In 2007, Led Zeppelin reunited to do something that few ever expected the group’s surviving members to do — take to a stage. The event took place in London’s O2 Arena and was, as Rolling Stone‘s David Fricke pointed out, the band’s first live set in 27 years. (Though, to be fair, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page had reunited for an MTV special and album 13 years earlier.)
As a new article in Ultimate Classic Rock reveals, the O2 show wasn’t quite the end of the road for Led Zeppelin. While Robert Plant spoke of having no interest in touring, his bandmates considered staying together for a tour — and began a search for a vocalist who could fill Plant’s shoes.
The highest-profile vocalist the group spoke with was Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler — and the article cites a few conflicting accounts of how that process went. It’s also not clear, based on Tyler’s account of the process, whether the group would have been billed as “Led Zeppelin” or something entirely different.
Ultimate Classic Rock also cites the experience of vocalist Myles Kennedy of the band Alter Bridge. He told Classic Rock that Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones spoke to him about playing in a band that was “a new project, it wasn’t going to be Led Zeppelin.” That project never materialized, however.
Somewhere out there is a parallel universe where Steve Tyler is now the vocalist of Led Zeppelin. It’s not hard to imagine that, but the image it conjures up is still more than a little surreal.
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