Led Zeppelin legend Robert Plant is featured in a new interview with The Independent's James McNair discussing his new solo album, Lullaby and... the Ceaseless Roar, and his former band. An excerpt is available below:

October sees Led Zeppelin's deluxe reissue program continue with expanded versions of Led Zeppelin IV and Houses of the Holy. With them comes inevitable speculation about a reunion. Back in May, Jimmy Page told The New York Times that Plant was "just playing games" with him, but the singer's quip about his supposed availability in 2014 was likely just a flip attempt to de-fang an excruciatingly tiresome question. I have no intention of asking it, but Plant pre-empts it anyway: "It's not going to happen ' you'd have to exhume."

But if Zeppelin is a definite no-no, less clear-cut, it seems, is the question of whether Plant will work with Page again. In a piece published in Uncut the day after our interview, Plant revealed that, about two years ago, he made a "hands across the water" gesture that the guitarist "walked away" from: "I said, 'If you got anything acoustic, I'll give it a whirl.'"

Page and Plant's complex relationship seems coloured by their very different attitudes towards Zeppelin. "Jimmy's the fulcrum and the curator," says Plant, but the singer himself, you sense, is subject to a more complex meld of emotions when he considers his time in the band, proud of its legacy though he clearly is. The nature of the ambivalence he seems to feel becomes clearer when we talk about "Somebody There", another song from Lullaby and... the Ceaseless Roar.

"It's about removing that tough exterior we all developed when we got into the game," says Plant. "As adults we have to put our shoulders back, but when I was a kid I saw everything as being absolutely beautiful ' there was nothing but wonderment. In the early part of my time in Zeppelin I wrote naively, but I loved all that mystery of the dark past and the Queen of Light. Unfortunately, I had it taken away from me bit by bit."

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Plant has uploaded a second short film detailing his forthcoming album lullaby and!The Ceaseless Roar.

Robert Plant And The Sensational Space Shifters will tour the US and Canada this fall with music from the new album, lullaby and... The Ceaseless Roar. All tickets will include a copy of the new album when it's released on September 9th, except the September shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which are already on sale. General on-sales started on Friday, August 15th.

Dates:

September
25 - The Capitol Theatre - Port Chester, NY
27 - Brooklyn Academy Of Music - Brooklyn, NY
28 - Brooklyn Academy Of Music - Brooklyn, NY
30 - Massey Hall - Toronto, ON

October
2 - Rivera Theatre - Chicago, IL
4 - Fillmore Auditorium - Denver, CO
7 - Hollywood Palladium - Los Angeles, CA

To celebrate the release of the new album, Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters will be appearing for the first time at the iTunes Festival at London's Roundhouse on September 8th. The performance will feature new tracks from the album including "Rainbow," "Little Maggie" and more.

First short film:

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