Led Zeppelin regroups for one last 'Celebration Day'

• The film of the 2007 reunion concert gets a theatrical release Oct. 17
• Show will also be released on CD, DVD and Blu-ray Nov. 19
• "It's in our DNA to play that music," says guitarist Jimmy Page

LONDON — Thirty years ago, they were part of one of the greatest, loudest and most outrageous rock bands in history. Today, the three surviving members of Led Zeppelin qualify for senior passes on London buses. Their faces are lined, their hair grizzled.

But these aging rock legends, who dominated the 1970s with their thundering, sexually charged songs and offstage mayhem, are proving themselves relevant more than three decades after the band's breakup.

Tickets are selling briskly ahead of the Oct. 17 theatrical release of Celebration Day, the film version of Zeppelin's acclaimed 2007 reunion concert at London's O2 Arena. The concert also will be released on CD, DVD and Blu-ray (Swan Song/Atlantic Records, $19-$45) on Nov. 19, with vinyl to follow Dec. 11. Critically scorned in its heyday, the band will receive a Kennedy Center Honor, one of the world's most prestigious cultural awards, on Dec. 1.

"We were the worst. We were the face of excess in every way," says Zeppelin bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones, 66. So the acceptance "is very nice. We moved out, but we moved back."

In exclusive in-person interviews with USA TODAY, Jones, singer Robert Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page dismiss talk of a tour, concede that they may not have made it big if they had started today and fondly recall their 2007 reunion.

It was the band's "destiny … to have one more show," says Page, 68. "It's in our DNA to play that music."

After Zeppelin was founded in 1968, the band's powerful guitar riffs, bashing drums and mix of lyricism and brutality enthralled a generation. At its peak, the group was playing to U.S. audiences of some 70,000 screaming fans. Zeppelin has sold 111.5 million albums in the United States, making the band the USA's fourth-best-selling artist, after The Beatles, Elvis Presley and Garth Brooks.

The band also broke new ground for its lurid exploits, from cocaine use to vandalism to dalliances with underage groupies. Zeppelin's self-destructive image was sealed when drummer John Bonham, 32, died after an alcoholic binge in 1980, leading to the band's demise.

In the years since, two of the three Zeppelin survivors have plunged into projects that might shock and disappoint their head-banging fans.

Jones is writing an opera based on a 1907 drama by Swedish playwright August Strindberg. He'll tour Britain next month with Norwegian experimental group Supersilent, traveling in a humble "splitter van" — gear in the back, a few seats in front — that's a far cry from the Starship, the luxurious jumbo jet that Zeppelin flew to gigs in the 1970s.

Does he miss the pampered treatment of his Zeppelin days? "Yes, of course," Jones says. "But I'd rather do that and play music I enjoy than start an artificial situation with a supergroup."

Plant, 64, has strayed almost as far from Zeppelin as Jones, entering an unlikely collaboration with bluegrass star Alison Krauss. Their Raising Sand album earned five Grammy Awards in 2008, including album of the year, and sold more than 3 million copies worldwide. Now Plant is about to tour South America with his own band, which melds blues, world music and rock. He has left his Zeppelin days so far behind that he had to struggle to recapture the old swagger for the 2007 reunion concert, a tribute to the late Ahmet Ertegun, the Atlantic Records founder who signed the band to its first recording contract.

"The kind of attitude that went with some of those songs is something I can remember," Plant says. "But it's a different place. To jump back in there and have that attitude … was a tough equation."

Page's current musical career is quieter than those of his former bandmates.

"I love playing live, and I had intended to be playing live by this point," he says wistfully. "I certainly hope to be playing live by this time next year." He has played in public only sporadically in the last few years, representing Britain in the closing ceremony of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and playing with old friend Roy Harper at a London tribute in 2011.

They've gone their separate ways, but their 2007 concert proved that the chemistry hasn't died. In a two-hour show, the trio, joined by Bonham's son Jason on drums, gave a taut, energized performance that made the critics swoon, though the three had played together publicly only a handful of times in the previous 27 years.

"Playing with Zeppelin is a bit like riding a bike," Jones says. "Once you got in the situation, lots came back."

Plant, on the other hand, says his performance was colored by "fatigue, fear. … It had to be good because we'd all worked so hard," he says. "And the anticipation was so great."

The band never intended to release a recording of the concert, but as it became clear that another reunion is unlikely, the need to satisfy fans became more urgent.

"It became apparent that (the footage) should go out because there wasn't going to be anything else, any other shows," Page says.

"I can't see it," says Jones of a reunion. "Robert has changed his style, and he doesn't want to sing like that anymore."

But the band members will regroup in December, this time in Washington, D.C., to pick up their Kennedy Center medallions. Even Plant, who skipped the 2005 ceremony for Zeppelin's Grammy lifetime achievement award, will show this time. He wants to shake hands with President Obama, whom he admires even though Obama's musical preferences in the 1970s ran to Stevie Wonder and Earth Wind & Fire.

"He needs to go back and get a bit of better taste," says Plant, unaware that one of his bandmates shared the president's leanings.

"Driving to Zeppelin sessions when we were recording, I played Stevie Wonder almost exclusively," Jones says. "Earth Wind & Fire, too, I'm afraid."

Their reputations are now assured, but they say Zeppelin may have been relegated to insignificance if they had started today.

"We would've ended up in the attic or something like Xfm," a U.K. alternative station, Plant says. "It would be very hard to get Kashmir (an eight-minute-plus Zeppelin classic) on maximum rotation. It was a long time ago."