33 Things You Should Know About… Led Zeppelin

23. There is such a thing as getting too big.
Before the ’77 tour was cut short by Plant’s tragedy, Zep headlined the world’s biggest indoor rock show, to 76,229 fans at Michigan’s Pontiac Silverdome. “The audience was 60 feet away behind a crash barrier,” Jones remembers with a grimace. “I was standing onstage thinking, This is bloody hard work.” Agrees Page: “It was surreal. It was like you weren’t actually there.”

24. Punks hated them …
With their flowery, mystical lyrics and epic drum solos, Led Zeppelin represented everything the new generation of British bands despised. Clash bassist Paul Simonon snapped, “I don’t have to hear Led Zeppelin. Just looking at their record covers makes me want to throw up.”

25. … or did they?
In 1977, Page and Plant hit up London punk hot spot the Roxy. “A member of the Damned came up and said, ‘Don’t worry what these other people are saying,’” Page says. “‘I often go home and play “Stairway” at night.’”

26. They invented heavy metal, but that doesn’t mean they like it.
Plant, in particular, has always shunned the devil-horn brigade. “If I’m responsible for this in any way, then I am really, really embarrassed,” he said in 1988. “It’s so orderly and preconceived and bleuurghh.”

27. When John Bonham died, so did Led Zeppelin.
After the hard-drinking drummer asphyxiated on his own vomit in 1980, his bandmates immediately decided to call it a day. “We couldn’t just bring in another drummer,” Page says. “It would have been an impossible role to fill. I absolutely believe that if we had lost any one of us it would have been the same conclusion.”

28. Their first reunion was a washout.
Bob Geldof persuaded Zeppelin’s surviving members to play three songs at Live Aid in 1985, but they were in such poor form that 20 years later they blocked the performance from appearing on DVD. “Live Aid was a fucking atrocity,” Plant later remarked. “It made us look like loonies.”

29. Page and Plant are the Odd Couple …
“We’re like Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon,” the singer once said. “Page is a clever, talented guy who has a particular slant on music, and I was his sidekick who had a different slant.”

30. … which makes Jones the odd man out.
When Page and Plant reunited for two albums in the ’90s, Jones didn’t get the call. “Nobody even talked to me,” he said at the time. “I read about it in the papers.”

31. They have an impressive fan club.
Dave Grohl and Jack White are just two of rock’s avowed Zeppephiles. “What current bands don’t you hear Led Zeppelin in?” Jones asks. “It’s really nice to hear something and think, Hmm, I wonder what they were listening to before.”

32. They’re back …
On December 10 in London, Led Zeppelin, with John Bonham’s son Jason on drums, are scheduled to play their first show in 12 years, to benefit a charity founded by late Atlantic Records boss Ahmet Ertegun. More than 25 million people applied for tickets.

33. … but not for long.
“There have been numerous offers over the years, as you can imagine,” Page says. “Forget that. It is what it is. Thank goodness it’s now and not in 10 years’ time, that’s all I’m going to say.”