Jimmy Page has called playing with the Black Crowes an “infectious” experience as the blues-rock stalwart and the Atlanta, Georgia band look back on their iconic Greek Theatre show 25 years later in a newly released short film.
The milestone anniversary was celebrated with a well-warranted 36-track anniversary reissue in March. This new film looks into the genesis of their unlikely union.
The reissue has been produced, mixed and remastered by Kevin Shirley and includes 16 previously unreleased tracks, mainly Black Crowes songs which were omitted from previous versions. For Page, it represents some of the best examples of his Led Zeppelin “guitar orchestrations” live, having been sonically limited in his band’s heydays.
During a decade when grunge hit fever pitch, kicking traditional blues rock out of the limelight, the Black Crowes — spearheaded by singer Chris and guitarist Rich Robinson — were a trend-bucking success. They were five albums deep into their career when they joined forces with Jimmy Page for the historic shows in New York and Los Angeles in what felt like a passing of the blues rock torch.
In the film, Page is full of kind words for a band he watched grow first-hand. They’d supported him on one of their first-ever tours, Chris Robinson says, and Page instantly knew the band was a shining light for the future of the genre.
“I really admired them,” he says. “They definitely came from the same school that I’d come from. They’re a band that clearly understood its roots and knew its roots. So there was already bond as far as I was concerned”
Fast forward the best part of a decade and the band, having superlatively put themselves on the rock scene’s radar with their 1990 debut album, Shake Your Money Makerwere getting ready to play London’s historic Royal Albert Hall — where standout shows from Cream and Joe Bonamassa have taken place, to name but two. That afforded them the chance to rub shoulders with the Led Zeppelin guitar hero once more, and a few days later he was on stage with the band in Paris “to play some blues.”
“The place went absolutely mental,” Rich Robinson says, beaming.
The show was so successful that Page couldn’t turn down an offer to do it again on the other side of the Atlantic and commit it all to tape. The result was Jimmy Page & The Black Crowes: Live at the Greek, recorded over two nights at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, in October 1999. Twenty-six years on, it stands as one of the finest blues-rock live albums.
However, contractual restrictions saw all Black Crowes tracks removed from the original two versions of the record, meaning the 2025 reissue is the first time their performances have been heard in their unfiltered glory.
The plan for the shows went far beyond just playing the blues as they had done in the French capital. As Page says, their ambitions were far more “panoramic” than that, with blues jams interlacing with Led Zeppelin covers and Page adding his flair to Black Crowes originals.
For Page, it was an exciting opportunity to perform Zeppelin songs in a way Led Zeppelin never could.
“‘Ten Years Gone’ was something I’d worked on at home. It had all this sort of guitar orchestration on it, but I’d never heard it like that apart from on record,” Page explains. “Because in the days of Zeppelin, I’d try and do as much as I could just with the one guitar. Suddenly I heard all these harmonies going on. It was like I had died and gone to heaven. It was a really emotional moment.”
The 2025 reissue of Live at the Greek was released in March 2025 with Kevin Shirley’s sonic touches giving it a crystal-clear production that shows the magic of those special shows in 4K.
“From my point of view, it was absolutely incredible,” Page says, smiling. “I mean, there was not going to be Led Zeppelin, but this was absolutely parallel because it had all the augmentation of all the guitar parts and more.”
The accompanying short film also reveals behind-the-scenes rehearsal footage alongside plenty of visuals from those electric shows.
When it’s revealed that the first song they practiced for the shows, Page quips: “That was brave, wasn’t it?”
But fortune, of course, favors the brave, and their union went down in the history books.
