Jimmy Page is still keeping most details regarding his long-awaited return to solo work under wraps, but he's definitely planning to make some noise in 2016.
Page touched on the subject during a recent interview with Classic Rock magazine, admitting it's "taken a long time" for him to get his solo career back on track. "I want to do it properly," he pointed out. "And there will be surprises — that’s what I’ve done all the way through my career, really."
As fans are already aware, Page's attention has most recently been diverted by his work on the most recent series of Led Zeppelin reissues, which kept him holed up in the studio for years while he surveyed the band's massive backlog of master tapes — and then kept him busy with promo work once they were actually released. "So it’s not been so easy to think about anything else in the tail end of this year," he admitted. "But okay, next year – bang!"
It isn't clear whether Page intends to finish his next album first or simply hit the road with a new band, but he did reveal that he's been working on new songs — and that for this project, he's approaching songwriting "in a totally different way." After all these years, that process of reinvention, Page added, "has a charm of its own, and an excitement to it."
When he does start his next solo tour, Page is planning a career-spanning set that works in plenty of unexpected elements.
"There will be all sorts of material from different eras. Right across the board – that’s the way I’m seeing it. But like I said, there will be surprises. It won’t be entirely what people might be expecting," he warned. "The best way for me to think about it is pacing towards a really exciting show, where you’ve still got chance to improvise and come up with new things every night. And I think in that sense, people are going to say, ‘Yeah, okay, I get it.’"