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Over 20 million music fans have already registered at http://www.ahmettribute.com/ for the chance to buy tickets to Led Zeppelin's November reunion show in London, which makes it perhaps the biggest triumph of hope over experience since Richard Burton married Elizabeth Taylor for the second time.

Let us survey the evidence. First the rarity value of a re-forming band even approaching the peaks that they once so effortlessly scaled. Notable among anticlimaxes were the Sex Pistols--who reformed as a pantomime with Johnny Rotten recast as Widow Twankey. Neither of their money-grubbing reunions--1996 and 2003--felt like anything better than tawdry betrayals.

On the other end of the scale, Slint were just as tedious--and their fans as snooty--in 2007 as they ever were in the '90s. In fact, your correspondent has witnessed only one re-forming band that raged as hard as they did in their supposed pomp, and that was Mission Of Burma, at the Islington Garage in London, April '02. (Oh alright, The Cult weren't half bad either...)

Second, let's look at that Ahmet Ertegun tribute bill again: Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings, Foreigner, Paolo Nutini. No, you didn't mis-read that: BILL WYMAN'S RHYTHM KINGS! FOREIGNER! PAOLO NUTINI! By the time Dark Lord, Golden God, The Other One and Bonzo Jnr creak onstage any sane music fan will be a mass of murderous tics if they haven't already slipped out through the out door. Show promoter Harvey Goldsmith predicts a two-hour Zep set; good news in theory, but the problem for the fan is how to stay fresh for the main event. Earplugs, a good book and a thermos of joe seem the only options. And how long is this concert anyway? Four hours? Five? Ker-rist!

One can forgive Led Zeppelin some anxiety--their two previous reformations, at Live Aid in 1985 and in 1988 at a concert for Atlantic Records' 40^th Anniversary, were hardly covered in glory. And perhaps they imagine that the likes of Nutini will break their fall if the wheels come off and their set's a turkey. But everyone who saw a Page & Plant show in '95 or '98 can tell you the oft-at-odds duo made an inspiring fist of re-contextualising the spirit of Zep in an, ahem, "post-grunge" climate, and just a second, are we not talking about LED FRICKIN' ZEPPELIN HERE? THE HAMMER OF THE FRICKIN' GODS? They need a support act like Willie Nelson needs another tax audit. I urge them to look up the word "bathos" and ponder its meaning.

Led Zeppelin never claimed to stand for anything. Their music--brilliant and audacious as it invariably was between 1969 and 1976--was never about anything other than how stupidly great it sounded, and for that they commanded a legion of awed followers worldwide, a legion that renews itself when every new generation discovers their albums. There is no philosophical way they can let us down. As long as they rock, they'll rule. So can they stop being coy and stop hiding behind Ahmet Ertegun's legacy, great though it is? Inside, they want to be acknowledged as the ne plus ultra rock band of the ages. As Jimmy Page enters his 64th year, that's what this concert is really all about.

If they shake off these weird, timid vibes, they can wipe the floor with the Sex Pistols, Slint--even The Cult!--and convince sceptics like me that reunion gigs are, maybe just maybe, a good idea after all.

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