Jimmy Page used to stride on stage like a dark wizard of rock, double neck guitar slung low and dragon suit catching the spotlights. For many fans, it is hard to picture that same man padding through a silent house, carrying a teapot instead of a Les Paul.
Yet in his eighties, that is where Page has landed: a private, almost monastic chapter built around a Gothic mansion, a much younger poet partner, and an obsessive devotion to art over spectacle. This is not a retirement story. It is a late-life plot twist.
The New York mansion that never existed
Over the years, tabloids have tried to relocate Jimmy Page into various fantasy settings, including a mythical Manhattan mansion where the guitar god supposedly broods above Central Park. It makes for lurid copy, but it is simply not true. Page has not decamped to New York at all, and his long term home remains a Victorian mansion in London’s Holland Park.
The house is The Tower House, a Grade I listed Gothic revival fever dream designed in the 1870s by architect William Burges. Inside are stained glass windows, starry ceilings painted with zodiac signs, carved stone fireplaces and themed rooms that look less like a rock star pad and more like a medieval imagination given brick and mortar.
So the reality is stranger than any New York gossip. Page does not live in a sleek city penthouse. He lives in what amounts to a private castle, half art museum, half haunted storybook, tucked behind the trees of West London.
Life inside a Gothic London fortress
Step past the heavy front door and you are in an environment that borders on the occult without needing a single pentagram. Every surface at Tower House seems to carry some symbol, story or in-joke from the Victorian mind that created it. Living there requires a certain tolerance for drama even when the amps are switched off.
Page treats the place less like property and more like a living organism. Friends describe him as a custodian, constantly monitoring temperature, light and vibration so that murals do not peel and woodwork does not crack. The man who once punished Marshall stacks now frets over central heating and cracks in plaster.
That protective instinct has gone public. When neighbor Robbie Williams pushed to excavate an underground complex next door, Page personally went before the local planning committee, warning that heavy construction could damage Tower House’s fragile structure and interior finishes. The resulting row dragged on for years and put into plain view just how far he is willing to go to defend his gothic refuge.
Scarlett Sabet: poet, partner, provocation
Sharing that fortress is Scarlett Sabet, a British poet and performer whose career was already underway when she met Page at a poetry event in London. She went on to publish several collections, from Rocking Underground to Camille, while their friendship quietly shifted into a relationship around 2014. Reports put their age gap at roughly 45 to 46 years, with Sabet in her mid twenties and Page around 70 when they got together.
If that number makes you blink, you are not alone. Their partnership has become a lightning rod for comments from fans who are happy to worship 1970s excess but suddenly grow puritanical when an older rock icon falls for a thirty something poet. The irony is hard to miss: people who cheered songs about squeezing lemons now clutch pearls over two consenting adults building a life together.
What makes the pairing interesting is not just the scandalous maths. Sabet is not a nostalgia trophy. She is an artist in her own right, steeped in Beat poetry, mysticism and performance, which means Page has ended up with something rarer than a groupie fantasy – a partner who pushes him intellectually and creatively instead of just orbiting his legend.
From hotel room chaos to herbal tea
In interviews, Sabet has painted a home life that would horrify anyone still chasing the Led Zeppelin tour bus. She describes Page as a funny, devoted family man who no longer drinks, preferring a quiet routine of reading, music and conversation to parties or clubs. The couple rarely entertain, aside from visits from his children and her siblings, and she talks about feeling deeply safe within the house’s ornate walls.
For a guitarist once framed as a kind of Dionysian sorcerer, this is a drastic rebrand. The wildest thing happening at Tower House on most nights is the sound of a kettle, the rustle of notebook pages and perhaps the low murmur of whatever archival recording Page is obsessing over that week. It is domestic, yes, but there is something almost occult about how deliberately he has banished chaos.
Out of that domestic stillness came Catalyst, a spoken word album written and performed by Sabet and produced by Page. Recorded at Tower House using a mix of analogue and digital techniques, the record sets eight of her poems against atmospheric soundscapes, released as a deluxe etched vinyl complete with a photo booklet and liner notes from both of them. For a man associated with screaming guitar, choosing to frame his partner’s voice instead of his own instrument might be the most quietly subversive move of his career.
The architect who became the archivist
To understand why this slow, controlled existence fits Page so well, you have to remember how he got here. Before Led Zeppelin, he was a terrifyingly efficient session guitarist, playing on British hits by everyone from Tom Jones to The Kinks, and earning a reputation as one of rock’s most versatile players long before arena crowds knew his name. When he finally took control of a band, he did it with the precision of a studio assassin.
That band, of course, was born when Page took the remnants of The Yardbirds, hired three “new boys” and rebranded them as Led Zeppelin. From the first gigs under the transitional name The New Yardbirds to the release of their debut album, he operated as guitarist, producer and chief architect of a sound that fused blues, folk and brute-force volume into something genuinely new.
The same control freak streak later drove him to remaster the entire Zeppelin catalog, album by album, adding carefully chosen companion discs of alternate takes and rough mixes. In one interview about the deluxe reissues, Page stressed that these were not throwaway extras but a way to let listeners hear how songs like those on Physical Graffiti evolved in the studio, insisting that “the criteria was always quality” when selecting material.
His curatorial instinct extends beyond audio. In his large format book Jimmy Page: The Anthology, he opens up a private archive of guitars, stage clothes, set lists, photos and personal memorabilia, guiding readers through decades of artifacts with obsessive detail. It is essentially a museum catalog for a museum that happens to be his life.
Then vs now: Page’s life in two acts
| 1970s Jimmy Page | Jimmy Page in his eighties |
|---|---|
| Dragon suits, double neck guitars, occult rumors and marathon arena shows. | Black clothes, low profile, carefully guarded privacy inside a Gothic townhouse. |
| Hotel room destruction, jet travel, groupies and chemical experiments. | Tea in the kitchen, poetry readings, restoration budgets and planning meetings. |
| Chasing louder riffs and bigger stages at any cost. | Chasing microscopic improvements in remasters, book layouts and historic preservation. |
What this quiet era means for fans
Page rarely steps back into full public glare, but when he does, it is usually to frame the story rather than relive the circus. His participation in the authorized documentary Becoming Led Zeppelin, where he and his surviving bandmates opened their personal archives and memories to filmmakers, is a textbook example – he is willing to unseal the vault as long as he can help control how the myth is told.
For older fans, there is something almost shocking about the idea that the man behind “Whole Lotta Love” has settled into a life of quiet companionship and historical stewardship. Yet in a music world cluttered with farewell tours and hologram cash grabs, refusing to become a nostalgia act might be the most rock and roll decision of all. Jimmy Page’s riffs built the temples of 1970s excess; his eighties are about guarding the ruins, tending the fire and choosing, very deliberately, who is allowed inside.
