Stairway To Heaven (33 page)

I
've got some horrible news, Richard. There's been a terrible accident. Just terrible.”

Charlotte Martin's voice was trembling. She had called Zeppelin's London office from the Greek island of Rhodes, and as I listened to the anxiety in her voice, I developed a queasy feeling in my own gut, expecting the worst as Charlotte continued to talk over the static-filled line. Charlotte had a tendency to exaggerate and panic over even the most minor problems. But this time she sounded as if she was in a daze.

“The Plants' car went off the road,” Charlotte said. “Maureen was driving, and it just crashed into a tree. It was horrible. Everyone's been hurt pretty bad.”

Maureen Plant had been driving a rented Austin Mini sedan, Charlotte said, and Robert was sitting beside her. Their children were in the backseat, along with Scarlet, the daughter of Charlotte and Jimmy Page. Charlotte was in a second car with Maureen's sister and brother-in-law and was not involved in the accident.

Upon impact, Robert's right ankle and right elbow shattered. So did many of the bones in his right leg. Robert's four-year-old son, Karac, fractured his leg, and seven-year-old Carmen broke her wrist. Scarlet escaped with only a few bruises. Maureen, however, was critically injured. She had broken her pelvis, fractured a leg, suffered cuts on her face, and had a fractured skull. She also had lost large amounts of blood, and because she had a rare blood
type, doctors had to rely on her sister, Shirley, for immediate transfusions. A doctor told me later that if Shirley had not been in Rhodes and readily available, Maureen might not have pulled through.

“Can you get here as soon as possible?” Charlotte pleaded. “And, Richard, if you can, bring some British doctors with you. I'm not sure these doctors here know what they're doing. They're having trouble locating more blood for Maureen. I'm going to find out what type of blood it is, and maybe you can bring some of it with you from England.”

“I'll be there as soon as I can get a flight,” I told her.

“Richard, I'm really scared,” she sobbed just before hanging up. “I don't know whether everyone's going to pull through.”

In July and August 1975, Robert and Jimmy had taken their families on a vacation to Rhodes by way of Switzerland and Morocco. Jimmy, however, had then left the others on the Greek island to fly to Italy, primarily to look at a farmhouse in Sicily once owned by Aleister Crowley that he was considering buying. From there, he caught a plane to London, where he was overseeing the editing of the “Dazed and Confused” portion of the long-overdue Zeppelin film, now titled
The Song Remains the Same
. Robert and the other globetrotters were scheduled to return to England later in the week, and the band was due to begin rehearsals for an American tour in the late summer.

After my conversation with Charlotte, I was up most of the night, making phone calls in hopes of tracking down one of the best doctors in London and talking him into flying with me to Rhodes. I ultimately convinced two physicians to make the trip. One of them was Dr. John Baretta, a British physician with an office on Harley Street who provided medical services to the Greek Embassy. He spoke fluent Greek, and I figured he'd be as important a resource for his language skills as for his medical expertise. The other was Dr. Mike Lawrence, one of London's most prominent orthopedic surgeons; from the accounts I was getting of the Plant family's injuries, I figured we could use someone who knew what he was doing in the operating room.

Dr. Baretta had another important asset. He was the personal physician of Sir Robert McAlpine, a successful civil engineer and contractor who owned several private jets, one of which could be turned into a flying ambulance, equipped with special supports for stretchers. I had already tried to charter a private jet for the trip, but Zeppelin's own accountants vetoed the idea. “You fucking asshole,” I screamed at one of them. “This is the band's money you're playing with. Robert and his family are badly injured, and now you tell me you're not going to release the money!”

“That's right,” he said. “Peter Grant's out of town, and you don't have the authority to do it.”

Dr. Baretta quickly arranged for the three of us to fly to Rhodes in one of
McAlpine's jets, leaving late at night. We had stocked the plane's refrigerator with eight pints of blood matching Maureen's type. I was so anxious that I didn't sleep at all on the flight. I didn't even have any booze or drugs to keep me company.

We arrived at six in the morning and took a taxi directly to the hospital, which was really not much more than a little emergency clinic. “I'm not impressed,” I told Dr. Baretta as we walked through the front entrance, dodging a few cockroaches crawling on the floor. There were two unattended patients sitting in wheelchairs, looking as though they had given up on ever receiving any medical care.

After evaluating the patients and the hospital conditions, Dr. Baretta and Dr. Lawrence agreed that we should get our patients back to England as soon as possible. They tried reasoning with the Greek physicians—“You are doing a wonderful job, but the patients need to be closer to home,” Dr. Baretta told them. The hospital, however, refused to release their patients. “The police are investigating the accident to see if alcohol or drugs were involved,” the hospital administrator told us, showing about as much compassion as the Berlin Wall. “Your friends can't leave the country until the police have decided whether they're going to press charges against someone.”

We were virtual prisoners. “This fucking hospital staff is behaving like a lynch mob, not health professionals,” I complained to Charlotte. In exasperation, I finally began contemplating sneaking Robert and his family out of the hospital in the middle of the night and back to London.

“I think there's only one way out of this,” I told Dr. Baretta, “and I don't think you'll like it.” He was opposed to my “kidnapping” plot, but by this time I had made up my mind. He had described to me how Robert's leg would have to be reset and how Maureen would need surgery, and I wanted all of it done in England.

As quickly as possible, I hired a private ambulance and rented two station wagons and had them parked at a side entrance. At two in the morning, Charlotte and I wheeled Robert, Maureen, and their children—along with their IV bottles and other medical equipment—down the hospital corridors to the “getaway cars.” If anyone saw us leaving, no one said a word.

Later that day, our plane was in the sky, headed for London, with a stop in Rome for refueling. It was a relief just to be in the air.

During the flight, Robert and I had our first real chance to talk. He told me they had been driving to visit Phil May of the Pretty Things and his wife, Electra, who had rented a house on the island from Roger Waters of Pink Floyd. “After the car hit the tree,” Robert said, “I looked over at Maureen and thought she was dead.” He paused for a moment, fighting back tears.
“Maureen was unconscious and bleeding, and the kids were screaming in the backseat. Charlotte had come up to the car, and she was hysterical.”

Robert said that they waited forever for an ambulance, but none ever arrived. “Finally,” he explained, “the driver of a fruit truck loaded us onto his open flatbed. He took us to the hospital, but we were bouncing around so much that my leg was dragging on the road for most of the trip.”

Word traveled fast around the island. Phil heard about an auto accident involving some Englishmen and assumed it was the Plants. He and Electra went to the hospital and, along with Maureen's sister, helped care for Robert and his family. “In the Greek hospitals, they don't even feed you,” Robert said. “If you don't have a relative or a friend to bring you food, they'll let you starve to death! It's completely ridiculous!”

As our plane approached England, I called ahead and had ambulances waiting for us at Heathrow. Although Maureen was sedated, she was still in a lot of pain. The Plants were transported to Guy's Hospital, where Maureen immediately underwent surgery.

There was a bizarre twist to our arrival, however. The plane actually delayed its landing in England, circling at 15,000 feet for thirty minutes, so we wouldn't touch down until shortly after midnight—a new calendar day. Even amid the chaos surrounding the accident, Zeppelin's accountants had the presence of mind to advise me that Robert would need to limit the number of days he spent in Britain because of his “tax exile” status. “If the tax man has any questions, he's going to ask for documentation of the flight schedules,” one of the accountants said. “If you land at eleven-thirty at night, that's going to count as a full day that Robert spent in the country. See what you can do to delay the landing here.”

I was furious that financial considerations were receiving such top priority. “Forget it,” I said. “We're going to get these people to the hospital as soon as possible.” But as the jet approached London, Dr. Baretta convinced me that the patients were stable. “If you need to wait another half an hour, they'll be fine,” he told me. So I gave permission for the plane to circle outside the three-mile limit until just past midnight. I knew it might save Robert many thousands of pounds in taxes, although I still thought it was more important to save a life.

 

As a result of the accident, Led Zeppelin was put on hold for months. The mini–U.S. tour covering eight cities in late August and September was canceled. So were European and Far Eastern tours later in the year. All our attention turned to the recovery of Robert and his family.

It was a difficult, tense time for everyone. Maureen spent weeks in the hos
pital. Robert and his children were released within a few days, but doctors had a sobering message for him. “You probably won't walk again for six months, maybe more,” one said. “And there's no guarantee that you'll ever recover completely.”

In the back of everyone's mind was the fact that Zeppelin's future was in jeopardy. “This could be the end of Led Zeppelin,” Peter said. “We don't know yet, but this might be the end of the line.”

A
lthough Robert was virtually immobilized for months, I was still faced with moving him as quickly as possible away from England for tax reasons. Peter was en route out of the country to protect his own status as a tax exile, so the decision of where to send Robert was left to me. By coincidence, I was having some of my paintings appraised, and Willie Robertson, my insurance broker, was at my house. I explained Robert's dilemma, and he had a suggestion: “My daughter's godfather is Dick Christian, a big lawyer on Jersey. He's a lovely guy. I'm sure he'll let Robert stay at his guest house.”

Christian was agreeable to the idea, and when Robert was released from the hospital, an ambulance took him to the British Airways terminal at Heathrow. Robertson, Benji Le Fevre, Marilyn, and I accompanied him on the flight. Because Robert was unable to climb the steps to the plane, I paid a forklift driver twenty-five pounds to raise him and his wheelchair to the jet's doorway. His casts weighed so much that for a while I wondered if the forklift itself might collapse. But he made it onto the plane, where the British Airways crew had removed two first-class seats so Robert could stretch his leg.

When we landed in Jersey, Christian had a limousine and an ambulance with a stretcher waiting at the airport. At the Christian mansion, a butler named Neville greeted us, but appeared horrified as he sized up our long hair. When Dick Christian came to the door, he had the same look—an expression that said, “What have I gotten myself into?”

Nevertheless, Christian was a thoroughly cordial host. He was a tall, middle-aged man with blond hair and glasses. After we exchanged greetings, he said to Neville, “I think my guests need a nice Pimm's.” As we moved inside the house, he told the ambulance driver, “You're going to have to leave the stretcher here. Mr. Plant may need it while he's my guest. I'm sure your boss has plenty of others.”

For the next few weeks, my assignment was to help take care of this rock-musician-turned-invalid. It was my toughest undertaking in rock music. Robert's cast ran from his hip to his toes. He was uncomfortable and frustrated by his limitations. At times, his attitude was almost intolerable. “I just don't know whether I'm ever going to be the same onstage again,” he moaned. “I can't imagine doing three hours in front of an audience, at least not for a long time.”

Robert drank a lot of beer, in part to smother his anxiety about his future. At the same time, he further numbed himself with painkilling drugs. He also spent many hours at the piano, a welcome escape from the torturous physical therapy for his leg and ankle that had become part of his daily routine. Eventually, Robert was on his feet, although for months he needed the help of a cane. It was a long, very trying road back.

Dick Christian made us feel as though we could stay as long as we wanted. He offered us the use of the Maserati and the Jensen parked in his garage. “We've all got cars like this Maserati,” he said one day, “but I don't know why. You put the damn thing in third gear, and you're already on the next island!”

As the weeks passed, both Peter and Jimmy began to worry about the band becoming stagnant. Pagey felt that as soon as Robert had the energy, they needed to start writing again, with an eye on getting back into the studio. He would call every few days for reports on Robert's progress. “The longer we wait,” he told me, “the harder it's gonna be to come back.”

In September, Robert finally gave us the thumbs-up. He felt strong enough, he said, both physically and emotionally, to get to work on the band's seventh album, which would ultimately be called
Presence
. I helped Robert pack, and we bid good-bye to Dick Christian. Dick genuinely seemed sad that we were leaving. To show our gratitude, Peter had engraved the names of Dick's children on Led Zeppelin gold records and gave them to the kids as gifts.

 

Pagey and Plant discussed where to resume their writing. Because of their status as tax exiles, anywhere in England was off limits. They contemplated a number of options before finally deciding upon Malibu, California. They rented a house right on the beach in the Malibu Colony. Between the Pacific Ocean and the bikini-clad girls, they thought the site was gorgeous. Within days of their arrival, Robert talked about how it stimulated his creativity,
how he felt so inspired. If the Beach Boys hadn't already done it, Plant might have written a song about California girls then and there.

Page and Plant remained in Malibu for more than a month, and during their stay Bonzo and John Paul flew out to begin rehearsing for the new album. They initially rehearsed in the rented beach house, but then moved into a more formal setting in the SIR Studios in Hollywood.

“Achilles Last Stand” came together during that period in Malibu. As Plant and Page wrote it, the song touched a nerve, expressing their feelings of having been relegated to a nomadic life. Thanks to their tax situation, they felt that they were losing their roots in England and had not found another place where they felt comfortable. Jimmy called the band “technological gypsies,” roaming the world, looking for a home.

“Tea for One” had a related theme, in which Robert poured out the loneliness he felt spending so much time away from his wife and children, due to his tax status and the accident. (Maureen's injuries still prevented her from traveling.) As he wrote the lyrics, an avalanche of emotions welled up inside him: Here he was in Malibu, he thought, still away from his family. At that moment, not much about his life made sense.

Benji Le Fevre spent time with the band in Malibu, keeping an eye on Robert and running errands for the band. He later told me there was plenty of heroin there, although he wasn't monitoring who was using it. “We called the house in Malibu ‘Henry Hall,'” Benji said. In England, “henry” is a slang word for heroin.

Dr. Lawrence had encouraged Robert to walk as much as possible, so throughout most of his stay in Malibu, he took slow, deliberate strolls along the beach, aided by his cane. The weather was beautiful until the end of their California stay, when a devastating storm ravaged the coastline, almost taking Zeppelin's rented home out to sea. Jimmy, finding hidden messages in much of what nature dealt, figured the storm might be an omen for the band to move on. They began making plans to record again.

The creative process in Malibu had been enormously therapeutic for Robert. Although there were moments early in his recovery when he wondered whether Zeppelin would ever return to full strength, he was now optimistic about the future, both for himself and the band. He wanted to get into the studio.

 

Jimmy suggested that they fly to Munich to record at the Musicland Studios, a facility located in the basement of the Arabella Hotel. As unglamorous as that sounded, the studio had built quite a reputation as one of the best on the continent.

I checked on Musicland's availability. “They say we can start immediately,”
I told Jimmy, “but we're going to have to work quickly; the Stones have reserved it, beginning in less than three weeks.”

The band's goal was to record the entire
Presence
album there. The weather was bitterly cold in Munich, and we had little else to do but spend most of our waking hours in the studio—with occasional indulgences in drugs. When we had arrived in Munich, Bonzo had moaned, “What the hell is there to do in this godforsaken city?” It was a common refrain of his, no matter where we were. One of our roadies had the answer. He pulled a bag of smack out of his coat pocket. “There's a lot of this junk here, and it's good,” he said. He helped keep us well supplied for the next three weeks.

Bonzo, Jimmy, and I used smack during the daytime hours in Munich, and none of us seemed the worse for it. No one ever talked about the possible risks, and we probably didn't think much about them, either. We felt trapped indoors by Munich's frigid air; heroin, it seemed, made the time indoors pass more quickly.

With the help of one of our roadies, I located a local drug connection within walking distance of the studio; if I moved briskly, I could purchase the heroin and get back before frostbite had begun to attack my fingers and toes. In fact, I experienced many more ill effects from the cold—goose bumps, chattering teeth, the shivers, numb extremities—than I ever did from smack itself. And I never stopped to think that, eventually, it might catch up with me.

In the late afternoons and into the night, Zeppelin channeled all their nervous energy into their work, often putting in twelve-hour days. As he had done from the beginning, Jimmy assumed control over the way the sessions unfolded. “Hots On For Nowhere” was written in a little more than an hour right in the studio. So was “Candy Store Rock,” a tribute to 1950s rockabilly. Jimmy recorded all his solos for the album in one fourteen-hour marathon session, trying to ignore his fatigue, keeping an eye on the calendar and the date by which they'd have to vacate the studio. He laid down at least six guitar overdubs for “Achilles Last Stand,” only stopping when his aching fingers could no longer move; when the cut was finished, it was more than ten minutes long.

Jimmy pushed the rest of the group along, determined to finish on time, but feeling the tension build from one day to the next. At one point during the sessions, just as he was feeling optimistic about their progress, the entire album was nearly sabotaged by an accident involving Robert. Though Plant was out of his wheelchair, the leg cast was such a burden that he always seemed off balance. “The poor bastard looks like the Leaning Tower of Pisa,” Bonzo wisecracked. One afternoon, that disequilibrium caught up with Robert.

“I'll be right back,” Plant said, rising from a chair and limping from the engineer's room to one of the recording studios. But barely more than a dozen steps into his journey, he became entangled in an electrical cable. He lost his balance, stumbled, and fell. All his weight landed on his bad leg, accompanied by a horrifying cracking sound. Everyone in the room gasped. It seemed as though Zeppelin itself had crash-landed.

“Fuck!” Robert shouted, sprawled on his stomach on the floor. He began moaning in pain as he rolled onto his side. “Oh, no!” he howled. “Not again! Not again!”

Jimmy was the first to reach Robert, trying to support him with a hand on his shoulder. Initially, we thought about not moving him at all. But he was so uncomfortable, and he wanted to get up onto a chair. It took three of us to help him move there.

That cracking sound was still ringing in my ears. I decided that Robert needed to be examined by a doctor. I summoned an ambulance, and he was taken to a hospital.

“If I broke that leg again, I might as well forget all about walking,” Robert grimaced. “Why did this have to happen? Why?”

No work was done the rest of the night, as we waited to see how badly Plant was hurt.

Fortunately, it was a false alarm. There were no new fractures. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief, especially Robert. By the next morning, the band was recording again, although Plant had increased his dose of painkillers.

Jimmy felt as if he were on an emotional roller coaster. “For a while, I thought we were back at square one,” he said the following day, still trying to calm down. He shook his head and added, “I'm beginning to wonder if we'll ever get Robert's accident behind us.”

 

Despite that temporary setback, the album continued to come together. Jimmy hated the pressure, but realized that he worked incredibly well when he was under the gun, even when he was tired. He had an ability to focus completely on the project at hand and keep the level of originality high.

Before long, the Stones were just two days away from arriving at Musicland. Jimmy placed a frantic call to Mick Jagger. “All we need is a little more time,” he said. “Can you guys come in three days late?”

Mick agreed. He was only too happy to have a legitimate excuse for taking a few extra days off.

When the sessions were finally over, Jimmy was delighted with the finished product. With some of the earlier albums, he would leave the studio feeling pangs of insecurity, convinced that there might have been something
else he could have done to make the tracks even better. With
Presence
, however, he seemed perfectly content. Through a frail smile, he told me that not an ounce of energy had gone to waste.

When the Stones finally showed up, we were clearing out our gear. “Thanks for the extra time,” Jimmy told Mick.

“No problem,” Jagger said. “Did you get a few tracks down while you were here?”

“It was more than a few tracks,” Jimmy said. “We've recorded everything for the album and finished the final mixes. The album is done.”

Jagger was flabbergasted. “Wait a minute,” he said. “But you've been here only three weeks!”

“Yeah, that's all we needed,” Jimmy said.