NEW YORK – Years ago, a guitarist friend sighed that there aren't any great rock-guitar riffs left to be thought up.

"Damn you, Jimmy Page," he'd say half seriously, half in tribute, shaking his fist at the legendary Led Zeppelin riff-master.

That's an exaggeration, of course. Page did not come up with all of the great riffs, even within his own legendary band. As bassist John Paul Jones explained to me a decade ago, if there were a lot of notes in a Zep riff – such as on Black Dog, How Many More Times or The Ocean – it was probably his brainchild.

But otherwise? All the rest? Jimmy's.

Singer Robert Plant's notorious, early-days lyric-lifting of old blues standards aside, even if you believe the few accusations aimed at Page over the years that he pinched a chord sequence here or riff snippet there (most recent lawsuit: the intro to Stairway to Heaven) and eliminate those from consideration, Page is still to hard-rock guitar riffs what Tiffany was to Art Nouveau glass lamp shades.

In an interview two weeks ago to promote the first three remastered reissues of Led Zeppelin's nine studio albums, which go on sale Tuesday, QMI Agency asked the 70-year-old Page about his 'cornering of the market' on riffs by the mid '70s.

Was it intentional?

"It's not a trite answer, but I used to think like that – that's how I used to think," Page said.

Just as it's inconceivable by Major League Baseball pitchers today that up to the 1980s a starter regularly would throw complete games, win or lose, so today's rock bands marvel at the pace at which rockers in the '60s and early '70s released new LPs.

Zeppelin composed the songs for their first six albums by summer 1972 – after having formed in summer 1968. Four years.

Riffs poured out of Page's guitars, thanks in large part to the band's calendar-packed touring schedule.

"When we were playing live, I'd start coming up with riffs all the time," he said in an upstairs hall of an old Bowery hotel, designed to ooze the interior look and feel of a medieval British castle.

"One night I'd come up with something and it'd be lost. I just kept exploring all the time. So it was quite a workout, those live shows, in a very, very positive way."

Two things make the latest Led Zeppelin catalogue reissues different from all others since the turn of the century.

First, the remastering of the music – off the original analogue, quarter-inch studio tapes – specific to each of today's myriad formats.

"The original albums were recorded for vinyl," Page said. "And then there was the advent of CDs."

Right. In the mid 1980s, Atlantic released the first digital versions of the Zep catalogue – not off the original tape masters but off poor-quality dubs.

"They sounded absolutely horrible," Page said. "But it was clear that that's the way things were going, to a CD market. So 20 years ago the catalogue was remastered for CDs."

Page oversaw that project and breathed new, punchier life into many Zep tracks, such as Good Times Bad Times and Immigrant Song.

He has done so again. Given Page's unofficial role as chief curator of the Zeppelin catalogue, you shouldn't have to ask why.

"I suppose the most important thing to consider from my point of view, or the band's point of view, is the quality. You always want the quality to be the best it can possibly be.

"This is a major adjustment to what was done 20 years ago. The technology in remastering now, which of course covers all the new digital formats, and also vinyl, is just superior."

Will Zep-ologist fans really notice any differences?

"As long as they don't listen to it on (compressed) mp3, they'll hear far more in it," Page said.

The second compelling things about the new releases are the companion discs available in "Deluxe" editions of each album. These will contain alternate or early-take versions and, in the case of Led Zeppelin III, a newly discovered unreleased track: an ad-hoc acoustic blues numbers.

In addition to CD, Atlanta/Swan Song also is releasing these dual offerings on 180-gram vinyl and high-quality (96kHz/24 bit) digital download.

A "Super Deluxe Boxed Set" of each album and companion songs will contain all sonic formats, plus a hardbound, 70-page commemorative photo book of the band circa the album's release, and also a print of the album cover.

With the exception of AC/DC, no hard rock band has come close to flooding our ears with so many catchy, crunching guitar riffs as Led Zeppelin did from 1968-82.

What's interesting about Zep – or boring, if your tastes veered into punk and new wave by the late '70s – is that young rock listeners in that decade not only were open to, but liked the ever-expanding avenues of classic rock.

Page and Zeppelin happily went down some of those roads. They meshed ever-more complex timing patterns with new, creative ways of presenting their verse-dominant riff rock.

The guitar layerings and orchestrations that Page, as the band's sole producer, began applying to some Zep songs represented the band's creative zenith, as heard on the 1971 LP Led Zeppelin IV, 1973's Houses of the Holy and 1975's masterwork double-LP Physical Graffiti.

Examples: the songs Misty Mountain Hop, Over the Hills and Far Away, In The Light and – a personal favourite – Ten Years Gone.

It was clear in my interview with him that Page is no less proud of the guitar orchestration he applied to Ten Years Gone than I've been intrigued by it.

Three years ago I had the honour of dissecting, learning and playing the sixth guitar layer (the upper-register slide part at the end) when the Toronto-based Classic Albums Live band performed Zep songs note for note, cut for cut, at Toronto's Massey Hall.

A bootleg of Page's personal home-studio recordings reveals how he painstakingly layered in all the weaving parts in the 20-second section at the end of the bridge on Ten Years Gone, right before the tune blasts back into the main riff.

To talk to Page about those layers, on that song, does not rank among the worst moments of my life. Especially given how enthusiastically Page engaged the subject as a microcosm of how he approached song building in general.

"I was very keen to have this whole change of moods – very definite changes of moods and atmosphere to these sections, and changes to intensity or fragility or whatever.

"The parts you're referring to on Ten Years Gone that are out there on bootleg – yeah, somebody managed to get into my tapes many years ago – but anyway it gives a good illustration of the way I would approach these things … I never stopped working on the different musical possibilities at home."

After our interview concluded, and after QMI Agency photographer Craig Robertson had finished shooting the magnificent accompanying photos he conceived on the spot in that moody, medieval-style room, Page turned to me to talk yet more about Ten Years Gone.

I did not decline the opportunity.

"It's interesting, all that Ten Years Gone stuff, huh?" he finally said. "It's beautiful on the album, isn't it?"

We'll find out in 2015 how that song and others from the remaining six Zeppelin studio albums sound following their various sonic upgrades. On-sale dates for those have yet to be announced.

As for those iconic Zeppelin riffs, I asked Page if it were true what I once read about drummer John Bonham actually inspiring a few of the riffs by hammering out the specific riff patterns.

Not quite. Page gave a thoughtful answer, though, that concluded with, "Knowing how John Bonham played and his approach, it was very easy for me to sort of come up with riffs that I knew were going to fit in with his approach to things."

But before saying that, Page emphasized one overriding reason why Led Zeppelin became Led Zeppelin. Something the surviving members have all agreed on, without waver, since Bonham's sudden death broke up the band in 1980.

It's not that Page, or Jones, came up with all those unforgettable riffs. Or that Jones so brilliantly applied his mantra of "less is more" to his melodic, harmonic bass lines, keyboards, mandolins and even woodwinds. Or that Plant in those early years could sing the ass off anyone in rock. Or that "Bonzo" Bonham attacked a drum kit in such pounding yet precise fashion that, today, still leaves most drummers in awe.

Rather, it's this.

"The most important thing to understand about Led Zeppelin," Page said, "is they were four musical equals."

'Physical Graffiti' tops among Zeppelin's nine albums

9. Coda (1982, 9th album): Two years after the death of Bonham, this aptly titled LP contains remainder-bin studio leftovers dating to 1970. A few good tracks, most notably Wearing and Tearing. But the best of the band's unused session work from the first five albums already had landed on Physical Graffiti.

8. Presence (1976, 7th album): Other than Achilles Last Stand and Nobody's Fault But Mine, not enough accessibility. And no acoustic songs or ballads to counter all the hard stuff.

7. In Through the Out Door (1979, 8th album): Many Zep fans always have hated this LP. Jones was chief composer, for whatever reason. Decades later Page lamented too many choruses, not enough riffs. But Fool in the Rain and All My Love (Plant's tribute to his young son who died of a virus) are first rate.

6. Led Zeppelin III (1970, 3rd album): Too soft? Too acoustic? Too mellow? On Side 2, yes. But Immigrant Song and Since I've Been Loving You would have highlighted any Zep album.

5. Led Zeppelin I (1969, 1st album): As Page often has said, it was all there on the first album: not just savagely attacked blues, riff-based rock and supreme musicianship, but "fragility" too via ballads and acoustic songs.

4. Led Zeppelin II (1969, 2nd album): The so-called "Brown Bomber" shot the band to superstardom, thanks to Whole Lotta Love. But Heartbreaker, What Is and What Should Never Be, Ramble On, Bring It On Home and Moby Dick all sear, while the organ ballad Thank You might not ever go out of style at Boomer weddings.

3. Houses of the Holy (1973, 5th album): FM rock radio still probably gives more airplay to songs off this underappreciated Zep LP than any other. You know them all except probably The Crunge (their deliberately undanceable, ironic homage to James Brown): The Song Remains the Same, The Rain Song, Over the Hills and Far Away, Dancing Days, D'Yer Mak'er, No Quarter and The Ocean.

2. Led Zeppelin IV (1971, 4th album): Most Zep fans list this as No. 1, and not just because of Stairway to Heaven. The perfect mix of the band's hard/soft, light/shade diversity. Black Dog is the Zeppelinest song of their entire catalogue: bassist John Paul Jones' brilliant, complicated riff; guitarist Jimmy Page's catchy, raunchy, chord-crunching bridge; Plant's lewd and most accessible lyrics; and John Bonham's drums that glue it all together while shredding your woofers.

1. Physical Graffiti (1975, 6th album): The band had recorded eight new "belters," as singer Robert Plant called them. It being the mid '70s, each track was stretched out -- collectively too long for one LP. So the band selected the best of their unused finished tracks to date -- riff-rippers, eclectics, acoustic numbers and otherwise-- and, tada!, one of the best double studio albums ever released. The foursome at their creative best.

Jimmy Page answers 5 QMI Agency readers' questions:

ROLLIE ROSE: "Did the band have a vision for future albums when drummer John Bonham passed away?"

JIMMY: "John Bonham and I had had some discussions of what we'd like to do, and it was going to be riff stuff. Not frantic riff but, you know, that really cool stuff that we could groove on."

DALE GAGO: "The music you made with the Black Crowes was fantastic, in terms of feel, energy and spirit. Is there a good enough band today that you would consider teaming up and playing with?"

JIMMY: "No, but I can recommend a band that I've just heard that sounded really amazing, but they don't need anybody else. They're called Royal Blood. Check them out."

JERRY L.: "Will the new Led Zeppelin re-masters be released in Blu-ray Audio format?"

JIMMY: "The (Super Deluxe Boxed Sets) contain a high-def audio download card of all content (at 96kHz/24 bit)."

ROB HAWK: "Does it ever surprise you the amount of influence you have had on a generation of musicians?"

JIMMY: "I've just been to Boston (to receive an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music) and I heard the musicians there doing renditions of my songs and the other honourees there, and the standard of musicianship was incredible. But I heard it then. They did various versions (of Zeppelin songs) with a good complement of guitars, I've got to tell you. But, yeah, the musicianship was incredible."

NV: "Are you aware of how happy you have made people, the pleasure you have provided and how many people you've moved with your music?"

JIMMY: "The essence of it, really, is people playing in the spirit, being inspired by what you did. And that's really cool. I like that, because that's the way I learned -- learning off records and stuff. Sixty, 80 years ago people would have passed on music by father to son, or mother to daughter, in that way. So this is just passing along the baton in a technological age, I suppose."

john.kryk@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @JohnKryk

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