Jason Bonham said the collapse of his musical project with Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones left him “more devastated” than Robert Plant’s refusal to continue Led Zeppelin after their one-off reunion in 2007.

The son of original drummer John Bonham has previously said how much the six weeks of rehearsal with the three surviving members meant to him, and that the show itself had been one the most enjoyable of his career, despite the associated pressures. He’s also previously discussed how Plant told him relatively early on that he had no intention of doing more than one show. That led to an all-new experimentation period with Page and Jones during 2008, which fizzled out after they failed to find the right singer, after auditions included Steven Tyler and Myles Kennedy, among others.

“In a short time I was told by Robert himself that [a continued reunion] wasn’t gonna happen,” Bonham told Q105.7 in a recent interview. “[B]ut it was very, very special at that time. Later on, of course, just after Robert said that, I then got the phone call from Jimmy and John Paul, and we started to do some stuff.”

You can listen to the full interview below:

He continued: “To be writing, to go write, to be in the situation of writing with those two guys was just another world. Jimmy turned round at one point and said, ‘Okay, have you got any idea you wanna work on, Jason?’ And I’m like, ‘Woah, what?’ That was just so much fun, just to be in that environment, to still be around them.” He reflected: “If anything, when that stopped, that’s when I was even more devastated than when the Zeppelin thing stopped. … Knowing that it wasn’t gonna happen anymore kind of, it sucked.”

By that time, Bonham said, he had ended his stint with Foreigner in order to concentrate on the now-abandoned project. “So what grew from that was, as a manager of the time said, ‘Why don’t you just do this little Zeppelin thing… a tribute to your dad, kinda get it out your system?’” he said. “Out of one sadness came something that brings so much joy to me and so many others.”

 

Led Zeppelin Albums Ranked 

More From Classic Rock 105.1