Jason Bonham Shares Real Reason Robert Plant Won’t Reunite as Led Zeppelin: ‘He’ll Probably Kill Me for Telling’

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Jason Bonham has gone in depth on the difficulty Robert Plant still has in moving forward without his dad, the late Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham – feelings that ultimately ended any hoped-for reunion of the band’s surviving members.

Plant, John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page last convened as Zeppelin, with Jason replacing John Bonham, in 2007 at London’s 02 Arena. The event was later commemorated with the release of Celebration Day, on CD, DVD, and Blu-ray. The album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard charts.



Still, Robert Plant has stood firm: There are no plans to continue on, despite the new-found excitement that surrounded this Led Zeppelin release.

“It wasn’t just him going ‘I don’t want to do it,’ there were other things going on,” Jason Bonham tells 98.7 The Gater. “He told me, ‘It doesn’t matter how great you are on the drums, Jason. I love you to bits, and you play absolutely amazing. But John was the drummer in Led Zeppelin, and John was part of me and Jimmy and John Paul. We shared something very, very special.'”

[WHEN LED ZEPPELIN, WELL, SUCKED: We’ve carefully sorted through all nine of their albums, looking for Led Zeppelin’s worst clunkers and most obvious missteps so you won’t have to.]

John Bonham died in his sleep at age 32 in 1980, and Led Zeppelin never returned to the studio again. Jason Bonham earlier appeared in a pair of other partial, one-off Zeppelin reunions, even while achieving his own musical success as a drummer with UFO, Foreigner and Black Country Communion.

In the end, Jason believes that the 2007 show will be Led Zeppelin’s last time together, despite his own feelings. Robert Plant simply misses Bonzo too much.

Jason Bonham says Plant confided: “‘I struggle sometimes just thinking about trying to create some magic again when he’s not there. He was a very, very dear friend of mine, that I miss every day.’ He’ll probably kill me for telling you that.”

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