Robert Plant has shared his memories of Led Zeppelin's 2007 reunion show in London for the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert.
Zeppelin's one-off reunion, with Jason Bonham taking the place of his late father John, holds the world record for the 'Highest Demand for Tickets for One Music Concert' with 20 million requests for requests for tickets for the 19,000 capacity South London venue. And in a new interview with MOJO magazine, Plant admits that the evening was "nerve-wracking".
"It was nerve-wracking, because we were already missing John Bonham," he says. "The responsibility the four of us had that night, the 10th of December in London, was a responsibility to ourselves, to get it right, with enough feeling, because we hadn’t visited it as a way of being for such a long, long time. It was 'Goodbye Ahmet [Ertegun]' and it was, 'Goodbye, everything, it’s been fantastic!' So it worked, and it was good, and that was it."
Zeppelin's reunion drew a star-studded guest list to the O2 Arena, with Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, Jeff Beck, Dave Grohl, Pink, Keith Emerson, Def Leppard's Joe Elliott, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Chad Smith, Paul Rodgers, Noel and Liam Gallagher, Queen's Roger Taylor, Snow Patrol, and supermodels Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss among those in attendance. The show was subsequently released on DVD, CD and vinyl with the title Celebration Day.
Speaking to MOJO five years after the concert, Jimmy Page admitted that another Led Zeppelin concert was highly unlikely.
"We were enjoying it for all the right reasons," he said of the 2007 gig. "But there hasn’t been a whisper since then about doing anything and so I can’t really see that anything will happen. If it was going to happen, it would have happened by now."
“The great thing for the three of us and Jason – and probably because of Jason – was that it really did work,” said Robert Plant. “We were able to creep up through the undergrowth of all the ensuing years and peek through and get back into it.”
