Why Jimmy Page didn’t attend the funeral of Robert Plant’s son ?

Whilst Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant is one of rock music’s definitive characters, and is the ostensible ‘Golden God’, possessing a vocal range that is otherworldly, he is so much more than this.

As well as being the tip of the spear for one of the most influential bands of all time, he is also one of the most approachable rockers out there and has always retained the humble spirit of his West Midlands origins, with this affable demeanour imbuing his stories with a captivating essence, told in the way you might expect a veteran of the pub to do.

Despite being universally lauded as a musician and person, Plant’s life hasn’t been simple. The loss of his best friend, Led Zeppelin’s drummer John Bonham in 1980 ranks amongst the worst, but undoubtedly the most catastrophic event that occurred was the tragic loss of his five-year-old son Karac in 1977, following a stomach illness.

Notoriously, the band were on tour in New Orleans when Plant was told the devastating news. Of course, the tour was immediately cancelled as he raced to get home and be with his family. When it came to the funeral though, only one of Plant’s bandmates was there, John Bonham, with guitarist Jimmy Page and bassist John Paul Jones nowhere to be seen.

In a 2018 interview with AXS TV in 2018, Plant looked back on the death of his son. “Well it wasn’t easy,” he recalled, “especially in the light of the fact that there’s the whole hysteria that surrounded the mid to late seventies. It was anything but conducive to normal family life.”

The rock icon continued: “But we pulled tight together and both my wife and I, we had strong families so … and good support, I mean, John Bonham from Zeppelin and his wife Pat, they were magnificent with us and helped us a lot.”

Accompanying Plant on his flight home after receiving the news were Bonham, the singer’s personal assistant, Dennis Sheehan, and the band’s tour manager, Richard Cole. As reported by Rolling Stone, Plant allegedly said the following to Cole regarding Page and Jones not being at the funeral: “Maybe they don’t have as much respect for me as I do for them. Maybe they’re not the friends I thought they were.”

Many different accounts exist for Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones’ absences at the funeral, but the most common claims are that the guitarist was on a binge and the bassist was on vacation, with both sounding pretty callous from every angle. As pointed out by Cheatsheet, Page was later quoted as saying: “We were all mates. We had to give the man some space.”

However, Plant has been clear in his thoughts on the matter, and space was not what he needed, he needed his friends. Speaking in an interview with OnStage in 2005, he reiterated his thoughts on them not turning up to say farewell to Karac, noting something of a cultural difference between him and the two missing bandmates.

“The other guys were [from] the South [of England],” he said, “and didn’t have the same type of social etiquette that we have up here in the North that could actually bridge that uncomfortable chasm with all the sensitivities required… to console.”