Why Jimmy Page Was Disappointed After Performing With Dave Grohl
Dave Grohl has worked with some of the biggest names in rock music. He was the drummer in the seminal grunge band, Nirvana. He is the mastermind behind Foo Fighters. He played a vital role in Queens of the Stone Age. And -– who could forget? –- he totally owned it as the devil in the video for Tenacious D's "Tribute" and in the movie, "The Pick of Destiny (he was also the principal drummer on Tenacious D's debut album). Grohl even formed a supergroup, Them Crooked Vultures, with QOTSA's Josh Homme and one of the most iconic bassists of all time: John Paul Jones, of the legendarily English heavy rock group, Led Zeppelin.
The roots of Them Crooked Vultures can be traced to a single gig in 2009. According to Louder, Dave Grohl was celebrating his 40th birthday with a special 1,000 seater concert with Queens of the Stone Age, to which he invited Jones as a special guest performer. It was after this performance that Grohl, Homme, and Jones came together as a band in their own right.
But this wasn't the first time that Grohl had performed with members of Zeppelin. Jones and the band's virtuoso guitarist, Jimmy Page, had shared the stage with Grohl the previous year at London's Wembley Arena. And according to Page himself, he was somewhat surprised that their musical relationship didn't go any further.
The Grohl-Zeppelin crossover
Dave Grohl had been asked to consider guest performers for the Foo Fighters' first headline stadium shows in 2008, and after seeing Led Zeppelin's reunion show at London's O2 Arena, he was hopeful that the guys from Zeppelin would do it. Grohl already had a connection to John Paul Jones whom he'd performed with at the Grammys, so he then made a nervous call to Jimmy Page to see if he would be open to the idea, according to WMGK.
Grohl said: "[Page] basically said 'Well what do you want to do?' And I was terrified to answer. I felt like I was in a waking dream ... But I had to say something, so I said 'How about "Rock and Roll"?' so he said 'Yeah, what else?' I said 'How about "Ramble On"?' he said, 'Great, see you at rehearsals.'"
The show went down as a "classic," and Grohl later shared fond memories of sharing the stage with Jones and Page. But in a June 2021 Facebook post published to mark the anniversary of the performance, Page seemed nonplussed that only Jones would go on to have further involvement with Grohl in the years that followed.
"Dave Grohl said: 'You guys should come to the States and record with us,' Page claims in the post. "I didn't hear anything more from Grohl, and John Paul Jones' communications seemed to dim. The next I heard, they were promoting their new group." Why Page was not invited to join Them Crooked Vultures remains a mystery.