Wither Jimmy Page?

the pact with the devil ran out in 1976 ;-)

seriously, page used to have three or four classic riffs in every zep song

by the firm, cloverdale, etc - there wasn't any magic
believe me, he was trying

his live playing with P/P was inspired
he really needs a good muse

he has faded when others kept on producing

Who is still doing inspired work after their former brilliant work while using. This isn't to say you don't see flashes of the old brilliance but by and large, there's a period and after everything's cleaned up... ther goes the music.
Who is not?
Paul Westerburg
Paul McCartney
Eric Clapton
Jimmy Page
David Gilmour
et. al.

Lou Reed

I'm not at all sure I'd put Paul Westerberg on that list.

Marty

I know this will piss off plenty of aging boomers, but here goes: I heard Led Zeppelin live three times back in the 70's. I went through my youthful guitar god worship phase as did many other baby boomers who got hooked for awhile on white redo's of black blues. IMO the original Blues Breakers LP got about as close to black blues by melanin-challenged Caucasians as I can remember. If I wanted to listen to blues since the mid-eighties on, I just spun Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters, T-Bone Walker, etc. etc. The heavily doctored studio "magic" that Peter Grant poured into Led Zeppelin's LP's was more than apparent to me when I saw them live. They couldn't replicate the "magic" live, for what I heard (even zonked) was a pale imitation of their records. I have seen several aging black blues "legends" in my life, and they all did a much better job of replicating the "magic" that was on their studio recordings. Don't get me wrong, on there own terms I still listen to Led Zeppelin's "Black Mountain Side" & "Bron-Ar-Aur." - and those are instrumentals.