The only person Jimmy Page could relate to after Led Zeppelin ended
Being in a world-famous, era-defining band is already a unique and rare experience. It’s not one that most can relate to. But then to have that already niche experience end in a collapse when the band splits up? Who is a rock star like Jimmy Page supposed to turn to for support for that issue?
I guess this is exactly why they say it’s so important to make friends with your peers. Rather than seeing them as competition, you should see them as your community because who knows when you might need a friendly shoulder to cry on when the world’s most niche heartbreak hits, and your other friends wouldn’t have a clue in the world what it feels like.
Sure, Jimmy Page had a lot of friends in high places. Luckily, he had put the social work into embedding himself within the music world, so when Led Zeppelin split up in 1980, there were surely plenty of people he could call.
He could’ve called up Paul McCartney or one of the Beatles. However, with the timeline landing the Zeppelin split in December, his old London peers were a bit occupied with their own grief after the death of John Lennon.
Even a lot of his musical friends wouldn’t really be able to relate. The Rolling Stones could appreciate how hard it is to lose a bandmate as they’d dealt with the death of Brian Jones, but it wasn’t exactly like they were all very close at the end, and the loss of Jones hadn’t led to the complete end of the band like the loss of John Bonham did for Zeppelin.
Most of his mates were simply busy, either still playing with their bands or now settled into their solo careers, so despite his status, even Jimmy Page didn’t exactly have a wealth of people to turn to who would understand the unique heartache of a band ending.
Luckily, though, one man didn’t just get it, but was going through it too. At the time, Paul Rodgers was “still recovering” from the breakdown of Bad Company. He’d put a lot into the group, even reportedly turned down an offer to replace Jim Morrison in The Doors to instead commit to the band.
Bad Company and Led Zeppelin were connected by their manager, Peter Grant, so Rodger’s band also felt the heavy hit of grief when Bonham died, and Grant seemed to lose all interest in working on music. Adding to already bubbling tensions, the group collapsed.
Mick Ralphs said, “Paul wanted a break, and truthfully, we all needed to stop.” In hindsight, they could see that it needed to happen, reflecting, “Bad Company had become bigger than us all and to continue would have destroyed someone or something.” But at the time, it was a messy and painful end.
Having known each other for a long time, connecting through Grant a long way back and spending time together jamming during happier days, Page and Rodgers found themselves reconnecting.
“Paul was one of the few people who could probably relate to what I was going through,” Page said later, as in the haze of their nuanced heartaches, the two friends leaned on each other while going through something few could understand.
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