Zeppelin Members Seek New Singer

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Last year’s Led Zeppelin reunion concert wasn’t the end for Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham ”“ but it looks like it was for Robert Plant. The there musicians have been holding rehearsals with singers including Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler (it didn’t go well, one source has heard) and possibly Myles Kennedy, lead singer of Alter Bridge (who has covered Zep songs onstage and has a formidable vocal range). But Page wants to make one thing clear about the new project. “Whatever this is, it is not Led Zeppelin,” says a rep for Page’s management company, QPrime. “Not without the involvement of Robert Plant.”

Plant, who just finished a tour with Alison Krauss, has insisted that he has little interest in an extended Zep reunion: “The whole idea of being on a cavalcade of merciless repetition is not what it’s all about,” he said just before last year’s reunion show. Added Jones last month, “We really want to do something, and Robert doesn’t want to do this, at least for the moment. He really doesn’t want to make loud music anymore. We do.”

Page’s rep emphasised that no decisions have been made on a singer, and Kennedy’s manager, Paul Geary, declined to comment on a report that he is the front-runner. “Nothing is set,” Geary’s assistant said. The trio have suggested that the new project ”“ whatever it’s called ”“ would both tour and record new music. “It’s got to be right,” Jones said. “There’s no point in just finding another Robert. You could get that out of a tribute band, but we don’t want to be our own tribute band. There would be a record and a tour, but we’ve got to have everybody on board”¦ What we’ve done so far sounds absolutely fantastic.”

Without Plant or the Led Zeppelin name, the commercial prospects for the project are unclear. One concert-industry source said the tour would do “surprisingly well. I mean, Journey came back bigger than life with a no-name.” But Seth Hurwitz, co-owner of Washington DC concert-promotion firm IMP, says, “With Robert Plant, it would be as huge as people think, as huge as huge could be. Without him, I don’t know.”