Jimmy Page Was Almost Killed in His Sleep by His Friend
Jimmy Page had a major impact on classic rock music, and not just because his best guitar solos are some of the greatest ever. Led Zeppelin’s founding guitarist assembled the perfect band of musicians who were just as talented as him. As a producer, his recording philosophy changed everything about making hard rock albums in the 1970s. Now imagine he never made it to Led Zeppelin. It almost happened. Page was nearly killed in his sleep by his friend and Yardbirds bandmate Chris Dreja.
Jimmy Page was nearly killed in a near collision with his friend at the wheel
Rumors of a band member’s death dogged one famous English band in the late 1960s (we think you know who we mean). Page was nearly an actual casualty of a tragic accident while he slept.
The guitarist didn’t drive, so he often rode to Yardbirds gigs with his friend and bandmate Chris Dreja. The late-night sojourns back from gigs often found the bassist at the wheel as the guitar player rested. As Dreja told Brad Tolinski for the book Light & Shade: Conversations With Jimmy Page, one ride home almost led to Dreja killing Page with a bit of high-speed driving:
“I owned a Mini Cooper S, which was so light and so ridiculously overpowered. Stupid car — but what a drive! We’d come back from gigs late at night, and back then, there were hardly any [highways]. You’d have to drive miles through country lanes.
“Jimmy doesn’t know that I nearly killed him. I never told him this story, but I was coming around this corner out of a village at eighty or ninety miles an hour, and there was a f****** donkey in the road. He’s asleep. I missed this donkey by this much. We would have been legends in our own death.”
Chris Dreja on how he almost killed Jimmy Page
Dreja also said he would violently swerve back and forth to see how much he could make Page’s head bang before he woke up. The bassist’s reckless driving could have killed both of them. With Dreja at the wheel, Page was lucky to survive long enough to form Led Zeppelin.
Page had Dreja contribute to ‘Led Zeppelin I’
Page assembled Led Zeppelin quickly when the Yardbirds disbanded. His bandmates scattered. Singer Keith Relf and drummer Jim McCarty reconvened in the short-lived band Renaissance, per AllMusic.
Dreja put down his instruments to become a photographer, which is how he contributed to Led Zeppelin I. The front cover was a reworking of the Hindenburg disaster, but the album’s back cover featured Dreja’s photo of Led Zeppelin’s four members clustered together in a two-by-two pose.
Page didn’t die — luckily for classic rock fans — and he helped create some of the best music of the 1970s. Led Zeppelin’s debut album ignited the band’s legendary career, but singer Robert Plant almost ended they band with a couple of scary car accidents.
Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant didn’t have good luck with cars
Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham collected cars and hot rods. He raced a dragster in the movie The Song Remains the Same. Bonzo once impulsively paid $85,000 cash for a Rolls Royce just to upstage the snooty salesman.
Page nearly died in a near-miss, and Bonham sat behind the wheel of several fast cars. Yet it was Zep singer Robert Plant who had the worst vehicular luck. He, his wife, and their children sustained severe injuries during an August 1975 vacation in Greece when their car went off the road. Plant wrote from a wheelchair when the band started work on their 1976 album, Presence, while he lived as a tax exile while his family recovered at home.
Plant had another car crash that almost derailed Led Zeppelin. While on a break between tours in 1970, Plant spun his Jaguar off the road and was lucky to survive. Part of the car’s windshield lodged itself in his skull. According to a report by Bloomberg, Plant suffered memory loss because of his injuries.
Jimmy Page was almost killed by his friend Chris Dreja’s reckless driving. Both were lucky to avoid hitting a donkey at high speed while heading back from a Yardbirds gig. Yet they survived. Page found fame in Led Zeppelin, and Dreja’s back cover photo on the debut album was his contribution to the band’s legacy.
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