Worthy causes can often bring out the best in artists trying to advocate for change. It can also inspire them to do things they wouldn’t normally do—like getting the old gang back together. That can be both exciting and unnerving, as was the case with the Led Zeppelin reunion at Live Aid in 1985. But a combination of nerves, miscommunication, and technical issues made the situation quite challenging for them.
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The Backstory
Sir Bob Geldof and Midge Ure organized the Live Aid festival to benefit Ethiopian famine relief. On July 13 1985, they assembled concerts in at JFK Staidum in Philadelphia and Wembley Stadium in London with an incredible lineup of stars of the day, everyone from Duran Duran and U2 to Queen and Mick Jagger, some of them performing together in different configurations. Other concerts inspired by Live Aid were held in Canada, Australia, Japan, Yugoslavia, Austria, West Germany, and the Soviet Union. The event was broadcast to a global audience of nearly 2 billion people.
The Transatlantic festival also allowed an opportunity for famous rock acts to reunite on that day—The Who, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin. While none of these appearances sparked immediate reunions at the time, they still generated fervor among many in the assembled throngs in Philadelphia and London. Of the three, only Sabbath put on a truly rock-steady performance. To be fair, technical issues plagued many groups playing that day.
A Complicated Reunion
The most anticipated set of the entire Live Aid event was Led Zeppelin who had broken up four and a half years earlier following the alcohol-related death of drummer John Bonham. Singer Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, and bassist John Paul Jones were ultimately game to get back together. However, the reunion sounds like it was hastily assembled and not well-planned, even if their hearts were in the right place.
Initially, former Genesis drummer and now-solo Phil Collins heard Plant and Page were going to appear and asked to join them, so they agreed. Here’s where things get complicated. Collins flew over on a Concorde from London to Philadelphia after performing with Sting and Branford Marsalis at London’s Wembley Stadium earlier that day. (For those too young enough to know, the Concorde was a hyperspeed jet that could cross the Atlantic Ocean in an hour.)
What Collins didn’t know is that the three surviving members of Zeppelin ultimately had decided to reunite and invited drummer Tony Thompson—an original member of the pioneering funk band Chic and then a member of Power Station, who also played that day—to join them on stage as well. Originally Collins thought the set was going to be with him, Plant, and Page, but then he found out it had ballooned into a full-blown Led Zeppelin reunion.
In 2005, Thompson recollected to Modern Drummer: “So the day of Live Aid, I got to Philadelphia and Jimmy, Robert, and Jonsey rented out a rehearsal room and we rehearsed. I was glad we had that rehearsal. I grew up listening to Zeppelin. They were my bible when I was a kid. Now, I assumed a song like ‘Rock and Roll’ was played a certain way. But when we started the song, Plant said, ‘No, that’s not it’ and Jonesy said, ‘It doesn’t go like that.’ [laughs] Bonham had a way of playing that everyone thought was straight. You’d think ‘Rock and Roll’ is just a big 2 and 4, but it’s not like that. It’s more like a Texas shuffle. I got the chance to actually play with the guys who wrote the song, who were there. Bonham was just so good. You can’t copy him.” (Page told Rolling Stone in 1988 that Jones arrived that day and they got in about an hour of rehearsal. Interestingly enough, bassist Paul Martinez was also a part of the band that day.)
Zeppelin played a three-song, 20-minute set: “Rock and Roll,” “Whole Lotta Love,” and the epic ballad “Stairway to Heaven.” When Collins announced Led Zeppelin and brought them out, the audience of 89,000 people in Philadelphia went crazy. There was a little bit of struggling at the beginning—the monitors weren’t quite working, and Page was reportedly handed an out-of-tune guitar which made the first song come off in discombobulated fashion.
Further Troubles
In a 2017 interview with Classic Rock magazine, Collins confessed, “I didn’t rehearse when I got there, but I listened to ‘Stairway To Heaven’ on Concorde. I arrived and went to the caravans, and Robert said: ‘Jimmy Page is belligerent.’ Page says: ‘We’ve been rehearsing!’ And I said: ‘I saw your first gig in London, I know the stuff!’ He says: ‘Alright, how does it go, then?’ So I sort of … [mimes the Stairway To Heaven drum part], and Page says: ‘No, it doesn’t! It doesn’t go like that!’ So I had a word with [co-drummer] Tony Thompson—[because] I’ve played as two drummers a lot and it can be a train wreck.” He advised his fellow skinsman that they play simply so as to play over each other. “Thompson, rest his soul, had rehearsed for a week, and I’m about to steal his thunder—the famous drummer’s arrived! – and he kind of did what he wanted to do. Robert wasn’t match-fit. And if I could have walked off, I would have done, [because] I wasn’t needed and I felt like a spare part.”
People have insinuated that Page was not sober during the performance, and the MTV interview afterwards seems to confirm that. He has a big grin on his face, but he seems spacey and barely says anything.
On the Zeppelin side, Page has blamed Collins then and now for why the gig did not turn out well. He thought it was “not very clever” of the band to reunite at Live Aid—certainly not the way that they did it. It was clear that Collins—who Page said flubbed the opening to “Rock and Roll”—had to follow Thompson’s lead to keep up with what was happening. Collins said during the MTV interview he did not play half the time and just watched. (Despite his frustration with how things went down, he wisely chose not to walk off stage because that would have drawn more attention to him than it was worth.)
During a 1988 interview with Rolling Stone, Plant admitted that things did not go well. “It was horrendous,” the singer said. “Emotionally, I was eating every word that I had uttered. And I was hoarse. I’d done three [solo] gigs on the trot before I got to Live Aid. We rehearsed in the afternoon, and by the time I got onstage, my voice was long gone.”
While Zeppelin’s set had a rough start, things got better with “Whole Lotta Love” and were much more in sync on “Stairway to Heaven.” The audience still loved seeing them, but the group rarely reunited again after that. They played some songs at Madison Square Garden in 1988 for the Atlantic Records 40th anniversary event with Jason Bonham, son of their late drummer. Reportedly, that was a rough show too. They also performed at the younger Bonham’s wedding in 1990.
A Better Turn
Fortunes took a better turn for Page and Plant when they reunited in 1994, first for the Platinum-selling No Quarter live release featuring Zeppelin songs and four new tracks in acoustic and orchestral formats. Then they embarked on a successful world tour in an orchestral rock format. After that, the duo released the original Walking into Clarksdale album in 1998, a Gold-selling release that was followed by another well-received world tour. The partnership dissipated by 2001, although Page had written another album’s worth of material. Bassist Jones was never asked to be a part of the project.
The legacy of Led Zeppelin received a more positive end note when Plant, Page, Jones, and Jason Bonham united at London’s O2 Arena on December 10, 2007 for one final show. This was to honor the life of the late Ahmet Ertegun, who had signed them to Atlantic Records back in the ’60s. The show was more polished, well-rehearsed, and well-received, and the event was captured on the Celebration Day CD and DVD release that came out nearly five years later.
Zeppelin’s Live Aid appearance, on the other hand, has never officially seen the light of day. However, fans can find video recorded from MTV posted up on YouTube. It seems unlikely that the iconic group will reunite ever again.
Looking back on their Live Aid reunion, it’s clear that Led Zeppelin was not as prepared as they could have been, but the set is not the unmitigated disaster it was made it out to be. It’s rough, for sure, but it improves as it goes along. That’s part of the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll—living on the spur of the moment, unfettered, and seeing what happens. However, in 2007, they wisely chose not to throw caution to the wind. They really rehearsed and put on a show that made the fans—and themselves—very happy.
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Photo by Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images
