Jimmy Page Talked About Their Plans About Led Zeppelin’s 9th Album

They Wanted Something “Harder and Trickier”

In a new interview on Rolling Stone, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page talks about his new “Jimmy Page: The Anthology” book and he also reveals their plans on the band’s supposed ninth album that didn’t come to fruition because of drummer John Bonham’s untimely death.

The legendary guitar player recalls, “I thought I knew how this album [In Through the Out Door] is shaping up, but the next album is going to be a departure from the keyboard album. After the sessions for In Through the Out Door, John Bonham and I were discussing how we wanted to do a sort of more riff-based entity, and harder and trickier. And then, of course, I know what sort of drums he liked to play. He liked to play, like, really hard; he liked to play stuff that people heard it, they’d go, “Wow, what’s that?” I like to do that as well with the guitar parts.”

He continues, “We had a bit of an idea of what we might do, but basically, it was not going to be a keyboard album. There would be keyboards on it maybe, but it was going to go more into another vein. It would be different to anything that had been there before. We didn’t get a chance to do that, obviously, because we lost John.”

After Bonzo’s death, Led Zeppelin decided to break up and since then, they’ve been pursuing different solo projects. Unlike other bands, they didn’t consider replacing Bonzo because his drumming was an integral part of their distinctive sound.