People who think being in a rock band is easy are totally wrong. It’s a job people love, and many dream of doing it, but it’s also really hard work. Touring as a musician means doing the same thing over and over, sometimes having too much fun, and feeling super tired all the time. This is even truer for a huge band like Led Zeppelin.
Led Zeppelin started in 1968 when Jimmy Page, a guitarist from another band called The Yardbirds, wanted to make a new group. He picked three amazing musicians: Robert Plant to sing, John Bonham to play drums, and John Paul Jones to play bass and keyboards. They were already a little famous in England, but they were about to get way bigger. In 1969, they made two awesome albums that changed music forever.
All four guys loved playing their songs, but performing every night, especially on big tours in the United States, could turn their dream into something tough. By the mid-1970s, John Bonham was tired of the crazy stadium tours. He missed his family back home and didn’t like being so famous. Plus, he was having a hard time with drugs and alcohol. Sometimes, he even said he wanted to quit the band.
Their manager, Peter Grant, always found ways to convince Bonham to stay. He’d offer him money or cool stuff like a new Lamborghini car. But even with all that, the band members started to argue a lot. Life as rock stars in the 1970s had big ups and downs, and it wasn’t easy for them to get along.
I talked to a photographer named Carinthia West, who was friends with Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood from The Rolling Stones. She told me something interesting: she didn’t see much of Keith Richards or Charlie Watts, even though they were in the same band as her friends. She said that rock bands might look like a big happy family, but it’s not always true. Even The Beatles broke up in 1970 because they needed space from each other. If they hadn’t, they’d have gone crazy!
Led Zeppelin had similar problems in the late 1970s, and things got really tough before John Bonham sadly passed away. The four members started to feel bitter toward each other while making their last two albums, Presence and In Through The Out Door. They split into two groups: Jimmy Page and John Bonham liked to stay up late partying, while Robert Plant and John Paul Jones focused on working in the studio, showing up on time and ready to go. Page and Bonham would record their parts late at night when they weren’t at their best.
In a 2007 interview with Q magazine, John Paul Jones talked about his time in Led Zeppelin. He said that even though they sounded great on stage, they weren’t super close off stage. “We get along fine,” he said about himself, Plant, and Page, who are still alive. “But we never hung out together. When we weren’t on tour, we didn’t see each other. I think that helped the band stay together longer and keep things peaceful. We weren’t really friends.”
Jones said being in Led Zeppelin was more like having coworkers than best buddies. “We didn’t grow up together and then get famous,” he explained. “Jimmy put the band together.” Jones and Page first met when they were both playing music for other people in studios, long before Led Zeppelin started. “Even back then, we’d see each other at work every day, but we never hung out,” Jones said. “In those days, you didn’t hire your friends for studio jobs.”
