Did Steven Tyler reject the chance to join Led Zeppelin?
Steven Tyler may be many things – a ‘Demon of Screamin’’ and an all-around rock legend, yes, but musical mediator and therapist to the stars may not strike you as one of them. But as it turns out, the Aerosmith frontman is responsible for attempting to reunite two of rock and roll’s finest exports, even if he’s unwilling to fully take the credit for it.
When asked in an interview with Howard Stern in 2024 whether he was the engineer behind getting Guns N’ Roses back together, Tyler responded: “I’m sure I’m not solely [responsible], but I did meet Axl [Rose] in a couple of clubs a year ago and two years ago and three years ago, and I bumped into him, and we had that talk. I said, ‘You need to get fucking back together again soon because we all miss you.’”
It was a call to arms that clearly struck a chord with Rose, because over the past few years the band have been churning out tunes as if they were in their prime, all culminating in their 2023 Glastonbury headline set.
But would Tyler be able to extend his peace-making magic to some of rock music’s other feuding families, perhaps Led Zeppelin? “I tried,” he admitted. “I went and played with him [Jimmy Page] while I was in outs with Aerosmith. I got a chance – I got a call from Peter Manch, who was managing Page, and he said, ‘Those guys are rehearsing. Would you like to go and rehearse with them?’. But it was without Robert Plant there.”
Nervous as he evidently was, the session, Tyler claimed, was every rock fan’s dream. Complete with screech and screams and all the experimentation you could ever imagine, he thought this was surely a winning formula for getting the heavy metal massive back together, with the addition of John Bonham’s son Jason on the drums.
Tyler continued: “I said to Jimmy Page, ‘I will gladly do something with you guys, any time. Call me. If I’m on tour with Aerosmith, I’ll do three in a row, just to go play with [you] and sing’.”
Despite his effusiveness, however, the fellow frontman was clear that his offer did come with a few strings attached. “I can’t do, like, a Coverdale page, I can’t do a Tyler page, I can’t do that. I told him – as angry as I was at Aerosmith – ‘I’m in a band that’s just as relevant as Led Zeppelin. You guys aren’t together, that’s a shame, you should be’.”
So, although we aren’t going to see the amalgamation of our dreams in the form of a permanent Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith supergroup, it seems by any measure that Tyler’s offer of a guest slot is still out in the open. Some say the Led Zeppelin legend died with Bonham, but if Tyler is anything to go by, it’s not a fully exclusive view, and endless possibilities remain for the taking. If Page and Plant need an excuse to put down the guns, they should just look to Axl Rose and Co, who are certainly grateful for heeding Tyler’s words.
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