Whole lotta nothin’: Bill Clinton failed to broker Led Zeppelin reunion

For all his legendary powers of persuasion, Bill Clinton never could quite sweet-talk Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak into closing the deal on a final status peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Looks like he whiffed again with Jimmy Page and and Robert Plant.

Last year, according to a report Monday on the CBS “60 Minutes Overtime” webcast, David Saltzman of the Robin Hood Foundation and film tycoon and Democratic financial donor Harvey Weinstein recruited the former president to broker a Led Zeppelin reunion for last year’s benefit concert in New York for victims of Superstorm Sandy.

Mr. Clinton approached the surviving original members of Zep — Mr. Page, Mr. Plant and bass player John Paul Jones — in Washington, where the three had gathered for the Kennedy Center Honors gala in early December, shortly before the 12-12-12 Concert for Sandy Relief. The legendary blues metal pioneers quietly rebuffed the top-level diplomatic demarche.

The arena rock titans haven’t performed together since a one-night reunion headlining a 2007 benefit concert honoring the memory of Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun at London’s O2 Arena.

But while Zeppelin deflected Clinton’s entreaties, fellow British rock deities the Rolling Stones turned up at the Sandy benefit for a two-song cameo, memorable mainly for a mordant Mick Jagger jape. 

“This has got to be the largest collection of old English musicians ever assembled in Madison Square Garden,” the Stones frontman observed. “But I’ve got to say, if it rains in London, you’ve got to come and help us, OK?”