“John Paul Jones kept to himself, but Jimmy Page took great delight in showing you what he’d been doing the night before”: Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson on touring with Led Zeppelin, John Bonham’s pranks and Jimmy Page’s ‘fruity’ Polaroids

Jethro Tull and Led Zeppelin.

In the summer of 1969, Led Zeppelin embarked upon their third North American tour, incorporating a host of festival appearances alongside their own arena shows. Fellow Englishmen Jethro Tull were given the opportunity to support Jimmy Page’s group at their headline gigs, playing for 35 minutes a night, and frontman Ian Anderson had fond memories of the trek, recalling Zeppelin and Tull having “a kind of football team rivalry.”

“After The Beatles, American audiences still had a lot of curiosity about what we weird Brits to offer,” he recalled. “Jimmy Page was confident about how Zeppelin would go down, but the other guys were gobsmacked to get so much adulation so early.”