Jimmy Page and Robert Plant: Walking Into Clarksdale

WHEN, IN 1994, MTV approached Robert Plant – otherwise engaged making records with unknown youngbloods, and saying rude things about Jimmy Page for working with well-known oldbloods like David Coverdale – somehow they persuaded him to do what he'd sworn he would never do (except perhaps for weddings and parties): reunite Led Zeppelin. Okay, the rhythm section wasn't involved (one dead, one uninvited) but Unledded was as close to Zeppelin Unplugged as makes no odds. Suddenly, Page and Plant are chums again, and off to Morocco to hand out with tribesmen, then off to Wales to add loops and Celtic trinkets to Zeppelin classics for Unledded – No Quarter, their first album together since 1979's In Through The Out Door. It was, Plant stressed, a tentative reunion. It's not any more. Three-and-a-bit years later there's a new album, Walking Into Clarksdale.