The Album Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and John Bonham Wanted to Make After ‘In Through the Out Door’

Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham formed Led Zeppelin in 1968. Following Bonham’s death in 1980, the rock band disbanded. Before the group disbanded, Page and Bonham had been deciding what kind of album they wanted to make following Led Zeppelin’s album In Through the Out Door.

Jimmy Page and John Bonham had ideas for Led Zeppelin’s ninth studio album

In 1979, Led Zeppelin released their eighth studio album called In Through the Out Door. The album ended up being the band’s last studio album, as the group disbanded after Bonham died in 1980.

Page was interviewed by Rolling Stone in 2020, and the guitarist shared that he and Bonham had begun making plans for Led Zeppelin’s next studio album.

“After the sessions for In Through the Out Door, John Bonham and I were discussing how we wanted to do a sort of more riff-based entity, and harder and trickier. And then, of course, I know what sort of drums he liked to play. He liked to play, like, really hard; he liked to play stuff that people heard it, they’d go, ‘Wow, what’s that?’ I like to do that as well with the guitar parts,” Page explained.

Jimmy Page and John Bonham did not want to make ‘a keyboard album’

Following In Through the Out Door, Page shared with Rolling Stone that one thing decided about Led Zeppelin’s hypothetical ninth album was that “it was not going to be a keyboard album.”

“We had a bit of an idea of what we might do, but basically, it was not going to be a keyboard album. There would be keyboards on it maybe, but it was going to go more into another vein,” Page said.

He continued, “It would be different to anything that had been there before. We didn’t get a chance to do that, obviously, because we lost John.”

Why Jimmy Page did not want to make a ‘keyboard album’ after Led Zeppelin released ‘In Through the Our Door’

Speaking with Rolling Stone, Page revealed that In Through the Our Door focused heavily on keyboards thanks to Jones’ “inspiration.”

“I think the way to put it is like this: Presence was a guitar album. After that record, John Paul Jones had acquired a ‘Dream Machine,’ a Yamaha [synthesizer]. Stevie Wonder also had one. So it had given him a lot of inspiration. He suddenly actually wrote whole numbers, which he hadn’t done before, and I thought the way to go with this is to feature John Paul Jones on the keyboard,” Page explained.

While Page appreciated what In Through the Out Door became, he wanted to try something different after it was released.

“He’d written some stuff with Robert. I thought, ‘Well, that’s great.’ Obviously, at that time, I thought I knew how this album [In Through the Out Door] is shaping up, but the next album is going to be a departure from the keyboard album,” Page told Rolling Stone.