Stairway To Heaven (16 page)

W
e're back!”

The elderly woman in the gift shop at the Edgewater Inn in Seattle looked up at Bonzo. “Who are you?” she asked.

“We were here last year,” he said. “Don't you remember? We're some of your top fishermen!”

We had come down to the gift shop to get some fishing rods for the evening. I felt a little tense, wondering if the stories of the Shark Episode—which had spread literally throughout the world—had reached the Edgewater staff itself yet. This woman, however, seemed to have other priorities. Most immediately, her attention was devoted to straightening up the candy rack next to the cash register.

Within a few minutes, we were dipping our fishing poles into Puget Sound. “It's good to be home,” Robert said.

Amazingly, we picked up right where we had left off the last time around. Bonzo caught a couple of mud sharks within the first half hour. Jimmy caught one, too. As the night progressed, we reeled them in like old pros.

“Someone must have just restocked the ocean,” Bonzo hypothesized.

As the night wore on and our fishing expedition continued, three rather foxy teenage girls, two blondes and a brunette, knocked on our hotel room door at about 3
A.M
. They wore miniskirts, their tits were falling out of their blouses, and they had “Fuck me” written all over their smiles. It may have
been early Sunday morning, but they didn't appear to be on their way to church.

Bonham and I, however, were concentrating on our fishing. We looked at each other and shook our heads. “Sorry,” I said. “We're fishing tonight. Come back tomorrow!”

Oddly enough, even the groupies bored us sometimes. As Led Zeppelin's fame and fortune allowed us to live out our fantasies, we were constantly looking for something new to entertain us. The fishing was all we needed for the moment. These particular girls were seductive-looking and obviously in the mood for a little recreation. But there would be girls in other cities; the fishing was a “now or never” proposition.

By this trip to Seattle, we realized that the stench of the sharks could become crippling after a day or two of sitting in the hotel room. “It's hard keeping the booze down when there's this putrid, fishy smell everywhere,” Bonham complained.

“Maybe so,” I said, “but you'd need a room deodorizer the size of Cheyenne, Wyoming, to freshen up this place!”

We finally decided to rent an extra “fishing room” where we could toss our catches for the day. On this particular trip, we reeled in about thirty sharks over a two-night period and threw them in a pile in the middle of the room.

“What are we gonna do with these suckers now?” Bonzo asked.

“I don't know,” I said. “Let's try stacking them up in the closet. If we close the closet door, maybe the smell won't be as bad.”

In a rather orderly fashion, Bonzo and I began to place one shark atop the other in the wardrobe closet, pausing every minute or two for another swig of booze. When they were finally perfectly arranged, we gently closed the closet door and turned in for the night.

The next morning, we were awakened by screams. A maid was running hysterically down the hallway, apparently having made a rapid exit from the fishing room. She had been cleaning the room and followed the odor to the closet. When she opened the closet door, a tidal wave of sharks—all thirty of them—collapsed on top of her, knocking her to the floor and sending her scrambling for her life. Perhaps she thought that she had been attacked by alien monsters.

A few minutes later, the hotel manager rushed into the room to inspect the damage. As he surveyed the carnage, he placed the palms of his hands on his balding head, apparently as a way of displaying his disgust. If he had had any hair, he probably would have pulled it out, one clump at a time.

“Don't you fellows have any sense of decency?” he said. “Don't you have any respect for private property?”

I looked at John Paul and whispered, “I think the answer's ‘no' to both questions.”

John Paul and I headed back to our rooms to try to get back to sleep. “Has everyone in America lost his sense of humor?” he mumbled.

When we checked out of the Edgewater later that day, the hotel had charged us a $250 cleaning fee to wash the carpets and remove the fish stains from the closet.

Our reaction to the Edgewater incident was a classic example of the band feeling its power and perhaps exhibiting some of the snobbery that can come with success and wealth. It's easy to start thinking that you can get away with things that the average person might not even consider doing, particularly since you usually can. The $250 damages charge really didn't mean anything to us. It was a small price to pay for a little fun.

 

As Bonzo once said, “We're in a place now where we don't have to take shit from
anyone
!” That meant coming down hard on people who seemed to run counter to our own best interests. On the '70 tour, that often translated into roughing up bootleggers when we caught them at work.

As the band's popularity mushroomed, so did the demand for bootleg tapes and vinyl of their live performances. The two albums in the record stores weren't enough. Many fans wanted a lot more of Led Zeppelin than we had given them.

During every concert on that North American tour, Peter and I were always looking for tape recorders in the crowd. “It's money out of our pocket,” Peter complained. “Those bastards aren't gonna get away with it.”

In the early minutes of our performance in Vancouver, Peter spotted a man crouched near the front of the stage, operating a sophisticated-looking recorder and holding a microphone overhead.

“Look at that bastard with the mike and the tape machine!” Peter growled. “He's right out in the open. What a fool!”

Some members of the crew and I stormed over, grabbed the fellow by the shirt collar, lifted him to his feet, and shouted, “You can't do that here, you asshole! If you want a recording, go to the record store and buy one like everybody else!”

The man was hoisted into the air and dropped in a heap onto the floor. We grabbed the recorder and smashed it against a security barricade, shattering it into a dozen pieces.

“Enjoy the rest of the show!” I bellowed as we turned and walked backstage.

Unfortunately for us, the man wasn't making bootleg tapes. He wasn't even an overzealous fan.

“There's a stagehand who just told me that the guy we beat up is a government official!” I told Peter. “He works for the city and measures the music's decibel level.”

Before the show was over, Vancouver police showed up backstage, and questioned us for nearly an hour. Fortunately, the cops didn't seem eager to pursue a case that might draw a lot of headlines. We agreed to pay for the recorder, and the incident was forgotten.

 

As we left the Northwest, we made our way to Los Angeles by way of Denver. As much as we yearned to return to the Château Marmont in L.A., Peter insisted that we move down the street to the Continental Hyatt House on Sunset Boulevard. Since the murder of Sharon Tate and four of her friends by the Charlie Manson cult in 1969, Peter had become paranoid about security. The Marmont, with its isolated bungalows spread over the hotel grounds, seemed like too easy a target for someone with foul play on his mind. Peter felt that a self-contained, high-rise hotel would offer us greater protection.

On that first stay at the Hyatt House, Plant and Bonham had already renamed it the “Riot House”—for obvious reasons. Girls on a Zeppelin safari swarmed through the lobby and crowded into elevators that took them to the ninth floor where we hibernated. And with no fishing to distract us, we would have found it silly to resist their invitations. There were girls everywhere—in the lobby, in the hallways, and inevitably in our beds. Sometimes the band and I would round up a few girls and pile them into the back of our stretch limousine, weighing it down so much that the trunk would become stuck on the pavement of the Riot House driveway, requiring a push off the curb so the car could negotiate its way onto Sunset Boulevard. It was absolute madness there for almost a week.

One afternoon, a seventeen-year-old approached me in the hotel lobby. “We've heard about Jimmy's whips,” she said. “Does he really use whips?”

“Do you like whips?” I asked.

“I love 'em!”

I had heard stories about Jimmy's affection for whips, too, but I had never seen them. He carried a small black box with him, and I presumed that might be where he stored them. Miss Pamela, who was one of Jimmy's girls in the U.S. during the early seventies, used to say that other girls claimed that Jimmy had used some whips from time to time, although they were never used on her.

I never found out whether Jimmy really had a weakness for whips. But there were other kinky paraphernalia that we used from time to time—most commonly handcuffs!

When we departed for a concert at the L.A. Forum, Bonham and I hand
cuffed two girls—a cute little brunette and her tall blonde friend—to the beds in our rooms. We wanted to make sure they'd be there when we returned. As Bonzo said, “We need something to slip into after a hard day's work! These girls look perfect for the job!”

As we snapped the handcuffs in place, you might have expected a hysterical reaction from the girls, struggling against their confinement, pleading to be released. But it never happened. They never complained about their temporary confinement.

“I've already called room service,” I told the girls as we were leaving. “A valet will bring up dinner for you at eight o'clock. There are also a few joints sitting here if you want some. If there's anything else you need, let room service know. Have a nice evening!”

When we returned from the concert, the girls were in the room waiting for us. They had eaten their dinner and, except for some minor irritation around their wrists, had no ill effects from their experience.

“Can we party now?” one of them asked.

“Why not,” Jimmy said, popping open a bottle of champagne.

The girls didn't leave for another twenty-four hours. No handcuffs were needed to keep them around.

I
n the final days of the spring 1970 North American tour, all of us were exhausted. Too much traveling, too little sleep, too much alcohol, too many drugs.

More than anyone, Robert seemed on the brink of collapse at times. He had been plagued by a cold for days, and his voice had taken a beating. It had become so ragged and hoarse that he could barely speak, much less sing. Professional pride would get him onto the stage each night, where he would push his voice as far as it would go. “Something's got to give,” he said in a gravelly voice in Salt Lake City, with frustration written all over his face. “My voice is really shot; I don't know how much longer I can last.”

We had humidifers operating around the clock in Robert's hotel room to try to soothe and preserve his voice. But nothing seemed to help. Each night, he had to struggle a little more than the previous night to get through the show.

In mid-April, we were in Phoenix, staying at the Biltmore Hotel. “Maybe if I relax a little—get out of the hotel for a few hours—I'll feel better,” he said. He asked me to schedule an afternoon of horseback riding.

Within an hour, he and a promotion man from Atlantic Records named Mario were out on a nearby trail with a couple of rented horses. Robert felt wonderful being out in the clean air. Ten minutes into the ride, however, it came to an abrupt end. Mario was thrown from his horse into a cactus. It took a doctor nearly half an hour to pull out all the thorns.

Later, Robert joked, “Actually, I did feel
much
better knowing it was Mario and not me who had to go through that ordeal.”

A physician in Phoenix examined Robert and didn't like what he saw. He was worried about long-term damage and insisted that we cancel the final concert on the tour, planned for the next night at the Las Vegas Convention Center. But Robert was reluctant. “Let me try it,” he said. “It's just one more gig. What a shame to let down the fans.”

Like the rest of the band, Robert was troubled by the thought of disappointing an audience. In a voice that was barely audible, he said, “I'll try drinking a lot of hot tea tonight, and maybe my voice will be good enough for one last performance.”

The next morning, however, Robert's voice was no better. Peter stepped in and took control of the situation. “That's it, Robert,” he said. “There will be no show tonight. You've sung twenty-nine concerts in thirty-one days. The doctor says that if you sing without a long rest, you could ruin your voice permanently. You're not going to risk destroying your career for one concert. I've already made the decision. We're going home.”

We flew directly from Phoenix to New York and then on to London. Following doctor's orders, Robert barely uttered a word on the trip home.

 

Back in England, Robert couldn't sit still. For a guy who often complained that the band didn't take enough time off, he was getting antsy just a week after returning home.

Robert told us he had been fighting with Maureen. Yes, life on the road was hectic, but at home, it was hell, at least for the moment. He thought maybe if he and Maureen got away—and took Jimmy with them on a working vacation—it could take the edge off their marital conflicts.

So barely more than a week after arriving back in England, Robert called Jimmy: “I'm ready to go back to work. Let's write some songs.”

In the year and a half since Led Zeppelin had been created, Robert's talents seemed to have evolved more dramatically than the others. He not only sang with more confidence, but he began to believe in himself as a song-writer. No, he didn't picture himself yet on a par with Jimmy—but he was on his way. He certainly didn't feel intimidated or insecure, even though he was writing with one of the best.

Jimmy and Robert began to see what they could put together. Accompanied by Robert's family and Charlotte Martin, they drove to South Wales, staying in a mountain cottage called Bron-Yr-Aur, which means “Golden Breast” in Welsh (“Bring back a couple of those golden breasts for me,” I told them).

Located near the River Dovey, Bron-Yr-Aur was a primitive setting—there
was no electricity, so the lighting was provided by gaslight. Robert and Jimmy found some time for relaxation, including jeep rides through the hills. But they primarily were there to begin writing songs for Zeppelin's third album: “Out On the Tiles”…“Celebration Day”…“Bron-Y-Aur Stomp.” They would take a portable tape recorder and sometimes a guitar with them on walks and would come back with both words and melody. On one of those hikes, they sat down in a small valley, Jimmy began picking out a tune, and Robert immediately improvised a verse. Fortunately, the tape recorder was running. The song quickly evolved into “That's the Way.”

Robert took the lead in some of the songs for the album. His fascination with Celtic legends became the creative force behind “Immigrant Song.” His dog, Strider, was the inspiration for “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp.” The songs came quickly.

By mid-May, Led Zeppelin was ready to record. No one, however, was particularly interested in returning to the formality of a recording studio. “What other options do we have?” Bonzo asked.

“Let's rent a retreat somewhere and bring in a mobile studio,” Jimmy suggested. No one argued with him.

Carol Browne, our secretary, made some calls and found a large country house called Headley Grange, located about forty miles from London, that we could rent. I helped the band get settled there, opening an account at the local market and bringing back the first batch of groceries and liquor. While the band was recording, I sometimes would take roadies Mick Hinton and Clive Coulson into town to a bar that would gladly serve us booze for hours.

The band's third album showed a more versatile Led Zeppelin—the same Zeppelin energy that had already brought Europe and America to their knees, but also a more romantic and softer sound at times. Jimmy played the banjo for the first time on “Gallows Pole,” an old folk tune that Page and Plant arranged. The banjo belonged to John Paul. Jimmy saw it propped in a corner, picked it up, and started fooling around with it. “I love the sound,” he told John Paul, and he kept returning to it at every break. Finally, he began looking for a song where he could use it. “Gallows Pole” fit the bill.

On “That's the Way,” the first few renditions they recorded were electrical. “Something's not right,” Jimmy kept saying. “It's just not there yet.” He finally suggested that they try it with acoustic guitars. Bull's-eye. The song quickly came together.

“Tangerine” was a song dating back to Jimmy's Yardbirds' days. Robert accompanied his own singing with double-track lead vocals. Then Pagey contributed an incredible pedal steel guitar line. It was a song that jelled right from the beginning. On “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp,” Jimmy did some of his best picking. At the same time, Bonzo was looking for a change of pace from his perch
behind the drums and began turning whatever he could get his hands on into musical instruments, even making spoons part of the cut.

“Friends” was enhanced by the addition of strings. John Paul was broadening his own horizons in the studio, and he suggested that he write an arrangement for strings, which turned out to be magnificent. Maybe the prospect of being accompanied by violins inspired Robert; he hit high notes on that song that could have shattered glass, stretching the limits of his own voice a little more with each take. There was some debate on how to begin and end “Friends.” Eventually, a bit of studio small talk was inserted at the start of the cut, and a Moog synthesizer was used at the very end.

Everyone felt that the third album was the way a record should be put together; it was a much more relaxed venture than the second, which had been written and recorded on the road with pressures that do not necessarily lend themselves to creativity. “This is the way we have to do it from now on,” Pagey insisted one evening as we sat around the fireplace. “I feel energized with this kind of pace.” He was worried that unless the band worked in a more leisurely environment, they were all going to burn out.