On stage Led Zeppelin were rated the best rock band of all time. But the 1970s group produced some of their most distinctive sounds back in their hotels. These ranged from the thrilling percussion of chairs breaking against walls to the clangour of television sets smashing through windows, sometimes overlaid by the thunder of a motorbike ripping down a corridor.

More than 20m fans have scrambled to register for 20,000 seats at a one-off comeback concert by the most celebrated exponents of debauchery on tour since the Vikings. It will be the first time Led Zeppelin have played together in 19 years, although their albums continue to sell in their millions and their song Stairway to Heaven retains the record for the most radio plays in the history of popular music.

“Stairlift to heaven”, a wry headline pronounced last week on the heavy metal band who were louder than Deep Purple, more dangerous than the Rolling Stones and wrecked more hotel rooms than the Who. Their antics make the rebellious posturings of Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty seem tame by comparison.

Jimmy Page, the group’s founder and guitarist, was once a baby-faced, axe-wielding heroin addict fond of wearing a Nazi uniform to transvestite clubs. Sometimes he had to be led back to his hotel and handcuffed to the toilet for safe keeping. His obsession with the occult compelled him to buy a country pile near Loch Ness that had once belonged to the satanist Aleister Crowley. Now a doughfaced 63-year-old married man and father of three, Page was awarded an OBE in 2005 for his work with poor Brazilian children.

Robert Plant, 59, remembers little of the 12 years when he was the group’s bare-chested, preening singer whose huge voice inspired generations of big-haired, tight-trousered heavy metal screamers. “I’m a golden god,” he once shouted from a hotel balcony. He is now “a bit of a saddo” who watches the History Channel and National Geographic.

The “quiet one” of the group was John Paul Jones, 61, a bassist, keyboard player and general musical fixer whose survival strategy was to go for long walks, although he liked group “therapy” with female fans.

One key figure will be missing from the charity lineup at London’s O2 Arena on November 26, alongside Pete Townshend, Bill Wyman and the Rhythm Kings, Paolo Nutini and Foreigner. The death of John Bonham, Led Zeppelin’s drummer, precipitated the group’s break-up 27 years ago. His son Jason, a renowned percussionist in his own right, will take his place.

Bonham’s drumming was so ferocious that he sometimes broke his extra-strong sticks and continued playing with his hands. Fatally, he also liked to hit the bottle. On September 24, 1980, after a breakfast of four quadruple vodkas washed down with more booze during a rehearsal for a Windsor concert, he was put to bed in Page’s nearby house and was later found dead, having choked on his vomit.

Such self-indulgence was not uncommon in a band that by 1973 had sold more albums than any group in the world, including the Beatles and the Rolling Stones (Led Zeppelin’s total sales are estimated at 300m albums). Their private jet, Starship, was equipped with a lavishly appointed bedroom where they would entertain women.

The demolition of one hotel suite was chronicled by Richard Cole, their tour manager and biographer: “Chairs crashed against walls. Couches soared out of shattered windows. A television set followed close behind, exploding on an air conditioning unit more than a dozen storeys below. Hearing the commotion, I sprinted down the hall, joined by a couple of our security men. The door to Bonham’s room was ajar and as we stormed inside he was hovering near the pool table, plotting his next move. ‘Well, don’t just stand there!’ he roared.”

Bonham also featured in a notorious orgy at the Edgewater Inn in Seattle in 1969. The band had caught some mud sharks and a blonde groupie was stripped naked and a bag of fish entrails was emptied over her as she writhed about with Cole and Bonham, reported Spin, the American movie magazine. By this account Bonham grabbed a shark and performed a “sex act” with the woman. Another version holds that it was a red snapper.

Nostalgia can screen out a lot of wrinkles, as the Rolling Stones, Bryan Ferry and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys can attest. But given the disagreements between Led Zeppelin, their comeback, so often announced but only twice fulfilled – for Live Aid in 1985 and at an Atlantic Records anniversary gig three years later – seems as unlikely as the Police’s reunion earlier this year, 23 years after they parted ways.

Some tension had always existed between Page, once a star in his own right, and Plant, who eclipsed him on stage. Their rift with Jones was revealed when the trio met up in New York in 1996 to be inducted into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame. “Thank you to my friends for finally remembering my phone number,” Jones declared.

Shortly before, Plant had answered an inquiry about Jones’s whereabouts with the reply: “He’s parking the car.” Jones never quite forgave him for the put-down.

Harvey Goldsmith, the music promoter, said that getting Led Zeppelin back together required him to employ an approach somewhere between “a United Nations negotiator and a Relate counsellor”. So why are the band’s survivors doing it? They certainly don’t need the money and seem happy to pursue separate careers.

The catalyst is their mentor Ahmet Ertegun, a founder of Atlantic Records who opened up America to the band and gave them unprecedented artistic control over their own records. The concert is in tribute to Ertegun, who died last year aged 83.

Led Zeppelin’s mind-blowing performances might have been delivered via 70,000 watts of amplification, but they took pride in melodic discipline and the controlled ingenuity of arrangements. Their rock-infused interpretation of the blues incorporated reggae, soul, funk, jazz, classical, Indian, Arabic and country music. Their definitive opus Stairway to Heaven relied on the tinkling of Celtic bells.

Jones recalled: “There was a lot of acoustic music as well as the rock. We had a big musical palette. But underneath it all was a great rhythm section. We were all influenced by soul music. I always thought Zeppelin used to swing. We swung like a bastard.” The result, many critics agree, was a musical influence that ranked only behind the triumvirate of Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Bob Dylan.

In a sense, the Swinging Sixties were just getting into their stride in 1968, when Led Zeppelin was hatched. Eschewing the radio-imposed constraints of the three-minute single, they lured rock fans out of theatres and into stadiums.

Their name is said to have been inspired by Keith Moon, the late drummer for the Who, who was originally going to play in the group but thought they would go down like “a lead balloon”. The “a” was dropped from the “lead” in case Americans pronounced it “leed”. At one of their first gigs the band were billed as “the Nobs” after the aristocrat Eva von Zeppelin, a relative of the creator of the famous airship, threatened to sue over its album cover showing the Hindenburg dirigible crashing in flames.

The band had begun as the New Yardbirds, a reconstruction of Page’s old group. Page, born in Heston, Middlesex, was a respected session guitarist who had played on records by the Kinks and the Who. He brought in Jones, originally from Sidcup in Kent, who had arranged a couple of songs for the Rolling Stones. Bonham, born in Redditch, Worcestershire, was a top session drummer and Plant, from West Bromwich, had a high wailing voice that could rise above Page’s solos.

From the outset, the band’s output was prolific. In their first year they managed to complete four US and four UK concert tours, as well as find time to release a second album which they recorded almost entirely on the road. Naturally, they found a compelling need for distraction.

On a record-breaking month-long tour of America in 1978, their manager feared the worst when he was asked to hire a motorbike and a 10ft python. The bike was for riding down the corridor on the ninth floor of the group’s hotel on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip. Since the local Yellow Pages did not list serpent hire, Cole never discovered what the reptile was for.

Perhaps Zep’s reunion would be a fitting occasion for the old codgers to demonstrate what they had in mind for that snake.

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