3 Times Robert Plant and Jimmy Page Clashed Over a Led Zeppelin Reunion
Led Zeppelin broke up in 1980, and while they have reunited for individual concerts, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page can’t seem to see eye to eye about a reunion tour. Both have spoken about it over the years, but the band hasn’t toured together. Here are three times Plant and Page proved this isn’t likely.
Robert Plant said it wasn’t his fault that the band wasn’t reuniting
Led Zeppelin reunited in 2007 to play a show in honor of Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun. They hadn’t performed together in years, so they knew it had to be good.
“[In 2007] we just wanted to play and see what it was like and be good once,” Plant said on Australia’s 60 Minutes, per The Guardian. “It was time to be good — and we were.”
The concert was a one-off, but it left many fans wanting more. In 2013, Plant said that while he is often seen as the main opposition to a reunion, it was actually Page and John Paul Jones.
“Well, then you need to speak to [Page and Jones] the Capricorns,” he said. “Cos I’ve got nothing to do in 2014.”
Jimmy Page said he was ‘fed up’ with Robert Plant
In 2014, Page contradicted Plant’s comments, saying he would love to play live.
“I definitely want to play live,” he told The New York Times. “Because, you know, I’ve still got a twinkle in my eye. I can still play. So, yeah, I’ll just get myself into musical shape, just concentrating on the guitar.”
He was frustrated that Plant had shifted the blame onto him, and said he was just playing games with the people who actually wanted a reunion.
“I was told last year that Robert Plant said he is doing nothing in 2014, and what do the other two guys think? Well, he knows what the other guys think,” he said. “Everyone would love to play more concerts for the band. He’s just playing games, and I’m fed up with it, to be honest with you. I don’t sing, so I can’t do much about it. It just looks so unlikely, doesn’t it?”
Plant fired back at Page for saying he was “fed up” with him.
“I think he needs to go to sleep and have a good rest, and think again,” he said, per The National. “We have a great history together and like all brothers, we have these moments where we don’t speak on the same page but that’s life.”
Jimmy Page was not happy with comments Robert Plant made about a potential reunion
In 2011, Plant said that a Led Zeppelin reunion “would have sent me tottering into the abyss. I mean, some people get into a groove and they stay with it indefinitely. And what starts off as a great moment of explosive passion can end up as cabaret 25, 30 years later.”
In an interview with Uncut, Page addressed these remarks with disbelief.
“A cabaret!” he said. “Twenty-five to 30 years afterwards? During the period between 1968 and 1980, it was obviously something else. It was not a cabaret. It was really, really hardcore music in which he was a major part — as a creative force and a master musician. I don’t know how you can look back and say that. The legacy is about the music. It’s not what he thinks. It’s not even what I think. I don’t know if is cabaret for Robert; it certainly isn’t for me.”
Still, he said that he had no intention of using an interview as an opportunity to get in touch with his former bandmate.
“The one thing I will not do is communicate with him through the pages of a magazine, because that is, if you will pardon the phrase, a sure way to communication breakdown.”
Several years later, the band doesn’t seem much closer to a reunion tour.
