By Alan Light
Special to MSN Music

It is a rock 'n' roll fantasy that most people had abandoned. On Dec. 10 at London's O2 Arena, the three surviving members of Led Zeppelin -- Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones -- will take the stage accompanied by Jason Bonham, the son of their late drummer, John Bonham. The concert marks the first time Led Zeppelin has performed together in almost 20 years, and only the third time the lineup has appeared since Bonham's death in 1980.

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Anticipation for the event has spurred an avalanche of ticket requests, followed by fresh suspense when the group was forced to reschedule from the original concert date of Nov. 26. Guitarist Page reportedly fractured his finger, prompting the delay. The concert is a benefit supporting a scholarship fund created by Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun, who passed away last year.

When the show was announced, the Web site on which tickets were being sold was so overloaded that it crashed. In the end, 20 million people around the world entered the lottery for the arena's 18,000 tickets. The response was incredible, but not shocking: Led Zeppelin is one of only two bands to sell more than 100 million records in the United States (the Beatles, of course, are the other, while Elvis Presley and Garth Brooks are the only solo artists to hit that number). The aura surrounding their majestic recordings -- eight studio albums released between 1969 and 1979 -- seems only to have grown over the years.

Speaking on the phone from London's Landmark Hotel a few days before beginning rehearsals for the reunion show, guitarist Page and bass/mandolin/keyboard player Jones made it clear that they're not taking this event lightly. "This is a really serious commitment," says Jones. "We need to get so familiar with this material again that we're not just re-creating a show, but doing something that's genuinely good."

The O2 performance will follow directly on the heels of several new Zeppelin projects. In October, the band announced that its music finally would be available for digital download, ending one of music's highest-profile holdouts. A new two-CD "best-of" compilation titled "Mothership" is being released Nov. 13, followed the next week by a remixed and remastered version of their 1976 concert film and soundtrack "The Song Remains the Same," with six previously unreleased tracks (including such skull-crushers as "Black Dog," "Misty Mountain Hop" and "Heartbreaker").

"Song," which was recorded over three nights at New York's Madison Square Garden in 1973, isn't generally considered a first-rate document of live Zeppelin; the "Rolling Stone Album Guide" dismisses it as "desultory." But the remastering is a revelation, the DVD includes such extras as news coverage of the famous robbery that took place at the band's Manhattan hotel during one of the shows, and the sheer scarcity of material from these towering rock superheroes makes any new recordings significant.

The future of the 21st century Led Zeppelin seems very much up in the air: Plant has said that he considers the O2 show a one-time thing, while Page has left the door open for more work going forward. For now, though, Page and Jones sound genuinely excited about the band's return to the stage, raving about a secret rehearsal they did in late spring to test the waters.

"We're right on the brink," says Page. "Next week we start, and I'm really looking forward to it. If it's anything like the little things that we've done, then this is going to be a terrific journey."

MSN Music: How does it feel to be playing together again?

Jimmy Page: Well, earlier this year we had this clandestine get-together. There had been a bit of a rift between us, so we had to find out if it could work, or was there too much water under the bridge? And that session felt absolutely fantastic -- it was urgent, vibrant, everything you might have hoped for and then even a bit extra, a bit more than that.

When the Ahmet thing came up, it was a call to arms. It gave us the opportunity to come together.

John Paul, I saw you this past June at the Bonnaroo festival, and you were having a blast sitting in and jamming with everyone. Have you been able to bring that spirit and enthusiasm into these rehearsals?

John Paul Jones: To be honest, though, it went the other way as well.

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