The Band in 1973

Yes, a blog fed by my own obsession of the Rock God Jimmy Page was entirely necessary!

If you aren't a fan of Led Zeppelin or Jimmy Page in general, then you probably don't belong on this blog. Either way, this story takes place back when "fan-girling" was equivalent to wanna-be groupies.

It is late summer (which also feels like spring, no doubt) in 1973 in London, a week after the end of Led Zeppelin's North American tour. Robert is notably losing his voice, but he refuses to stop working. Jimmy is frequently becoming ill on and off from all the hard work, and John Paul is feeling extremely left out. Bonzo has been lapping up his rise to stardom after the release of Moby Dick a few years ago; all the dudes think it's rad and all the girls think he's hot.

Even though they have the rest of the year to themselves, they spend a lot of their time doing promotional activities, which rides on Jimmy's nerves. The band is a tad irritable at this stage in their 13 year reign, but Jimmy and Robert always make time to goof off.

John Paul Jones is homesick more often than not and has considered, more than once, quitting the band altogether. Luckily, however, Peter Grant (the band's manager) had convinced him to stay. As he later put it in an interview:

"I didn't want to harm the group, but I didn't want my family to fall apart either. We toured a huge amount in those early days. We were all very tired and under pressure and it just came to a head. When I first joined the band, I didn't think it would go on for that long, two or three years perhaps, and then I'd carry on with my career as a musician and doing movie music."

What's more, he feels incredibly guilty not staying faithful to his wife since '68, Maureen. Bonzo hardly ever obliges in sex with groupies, because he claims it makes him sick to think how he would feel if his wife had cheated on him. But none of this fazes Jimmy or Robert, who were both extremely busy buttering up the public eye.

During their last concert of 1973 in Madison Square Gardens (or MSG), the band began the first filming of "The Song Remains the Same", which was released in 1976. As Jimmy Page would later say, "This was Led Zeppelin's peak."

All of the information used on this tab was accurate, and most of the band information in the story will be correct as well.