Jimmy Page to tour for the first time in almost 20 years with new album

Page has been largely absent from the touring game for a long time, spending most of his days working on reissuing the Led Zeppelin catalog, and managing various other aspects of his former band’s brand.

Considered by many to be one of the greatest rock and roll guitarists of all time, Page started his career as a session musician in the UK, before joining famed pre-Zeppelin group The Yardbirds in the mid-1960s. He then went on to co-found Zeppelin in 1968. For his efforts in both groups, Page has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice — once for each group.

Page’s last major tour was with Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant in 1998, and he hasn’t released an album since 1988’s Outrider. All that will change next year, when the singer says he will release another solo album to coincide with the tour.

“It was a question of having time,” he said when asked about why he had been absent from the road and studio for so long. “The only way to have time is to shut down and then do what you want to do. I’ve been doing so much Led Zeppelin stuff over quite a number of years now; so it’s not been so easy to think about anything else in the tail end of this year. But OK, next year, bang!”

Though no members of his new band have been announced, the guitarist says that the group will play a mixture of old and new material on the tour, with no word on what the new material will sound like, other than stating, “It won’t be entirely what people might be expecting.”

An aging musician, Page wants to play for as many fans as possible before he doesn’t have the ability to anymore, saying in an interview with Billboard in late 2014, “I haven’t got another 20-30 years left in me, so I really need to get out there and present myself the way that I like to present myself, and to be seen and be heard.”