In 1993, the beginnings of a reunion of the musical partnership of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant began. Following casual meetings, while Page was finishing his collaborations with David Coverdale he stopped on the way to rehearsals in L.A., in Boston where Plant was scheduled to play to further discuss the possibility of playing together again. Robert had offered some rudimentary drones he had recorded for Page to add to and the songwriting partnership began again. The reunion was brought about by producer Bill Curbishley, who had managed Plant in his solo career since the eighties and had assumed management of Page in 1994 and persuaded the two to discuss the matter after Plant had been offered to do an Unplugged segment for MTV.
Their first public appearance reunited was at the Alexis Korner Memorial Concert in Buxton, England and in August taped performances in London, Wales and Morocco with Egyptian and Moroccan musicians playing reworked and stripped-down arrangements of several Led-Zeppelin songs plus four original songs debuted. The performances aired on MTV, without the Unplugged moniker, on October 12th, 1994 and was so successful that a full scaled world tour was taken underway. With Page and Plant’s band featuring Charlie Jones on bass, Michael Lee on drums of Plant’s solo band, and Porl Thompson of The Cure playing guitar and banjo, as well as including several other expanded instrumentalists as well as a traditional Egyptian and Classical orchestra. The performance was released on home media in November of 1994 as No Quarter: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Unledded.
Following the success of the MTV performance and the tour that followed, Page and Plant entered the studio and recorded the album Walking into Clarksdale, released April 21, 1998, in 35 days. An album comprised of entirely original material from Page and Plant together, the album also marked a return to a traditional rock/folk/blues sound and the tour that followed saw the omission of the orchestras and extra musicians and featured just Page, Plant, Charlie Jones and Michael Lee. The song Most High from the record received a Grammy in 1999 for best Hard Rock Performance. Another world tour followed the release of the album.
Walking into Clarksdale did not fare as well as the Unplugged special on the charts despite the enormous response of the tours that followed, and the partnership dissolved again though the two did reunite once more for the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2001.