Bibek Acharya
“When we lost John, we agreed unanimously that that was that,” said Robert Plant, reflecting on when Led Zeppelin broke up following the tragic death of their drummer, John Bonham. The split came for a couple of reasons; first, it wouldn’t have felt right to play with anyone other than Bonham, given how much of a pivotal role he played in the band. However, it was also because Robert Plant had personal things he wanted to address.
“I had to go and find out if I really want to do it. Did I want to do it, or did I just want to sit back there like a croupier at a gambling thing, and just kind of rake [the money] in,” he said, “Or, did I want to actually continue this kind of gig of finding out where I’m going. I wanted to take all the trappings away, because I’d lost my best mate.”
Led Zeppelin would stay apart from a couple of reunions. One of them came at Live Aid. When they got back together and had Phil Collins play drums, this caused more harm than good. Jimmy Page was happy to have Phil Collins on drums if he had learnt the songs, but it quickly became apparent that that wasn’t the case, as the drummer was more or less just playing whatever he wanted on stage.
Fans weren’t happy with the reunion, which marked the last time that Led Zeppelin took to the stage together until 2007. The band got back together to play a show at the O2 Arena in tribute to Ahmet Ertegun. John Bonham’s son, Jason Bonham, played drums in place of his dad, and the show was seen as an incredibly positive reunion. Jimmy Page went as far as to suggest that it made up for their nightmare at Live Aid.
“Initially, there were going to be two nights, with us on one night, along with other Atlantic artists,” he said, “The idea was that we would do a half-hour set, but I said, ‘I’m not rehearsing to do a half-hour set! We’ve got Live Aid to correct.”
Despite the show’s positive reception, Robert Plant seemed unwilling to talk about the gig before or after it happened. When Page was asked why Plant was so standoffish, he said he wasn’t sure and figured it must have been because he was more focused on other work at the time.
“You’ll have to ask Robert. He doesn’t want to, I didn’t know about his autumn press schedule when we started working together on this,” he said, “I knew about the Alison Krauss album, but everybody was working on something else at the time. I was finishing remastering the DVD of [1976’s live film] The Song Remains The Same.”
Whenever Plant spoke about these Led Zeppelin reunions, while he likely enjoyed the nostalgia of meeting up with old bandmates, you could tell that his heart wasn’t as in it as the others. While other work might have gotten in the way of him talking about the reunion so much, when talking about Live Aid, it was clear that the main issue was the distance Plant felt from Zeppelin.
“Every time I play with Jimmy, it’s great. Jimmy and I, to be perfectly honest, we’ve played together for various reasons over the last two years, but we haven’t really gotten together,” said Plant, “We don’t go out together, we don’t sit around together. Our relationship deteriorated, but this is what we’ve got now. Live Aid was like having the umbilical cord there for me to see again.”
