LONDON (AP) – Jimmy Page started the project because he couldn’t believe how bad Led Zeppelin sounded.
The legacy of the band he’d devoted much of his life to was being muddied by the way its classic studio albums sounded when reproduced on the ubiquitous MP3 players that are popular today.
Instead of accepting that future generations would have to hear a cramped, compressed version of Led Zep’s sonic booms, Page has devoted several years to completely re-mastering the band’s extensive catalog in a labor of love – “Physical Graffiti,” which was released on Tuesday.
“This whole re-mastering process is a result of listening to Led Zeppelin on MP3. It almost sounds as if someone has got into the master tapes and done a really horrendous mix of it,” Page said of the MP3 versions in a recent interview. “It just wasn’t representative of what we’d done in the first place. So many textures were missing. The whole beauty of Led Zeppelin, the air of it, these instruments coming in here and here and over here, was just totally destroyed.”
The re-mastering has taken several years, and the new editions include previously unreleased companion disks of outtakes, live performances and alternate versions of many songs. Page listened to hundreds of hours of tapes looking for gems. The 71-year-old guitar master, who wears his long silvery hair in a ponytail, is confident that the new versions will last and be easily adapted for the next round of technological innovation.