Stairway To Heaven

by Richard Cole

  With the new album set for release in the States in the midst of the tour, the band concentrated on the music from Led Zeppelin II in its set: “Whole Lotta Love”…“Bring It On Home”…“What Is and What Should Never Be.” “Thank You” was built around a keyboard solo by John Paul. “Moby Dick” became a part of their act, featuring a drum solo by Bonzo that, over the years, eventually extended to twenty minutes, then thirty minutes, and sometimes even longer. When the band performed songs from the first album, there was often a new twist to them, like variations on “Dazed and Confused,” with Jimmy taking the song in imaginative directions—eventually even inserting small pieces of other songs by Joni Mitchell or the Eagles and letting the band follow his lead. “Let’s keep it loose,” Jimmy used to tell the band. “Nothing needs to be very structured.”

  Everyone in the group had the latitude to grab onto a song and shape and sweeten it into what he wanted it to be on any given night. They had developed confidence in each other’s musical instincts. As a result, they often hit paydirt.

  About midway through that fall tour, Zeppelin performed at Boston Garden to a throng of fans—nearly 20,000 paying customers. The Garden was sweltering that night, and the air-conditioning system had melted down within the first half hour. But it didn’t matter. The fans were maniacal from the first song to the last.

  “This is the performance that puts Zeppelin over the top for me,” Peter said backstage. “This band could be just as big as the Beatles or the Stones. Or even bigger.”

  Peter’s judgment, of course, was usually worth paying attention to. I decided to brace myself for Led Zeppelin’s ascent into the rock heavens.

  That night after the Boston concert, fans stopped Peter in our hotel and talked to him about a Zeppelin “force” still echoing through their heads. “At this point in their careers,” Peter told me, “even if I wanted to hold them back and take things a little slower, it couldn’t be done. They’re unstoppable.”

  When Led Zeppelin II was released, it hardly had the record stores all to itself. Other new albums were released at the same time—Let It Bleed by the Stones, Abbey Road by the Beatles, The Best of Cream, and Crosby, Stills and Nash. But Zeppelin’s true believers couldn’t be bothered with them. Once Led Zeppelin II had landed in the record racks, fans lined up around the block in some cities for a first-day purchase. Sales began during the third week of October, and they were so monstrous that by November tenth—two days after the end of the band’s fall American tour—the Recording Industry of America had awarded us a gold album. As a Denver disc jockey proclaimed, “Hundreds of thousands of stereo needles are being sacrificed tonight playing, replaying, and then replaying again Led Zeppelin II.”

  During that fourth U.S. tour, the titanic sales of the new album put the band in festive spirits. It helped ease the fatigue that seemed to come and go with little predictability. It helped boost egos that sagged when an uncomplimentary review would strike a nerve. It also gave us one more excuse to throw a party.

  In San Francisco, we rented a suite at the Villa Roma, an elegant hotel built around a courtyard, to stage a celebration of the album’s success for about twenty-five guests, mostly locals. A couple of absolutely gorgeous girls showed up—tall, long hair, breathy voices, seductive body English, and virtually every other feminine quality that could snap our libidos to attention. The band members almost trampled each other in the rush to introduce themselves to these ladies.

  One of the girls had brought three gray doves with her in a cage, although she kept taking them out and letting them soar around the room. One of the doves in particular was like a kamikaze pilot, banging into walls as though it were on a suicide mission. Somehow, the stunned bird would regain its strength and equilibrium and begin flying again. With the doves as entertainment, we consumed alcohol as quickly as room service could supply it. The festivities were finally called to a halt at about 3 A.M. By that time, I was so drunk that I had very little recollection of much of anything, including who ended up with the girls.

  We spent the night in our own rooms at the Villa Roma, and the following morning I walked with Jimmy and John Paul through the hotel courtyard on our way to breakfast. Our attention on that stroll, however, was drawn to the sound of running water—a waterfall, really—plunging off the balcony of a second-floor room, splattering on the cement below.

  “My God,” John Paul suddenly exclaimed. “That’s the room where we had the party last night.”

  I could immediately see a bill for damages flashing through my brain. In unison, we turned and sprinted up the stairs. I fumbled through my pants pocket, desperately groping for the key to the room. When I finally located it, I jammed it into the lock, shoved the door open, and stormed inside. Within the first couple of steps, we were up to our ankles in water.

  “Oh, shit!” I exclaimed. “It’s a fucking swimming pool in here.”

  I splashed into the bathroom, looking for the source of the San Francisco flood. The culprit was the bathtub, overflowing with a tidal wave of water that had probably been spewing out for seven or eight hours by then. I turned the faucet off, quickly surveyed the scene, and shook my head in disbelief. “Who in the fuck left the damn water on?”

  Jimmy peered into the bathtub and saw the source of the problem. “Look at this,” he sighed. “One of those fucking doves got sucked into the drain. That’s what clogged it up.”

  I reached in and picked up the remains of the little bird. He had flown his last suicide mission. The water in the tub began to drain.

  “This carpeting is a total loss,” Jimmy said, sloshing through the water damage in the room. “Do you think the hotel has dove insurance?”

  “This one could be costly,” John Paul chimed in. “We may have to sign over the royalties from the new album to pay for this.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” I told them. And, in fact, I felt confident that we had absolutely no reason for concern. After all, when we checked into the Villa Roma, I registered the band under someone else’s name. My reasoning: To avoid being bothered by fans and also to minimize the paper trail if we accumulated additional charges.

  A couple of days later, I told the story to Bonham, who burst into hysterics over what I had done. “That’s spectacular,” he said. “I can’t believe you can get away with something like that.” Then he asked, “Whose name was that room registered under?”

  “Frank Barsalona,” I said. Frank was the agent with Premier Talent who handled the band’s U.S. bookings. “He should be getting the bill any day. I hope he has a sense of humor.”

  “If he doesn’t,” said Bonzo, “maybe he’s good at laying new carpeting.”

  As the new album sales became astronomical, and with the increasing popularity of Zeppelin seeming all but inevitable, the band members would occasionally chat with Peter during their idle hours about how to protect their individual nest eggs. They were also receiving advice from the home office in London, where our accountants were offering recommendations designed to turn them into instant tax experts.

  During a short break in the tour, everyone in the band made a quick exit off the U.S. mainland on the advice of our tax attorneys, who had added up the numbers on the band’s likely earnings for 1969 and arrived at a figure of about $1 million. Because the band had worked in the States for a cumulative total of nearly six months, we were on the brink of having to pay both U.S. and British taxes—not an appealing thought for a band earning a seven-figure income.

  Jonesy, Bonzo, and Peter decided to fly directly to London to be with their families during the break. The rest of us convened in San Juan, Puerto Rico. For tax purposes, Puerto Rico was not considered part of the States, yet it was still within striking distance of the mainland.

  Jimmy, Robert, and I stayed at the Caribe Hilton Hotel in San Juan. We squeezed in as much midday sunbathing, early-evening piña coladas, and late-night revelry as possible.

  One evening, I convinced Robert and Jimmy to accompany me into
Old San Juan, a seven-square-block area that was the original city, with buildings dating back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A bellhop at our hotel had warned us, “Señors, Old San Juan is fine during the day. But don’t go there at night. It’s too dangerous for the tourists. Too much crime.”

  I dragged Robert and Jimmy there anyway, although you could see the anxiety etched into their furrowed brows and tight lips. I began looking for a bar where we could find some good Mexican beer and maybe relieve some of their tension. We walked into the first club we approached on Calle San Sebastián—but it wasn’t what I had expected. In fact, I had the feeling that we had entered the Twilight Zone. The bar was so dark that I could barely see my companions, much less anyone else who might be in the place. As we edged our way across the bar, I could feel dozens of eyes staring at us. Then, a few seconds later, someone turned all the lights on in the club.

  Clearly, we looked different from the rest of the patrons. They looked as if they had just disembarked from a pirate ship after a hard day of plundering and torture. We wore flowery shirts and earrings and had long hair—a bit too much on the effeminate side for this crowd.

  “We’re getting out of here,” Robert announced, turning toward the door.

  “Naw, Percy,” I said, grabbing his arm. “Let’s order some drinks.”

  “You’re mad, Cole,” Jimmy said. “I don’t think they want to be our friends.” He was starting to tremble.

  “We’re okay,” I said, letting my desire for alcohol smother any fear I was feeling. “They won’t touch us.” I wasn’t at all convinced of the truth of that statement.

  The club itself was as sleazy as any I had ever seen—no wonder I wanted to stay. We sat at a table with one leg missing and ordered three beers. A few minutes later, just as Jimmy excused himself to go to the bathroom, a gorgeous brunette wearing about seven pounds of makeup—obviously a hooker—walked over to our table, sat down in Pagey’s chair between Plant and me, and tried to get friendly.

  Before the conversation had even gotten beyond “Cómo estás?,” she reached down and put her hand on my crotch.

  “Oooh,” she sighed. “Grande!”

  I smiled and looked over at Plant. I was really beginning to like this place.

  Then she placed her other hand on Robert’s crotch. “Ooooh,” she moaned. “Mucho grande!”

  For the first time that evening, Robert laughed.

  “This is a very perceptive young lady,” he said “Very perceptive.”

  When Pagey returned, he refused to submit to her below-the-waist evaluation. “Let’s get out of here before we get killed!” he said.

  Robert and I had already had our egos stroked for the night, and so we agreed to a quick exit.

  At the end of the American tour, when we finally flew home to London, we talked about what an amazing year 1969 had been. The band had come out of nowhere and was on the brink of superstardom. We had toured at a merciless pace—160 performances since that very first one in Copenhagen fourteen months earlier. The group was making so much money that we had to do things like evaluate our tax status in the middle of a tour. At times, it was exhausting just to think about how far we had come.

  18

  “NAME YOUR PRICE”

  How much did you say?”

  “You heard me, Cole. They offered us one million dollars!”

  “And you turned it down?”

  “It just wasn’t right. It would have been a mistake.”

  Peter Grant was explaining why he had rejected one of the dozens of concert offers that had poured into the Led Zeppelin office. Because of the enormous record sales of Led Zeppelin II, a lot of promoters virtually said, “Name your price.” They wanted the band that bad.

  One of the most tempting offers had come from a group of American promoters, who proposed staging a Zeppelin concert in West Germany on New Year’s Eve, using a satellite transmission to beam the performance into movie theaters throughout the U.S. and Europe.

  “We’ll pay the band half a million dollars,” the promoters said in their initial offer. “That should start off your nineteen seventy with a bang!”

  Not a big enough bang for Peter, even if it was a phenomenal sum for one night’s work. Like Jimmy, Peter was a perfectionist. And the thought of subjecting his band to the satellite transmission made him shudder.

  “I’ve heard the sound quality on those closed-circuit transmissions,” he told the American businessmen. “I’ve never been impressed. It’s just not up to our standards.”

  Initially, the Americans figured he was kidding. After all, for $500,000, perhaps a band could be convinced to put up with a little static or a bit more treble than they’d like. But the more they talked to Peter, the more they realized that he was serious.

  “Television just isn’t the best medium for a band that’s conscientious about quality,” Peter said. “That’s why this band has never done TV. When you’re talking about a satellite transmission over thousands of miles, it can’t be very good.”

  The Americans apparently still believed that if the price were right, Peter might change his mind. They called back two days later. They raised their offer to $1 million!

  Peter never hesitated. “The answer is still no,” he told them. “You can raise the fee as high as you like. I’m not going to change my mind. Quality is still paramount to this band.”

  I had a tremendous amount of respect for Peter for making decisions like that. After all, $1 million was more money that any rock band had ever made on a single night. But he wasn’t going to budge from his own artistic principles.

  I also think Peter enjoyed hearing the shocked reactions of the Americans when he matter-of-factly rejected their offer, as though $1 million wasn’t a significant amount of money. The egos of everyone in the organization were growing—perhaps overgrowing—and by turning down a $1 million offer, that’s one way of telling the world just how big and important you are.

  Still, the driving force behind his decision was an unwavering set of principles about the quality of the band’s music. “There’s more to life than money,” he once told me. He knew that other opportunities would present themselves under terms he could live with. So on New Year’s Eve, we stayed home.

  Nevertheless, Led Zeppelin did its celebrating a few days later. On January 9, we eagerly anticipated the band’s performance that night at Royal Albert Hall. “England finally belongs to us,” Bonzo said. “After tonight, there’s not going to be any doubt in anyone’s mind.”

  It was also Jimmy Page’s twenty-sixth birthday. As the crowd gathered at Royal Albert Hall, some arriving four to five hours before show time, many carried signs wishing Pagey a happy birthday. Others were more generic: “We love you, Jimmy”…“Zeppelin Forever.”

  Robert was feeling on top of the world. The extraordinary record sales were abstractions in his mind; it was hard to relate to sales figures in six and even seven figures. But when he could look out on an audience, stare into individual faces, and bring them to an orgasmic pitch within minutes, numbers became meaningless. We knew that the critics were wrong. If the press didn’t like Led Zeppelin, it was their problem. Yes, those negative reviews—which still outnumbered the positive ones—angered Robert. But he knew that this band touched people’s lives. He witnessed it from a vantage point that no one else had.

  Royal Albert Hall was the third stop on a short, seven-concert tour of the U.K. And the band held nothing back. They planned a two-hour set, but it ran at least thirty minutes longer than that. They had added songs like “Since I’ve Been Loving You” and “Thank You” to the act, but more than that, the audience reaction was so overwhelming that the band spontaneously changed the show several times in midstream. During “Bring It on Home,” Pagey and Bonham began dueling one another with their respective instruments—first one, then the other, in a stirring showdown that no one, neither the band nor the audience, wanted to end. The applause was so strong for some songs that even as the ban
d would begin to wind them down, the crowd reaction inspired them to extend them even further. For instance, as they were drawing “How Many More Times” to a close, the audience hysteria became so intense that the band couldn’t move on to its next number, “The Lemon Song.” So instead, they began another riff of “How Many More Times” and carried on with it for another eight minutes.

  There were moments of irony, too. As popular as the original Zeppelin material was, the music that really brought down the house was a medley of old rock ’n’ roll songs, including “Long Tall Sally,” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On.”

  Roger Daltrey was backstage with a drink in his hand, watching the show with an astonished look on his face. “I know why no one wants to play with these guys,” he said at one point. “They’re just too good.”

  Daltrey was accompanied by his girlfriend, Heather, who had brought Jimmy a rather unique birthday present—a beautiful, successful French model named Charlotte Martin. Heather was convinced that Jimmy and Charlotte would hit it off.

  I had met Charlotte in the south of France in 1966 and run into her again two years later when she was dating Eric Clapton. Charlotte was the type of girl who you couldn’t look at just once. Tall. Thin. Blond. Perfect features. You had to glance a second time.

  But I also knew a different side of Charlotte. At least in her relationship with me, she was aloof, unfriendly, and indifferent. It was my feeling that unless she really liked you, she had a “take it or leave it” attitude. Frankly, I wasn’t impressed.

  Nevertheless, Jimmy and Charlotte instantly became an item. After the concert that evening, Jimmy chatted with her for several minutes and then took me aside. “Can you drive Charlotte and me to her apartment? It’s not that far out of your way.” I gave them a ride, and that was the beginning of a relationship that continued for years.