Jimmy Page Kept Getting Sick During His 1st Tour Amid Awful Conditions
Jimmy Page is one of the most famous musicians of all time, and he is most known for his role as a guitarist in the rock band Led Zeppelin. Page developed a love for the guitar at a young age, and growing up he toured in a band called Neil Christian & The Crusaders. Bob Spitz’s 2021 biography Led Zeppelin: The Biography reveals that while touring with Neil Christian & the Crusaders, Page became sick with mononucleosis.
Jimmy Page became sick while touring
Page joined Neil Christian & the Crusaders when he was a teenager. Because of his age, he had to get permission from his parents to join the group.
The band performed as often as possible and often took multiple gigs in one night. According to Led Zeppelin: The Biography, Neil Christian & the Crusaders spent so much time in their touring van, an old ambulance, that Page started getting sick.
“All the traveling to one-nighter gigs made me ill,” Page said in Led Zeppelin: The Biography. “I used to get sick in the van.”
He continued, “I remember we were driving to a Liverpool club once and the van broke down and we had to hitchhike. . . . We didn’t really have any money, so we ended up sleeping in this little room in the club, in the middle of the desk chairs and the f***ing first aid cabinet, and it was really cold.”
The guitarist occasionally missed performances
In Led Zeppelin: The Biography, it’s revealed that Page was diagnosed with a virus called mononucleosis.
“I kept getting glandular fever,” Page said in the biography.
Because he was sick, Page had to spend weeks recovering in bed at his parents’ house. This caused Page to miss multiple gigs with Neil Christian & the Crusaders.
Spitz writes that while Page was absent, the band “replaced” Page with “Albert Lee, a seminal British guitarist, and occasionally by session player Joe Moretti or Tony Harvey from Vince Taylor & the Playboys.”
Jimmy Page was also bored performing with Neil Christian & the Crusaders
Joining Neil Christian & the Crusaders was an amazing opportunity for Page at first, as it gave him the chance to be a paid touring artist.
However, in addition to getting sick, Page soon became bored of touring with the band and the repetitiveness of the setlist and crowds.
“The numbers we were doing were really out of character for the audiences that were coming to hear us play,” Page said in Led Zeppelin: The Biography. “It was just disheartening to go up to, say, Rushton or somewhere like that and find ten people having a punch-up. In the end, it just didn’t appear to be going anywhere, so jacked it in.”
Page decided to quit the band and join art school so he could have a break and time to recenter.
