Led Zeppelin Were Asked to Do Hologram-Style Show That Is Now a Huge Success With ABBA
Led Zeppelin were asked to put on a hologram-style concert featuring digital avatars of the English rock band, much like the hugely successful "ABBA Voyage" virtual concert residency launched last week by the Swedish pop group ABBA, Led Zeppelin icon Jimmy Page has revealed.
Holographic performances from major artists, publicly epitomized at Coachella 2012 in a hologram set from the deceased hip-hop artist Tupac, have already made their way into classic rock. A Ronnie James Dio hologram tour played dates across the world from 2016.
At the Welsh literature event Hay Festival this week, per The Guardian, Page told an audience that Zeppelin were approached a while ago with the idea to do "that sort of thing."
However, it "didn't really get moving," he added, because he and fellow surviving Zeppelin bandmates Robert Plant and John Paul Jones couldn't agree.
ABBA's virtual show is based on their recent comeback album, Voyage. It opened last Friday (May 27), the group appearing onstage not as their flesh-and-blood selves, but as digital representations in the purpose-built ABBA Arena at London's Queen Elizabeth Park.
The characters, dubbed "ABBAtars," were created by Industrial Light & Magic, the firm known for its success in Hollywood visual effects. They took over a billion hours of processing time to complete, according to UCR, and the members of ABBA — Agnetha Faltskog, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad — spent five hours a day in front of 160 motion-capture units over the course of a month.
Page was on hand at the Hay Festival of Literature & Arts in Powys, Wales, on Thursday (June 2) to talk with Dylan Jones, an English journalist, as part of an interview about his music career.
See a preview video for "ABBA Voyage" below.