Jimmy Page hinted at being a bit bummed about being left out of Them Crooked Vultures — the group featuring John Paul Jones, Dave Grohl and Josh Homme — in a new social media post.
Page shared a photo of himself, John Paul Jones, Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins following a performance during the Foo Fighters June 7, 2008 show at Wembley Stadium.
“I was asked to play with the Foo Fighters at Wembley,” wrote Page. “This was after the LedZeppelin show at the O2 attended by Dave Grohl. John Paul Jones and I played ‘Ramble On’ and Dave sang with Taylor Hawkins on drums. Then Taylor swapped drums with Dave and he sang ‘Rock and Roll’. Dave Grohl said: ‘You guys should come to the States and record with us.’”
Page concluded with, “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.”
Them Crooked Vultures released their self-titled debut album in November 2009. Its lead single “New Fang” netted the band the Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance in 2011, however, the band has yet to release any follow-up material.
Grohl has fondly looked back on the performance with Page and Jones in previous interviews. In May 2020, he told Entertainment Weekly getting the Led Zeppelin legends to perform was rather seamless. During the Foo Fighters’ set at Wembley at Live Earth in 2007, Grohl told the crowd the band would be back to do a headlining show soon.
“And in the middle of the set I jokingly announced to the audience that we would be back to play Wembley multiple nights,” said Grohl. “I was kidding! Because at that point we had never even headlined a stadium. So about a year later when my manager asked if we wanted to [do it], of course we had to pull out all the stops.”
Grohl continued, “And then someone asked us if we wanted to have some special guests. So being a Led Zeppelin freak — you know, I’ve got Led Zeppelin tattoos — I thought ‘Well, we’ve gotta call John Paul Jones.’ We had wound up performing ‘The Pretender’ with him that year at the Grammys and we made friends so I figured, this is the most momentous occasion of my entire life, why not call the band that changed it all for me?”
From there, Grohl then got on the phone with Page and the guitar god was all in.
“He basically said ‘Well what do you want to do?’ And I was terrified to answer. I felt like I was in a waking dream,” said Grohl. “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.’ I mean it was that easy, I couldn’t believe it.”
