For bands, navigating the past can often be a tricky business. In some cases, there is an avowed refusal to engage in anything other than the work in front of them – as if stopping to look back will somehow derail hard-won forward momentum. In others, it can be somewhere they’d rather not revisit; a place of bad memories or difficult circumstances. For Led Zeppelin, the past is a source of extraordinary triumphs but also, ultimately, great loss. How, in other words, do you reconcile the good times with the bad times?
For this month’s cover story, we have reunited Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones for a series of exclusive interviews to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Physical Graffiti – the immense double album that marked the loftiest peak of their formidable imperial phase. The three musicians take us far inside the album – but along the way, the story becomes unexpectedly reflective. It’s not simply that, 50 years on, Physical Graffiti continues to work its powerful magic on its principals. But as it deepens, our cover story often feels like an intricate study of the relationships between Plant, Page and Jones as it unfolds in Headley Grange, on the world’s largest stages or in the wilds of Morocco; three very different people whose passion for the work they achieved together remains as strong and unifying as ever. “I was never a great fan of other bands,” insists John Paul Jones. “I didn’t really go to concerts. I didn’t listen to other bands. I wasn’t interested because I wasn’t in them. I was a fan of Led Zeppelin, because I was in it.”
Elsewhere, there’s new interviews with Jason Isbell, Bryan Ferry, The Waterboys‘ Mike Scott, Steel Pulse, Maddy Prior, Destroyer, the Sex Pistols and Valerie June, while David Bowie‘s closest collaborators lift the lid on an early ‘Berlin’ era classic, the survivors revisit hippie stronghold Middle Earth, Mick Jones shares his memorabilia collection and a clutch of luminaries including Elvis Costello, Lucinda Williams and Adam Granduciel recreate Blood On The Tracks as Dylan’s 1975 masterpiece turns 50.