The archives are shut. The unreleased songs remain unreleased. Remastering the soundboard tapes is a pipe dream. It’s 2025 and Led Zeppelin is somehow less culturally relevant than Elvis Presley.

Fans of Presley have this year been treated to a feature-length documentary using unseen concert footage that comes hot on the heels of 2022’s biopic, a new memoir by Priscilla Presley and an exhaustive new biography of Presley’s manager.

The world of Led Zeppelin, however, is far less exciting. “Becoming Led Zeppelin”, the feature-length documentary about the band’s origins that was produced independently from the band, caused a wave of interest in Led Zeppelin’s music. The band reacted to the film’s release with the equivalent of a shrug of their collective shoulders.

No band members attended the film’s premieres or gave even a single interview to promote the release of what will likely be the definitive history of their early years. It’s only now, months after the film’s release, that the band members have seemingly realised their royalty cheques are larger than normal.

Perhaps it was a 23% rise in streams of Led Zeppelin’s music that prompted a decision to celebrate February’s fiftieth anniversary of Physical Graffiti by re-releasing the album on vinyl in September with an added poster, perhaps the least effort that could have been put into celebrating the album’s anniversary.

There was a glimmer of hope this month when Led Zeppelin released Live E.P., a four track vinyl release containing live performances. Instead of taking the opportunity to unearth unheard gems, however, the band simply released the audio of four songs from Led Zeppelin’s 2003 DVD, using the same mixes of the songs that were made in 2002.

The lack of effort was also shown by the fact that the release simply copied and pasted the credits from the band’s 2003 DVD, leading to scratching of heads as the credits mention John Paul Jones’ mandolin playing, something which can’t actually be heard on the EP. 

The lack of any liner notes for the album, with the band choosing to leave one half of the vinyl’s inner gatefold sleeve blank, baffled even the most ardent fans of Led Zeppelin. Dave Lewis, the editor of the long-running Tight But Loose fanzine, rightly called the omission “a missed opportunity”.

Perhaps realising that Live E.P. was a half-baked package containing a handful of songs originally released in 2003, no band members have bothered to promote the EP. Robert Plant is understandably focused on promoting his new solo album, leaving Led Zeppelin to dig out a quote he gave in February 1975 to include in its announcement of the EP.

Frustrations over Led Zeppelin’s inactivity are often batted away by staunch defenders of the band who insist that the surviving members of Led Zeppelin owe us nothing. They are, of course, correct. Jimmy Page has more than earned the right to sit in his garden complaining about his neighbours, an activity he indeed seems to have spent several years doing.

But the longer Led Zeppelin keeps its vaults shut, the less relevant the band becomes. It’s especially apparent when contrasting the band’s recent lack of activity with other heritage rock acts.

Even the feuding members of Pink Floyd managed to agree with each other long enough to sell their catalogue to Sony Music for $400 million last year. That deal led to a flood of interest in the contents of the band’s vaults, resulting in a stunning remaster of the 1972 concert film “Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii” earlier this year.

Now, Pink Floyd is releasing a new fiftieth anniversary box set of the 1975 album Wish You Were Here that comes with unreleased songs, a live album from Wembley as well as a remastered bootleg audience recording made by Mike Millard in 1975.

As a reminder, Led Zeppelin celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its own 1975 album Physical Graffiti by re-releasing it with an added poster. Any hopes of Led Zeppelin remastering and releasing any of Millard’s legendary audience tapes of Led Zeppelin in its prime remain as realistic as the fantasy sequences in “The Song Remains The Same”.

What’s more, while Pink Floyd was left reliant on Millard’s audience tapes because of the band’s lack of soundboard material, we know that Led Zeppelin has multi-track recordings from its 1975 Earl’s Court shows. Page, ever the perfectionist when it comes to Led Zeppelin’s legacy, wouldn’t need to use audience recordings if the concept troubled him.

Jealous Led Zeppelin fans look with envy at Bob Dylan, whose bootleg series of official archival releases is now on to its 18th volume and Bruce Springsteen, whose archival releases will soon include his long lost Electric Nebraska material. After denying the existence of the material in June, Springsteen seemingly checked his vaults, found the recordings and decided to release them, all within a matter of months.

Led Zeppelin’s recent lack of activity looks even worse when compared to The Beatles, with upcoming projects from that band including a fourth Anthology volume and a remarkable four biopic films due to be released in 2028. The 2023 release of the single “Now And Then” earned The Beatles a Grammy Award for best rock performance earlier this year, while the 2021 “Get Back” series gave fans hours of remarkable unseen insights into the making of the 1970 album Let It Be.

What’s particularly frustrating for Led Zeppelin fans craving more from the band is the fact that we know how much more could be released. It’s widely understood that the band have multi-track recordings from the band’s legendary 1971 tour of Japan, a project Page seems to have worked on before abandoning it.

Furthermore, a multi-track recording of the band’s 1973 Southampton University performance has emerged through bootleg releases but remains officially unreleased.

“Led Zeppelin have the tapes”, photographer Ross Halfin, a close friend of Page, said in a 2021 podcast interview when asked about the contents of Led Zeppelin’s vaults. “There’s the live in Japan 1971 that’s never come out. There is Southampton 1973 that has never come out. They have stuff,” he explained.

The surprise emergence on YouTube in 2022 of incredible unseen footage of Led Zeppelin performing at Bath Festival in 1970 was yet another indicator that material remains available for Led Zeppelin to release. But the footage wasn’t licensed by the band and was later deleted from the internet, returning to obscurity in the hands of the estate of director Peter Whitehead.

Even a simple remaster of the band’s DVD, now released more than 22 years ago, is long overdue. Surely releasing “Led Zeppelin: Blu-ray” with fresh, high definition transfers of performances such as Royal Albert Hall 1970 and Knebworth 1979 is a no-brainer? 

Revisiting those tapes would have given the finale of “Becoming Led Zeppelin” an extra visual flourish, while also being the perfect product to release while the film shone a global spotlight on concert footage of Led Zeppelin.

However, rather than digging out the original tapes, the band instead appears to have used artificial intelligence to remaster Earl’s Court and Knebworth footage before releasing it on YouTube to promote Live E.P.

Page’s four-year project to remaster Led Zeppelin’s albums, adding unreleased material and alternative mixes, was an unambiguous victory for fans. But the end of that commendable effort in 2018 has served to highlight the material left in the vault.

We know, for example, that unreleased Led Zeppelin studio material exists. Page took it upon himself to release a home demo of “The Rain Song” online in 2023. At the time, LedZepNews was told by a source that more material was on the way. In the end, nothing further was released.

The closest we’ve come to an official release of the tapes of Led Zeppelin writing “Stairway To Heaven” was when Page explained the contents of four recordings as they were played in a Los Angeles courtroom in 2016.

Hopes were also raised by Page’s repeated mentions in 2017 of the imminent release the following year of unreleased Led Zeppelin material. “There’ll be Led Zeppelin product coming out, for sure, that people haven’t heard,” he told the Academy of Achievement in 2017, “because I’m working on that. Next year will be the fiftieth year so there’s all manner of surprises coming out.”

In the end, the band only managed to release two alternative mixes of studio songs in 2018 alongside a book and, bizarrely, a snowboard that emerged the following year. By 2022, Page seemed to admit defeat. “Obviously, there is source material that could come out – but it seems the band don’t all agree so there’s no point,” he told Uncut Magazine.

Plans for a Led Zeppelin exhibition, seemingly titled “The Led Zeppelin Experience” appear to have been abandoned. It now exists solely as a trademark application after the band let its original US trademark lapse earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Page managed to shorten the length of the live album How The West Was Won in its 2018 remaster, cutting the two-minute “Hello Mary Lou” medley. When asked about adding more material to the album, Page admitted in a 2018 interview that he was “not entirely sure why” he didn’t add a live performance of “Tangerine”.

With Led Zeppelin seemingly content to keep its head down, the most interesting Led Zeppelin activity in 2025 comes not from the band itself, but by outsiders intent on carrying the torch.

“Becoming Led Zeppelin” director Bernard MacMahon spent months painstakingly restoring lost footage of Led Zeppelin performing in Amsterdam in 1969 for the upcoming Blu-ray release of his film, a project that took place entirely outside of Led Zeppelin’s control.

This year, LedZepFilm released the second-earliest footage of Led Zeppelin to emerge along with upgraded footage of the band performing in Tokyo in 1971 and close-up footage of Led Zeppelin performing in Landover in 1977.

A pipeline of unseen photographs of Led Zeppelin on stage is coming not from the band itself, but from small galleries in the US and Sweden.

Here at LedZepNews, we’ve spent years writing exhaustive histories of Led Zeppelin covering everything from unseen police records about the 1973 robbery of the band in New York to legal files that revealed the impact of backstage violence in 1977 and confirming the location of the first Led Zeppelin rehearsal in a London basement in 1968. Our reporting has been met with radio silence by the band and even a legal threat.

Meanwhile, Led Zeppelin’s scant activity seems limited to re-releasing old material. On September 22, the band announced an upcoming vinyl re-release of a 1975 promotional single for “Trampled Underfoot”.

Four hours later, the announcement was deleted. It seems the band somehow managed to break the embargo for upcoming Record Store Day releases by more than a week.

Remarkably, this was the band’s second bungled vinyl single re-release in a row. A 2021 “Immigrant Song” single release was scrapped just one day before it was due to be released, with no explanation given. It seems that even successfully announcing and then re-releasing old material is beyond the reach of Led Zeppelin.

How can Led Zeppelin fix this malaise? If both Plant and Jones can both be persuaded to attend one of the band’s regularly scheduled meetings with Page, perhaps they can all agree on an archival release.

If even this is beyond their reach, it might be time to question whether the surviving members of Led Zeppelin are the best custodians of their legacy. Sony Music’s stewardship of Pink Floyd’s catalogue has already resulted in two blockbuster releases. Could an outside owner do the same for Led Zeppelin?

We know that Helen Grant, the daughter of Led Zeppelin manager Peter Grant, has spent years searching for a buyer for her 10% stake in the band’s royalties. There is no sign of that deal closing, however, and any buyer will be limited to receiving royalty cheques and politely asking the band to do something.

The recent release of Led Zeppelin’s Live E.P. should serve as a reminder to the surviving members of the band as well as their record label Warner Music Group that fans are desperate for more from Led Zeppelin.

At its peak, Led Zeppelin was an unrivalled live act. We know that tapes exist, including multi-track, soundboard and audience recordings, showing Led Zeppelin’s musical peak. Surely fans of the band should be treated to a little more?

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