On this day (August 25) in 1994, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and Robert Plant reunited to record a portion of No Quarter: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Unledded. The album featured Zeppelin classics and new songs backed by a Moroccan string band and an Egyptian orchestra.
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Page and Plant recorded No Quarter in three locations. They captured some of the album’s songs in Marrakech, Morocco, earlier in the year. Then, they traveled to Aberliefenni quarry in Wales to record more material. Finally, they finished the album over two nights at the London Weekend Studios in front of an invite-only audience.
[RELATED: On This Day in 1968, Led Zeppelin Played Together for the First Time]
The No Quarter sessions didn’t represent a full Led Zeppelin reunion. At the time, Page, Plant, and John Paul Jones were the only living members of the band. However, Page and Plant did not reach out to Jones about the project. Jones was reportedly upset after hearing about the reunion in the press rather than being contacted directly. Moreover, he contributed heavily to the title track, “No Quarter,” making the snub sting that much more.
No Quarter Was Not Meant to Be a Led Zeppelin Reunion
In truth, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant didn’t want to put Led Zeppelin back together. Instead, they wanted to do something new. It all started when MTV reached out to Plant and offered him an Unplugged special.
“I would have been incredibly facetious if I thought I could have carried any thread of the Zeppelin history on my own shoulders outside of a live gig,” he told Rolling Stone. “The idea of doing a whole lot of solo stuff–well, I knew that that’s not exactly what everybody would’ve wanted either–however proud I am of all those songs,” Plant added.
“It was obvious that I could either say, ‘Well, f**k off. I don’t like MTV anyway. You don’t play me as a rule because I’m too old, so why start worrying bout me now?’ or I could think about how to team up with the one bloke who knew where I was coming from and see if we couldn’t go ahead,” he explained.
Page and Plant had shared stages in the 14 years since John Bonham’s death. However, they hadn’t had a real conversation. The planning stages for No Quarter allowed them to reunite on more than a musical level. It was the beginning of a new group, Page & Plant, that would tour and release one more album before disbanding in 1998.
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