Robert Plant Says He Didn’t Need Led Zeppelin After His Son Died, and Names the Bandmate Who Stayed
· Thought Catalog
Updated 2 minutes ago, October 21, 2026
Robert Plant was 29 and in New Orleans with Led Zeppelin when his five-year-old son Karac died back home in the English Midlands on July 26, 1977, from a sudden stomach infection. In a new interview, he explains what that did to his bond with the band he fronted.
“There was no map, no instructions to Led Zeppelin, and we just carried on,” Plant said. “But I didn’t need the group after losing my boy. These musical romances are great when everything is great. When things go left of centre, who wants to sit backstage for hours and hours with people you’ve been stuck with since 1968?”
The band was on its 1977 North American tour promoting Presence when the call came. Plant flew home. Every remaining date was cancelled, and Led Zeppelin never toured America again.
Plant credits drummer John Bonham, his friend since they were teenagers, with pulling him back. Bonham attended Karac’s funeral.
Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones did not. “I lost my boy. I didn’t want to be in Led Zeppelin. I wanted to be with my family,” Plant said in 2007.
He describes Bonham now as “a sensitive, big-hearted guy who got overwhelmed by the boredom of the moving monolith,” torn between missing his family and being unable to walk away from the band.
The group stayed off the road for about two years, then recorded In Through the Out Door, a softer, keyboard-led record where the writing shifted toward Plant and Jones. Plant later said the old swagger had stopped meaning anything to him.
He has stayed consistent that it was Bonham’s death in September 1980, not Karac’s, that ended Led Zeppelin as a working band. Karac’s death is what ended Plant’s need for it. The only full reunion he has done since is the one-off O2 tribute show in London in 2007.
One of the two Led Zeppelin songs Page did not co-write is “All My Love,” which Plant and Jones wrote as a tribute to Karac.
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