FOR JIMMY PAGE the Eighties were all but a lost decade. Addicted to heroin and then to alcohol, he stumbled through a succession of unwise career choices, from Michael Winner’s deadening Death Wish II to the sub-Bad-Company stadium sludge of The Firm. Meanwhile John Paul Jones kept busy with arrangements and productions of no great distinction.
Plant, grieving both for his son and for his best friend, pulled himself together to commence a career whose initial mission was to distance himself as far as possible from Led Zeppelin. A series of interesting if over-produced albums, from 1982’s Pictures at Eleven to 1988’s Now and Zen, proved his willingness to experiment with both new influences (including those from the world music he loved) and new technologies. When the three Zeppelin survivors did reunite – at Live Aid in 1985 and at Atlantic’s 40th anniversary in 1988 – the results were shambolic and, for Plant, regrettable.
Revisiting Zeppelin’s legacy with Page in 1995–6 was a happier experience for all concerned. The “unledded” North African reworkings of some of the band’s best songs were in the main invigorating, however much ill-will it provoked from the unforgivably uninvited John Paul Jones. Zeppelin’s multi-instrumentalist linchpin, who had found a new lease of life in arranging for R.E.M. and performing with the terrifying Diamanda Galas, swallowed his bitterness for long enough to rejoin Page and Plant for 2007’s triumphant O2 tribute to Atlantic honcho Ahmet Ertegun.
As massively hyped and oversubscribed as the event was, Plant had by this point proved he needed a Zeppelin crutch less than ever. He scored six Grammies and three million sales with Raising Sand, a superb Americana collaboration with the divine Alison Krauss that remains by some distance the most successful solo work by a former member of Led Zeppelin.
The more time goes by, the less likely a fully-fledged Zeppelin reunion seems. Page and Plant’s love–hate relationship aside, the group’s former front man appears to feel ever less interest in resting on his laurels. But it would take a fool to bet against it happening.