Zeppelin nixes more tours
Jimmy Page has dashed the hopes of Led Zeppelin fans by saying it is “really unlikely” the band will get back together for a tour.
Page, 76, was on the Zoe Ball Breakfast Show on BBC2 ahead of the release of his long-lost Rolling Stones collaboration, Scarlet, which will feature on the Sept. 4 reissue of the 1973 album Goats Heads Soup.
“My recollection is we walked in at the end of a Zeppelin session,” Stones guitarist Keith Richards said in a statement. “They were just leaving, and we were booked in next and I believe that Jimmy decided to stay. We weren’t actually cutting it as a track, it was basically for a demo, a demonstration, you know, just to get the feel of it, but it came out well, with a line up like that, you know, we better use it.”
During his appearance on Ball’s show, Page was asked how he felt after hearing that Stones frontman Mick Jagger was “disappointed” that Zeppelin didn’t reunite for a world tour after a one-off show in 2007 at London’s O2.
“It would’ve been really good to have done that after The O2, because we’d put a lot of work into The O2 and we were really on it, you know? But it didn’t come off,” Page replied. “It seems really unlikely that there would be a tour in the future.”
Many fans had hoped that the 2007 show would lead to more shows featuring Page, vocalist Robert Plant, bassist John
Paul Jones and Jason Bonham on drums.
In a 2015 interview with The Sun, Page spoke about the early years of the band, which was formed in the summer of 1968, after the dissolution of the last incarnation of The Yardbirds.
“I can tell you right now,” Page said, “that even from that first rehearsal — we only had, like, half an hour to rehearse in this place — we just knew straight away that that was it … It was the opportunity for everybody to really flex their muscles, musically, in such a way that we could play in a band as well.”
Zeppelin released nine studio albums in its 12-year career, calling it quits after original drummer John Bonham died in 1980.
Looking back on the band’s untimely split at the height of its fame, Page said, “The most important thing to understand about Led Zeppelin is they were four musical equals.”
On the eve of the band’s 50th anniversary in 2018, Plant dashed hopes of a reunion telling The Sun, “You’ve got to stay in the groove of ceaseless creativity.”