Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant has revealed that he decided against performing again with the band over fears a full reunion might disappoint fans.

Plant ruled himself out of more shows last November following endless calls from fans for the band to return to the road.

The singer's former bandmates - Jimmy Page, Jason Bonham and John Paul Jones – later abandoned plans to tour without him after attempts to find a replacement singer fell through.

Speaking to Absolute Radio's Ben Jones, Plant said it would have been “delicate” to “visit old ground” again with the group.

“The disappointment that could be there once you commit to that and the comparisons to something that was basically fired by youth and a different kind of exuberance to now, its very hard to go back and meet that head on and do it justice,” he said.

“The reason that it stopped was because we were incomplete, and we've been incomplete now for 28 years.”

Plant added that it was important to “guard the discretion” of the band's past material and “make sure that you have all the reasons in the right place to be able to do something with absolute, total conviction.”

“I mean, if my great award is to do this, then I don't want to do anything where we challenge what we did in the first place by just going back and visiting it without having a new, fresh makeover start."

Calls for a Led Zeppelin reunion tour were instigated by their reunion show at the O2 Arena in 2007, which attracted 1 million applicants for just 9,000 pairs of tickets.

(by Jason Gregory)