Away from the tour, I didn’t live that far from where Jimmy lived in those days, in Sussex, and a lot of time we would go to each other’s houses for lunch on a Sunday, that sort of thing. But it was a different Jimmy Page once you got on tour. That’s true of any artist, but magnified in Jimmy’s case because of the vastness of what Led Zeppelin had become by then [1973]. All of them were normal types when they were at home. John Paul Jones is still with the same wife now he had then. It was probably more difficult for Jimmy, though, to build a solid foundation of real friends, because he is by nature a little reclusive. Then becoming as big as they got, that sealed his fate, in a way.
—Phil Carson, former Atlantic Records Senior Vice President, Classic Rock Special: Led Zeppelin, 9th Edition, 2025
