Jimmy Page, cryptic? Nahhh! Not him. © Neal Preston/CORBIS
By all indications, Jimmy Page is launching a new website called Jimmy Page.com, appropriately enough. But in true Page-ian fashion, the name is about the only thing that is easy to understand.
At the moment, the site displays a front page featuring a daily-changing Roman numeral (see below, as of today, 6 July, it's VIII), and the adjacent hourglass video shows sand passing through it but never filling up. Or perhaps it will on 14 July, which is eight days from now.
If Page's intention was to have folks guessing at the significance of all of this, he's already succeeded. The Morton Report suggests that the launch date may have something to do with 14 July being nine days until a full moon in Capricorn, drawing the connection between Page's birth date (9 January) and the trousers the guitarist wore during Led Zeppelin's 1973 tour (they were emblazoned with his astrology symbols: Capricorn Sun, Cancer Moon, Scorpio Rising).
Another theory being floated around is that it was on 14 July (UK time) that the three surviving members of Led Zeppelin appeared together at the Live Aid show in Philadelphia, performing for the first time since John Bonham's death on 25 September 1980. OK, that one might be a stretch.
Page, of course, has confirmed little about the project, although at the Ivor Norvello Awards last May, he did say, "At the moment, I'm constructing a website because I've had the domain name but I've not had a website, so I'm constructing that. I think that will bring a few surprises to how things normally are. Once that's done, then I'm going to start working on some new music."
So far, nobody's picked up on MusicRadar's guess as to what the Roman numerals and the launch date signify: that the website simply isn't finished yet, but it will be... eight days from now.
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Joe is a freelance journalist who has, over the past few decades, interviewed hundreds of guitarists for Guitar World, Guitar Player, MusicRadar and Classic Rock. He is also a former editor of Guitar World, contributing writer for Guitar Aficionado and VP of A&R for Island Records. He’s an enthusiastic guitarist, but he’s nowhere near the likes of the people he interviews. Surprisingly, his skills are more suited to the drums. If you need a drummer for your Beatles tribute band, look him up.