In 1980, the magic of Led Zeppelin ended following the death of drummer John Bonham, but Robert Plant had been questioning his future with the band for three years before that. After the sudden loss of his five-year-old son Karac in 1977, the Led Zeppelin frontman felt he no longer needed the band that made him one of rock’s biggest stars.
In an October 2026 interview with The Sunday Times, Plant, 78, looked back on that heartbreaking period of his life nearly 50 years ago, when he got the call that his little boy had died from a severe stomach virus.
“Well, there was no map, no instructions to Led Zeppelin, and we just carried on,” Plant recalled of how the band handled the tragedy.
“But I didn’t need the group after losing my boy,” he continued. “These musical romances are great when everything is great. When things go left of center, who wants to sit backstage for hours and hours with people you’ve been stuck with since 1968? You’re not playing cards, you’re not going to the movies, you’re just waiting. I was always looking to get away.”
Plant once told Rolling Stone that his son’s death forced him to make changes in his life.
“I lost my boy. I didn’t want to be in Led Zeppelin. I wanted to be with my family,” he shared. “I stopped taking everything on the same day. The most important thing to me is my family and when I got off my face, I found it difficult to be all things to the people that meant a lot to me.”
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At the time of Karac’s death, Led Zeppelin canceled the remainder of their tour in America, which included dates in New Orleans, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia’s JFK Stadium.
A report from the Associated Press in July 1977 revealed that Plant immediately flew from New Orleans back to his home in England after his wife Maureen telephoned him with the tragic news.
“We were all mates. We had to give the man some space,” guitarist Jimmy Page reportedly said.
Led Zeppelin never toured the U.S. again but released two albums, 1979’s In Through the Out Door, which featured the song “All My Love” in honor of Karac, and Coda (1982). After Bonham’s death in September 1980, Plant reunited with his surviving bandmates for Live Aid in 1985, for an Atlantic Records anniversary in New York in 1988, and for a tribute concert at the O2 in London in 2007.
While the O2 concert had fans buzzing about the return of Led Zeppelin, Plant told The Times that he never expected it to be anything more than a one-off event because his Zeppelin days were done.
“That was always my plan,” he said. “The concert was nerve-racking because it could have been a shambles, and who wants that? Someone said, ‘Why does Plant turn his back on the majesty of Led Zeppelin? Why is Person A [Page] representing the power and the glory while Plant goes to bingo in the Welsh borders?’”
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