Southern rock legends The Black Crowes appeared on the Howard Stern Show this week to promote their new album Happiness Bastards, and revealed that a box set version of their 2000 album Live at the Greek: Excess All Areas, recorded with Led Zeppelin legend Jimmy Page, will be released next year to celebrate its 25th anniversary. The album was originally recorded at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles over two nights in October 1999.
Most notably, the release will include material left off the original release, when contractual problems meant that the Black Crowes' own songs – versions of Remedy, Wiser Time and No Speak, No Slave and, as well as their cover of Otis Redding's Hard To Handle – were not considered for inclusion.
"Jimmy's always great," frontman Chris Robinson tells Stern. "I mean, he's Jimmy Page, you know? It was a real blessing and a real honour to get to play music with him, and our friendship has continued all these many years. That's almost 24 ago when we made that record."
Stern responds, "In fact, the Black Crowes are re-releasing it and adding the Black Crowes' songs that Jimmy Page played on with you guys."
"Yeah, we're going to do a box set next year," confirms Robinson. "It will be the 25th anniversary of that record, and that record's been released a couple of times but without any of The Black Crows' songs that we did with him."
The release will also presumably include versions of Led Zeppelin's In the Light and Misty Mountain Hop, recorded at the Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, NY in 2000, which originally appeared as bonus tracks on the Japanese version of the album, as well as Bring It On Home, recorded during the same show, which appeared with the other two on a Record Store Day 10" single in 2017.
Other songs from the Jones Beach setlist that haven't been officially released include versions of Muddy Waters' I Can’t Be Satisfied and Led Zeppelin's Hots On For Nowhere, plus The Black Crowes' own She Talks to Angels.
Elsewhere during their appearance on the show, guitarist Rich Robison detailed a night out with David Bowie, when they attended a surprise birthday party for U2 frontman Bono. The band also spoke of their breakthrough and subsequent breakup and their friendships with late comedians Richard Lewis and Don Rickles, and performed a cover of Led Zeppelin's Hey Hey, What Can I Do, plus their own 1992 hit Remedy and Happiness Bastards' single Wanting And Waiting.
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