The Surreal Time Robert Plant And Jimmy Page Covered The Cure

The Surreal Time Robert Plant And Jimmy Page Covered The Cure

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Robert Plant Jimmy Page
Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, Rock Over Germany, Schwalmstadt, June 1995. Photo by Uwe Zucchi/picture alliance via Getty Images.

It’s well known Led Zeppelin would routinely include reworked blues and folk standards on their albums, with impressive recordings of “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You”, “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” and “Gallows Pole” just a sample of their canny way of enhancing existing songs.

While these tracks are stone cold classics in the hard rock legends’ catalogue, even big Zep fans might be unaware of another amazing cover Robert Plant and Jimmy Page performed live in 1995. The Cure’s 1989 single “Lullaby”, a top five hit in the band's UK homeland, was written years after Led Zeppelin dissolved in the wake of drummer John Bonham’s death in 1980. So how on earth did Plant and Page come to celebrate this famous track by Robert Smith and his pallid mates some 25 years ago?

After more than a decade of rarely being seen in the same room, Led Zeppelin’s guitarist Jimmy Page and vocalist Robert Plant reunited in 1994 for an MTV special. Released as the Page and Plant live album No Quarter in November, the recording found the pair reworking both Led Zeppelin material as well as offering up new collaborations. The success of the album, which reached #2 in the Aussie charts and the top 10 in the UK, US, France and Canada, saw the pair subsequently book an international tour which kicked off in the US in February 1995.

Robert Plant Jimmy Page
Photo by SGranitz/WireImage.

Guitarist Porl Thompson, who had left The Cure in 1994, was tapped on the shoulder to take part in the tour after being involved in No Quarter’s August 1994 recording sessions in London. Thompson, who had planned on becoming a full-time painter at this point, instead found himself answering a call from Robert Plant asking about his availability: he was set to be drafted in as a second guitarist to none-other than ‘70s rock god Jimmy Page.

“Robert was really into The Cure, which I thought was interesting, and they invited me up to see if we all got along,” Thompson told hollywood.com in 2015. “It was an opportunity I couldn’t really turn down.”

For the tour’s first date in Florida in February 1995, fans were treated to more than a dozen revisions of Led Zeppelin standards, as well as the debut live airing of the Page and Plant cover of The Cure’s “Lullaby”. A track which Thompson had co-penned with his Cure colleagues for 1989’s revered Disintegration album, the No Quarter Tour version featured Thompson’s creeping guitar melody underpinning Plant’s reverb-drenched vocals.

Sadly, an official audio recording has never been made available of this cover, but you don't have to search far to hear a recording. With at least some US tour dates providing floor space for fans to record gigs, multiple bootlegs of the 1995 dates exist for those wishing to seek out this oddity. The 11 March performance at UNO Lakefront Arena, New Orleans, Louisiana has been pin-pointed as featuring a particularly impressive version of “Lullaby”. Bootleggers appear to have initially mistaken the song for a new Page/Plant composition, with the track labelled as “Spiderman” on some early tapes. While Plant injects plenty of personality into the performance, it retains an ominous, off-kilter Cure feel: imagine “No Quarter” produced by Martin Hannett and you might be close to the cultural collision.

Routinely clocking in at more than five minutes, “Lullaby” was aired close to 50 times by Page and Plant during their initial run of dates, with the final performance taking place at the 16,000-seater Rotterdam Ahoy in the Netherlands on 15 June. Thompson played his final show with the regrouped Led Zeppelin mainstays at Madison Square Garden in October 1995, with belly dancers arriving on stage to bid him farewell in the encore. Although Thompson re-appeared on Plant’s solo 2002 album Dreamland, he is now a full-time graphic artist and goes by the name Pearl Thompson.  

The final leg of Page and Plant’s No Quarter Tour were Australian dates in 1996. While “Lullaby” might not have been given an outing Down Under, a blistering take on The Doors’ "Break On Through (To The Other Side)" was instead aired - further proof Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were still capable of putting the Led Zep stamp on music more than 15 years after their infamous globe-straddling band split up.

Did you witness this tour? Got a favourite Led Zeppelin cover? Join the Facebook discussion on the I Like Your Old Stuff site.

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