Led Zeppelin in the 80s?

shudders at the thought

 

..Led Zeppelin in the 80's

 

What's to say Bonham would have remained as good a drummer? It takes a lot of stamina and this is a man who really didn't take care of himself.

 

I can see it being a lot like AC/DC in the 80's where they would have either embraced keyboards and the 80's or gone almost metal like AC/DC did (who also experimented with different 80’s production styles) and alienated blues-rock purists (as AC/DC did) and album sales/interest would wane a bit but they'd still remain a huge live attraction before having a huge comeback at some point, probably when grunge hit.

 

They already had embraced keyboards. Considering Robert Plant had nothing against them they would almost certainly have carried on using them.

 

The band literally said they could not continue without their drummer and then went in entirely different directions in their solo careers. Not a chance in hell they would have continued and swapped new members. They were done. They knew what they created.

 

Post Punk, pretty decent Post Punk.

 

Here's Page's response in an interview in The Guardian in 2015:

The Guardian: The great counterfactual of rock is what might have happened had Zeppelin continued into the 80s. What kind of direction do you think you would have taken had John Bonham not died?

Jimmy Page: John and I liked to discuss what we would like to do on the next album, and if you listen to Led Zeppelin all the way through you can hear all the things I like to do – riffs that would be quite tricky, interesting, provocative. And he loved playing this sort of stuff. So we definitely would have done some guitar-driven riff things because he loved all of that and because we’d just done a keyboard album.

 

If Page and Bonham had somehow cleaned up they would have surely remained a commercial force, given what Robert Plant was accomplishing all by himself. Even if they didn't, really, as long as they could function. Hell, Zep was one of the most popular bands in US high schools for most of not all of that decade even being gone. Like somebody said they would surely have had a terrible power ballad MONSTER HIT or two...and hard rockers for the boys.

 

…..would not have worked. 1977 onwards they were simply boring and had turned into that classic dinosaur rock band punk needed to wipe out. ITTOD is not a great album at all. The 1980 tour, playing smaller venues and dropping all the dull past their sell by date epics was a sensible idea. But I just don't think they would have handled the 80's well at all.

 

I think rock radio was getting burned out on them by the early 80s and needed a bit of a break (I recall a DJ making a comment to that effect on her radio show).

Plant did a great job of transitioning into the 80s with a more modern sound that still retained some of the old Led Zeppelin muscle.

 

His drumming on ITTOD is stellar and he wasn't the problem on the 1980 tour.
I know pub/alcohol culture in the UK runs deep, so maybe Bonham would of never changed. That said, he was a real family man with roots and had the things in place to change, if he wanted to.

Page was playing pretty good guitar on stage by the time of The Firm and he never lost his studio ability.... Some differ, but I really like all of his guitar solos on ITTOD...

 

Someone earlier made the observation that Peter Grant was also a complete mess at that time. Robert Plant was having issues with him, and let him go not too long after he started his solo career. Richard Cole was in jail. It seems like the entire organization was falling apart. Kind of like Elvis in '77 or the Dead in '95, it's almost impossible to imagine how they could have continued much longer. I think Bonham's death was just the particular manner in which the inevitable happened.

 

That is a horrible idea, just horrible ...

 

I'm glad they ended when they did. They have a mythology that hasn't been tarnished.
It is only recently that I started exploring their solo work (just Plant atm). I'm enjoying his work immensely, Pictures at Eleven, Now and Zen and Fate of Nations.
Plenty more to discover.
I think it likely that Plant would have provided the artistic guidance for any Zep in the 80's.

 

I agree with an earlier poster— if Bonham didn’t die , Page would have.

Same effect.

The rock gods decreed that Zeppelin would not endure the ‘80’s.

 

I think they would have done well, especially considering the quality of Plant's first two solo albums.

 

I don’t know about that. Bands like LZ were being pushed aside for Punk, New Wave in the latter 70’s. Massive effect? That’s a stretch. Even if Bonham didn’t die and the band continued, their relevance in the 80’s would have been diminished, IMO.