Stairway To Heaven (30 page)

I
n October 1974, I got a call from Peter Grant.

“We're planning a new Led Zeppelin tour,” he said. “We're heading to America in January. I'd like to talk about you coming back on the team if you're interested.”

I hadn't been looking to return to Led Zeppelin. I had enjoyed the tour with Eric Clapton and realized that I could fit in just about anywhere. Nevertheless, my personal problems—my drug and marital difficulties—were becoming more intrusive, and it was actually nice to hear what sounded like a friendly voice on the other end of the line.

During that phone conversation, Peter made me an attractive offer. It included a company car—a BMW or a Jaguar. And my salary would be about 2½ times what he had previously paid me. At that moment, my bitterness from earlier in the year seemed to have softened. “I'm not going to let the old hard feelings get to me this time,” I told myself. I also was already starting to calculate how the increased salary could help keep me supplied with heroin. I accepted the job.

Later that day, Peter, Robert, and Jimmy drove to my house to celebrate, and the four of us went to Ringo Starr's home in Surrey where Maggie Bell was recording a new album. Later, we moved the party to a club called Tramps for some libations.

 

It didn't take long for me to get back into the Zeppelin way of life. The following week, upon the release of Swan Song's first album in the U.K.—the Pretty
Things'
Silk Torpedo
—Zeppelin hosted a Halloween party at Chislehurst Caves. There was enough food and booze (mostly wine) to meet the needs of the entire British army. Even so, the overflowing buffet tables took a backseat to the entertainment. Live music was provided by a jazz combo, while a couple of magicians and a fire-eater performed.

Much more eye-catching were the topless and, in some cases, fully naked women who mingled among the guests and rolled around in vats of cherry Jell-O. Other nude women played the parts of virgins being sacrificed at makeshift altars. Strippers arrived dressed as nuns and peeled off their habits in an act that, if the Vatican were making the decisions, would have doomed us to an eternity in hell.

I could see that nothing much had changed with Led Zeppelin, at least in terms of their delight in shocking people. They made their surroundings as offensive and titillating as possible. It wasn't an act. It was the kind of environment they relished.

 

Near the end of November, Led Zeppelin began congregating at a converted theater called Liveware, rehearsing for the upcoming American tour, which would be preceded by two European shows—one in Rotterdam, the other in Brussels. These would be the band's first live performances in eighteen months, and they wanted to get out the kinks as quickly as possible. John Paul, however, was surprised at just how few imperfections there were. Peter agreed, telling the band, “You guys sound as though the hiatus was eighteen hours, not eighteen months.”

Meanwhile, my marriage had moved closer to disintegration. In December, Marilyn found out I had had a brief affair. We fought, we made up, but the arguments flared up again and again. One evening, in the heat of battle, she hurled two of my Zeppelin gold records into a roaring fireplace, turning them to ashes. I was incensed.

 

In the first week of January, it was a relief to get on a plane to Holland. That concert would be the first warm-up for the American tour and the first live performances of songs from the yet-to-be-released
Physical Graffiti
album. The set was scheduled to include “Kashmir,” as well as “Trampled Under Foot” and “In My Time of Dying.”

It was a joy knowing that I would be hearing Led Zeppelin play again. I was determined that, despite my growing fixation with heroin, I was going to prove myself to Peter and the others that there was no better tour manager around. My spirits were incredibly high—at least until I got my first look at the Rotterdam concert hall, just hours before the performance was scheduled to begin. As soon as I saw it, I realized I had made a mistake in not inspecting
it days or weeks earlier. The ceiling was so low that if Robert had leaped into the air during the excitement of performing, he might have self-inflicted a head wound. To make matters worse, there were floor-to-ceiling pillars throughout the building, which would obstruct the view of dozens of fans. I knew the band would make the best of it that night, but I also realized that the shortcomings of the venue would detract from their own enthusiasm.

When I returned to the hotel that afternoon, a local TV news crew was beginning an interview with Led Zeppelin in my suite. A fellow named Van, who was the promoter of the concert, was being interviewed in Dutch. With the cameras rolling, he picked up his Samsonite briefcase and began to open it. Inside, there were 20,000 pounds worth of guldens in cash—the money that he would pay Zeppelin that night. Perhaps the New York robbery was still too fresh in my mind, but I panicked at the thought of publicizing the fact that the band had so much cash in its possession. As Van tilted the briefcase so the TV camera could get a better view, I instinctively leaned over and struck the open lid of the briefcase with a karate chop, which slammed it shut—crushing the index finger of Van's right hand. He began screaming, then cursing in Dutch, which was all captured for posterity by the news camera.

I was off to a rather inauspicious start in my return to the Zeppelin trenches.

 

Before long, Van wasn't the only one nursing a wounded hand. After the European gigs, we returned to England for three days before flying to the States. During that brief stopover, Jimmy had exited a train at Victoria Station and tried to hold the door open for the passenger behind him. However, the door forced its way shut, with the ring finger of Pagey's left hand bearing most of the brunt. He was in terrible pain, and as soon as he got home he applied ice to the injury. But as the hours passed, the pain didn't subside. Finally, he went to a doctor late that same day. X rays showed he had broken a bone in the tip of the finger.

Jimmy was furious at himself and terribly frustrated. “If it was going to happen, couldn't it have happened sometime during the eighteen months when we weren't performing?” he said.

Immediately, Jimmy began planning how to work around the injury. Having lost the use of a finger, he decided he would try playing with what he called a “three-and-a-half-finger technique.” He also realized that certain Zeppelin standards, such as “Since I've Been Loving You” and “Dazed and Confused,” would have to be dropped from the act until his finger healed.

Despite the anger and the disappointment, Jimmy's self-confidence wasn't bruised. He told himself that even with the handicap of a broken finger, he could play better than most guitarists at full strength.

“Most fans won't even notice any difference,” he proclaimed on the British Airways flight to America.

Although Jimmy was subdued on that long trip from London to New York, his seriousness didn't keep the rest of us from creating commotion and attracting attention. The first-class stewardesses frequently replenished our liquor supply, and as one hour passed into the next the band became increasingly loud and rowdy, caught up in the excitement of the upcoming tour and the fatigue of the lengthy journey. Robert and Bonzo especially were raising their voices loud enough to be heard halfway to Manhattan, and some passengers were looking at one another with expressions that said, “Who the hell are those fellows?” Because Zeppelin made no TV appearances, their faces were still unfamiliar to most people over the age of thirty.

When we finally landed at JFK airport and the plane pulled to a stop at the terminal, we began grabbing our carry-on bags. Just then, the pilot approached us. At a moment when the cabin was relatively quiet, he said, “Your own pilot just radioed a message that he can't get any closer than this.” He pointed out the window to the
Starship
. It had been used for a recent Elton John tour and was freshly repainted with stars, stripes, and bright red letters spelling out “Led Zeppelin” on its fuselage. What a sight!

There were stunned looks on the faces of the passengers near us. As we approached the exit doors, Peter told the British Airways cockpit crew and the first-class stewardesses, “Why don't you come over to our jet and have some cocktails and hors d'oeuvres with us.”

We had special customs clearance, and so within just a few steps we were inside the
Starship
, where the band proceeded to drain our liquor supply over the next hour and a half until we took off. “So this is what the life of a rock star is like!” one of the crew exclaimed.

 

The tour helped hype the
Physical Graffiti
double album, which was released while the band was in the States with more than one million advance orders. As record buyers raided music stores to buy the new album, sales of the previous five Zeppelin records also soared. By late March, all six Zeppelin albums were on
Billboard
's Top 200, making Zeppelin the first rock performers ever to score that achievement.

Even some of the critics seemed to be coming around. When
Rolling Stone
reviewed
Physical Graffiti
, Jim Miller actually offered some praise. But the record sales were what really mattered. That was the kind of validation that counted on this renewal of the touring wars. John Paul said that the fan acceptance inspired them to play with more fury, more intensity, more passion.

During the next few months, Zeppelin proved that they also were still the industry's Number 1 live attraction—and the world's highest-paid band. For
that thirty-nine-concert North American tour, more than 700,000 tickets had been sold within hours after they went on sale—and the shows themselves were bigger than ever. At every concert, the music was channeled through an incredible 70,000-watt speaker system and an intricate lighting network that generated 310,000 watts of power. No one ever asked for his money back. Most of them would have paid to see more.

 

As the tour progressed, we soon had to deal with problems other than Jimmy's injured finger. Less than two weeks into the tour, Robert contracted the flu, with a high fever and a gravelly throat. At one point, he was feeling so ill that he literally couldn't drag himself out of bed.

Peter impressed me with the way he reacted. He still saw Led Zeppelin as a long-term investment, and he insisted that Robert put his health before the tour itself. He called the local promoter in St. Louis and ordered a rescheduling of the forthcoming concert there. That gave Robert a few days to recuperate, which he both needed and appreciated. It also allowed the remaining band members to make an unscheduled invasion of Los Angeles.

At the Ambassador East Hotel in Chicago, Bonham first raised the possibility of leaving town during Robert's recovery. “Let's not hang around here. It's boring as hell. We can have a lot more fun at the Rainbow Bar in L.A.”

John Paul protested. He wanted the
Starship
to fly them to the Bahamas, where he could already feel the warm sunshine and fantasize about the girls on the beaches. But Los Angeles held the promise of warm weather, too. We talked about it for an hour and finally reached a consensus. We gave the orders to rev up the engines of the
Starship,
and we headed west.

 

When the tour resumed, I sometimes felt that Led Zeppelin had become too big, too successful for its own good or at least for its own physical well-being. The audiences were so immense and so enthusiastic that there seemed no way to ensure proper crowd control. Sometimes bedlam broke out days or weeks before the band even reached town.

In Boston, in fact, the concert never got off the ground. Fans had lined up to buy tickets for the performance at Boston Garden, and because the weather was frigid, officials let them camp inside the building. During the night, however, the kids went berserk. They broke into the food stands and got drunk on the beer they had stolen. They ripped seats out of their moorings. They turned on emergency fire hoses. In all, there was more than $30,000 damage to the Garden. As a result, Boston mayor Kevin White ordered the cancellation of the Zeppelin show, fearing even more trouble at the concert itself.

Not knowing quite what to expect, I ordered that security remain ex
tremely tight at those 1975 concerts. At the Philadelphia Spectrum, a fan approaching the stage with a camera during “Stairway to Heaven” was ambushed by two of our hired goons. They battered him with such ferocity that Jimmy nearly became ill watching the brutality in front of him. He moved toward the edge of the stage, as though he was going to intervene in some way. But as he got a closer view of the mayhem, he bowed his head and turned away. It was really more than he could stand.

“What the hell was going on out there tonight?” he shouted at me after the concert. “You have to find a less violent way of controlling these situations!”

I was more sympathetic toward the security team than Jimmy. I had done my time on the front lines at Zeppelin concerts and realized that when security attacked, it was usually for a reason, even if it was in response to their own fears and anxieties. At times, I had felt that crowds were going to overwhelm me, that it was going to be a fight for survival. Late in that same Spectrum concert, when dozens of fans began congregating near the front of the auditorium, I positioned myself underneath the stage and frantically began smashing them on the kneecaps with a hammer.

I learned a lot from the off-duty cops who usually provided the security at the concerts. At the Pittsburgh Civic Arena, one of them was particularly proud of his crowd-control tactics. “Let me loan you a blackjack in case you need to bash in a skull or two tonight!” he said calmly as he handed me one of the metal-laden weapons. He also showed me how to conceal small weights in a pair of gloves, turning them into a potentially lethal weapon. “Some cops here use them to rough people up,” he said. I made a mental note to keep a low profile in Pittsburgh.