The performance Jimmy Page believed saved Led Zeppelin’s Live Aid fiasco: “I don’t practice.”
Led Zeppelin are a band whose career is still one draped in mystery. When the band went on tour, there were a lot of rumours about how they acted with their crew and fans. There were stories surrounding the usual drink and drugs, but they also took more sinister turns, as rumours of them drinking blood, dining with the devil, and selling their souls to Satan circulated.
Why were people so keen on spreading such rumours about Led Zeppelin? Simply put, they were too good. When Led Zeppelin got together for their first-ever jam session, Jimmy Page told them that the intention was to merge multiple genres of music in a way that was cohesive, accessible, and could be commercially successful. Most musicians would have laughed at the notion, but not Zeppelin.
Page, Robert Plant, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones are some of the finest musicians to ever walk the Earth. They were up to the task of merging different genres and could easily pull it off because they were all good at their chosen instruments.
Although the band will have had their fair share of arguments when on the road and some albums divided them, the only thing that could ever stop such an unstoppable force as Led Zeppelin was one of the members passing away. There was no way the band could continue to function without this range of excellent musicians to hand to make such impossible-sounding music.
Subsequently, when drummer John Bonham passed away, Led Zeppelin decided to call it a day. “When we lost John, we agreed unanimously that that was that,” said Robert Plant. “I had to go and find out if I really wanted 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… I wanted to take all the trappings away, because I’d lost my best mate?”
Led Zeppelin has remained separated, however. They have reunited on several occasions, some of which proved more successful than others. The first reunion occurred in 1985 when they agreed to reunite for Live Aid. To help out with drumming duties, Phil Collins and Tony Thompson stepped in, but the gig was a disaster that sparked a feud between Collins and Page.
“Robert told me Phil Collins wanted to play with us. I told him that was all right if he knows the numbers,” said Page, recounting the disastrous gig. “But at the end of the day, he didn’t know anything. We played ‘Whole Lotta Love,’ and he was just there bashing away cluelessly and grinning. I thought that was really a joke.”
Collins was equally unhappy with the show. “If I could have walked off, I would have done,” he said. “It was a disaster, really. Robert wasn’t match-fit with his voice, and Jimmy was out of it dribbling. It wasn’t my fault; it was crap.”
The band didn’t reunite again until 2007, when they got back together in order to perform for the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute at the O2. This time, it was John Bonham’s son, Jason Bonham, who handled drumming duties, and the gig went much better, so much so that Page thought it made up for their disastrous reunion at Live Aid. He even says he would have liked to have performed that reunion more.
“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.”
