“You can't look over and be, 'Omigod! I'm playing with Jimmy Page!'” Twenty-five years after Page and the Black Crowes joined forces, Rich Robinson explains the group’s split with the legend as an expanded ‘Live at the Greek’ arrives 

The Black Crowes' Rich Robinson says being awe-struck by playing alongside Jimmy Page was not really an option when it happened 25 years ago.

"It's one of those things you can't process in the moment, 'cause you're in it," Robinson tells us via Zoom from his home in the Los Angeles area. "You have a job to do. You can't look over and be, 'Omigod! I'm playing these songs with Jimmy Page!' You've got to play the fuckin' song. Do the gig! That's the best way to honor the man and the work."

But with the passage of time, and with an expanded edition of 2000's Jimmy Page & the Black Crowes: Live at the Greek, out March 14, Robinson says he's more able to take a step back for perspective.

"Once you get outside of it and you spend some time thinking about it, it's like, 'Fuck, man, what an amazing thing to have done,' Robinson acknowledges. "Who wouldn't want to play those songs with Jimmy, right, and also just how cool it was and how we fit so effortlessly with one another. We really feel great about it."

Page certainly felt the same way at the time. "It's a good fit," he noted after one of the combination's three performances during October 1999 at the Roseland Ballroom in New York. "They're younger, but they come from the same place with their music. It's quite easy, really. It's very...complementary."

To which Robinson adds, "We were like old friends, in a weird way. Instantly, it just felt comfortable. We all came from had understanding of the same kind of music. We knew the stuff Jimmy and Robert were influenced by, and then we were also influenced by them — and then we took that to our level. It was such a cool thing."

The joint project was, indirectly, generated by Page's Led Zeppelin bandmate Robert Plant, who introduced the guitarist to the Black Crowes in January 1995 when the American group — then three albums into its career — was performing at London's Royal Albert Hall. (Plant had previously worked his magic in a similar fashion for Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson around that same time.)

A week later Page joined the Crowes onstage in Paris for encore renditions of Elmore James' "Shake Your Moneymaker" and Little Walter's "Mellow Down Easy." The Crowes subsequently played on some bills with Page & Plant during their 1997 tour and backed Page for a short show at the Cafe de Paris in London.

The 1999 dates — just eight, in London, New York, Los Angeles, Worcester, Mass and at the NetAid benefit in New Jersey — were the idea of the Crowes' then-manager Pete Angelus, while Page's manager, Bill Curbishley, ran with the collaboration the following year, constructing a full-scale arena tour with his other client, the Who. The two acts played back-to-back nights in each city, limiting costs by using much of the same stage gear.

The shows blended Zep and Crowes songs and a few select covers, which gave Robinson in particular a chance to play songs he hadn't before because he was writing and playing his own material since he was a teen.

"I started playing guitar when I was about 15," says the guitarist, who spoke with us about the special acoustic guitar, a 1954 Martin D-28, behind the Crowes’ signature tune, “She Talks to Angels.” “And we didn’t' go through the phase of learning how to play riffs, learning songs and being in a cover band. We started playing our own stuff pretty quickly.

“I always loved Zep and the Stones, and I think it had magical quality to it because I didn't look behind the curtain in that sense. Once you learn it and get know it, it's like, 'Oh shit, this is how he did this and blah de blah. Back then it was an untouchable thing, so I could enjoy it purely as a fan.

"And then to get into it and start listening to all the parts and listen to the brilliant composing that Jimmy was doing — the layering of guitars and the melodies and counter melodies and different parts —it was amazing to see. Then to be able to bring that to the stage with him and cover all those parts was amazing."

Robinson says he and fellow Crowes guitarist Audley Freed deferred to Page on guitar arrangements for the songs. "That was really up to him — 'What do you want us to play?'" he remembers. "When he played with Zeppelin, he'd have to cover all those parts himself. He sort of chose what he felt was most important to put forward, and it always sounded amazing. With three of us a lot more of those parts could be played."

That was not lost on Page, either. "This covers a lot more ground than I could on my own, or even just out with Robert," he acknowledged in New York. "We just have to decide which one of us is going to play which part, which is exciting."

Robinson says that the trio was not tied to slavishly recreating Page's variety of recorded parts, either. "He would say, 'This is how we did it live,' and we'd just build off of that," he recalls. "He was very specific; he knew what he wanted, and these parts really were brilliant.

“To peel the curtain back and see the compositional sort of elements he was doing, and to have Jimmy at the helm, knowing exactly what he wanted, there's really nothing better than that. What a really cool way to support him and his legacy."

The Crowes also deferred to Page on repertoire, though Robinson says there was a unified sentiment that favored "some slightly more obscure stuff, off the beaten path — like, we didn't choose 'Stairway to Heaven,' but 'Whole Lotta Love, oh, that was cool. 'Custard Pie,' 'In My Time of Dying,' those kinds of things. We did 'Nobody's Fault But Mine.' 'In the Light,' that was really cool to do." The selection also included an arrangement of things that mashed elements of the Yardbirds' 1966 original with the Jeff Beck Group's heavier treatment of it two years later.

“Jimmy was way up for it," Robinson says. "We were mainly focused on the Jeff Beck version, but the Yardbirds version had this really cool solo that Jimmy really wanted to do. So we did basically the Jeff Beck Group version, but for the solo we went into this really cool Yardbirds thing, and then it kicked back into the Jeff Beck version.

"Things like that were always so cool. I remember we did [Pink Floyd’s] 'Lucifer Sam,' we did a lot of really cool stuff, and Jimmy was always up for it. His positivity and his exuberance were so palpable."

Page was equally enthused about being part of the Crowes’ songs, which were left off the initial Live at the Greek release because of legal issues between the band and its original record label.

"He really liked 'Horsehead,'" Robinson says. "He played one of the most beautiful B-bender parts on 'She Talks to Angels.' He played an amazing solo on 'No Speak, No Slave.' To think about this guy Jimmy Page, this legend, playing on my songs was such an honor, I don't even know how to describe it. To be able to just have and hear the amazing parts and playing he brought to those songs is just mind-blowing to me."

The Crowes were planning to perform even more shows but he dropped out due to a claimed back injury. In his 2019 memoir Hard to Handle: The Life and Death of the Black Crowes, original Crowes drummer Steve Gorman wrote the excuse was fabricated, and that Page left because Robinson had rebuffed his invitation to write new material together — which the guitarist unequivocally denies.

"That's just not true," he says. "No one respected Jimmy more than me. I told him if he ever wanted to do anything I'd be more than happy to help in any way, shape or form." Page has, in fact, joined the Black Crowes onstage since the tour and attended the group's show in London last year while supporting its latest album, the Grammy Award–nominated Happiness Bastards, for which Robsinson used resurrected Guilds and an unusual Fender amp for the resurrected Crowes’ first album in 15 years.

Robinson also says Page sent him and his older brother, Crowes frontman Chris, a message complimenting their performance of "Going to California" with Slash at last month's Fire Aid benefit concert in Los Angeles.

"We've always kept in touch," Robinson says. "Chris just went to dinner with him recently. I think the actions speak louder than words."

As Live at the Greek comes out, the Robinsons are "pretty far along" in writing for the Crowes' next album. "I’ve sent Chris 30, 35 songs, and then he gets them and does what he does, then we'll get together and finish them," Robinson says. "I'm really liking what we have now. There's some cool shit I'm really looking forward to recording with the band."

And while that goes on the Crowes are also nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the first time ever. Fan voting runs through April 21 via vote.rockhall.org, and Robinson acknowledges that "it's cool just to be nominated.

“I know it sounds cliché, but just to be acknowledged is cool. We appreciate it, which is very unlike the Black Crowes.’ He laughs. “It would be cool to get in and be honored like that."