Led Zeppelin exists as a brand but not a band

Want an officially licensed Led Zeppelin beach towel? How about a matching bag? Would you like to sit on an official Led Zeppelin barstool while you're wearing your Led Zeppelin hoodie and staring at your Led Zeppelin blacklight poster with the soundtrack to The Song Remains the Same blaring on 180-gram vinyl? These days, there sure are enough goodies available from Bravado, the sole officially licensed dealer of Led Zeppelin merchandise, for a hardcore fan to adorn a room in a way never before possible.

The amount of sanctioned merchandise available to the public keeps on increasing. Collect all the ringtones and 2007 reunion programs you want, but there is one thing Led Zeppelin has not been able to supply: new musical compositions. That's because Led Zeppelin, while successfully resurrected in a concert setting once last December, is not a functioning band.

Led Zeppelin was forming at this time exactly 40 years ago, and it spent the following 12 years offering up the music that made the band the best in the world. Excitement about the group has not lessened in the long period since the fourpiece existed. The band's original albums are among the biggest sellers of all time, and newer collections of archival material have been right behind, with barstools and beach bags being manufactured to satisfy fans clamoring for more memorabilia associated with the band.

This 40th anniversary gives pause for reflection and a measure of celebration. One can only assume that the group's three original surviving members are cognizant of the occasion and are marking it in their own ways, just as will the collectors and fans who will be taking part in the memorabilia exhibit held at the historic Knebworth Field House in England between Friday and Sept. 3.

Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Robert Plant must also harbor some desire to recreate some of their greatest collective moments from when they played alongside John Bonham, rock's greatest drummer. Recent packages like BBC Sessions in 1997 and DVD in 2003 have reminded fans about what Led Zeppelin was like in its '60s and '70s heyday. Because the group's fine form reappeared onstage for an isolated moment in this decade, with the powerful and deserving Jason Bonham behind the drum kit, it is more than a mere possibility that the group could do something else to add to its outstanding legacy. As such, it is simply up to the Led Zeppelin organization to decide whether or not the last Led Zeppelin song has been written, or the last Led Zeppelin tour has taken place.

We can make educated guesses on the mindsets of the would-be band members. Jimmy Page is looking back on the band he was in when he was at his best. Jason Bonham is hopeful for the band that will make him his best. John Paul Jones could be doing anything at this point, but he has a soft spot for playing with Jimmy Page. Robert Plant, turning 60 next month, is looking ahead to something he hasn't done yet.

If it is indeed Plant's decision to pursue other projects, it is unfortunate for him that he would inevitably be viewed, once again, as the lone holdout to a Led Zeppelin reunion. It would likewise be unfortunate for the others that he would not be joining them should they otherwise decide something like a world tour is in the cards.

It would be just as unfortunate if the history of Led Zeppelin, as the one legendary rock group that resisted all temptation to reunite and/or change its membership for the sake of a whopping payday, were so drastically rewritten that the new storyline involves a 2009 world tour with a new singer, such as a young Robert Plant imitator.

Still, Jason Bonham was Jimmy Page's drummer on tour in 1988, and they didn't call it Led Zeppelin. Robert Plant and Jimmy Page went on tour between 1994 and 1998, and they didn't call it Led Zeppelin. If a Led Zeppelin tour is discussed for next year and the willing parties don't include everybody it naturally could, and particularly if one or more surrogates is called to step in, then there's no sense in calling it Led Zeppelin. Call it the Vegetables, or the Mad Boys, or the Whoopie Cushions, or the Nobs. Just don't call it Led Zeppelin.

Then they can introduce a new brand with which to license merchandise, so they can pocket the profits and keep the proceeds from any unwilling participants.

Update: Well explained comments from Jeff Jampol, manager of the Doors, appeared in late October in a mailing list by Bob Lefsetz. Jampol, in a response to an earlier complaint about the rock band's perceived commercialism of late, defends the choices he made and explains why. Click here to read them.

Page, Jones and Foos to DVD; separate film with Page to get Canadian screening

The special guest appearance by Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones onstage at a Foo Fighters concert last month is to be included on a DVD now set for release this August in the United Kingdom. Footage culled from the American group's two-night stand at Wembley Stadium in London, including the double encore of "Ramble On" and "Rock and Roll," already hit U.K. movie theaters this month for a limited run. The Foo Fighters DVD may also be included as part of an updated greatest hits package listed for later release worldwide.

Meanwhile, a documentary described as containing Page's first time meeting fellow guitarists Edge and Jack White is set for its world premiere this September at the Toronto International Film Festival. All three guitarists are supposedly depicted creating new music separately and then jamming together in the film, titled "It Might Get Loud." This latest picture from acclaimed director Davis Guggenheim was previously mentioned as set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival but was not screened at that time.

Plant, Krauss make front-page news in Nashville

So glad to see Jae S. Lee's photo of Robert Plant smiling onstage at the Sommet Center on the front page of The Tennessean this morning.

Beverly Keel was the reporter who two years ago broke the news that Plant and Alison Krauss were in Nashville collaborating on an album produced by T Bone Burnett. She even predicted a Grammy award without hearing one note!

It's Keel who now brings them to the front page of this Sunday edition with a story reviewing the critical acclaim and Grammy award success these musicians have now earned together. The piece, available here, delves deep into Plant's background for a reading audience already quite familiar with Krauss from her years fronting Union Station.

That group isn't mentioned in the article, but Keel writes extensively about the current state of affairs with regard to a potential Led Zeppelin reunion, even posing the question to both singers as whether or not Krauss ought to be regarded as "the new Yoko Ono," as was suggested in print by The Guardian newspaper back in England.

Krauss was level-headed in her response: "Oh, whatever. I don't think about it. I didn't cause anybody to do anything." Plant also fielded the question: "What a cheap shot. These guys, they should dare to do better than that."

The story focuses almost entirely on Plant's personality, his attitude and his ever-changing musical influences. Both he and Krauss comment at length on these topics, and the article concludes with Plant quoting a song called "Rejoice for the Song Has No Ending." He says, "That is basically what it is: The song has no ending if you can turn the song and keep it real and beautiful."

Plant says he has several personas -- at least "six or seven" of them -- which resulted in the diversity of his singing styles and his lyrics even in the Led Zeppelin days. He cites the words in "The Rain Song" and then says, "There were so many different guys in that group singing and writing. That was why the group was so good. Everybody could go into different characters -- the raucous one, the sort of braggadocio, the kind of back-door man."

But reliving the Led Zeppelin days? He answers this a few different ways in the article.

First: "I appreciate what people feel, and in a way they might be justified ..."

With this comment, Plant acknowledges an argument often made that he wouldn't be as successful as he is today without having been in Led Zeppelin, whose other members seem ready to reunite. But is the argument really that because they can, they should? Does Plant owe it to the fans, or to Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham?

Plant continues: "... but how does one go about giving everybody everywhere what they want? Because everybody wants a different angle of it all. So I think what I'm doing now is the best way for people to know who I am. I think that the six or seven other Robert Plants are going to have to wait."

He is also quoted as saying: "But if you're thinking about whether there will be another Indiana Jones? Well, gee, there is. Could Led Zeppelin play together? Of course they could, but why? And for what? That is the question."

Wow. That's exactly the way John Paul Jones saw it when I interviewed him in December 2001. He sees it differently now.

Plant says, "So my ideal is that I go with my heart."

He is the feather in the wind, changing directions constantly.

Krauss likens him to a snake winding around on an unpredictable path: "He's going to go around this curve over here, and maybe he got a CD in Seattle and that made him turn this other way. Or maybe he shook somebody's hand in Istanbul and that's why he's turned to the right now."

Krauss then sums it up in one sentence: "He's constantly on the move to find inspiration."

So when I say to those hoping for a Led Zeppelin reunion, "Just wait and see," I guess I ought to clarify the position and add on, "Just hope Robert Plant can be inspired enough to participate."