our first guests are members of the legendary rock and roll band led zeppelin for god's sake
they this weekend in washington d.c to receive the kennedy center honors this is a new cd
dvd entitled celebration day it's in stores now what are we doing here
please welcome robert plant jimmy page and john paul jones everybody yeah thank you very much
what do you think
congratulations uh you uh robert i had met before from the show uh jimmy and i had never
met nor had john and i had met but it was it was fun wasn't it it was great yeah it was really
so easy compared to the you know
something that goes on over the river over the water there oh oh yeah yeah it's pretty
stiff there yeah have you you've all received uh comparable awards in in your home country no no
oh well it was it was good to see uh bass player though yeah and then
you nice enough to come up here and visit with us again this evening thank you very much now
buddy guy also receiving the kennedy center i know a buddy guy through paul shaffer who brought the
buddy guy here uh early early on in the 80s when we started the show and he's been here many times
buddy guy is a name that influenced everybody uh when you were kids oh yeah absolutely absolutely
when we uh i like for example jeff beck and myself we were still probably teenagers when we heard um
buddy guy but um just just hearing the uh yeah i remember being with jeff and playing the the
vinyl with which was called a folk festival of the blues where buddy guy is really young on it
and he's he's he's playing with muddy waters and sunny boy williamson etc you know howling wharf
but he sings two songs on it and just the whole delivery and the passion and the drama and
this guitar is just out of this world now these names that you you mentioned uh sunny boy williams
williamson williamson uh howlin wolf uh buddy guy muddy waters now these men seem to have had
tremendous influence on british musicians early on do we know paul help out here did they also have
the same kind of influence on young american musicians absolutely but i i think it was the
brits that really brought that music back over to us and inspired us to start appreciating it where
it was under appreciated for so long oh yeah so guys yeah it's the main movies i mean canned heat
there were some guys who went out and brought some of the guys from the delta
who'd sort of given the game up and they brought them back to the new port folk festival in the uh
early mid 60s something like that yeah yeah it's it's i think it's fascinating that is and you
guys were in your teens just out of high school more or less when you started uh that that you're
influenced by this uh relatively obscure group of blues musicians from the united states it's
just wonderful and and now that it's all come full circle many times for them and and uh who else was
in your class of rock and roll bands well from newport virginia gene vincent with the blue caps
and you know brian setzer with his big orchestra he's like a complete
aficionado of the vincent catalog cochran and the king elvis we met him uh the three of us
four of us met him in about 1973. how was that in terms of personalities he had a lot of chicks
got something going on but uh so you had that in common with elvis a lot of a lot of tricks
but i i i mean to be in london when you guys were kids and all of the music going on and
the the rolling stones and the the kinks and the beetles and the who and i mean there's
never been anything like that has there were there other bands i didn't remember
but did did you all know one another would you hang out would you visit would you gig
with one another would you work on each other's music how many notes do you want
we basically saw each other in airports is that about it that's about it yeah so so the music
never intersected nobody ever called up and said i'm doing a record would you like to come over
and play on this record and then we can do that on your record or well these guys worked together a
lot me and bon i was working on the blacktop um and bottom was uh stealing cars i mean we were
we were busy in another part of the world all together really these guys were kind of
high-flying playing on lots of people's records and stuff had you mentioned the
part about stealing cars to the kennedy center people how long did it take us to get in there
they thought i was born in 1960 well of course i was but i mean
it took ages to clear that one up and and then a tremendous success the the band
you you guys 12 years is about the run of the band is that right yeah
1980 uh the drummer dies sadly tragically and you you call it quits some some people would say well
sadly we'll move on but we'll get another drummer that never crossed your mind so
no no it wasn't the fact was that you know we had the records out and when and and then we put the
the songs into the set uh and and that was just a big it was almost like another beginning for
the second win for the songs because they were changing every night with the improvisation we
were putting in and there was no way with the amount of uh work and mutation that had gone on
with those songs that we could say to another drummer well can you learn this but it just
wouldn't work jack black when uh you guys were being saluted last night did a tremendous job and
he he said that uh you your your music was about sex was about vikings was about vikings having sex
is that
is is that a good evaluation well we've left all the furs in the dressing room in fact what do we
use first for nowadays oh to keep warm yeah um i can't remember much about that david really
you missed a bit about vikings having sex with hobbits oh that's right and also the hobbits
well i don't want to offend all of the hobbits tuning in tonight
uh but the music help me out with the description what how would we describe it how would i
describe it how would i how would i say in a sentence the kind of music that you produced
all right okay fair enough let me uh
get it done get it done get it done [ __ ] wrong oh that part's wrong i'll tell you what
it's very handy having john paul jones nearest the hosts yeah i've never already speak for yourself
now i want to tell you
i have two pictures here that say so much about about you about the world about culture and about
how time changes people and moves on this is less than 24 hours ago this photo here you are
with the president of the united states that was last night
1973 got your own airplane and you don't need to button your shirts for takeoff
oh my god
how old are you guys are you just kids there aren't some would say what went wrong you know
yeah yeah what did go wrong oh my god and and uh you so you sit there last night and you hear uh
well-known well-regarded musicians playing your music and i said to you i said this this sounds
great to me and you said yeah that that musicians like playing led zeppelin music it's it's fun
music to play and and to hear your music coming at you from other musicians in the same building
is it exhilarating does it make you nervous does it what is the reaction there well we didn't know
what was gonna it was quite a surprise what was gonna happen so it was quite exhilarating to hear
the different approaches that people had to the songs and uh yeah it was kid rock was fantastic
and um he did a version of stairway that uh had a choir yeah it just had an orchestra and then
after the guitar well it was with the uh uh ann and nancy wilson who did a superb job to start
it off yeah started building and building and then after the guitar solo there's a there's a
scrim that goes up and you see this but it already had a small choir on stage already
but a huge one at the back and they started really rocking it was great it was lovely and
then there were more people on stage doing your music than actually in the audience it was a huge
huge production and then the the lenny kravitz also was of the vikings did you see them yeah
seriously do my favorite next time you guys fly take your shirts off
that's a lot lounge is not in here this is freezing i know i know uh so then there was a uh
uh not a completely reunion concert but it was a a concert with uh john bonham's son jason
bonham on drums and this was in 2007 am i correct with that and is this is the compilation
from that performance right and and i'm told that uh where was what was the venue the o2 in london
yota arena and and requests for 20 million tickets 20 million tickets that's how many
now in all fairness some of those requests were for matinees
but still
when you say when you say matinee is it the same kind of meaning that
we have for a matinee i don't know oh no no no i don't think
oh my god
it's nice to it's nice to be here and after
after that weekend it feels like we're all uh like i ought to be in the band doesn't it
no no no no he says no it doesn't feel right well i had great fun uh getting to know you guys
a little bit uh and certainly more than i had before and uh what an honor you guys deserve it
and i i couldn't be happier you're here tonight no thank you and do me a favor and come back if
you will okay thank you good to see you thank you thank you very much thank you so very much