{"id":365313,"date":"2025-08-22T18:42:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T18:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/365313\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T18:42:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T18:42:12","slug":"the-drummer-who-rejected-led-zeppelin-and-lived-to-regret-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/365313\/","title":{"rendered":"The drummer who rejected Led Zeppelin and lived to regret it"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"John<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ julio zeppelin)<\/p>\n

Fri 22 August 2025 17:30, UK <\/p>\n

You\u2019ve got The Beatles way out in front with around 600million record sales, and then you\u2019ve got Led Zeppelin<\/a> vying with Queen for the second place spot, both lingering around the 300million sales mark. Needless to say, that\u2019s a lot. Hell, Jimmy Page has even owned multiple castles.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just the monetary rewards of being in Led Zeppelin that boggle the mind, the group also completely changed the face of modern music, taking up the Fab Four\u2019s mantle in continuing the counterculture surge into the 1970s. Much like The Beatles, you can\u2019t really imagine them as being any different from the band that we know and love, either.<\/p>\n

Such was their simultaneous sense of superstardom and seamless chemistry, their jams together are a picture of rock \u2018n\u2019 cohesion to an alchemical degree, but also, when a poll of thousands of music fans asked people to pick the greatest frontman, guitarist, bassist and drummer of all time, each member of Led Zep comically came out on top.<\/p>\n

They were, in essence, a supergroup, but they fit together in such a hand in glove manner that there were never any of the usual gripes of the sum being less than the parts. So, you might think that they were carefully honed from the get-go, but that wasn\u2019t the case.<\/p>\n

Jimmy Pagw was stuck between two poles in the 1960s. He had already established himself as a leading session guitarist and producer in the early part of the decade, esteemed among his peers, so when the Yardbirds needed a new guitarist, the group tried to prise him out of the studio. They were successful, but the issue was that they were not necessarily a group in the traditional \u2018band of brothers\u2019 manner, they were more so an ensemble of individualists.<\/p>\n

\"Jimmy<\/a>(Credits: Far Out \/ Open Culture)<\/p>\n

In fact, Page\u2019s arrival inadvertently furthered this with the likes of Jeff Beck so impressed that he knew he had to depart and abide by his wont for personal experimentation. Thus, by mid-1968, Page was somehow the only member of the Yardbirds left. At that point, he may well have called it a day and returned to the studio forevermore, but the band still had some US dates on the horizon, and ever a man of his word, Page was determined to fulfil them.<\/p>\n

This honorary nature also arrived with the realisation that he really did have a desire to go on as a member of a band rather than supporting party, so he decided to assemble a new one.<\/p>\n

He might have been a maestro guitarist and creditable songwriter at this stage, but he knew the one thing he wasn\u2019t was a frontman. He knew a good one, however, called Terry Reid, but Reid was in the habit of rejecting bands, favouring his own muse, so much so that he not only turned down the chance to be Led Zeppelin but also Deep Purple after being buoyed by a solo tour with The Rolling Stones.<\/p>\n

Therein lay Page\u2019s issue. He wasn\u2019t pitching Led Zeppelin as we know them today, the icons of rock who own castles and candy stores, he was pitching, well, himself, who at that time was the sole remaining member of a creatively and commercially failing Yardbirds. <\/p>\n

So, he had to be an early adopter of \u2018shop local, think global\u2019, and back in his hometown, Robert Plant was renowned as a premiere vocalist. He had also clearly displayed his own knack for artistry too by creating a proto-viral stunt, engineering his own non-existent arrest, and \u2018Free Robert Plant<\/a>\u2019 campaign. <\/p>\n

Page was suitably impressed by the Band of Joy singer. So, he not only hired him, but asked him if he knew any good drummers while he was at it. Thus, we arrive at the sorry tale of Mac Poole, a man who lived his life under the shadow of an enormous what-could-have-been, a monumental castle-owning, 300million record selling, culture evolving, private jet with a lounge in it what-could-have-been.<\/p>\n

By all accounts, Poole was a contented and lovely man, but there is no doubt that the odd moment stood by the kettle on an idle Tuesday must\u2019ve plagued him. However, in those moments, a semblance of comfort could surely be extracted from the fact that it was equally an idle Tuesday when the proposition was presented to him, and he had no way of knowing that his pals\u2019 presentiment was actually millions of pounds and a profound impact on the world.<\/p>\n

As Poole recalled in When Giants Walked the Earth, \u201cRobert put it to me in a very kind of simplistic way. He just said, \u2018I\u2019m doing these sessions with a guy called Jimmy Page, and we\u2019re gonna get a band together and we\u2019re gonna call it the New Yardbirds \u2013 and we need a drummer.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

Poole added, \u201cThat was like asking me if I was free. That\u2019s how we did it in Birmingham, you sounded people out first, you didn\u2019t just say, \u2018Do you want the job in the band?\u2019 But I just said, \u2018Well, I\u2019ve got my own band, Rob, we\u2019ve got our own deal.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In fairness, Plant did say, \u201cand we need a drummer\u201d which, to me, implies more than a mere \u2018are you free for a kickabout?\u2019 Alas, poor old Poole might\u2019ve had to bend the truth to himself a few times to keep up his chipper disposition.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n

The Far Out Led Zeppelin Newsletter<\/p>\n

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Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ julio zeppelin) Fri 22 August 2025 17:30, UK You\u2019ve got The Beatles way out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,21945,269,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-365313","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-led-zeppelin","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115073892159960760","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}