Robert Plant recently explained to Rolling Stone why he turned down a late 2000 tour with Led Zeppelin. The band had just played a wildly successful reunion show in London’s 02 Arena in 2007 and could have made a cool couple of billion from a follow-up tour. But Plant had qualms, stating, 

“You’re going back to the same old shit. A tour would have been an absolute menagerie of vested interests and the very essence of everything that’s shitty about about big-time stadium rock. We were surrounded by a circus of people that would have had our souls on the fire. I’m not part of a jukebox!”

Jimmy Page, on the other hand, was all for the tour and attempted to find a lead singer so that John Paul Jones, Jason Bonham and himself could tour without Plant. Page’s view was,

“There’s bound to be fallout if you just do one show. At the time of the 02 show we were led to believe there were going to be more. You’ll have to ask Robert why he changed his mind. I don’t even know if he considered it. I don’t know what he thinks.” 

But in the end, Page and the others decided not to tour without Plant. Page said, 

“Singers were being thrown at us from here and there. The material we were coming up with was really, really good. Obviously, other people wanted to just get us out on the road quickly. I wasn’t feeling comfortable. Going out with the three members from the 02 show and another singer might have looked like trying to jam a square peg into a round hole. I wanted to see what we could come up with musically.”

Zeppelin fans, don’t give up hope, as Plant hasn’t entirely ruled out a future reunion, stating,

“I don’t think there’s any reason for me to do that, otherwise we’ve got nothing to be mystic about…Everything will develop as it develops. All doors are open. All phone lines are open. I don’t hear from anybody. Talk is cheap…But I just think everything has to be new. Then you can incorporate history.”

In the meantime, we live with history only, as Page has a photographic autobiography due out in October.

-Brittney Borruso www.facebook.com/rockstella

[via JamBase]