Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones busy writing an opera for reunion

More Led Zeppelin news: John Paul Jones is writing an opera. While Robert Plant has dangled the possibility of reuniting Led Zeppelin next year, the band’s bassist revealed that he has his hands full adapting a 105-year-old Swedish play. “2014 is full of opera for me at the moment,” Jones explained in a recent interview. Red Carpet News had caught up with the rocker at an after-party for the English Nation Opera’s latest production, The Perfect American. “[Opera] is unlike anything else,” he said. “It’s the emotion, the passion, and I’m writing an opera myself so I have to say that.”

Jones’s opera is based on Spksonaten (The Ghost Sonata), written by August Strindberg. “Right now I’m halfway through the first act,” he said. A favourite of Ingmar Bergman’s, the play mixes the surreal and the domestic, with ghosts roaming through a Stockholm apartment building. It first premiered in January 1908.

Although still best known for his work with Led Zeppelin, Jones roamed widely before, during and after his time with the band. Over the past 30 years, he has collaborated with artists as diverse as REM, Diamanda Gals, Foo Fighters, Gillian Welch, and the Norwegian avant-gardists Supersilent. These days, Jones said, he only has time “to do little gigs that I don’t have to prepare too much for”.

Unfortunately for Led Zeppelin fans, this seems to put an end to discussions of a possible reunion. Whereas Robert Plant blocked the group’s last attempts to get together, saying he was too busy with Alison Krauss and the Band of Joy, Jones is now the one with clashing priorities. “I’ve got nothing to do in 2014,” Plant complained earlier this year.