Robert Plant has discussed longstanding claims that Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones wanted to carry on with Led Zeppelin without him, acknowledging his role in the band’s dissolution. This was during an interview with the Irish Examiner.
Regarding the band’s dissolution in 1980, the vocalist stated the following:
“You have to keep on developing. Probably for everybody and everything, it was the right thing; it was right for me. I think Jimmy and John Paul, for a while, wanted to keep it going but we all change.”
From ‘Bron-Yr-Aur’ To Mature Artistry
He went on, considering the change in his own songwriting and creative direction:
“You have to go from the writing of youth, you’re talking about ‘Bron-Yr-Aur’ and ‘Battle of Evermore,’ from writing in that fashion and those visions of a life and an eternal rub between people to the maturity you find along the way; I’m doing the right thing.”
Post-Breakup Paths And Reunion Hopes
Upon John Bonham’s passing and the band’s dissolution, each member pursued their individual interests. Although the band has only reunited on special occasions over the past 40 years, fans had hoped for a reunion. They reunited for the first time in 1985 at Live Aid. After that, they performed together three more times, the final one being an Ahmet Ertegun tribute show where Jason Bonham replaced his father on the drums.
While Plant was adamantly opposed to Led Zeppelin getting back together, Jason Bonham thought it would. At the 2007 Ahmet Ertegun memorial show, he praised Jason’s drumming but said that despite the passage of time and enormous offers—such as Richard Branson’s $800 million—he couldn’t go on without Bonham. In an interview with Billboard in 2018 Jason recalled:
“On the way back, I said to Plant, ‘I’ve got to ask you… are we gonna get the band back together?’ And he said, ‘I loved your dad way too much. It’s no disrespect to you; You know the stuff better than all of us, and no one else who is alive can play it like you. But it’s not the same. I can’t go out there and fake it. I can’t be a jukebox. I can’t go out there and try to do it that way.’ He told me, ‘When your father left us, left the world, that was it for Led Zeppelin. We couldn’t do what the Who did. It was too vital.'”
Debunking Alison Krauss Rumors
Plant later addressed the reports that he didn’t desire a full reunion following the 2007 event, citing Alison Krauss as the cause, in an interview with Rolling Stone in 2021. With the following statements, the leader clarified why he just wasn’t interested in the band getting back together:
“It was nothing like that. Basically, we were lined up to do what we were going to do, and that gig was a one-off gig for all the right reasons: to kickstart a charitable trust for students in the name of Ahmet Ertegun. Everybody’s around going, ‘Look, this could be great,’ and you knew what it took to get it to that point, and you knew what it might take. The conversation didn’t even involve three people.”
In 2022, the rock star again ruled out a Led Zeppelin reunion in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. He disclosed that he doesn’t get the creative stimulus he craves from playing in front of large crowds again.