MUMBAI: The famous disbanding of one of the world’s premier band, Led Zeppelin, remained as even invitation from former US President Bill Clinton could not get the remaining members to reform for a benefit concert.

CBS’ webcast on Monday 6 May revealed that Clinton was enlisted to ask the British rock legends (who disbanded in 1980 following death of drummer Jon Bonham) to get back together last year for the Superstorm Sandy benefit concert in New York City. “He asked, they said no”.

The former president of the United States reportedly asked the group to reform for the 12-12-12 benefit concert.

Led Zeppelin last played publicly at a one-night reunion in London in 2007. There were 20 million online requests for some 18,000 seats of the O2 Arena where the band played.

According to CBS television network webcast, 60 Minutes Overtime, executive director of Robin Hood Foundation (which organized the concert) David Saltzman, said he and film executive Harvey Weinstein flew to Washington DC late last year to enlist Clinton’s assistance.

Clinton agreed to cajole the surviving band members Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, who were all in Washington to attend a celebration of their work at December’s Kennedy Center Honors gala, just days before the Hurricane Sandy benefit. But they could not be persuaded to perform.

“Harvey Weinstein had this great idea that we could enlist Bill Clinton to convince Led Zeppelin to reunite. The President was terrific – ‘I really wanna do this, this will be a fantastic thing, I love Led Zeppelin’. And Bill Clinton himself asked Led Zeppelin to reunite, and they wouldn’t do it,” Saltzman said.

The concert at Madison Square Garden was co-produced by the Democrat donor Weinstein and went ahead without the Seventies rock icons.

The show featured several British artists like The Who, Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger and Roger Waters of  Pink Floyd and raised around $50m (?32m) to help those affected by the superstorm, which devastated large swaths of the North-eastern US and Caribbean in October 2012.

The concert also saw surviving members of grunge pioneers Nirvana, Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear, reunited for the first time since the death of frontman Kurt Cobain in 1994, appearing alongside  Paul McCartney as he closed the show.

The show was broadcast live across six continents.