Well, there seems to indeed be a silver lining to every cloud: If guitarist Pete Townshend’s tinnitus forces him to an unfortunate, early retirement (this is the cloud part), at least part of the Who will go on—and perhaps with a member of Led Zeppelin (this is the silver bit). The Who’s Roger Daltrey told BBC 6Music that if the two surving Who members must part, he’d dig working with a new axeman, specifically, Jimmy Page:

I’d love to do something, I’d love to do an album with Jimmy Page. He needs a singer to drive him. I’m a great blues singer. I don’t sing the blues with The Who, but that’s what I used to be before Townshend started writing. I used to be a great blues singer.

There’s no word yet on whether Page is up for some jamming with a fellow classic rock icon, but the odds are that he isn’t sitting around waiting for Robert Plant to call.

As for Townshend, “If my hearing is going to be a problem, we’re not delaying shows – we’re finished,” he said. “I can’t really see any way around the issue.”

After a quick retro read of Lester Bangs’ Led Zeppelin III review (dated 1970), two thoughts sprang to mind: A) if Bangs lived, he’d be a blogger and B) the Zep’s place in rock’s canon is much more debatable than commonly thought. We could riff on  those thoughts night and day, but, frankly, there is no Led Zeppelin without John Bonham, IMO, and Jimmy Page disagrees… I guess.

“You’d better ask Robert Plant what the future of Led Zeppelin is,” said the legendary guitarist (via Starpulse). “Musicians can always play together but I don’t think you can go out with a band called Led Zeppelin if you haven’t got the original vocalist.”

To read between the lines, Plant and his armful of Grammys just aren’t down with Page and his Oscar-snubbed documentaries. No, it’s more complicated than that, of course, but this quote only provides more fodder for Bangs and my “nursing [of] this love-hate attitude toward Led Zeppelin.”

Don’t get me wrong: I love Led Zeppelin (I think). These guys have cast some of the biggest hooks to date, but sometimes we all get tired of feeling like bait.

Reports have been filing in about a press conference held by Jack White and Jimmy Page in promotion of the documentary It Might Get Loud (watch trailer) at the LA Film Festival last weekend and I’m wishing I had made the jaunt. The pair dissed Guitar Hero, bromanced a bit, and made some strange comparisons between their guitars and women.

The Guitar Hero bit was probably the best. Jack White said it’s “sad” and “depressing” that kids require a video game to get interested in music. Page, however, completely dismissed the game as a training tool, NME reports, citing John Bonham’s drum parts in “Good Times Bad Times” and adding, “How many drummers in the world can play that part, let alone on Christmas morning?”

In one exchange transcribed by LA Weekly, Page and White compare their guitars to women: “I’ve said that it’s shaped like a woman, you know,” Page said. “You can touch it and caress it. The thing I haven’t said, that I’ll tell you now is: it doesn’t ask you for alimony!”

Jack’s response is pretty funny because it kind of gives you a window into how his intense energy plays out in his personal life: “I think if you picked up a girl as much as you picked up a guitar every day, they might get annoyed. The guitar doesn’t say, hey, get off of me, ya know?”

Jimmy Page’s manager, Peter Mensch, has spoken out to BBC 6 Music about a likely Led Zeppelin reunion and the band’s issues with Robert Plant. He said:

“People don’t really understand it, Jimmy Page has been playing guitar professionally since he was 16 years old. Jimmy Page likes being a musician. He doesn’t want to be a race car driver or a solicitor. So they [Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, Jason Bonham] did the show with Robert Plant; they had a really good time rehearsing, the three of them, before Robert showed up.” (Emphasis mine).

Ouch. Mensch also denied rumors Chris Cornell or Myles Kennedy have been tapped for Plant’s role, but he did confirm the search for a singer is on, saying the band “decided that if they could find a singer that they thought would fit their bill, whatever their bill was at this stage in their career, that they’d make a record and go on tour.”

U2 gave Rolling Stone an advanced listen to their upcoming album No Line on the Horizon at their London studio. The Edge describes how meeting Jack White and Jimmy Page while filming the upcoming documentary It Might Get Loud inspired the bluesy riffs on their new song “Stand Up Comedy.” He told RS, “I was just fascinated with seeing how Jimmy played those riffs so simply, and with Jack as well.”

Descriptions of all the new songs are here.