new Physical Graffiti reissue.

Long perceived as one of the finest works in Zeppelin’s comparatively slim catalog—the group released only nine studio albums in their 12 years together—1975’s Physical Graffiti was an adventurous effort for the band. A two-LP set, the album gave the band room to stretch out creatively with lengthy tracks such as their classic “Kashmir,” later concert favorites “Trampled Underfoot” and “In My Time Of Dying,” and the informal but colorful collaboration with Rolling Stones’ longtime keyboard associate Ian Stewart, “Boogie With Stu.”

Many contend the instrumental strength of the quartet—consisting of Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist John Paul Jones, and drummer Bonham—was never more conspicuously on display.

“It gave the opportunity to be able to present so many even more different moods and colors and textures than [what] had preceded it,” Page told Yahoo Music earlier this month in London. “It was really experimental for us. We were really pushing and pushing and pushing ourselves—which meant that because of the cohesion of these four characters, musically, the fact that they were so good, you could really push the envelope and the boundaries of everything and go basically where we certainly hadn’t gone before.”

Most memorable on the set is “Kashmir,” here both in its original form and in a newly unveiled rough orchestra mix. Page rightly sounds pleased with the track when discussing it today. “I wanted this thing to sound huge and majestic” he recalls, “and I thought of it in the context of orchestra, cellos doing the riffs, and brass doing these sort of cascades. In my head it was always orchestral. So when you think of that — an orchestral track on a Led Zeppelin thing, with such density — yeah, that was pretty radical.”

The newly revamped Physical Graffiti comes midway through the band’s extensive catalog reissue campaign — which began in 2014 via release of deluxe editions of their first five albums, all of which were received well both critically and commercially.  Like those sets, the album will be available in multiple configurations, including double and triple vinyl and CD sets, digital downloads, and a Super Deluxe Boxed Set.  Coming later this year: The final three studio albums in the band’s chronology, Presence, In Through The Out Door, and Coda.

While it is indeed an extensive reissue series, there are few figures in popular music more deserving than Led Zeppelin — or careers in rock ‘n’ roll that were more extraordinary.

“At the time during the ‘70s,” says Page, “when you think of the band and what it was literally doing — and the response to what we were doing, the enthusiasm from the audiences in the live situations, and also the fact that we were doing sets which were sort of three hours long, playing about five nights a week three hours long, lengthy, lengthy… it was just so enjoyable.

“I was just living the whole life of what it was,” says he. “There wasn’t another life to follow.”