Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant recalled his band’s one-off reunion performance. In 2007, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones teamed up with Jason Bonham, son of the late drummer John Bonham, to play a single concert 27 years after Led Zeppelin disbanded.
The “Ahmet Ertegün Tribute” concert took place in London in 2007 and broke records. To this day it is considered the concert with the highest ticket demand. London’s O2 Arena held 19,000 people and 20 million had requested tickets. The reunion show took place in honor of Ahmet Ertegün, founder of Atlantic Records and co-discoverer of the group, who died in 2006.
Plant tells MOJO: “It was nerve-wracking because we were already missing John Bonham. The responsibility the four of us had that evening, December 10th in London, was a responsibility to ourselves to do it right, with enough feeling, because we hadn’t shared that way of being for a long, long time “. The singer continued: “It was of course a ‘goodbye Ahmet’, but it was also a general ‘goodbye’. It was fantastic! So it worked, it was good, and that was it”.
The benefit concert not only attracted overjoyed fans, but also prominent guests didn’t want to miss the event. These included David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, Dave Grohl, P!nk, Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Paul Rodgers, Noel and Liam Gallagher, Roger Taylor of Queen, Snow Patrol, Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss.
About a possible further reunion on stage, Jimmy Page already said five years after the 2007 show “MOJO“: “We enjoyed it for all the right reasons. But since then there has been no sign that we want to do anything, and so I can’t imagine anything else happening. If it was going to happen, it would have happened a long time ago.”
Looking back, Robert Plant sums up the band’s last gig: “The great thing for the three of us and Jason was that it really worked. Probably because of Jason. We were able to sneak through the undergrowth of all these years, see through everything and get back in.”