Stairway To Heaven

by Richard Cole

  “Don’t worry about it, Richard,” Bonham said. “With all the guns and the crazy people in America, we should be grateful no one got shot. Have a good time tonight.”

  In a sense, I already was making the best of it. A friend from the record company had replenished my supply of cocaine, and I was sufficiently numb a few minutes into the party. I shared the drugs with the band—we needed some kind of escape from the evening’s events—and all of us were pretty relaxed by the time Ahmet presented us with gold records.

  “If we melt this gold down,” Bonham chuckled, “how much coke do you think we could buy with it?”

  The New York newspapers were filled with stories of the robbery. The Daily News’s front-page headline blared, “Led Zeppelin Robbed of 203G.” The press was calling it the largest robbery of a safe-deposit box in New York City history.

  Danny Goldberg realized that the robbery had instantly undermined his well-planned campaign to focus attention on Led Zeppelin’s music. He tried to remain calm, but he showed signs of stress, sometimes answering reporters’ questions abruptly, particularly when they were the same questions he had answered a dozen times or more already. He had to deal with dozens of interview requests that day, but not because of our album sales or record gate receipts. Instead, the press was obsessed not only with the robbery itself, but with the band’s financial “excesses” and “extravagance,” our “bizarre” lifestyle and our “irresponsible” business practices that allowed more than $200,000 in cash to sit in a safe-deposit box. It was a press agent’s nightmare.

  In light of the robbery, our return to London had been postponed a day, and Danny recommended that Zeppelin face the press—answering questions about the incident in hopes of quickly putting it behind us. The band considered his suggestion, but then ultimately rejected it.

  “This is ridiculous!” Robert said. “Can’t we just play our music and ignore the rest of this bullshit?”

  Peter decided to face the press alone. He walked into a hotel meeting room that had been transformed into a lion’s den teeming with two dozen reporters and a row of TV cameras. Dressed in a polka-dot shirt, with a scarf around his neck, Peter showed the strain of the last twenty-four hours while he struggled to keep his composure as the questions escalated to an absurd level:

  “Was this just a publicity stunt to get the band’s name in the papers?”

  “Absolutely not. The only kind of media attention Led Zeppelin is interested in revolves around our music.”

  “Does the band despise America now? Will you ever come back?”

  “This robbery is certainly no indictment of America. We love the country, and we love the people.”

  Upstairs, the band was becoming increasingly impatient, eager to get home. Jimmy in particular seemed to be feeling the pressure. Pagey always looked a bit pallid and malnourished, but he appeared much more weary than usual. “The fatigue doesn’t hurt my playing,” he said, “but offstage I have trouble staying on an even keel and keeping the adrenaline and anxiety under control. This robbery doesn’t make things easier. When can we get the hell out of here?”

  Finally, on July 31, the band piled into limousines and headed for JFK airport and the flight back to London. Even at the airport, however, we couldn’t put the robbery completely behind us. As we waited to board the plane, repeatedly ordering rounds of drinks in the Pan Am Clipper Club, Bob Estrada and an FBI colleague unexpectedly walked in.

  “Hi, guys,” Estrada said. “So you’re leaving now?”

  “Yeah,” I said, bewildered by the FBI’s presence.

  “Well, have a good flight.”

  They left as quickly and mysteriously as they had arrived. We exchanged puzzled expressions.

  “What was that all about?” Jimmy asked.

  “They must still think we have the money,” Peter said. “I bet they’re going through our luggage right now.”

  Perhaps they were. When we claimed our baggage and went through customs at Heathrow, the clothes in our suitcases were disheveled, in much greater disarray than when we had packed. A pair of Bonham’s brown snakeskin shoes were gone, as if the FBI had confiscated them to rip them apart, searching for the $200,000 inside their custom-made, thick platforms. Two other pairs of Bonzo’s shoes—his pink and green ones—were nicked and damaged.

  Once we had moved through customs, limousines were waiting for us at curbside. Jimmy had recently bought a beautiful house from actor Richard Harris in the Kensington section of London; he was eager to get home and rode by himself in his own limo. Robert and Bonham, who lived just ten miles apart, shared a limo that took them to their homes. John Paul, Peter, and I each had our own limos.

  The drive home, however, was never nonstop. Bonham and I instructed our chauffeurs to stop at pubs along the way. We each had about a two-hour drive, and that was too long to wait for our next drink. No matter what time it was, we could always find open bars with ample English beer: the Copper Kettle…the George…the Swan.

  Perhaps out of frustration with the sour ending to the 1973 tour, Led Zeppelin would not return to the road for eighteen months. I was simply fed up with things and figured it was time to reevaluate my own future. With no new Zeppelin tours on the drawing board, there wasn’t much work for me around Peter’s office, so I spent a lot of idle time at the local pubs and alone at my house, a seventeenth-century barn that had been converted into a beautiful split-level home. But with my brain fogged by alcohol so much of the time it was hard to do much planning for what might lie ahead.

  I took a brief vacation in Romania on the Black Sea, and when I returned to London there was a message for me from Peter, asking me to stop by his house. It was one of the shortest meetings I had ever had with him. “Are you sure you had nothing to do with the robbery in New York?” he asked.

  I couldn’t believe this was still an unsettled question in his mind. “Absolutely,” I said, raising my voice enough to show my frustration. “I don’t know who took the money. That’s the truth.”

  “Do you think one of the porters could have gotten the key off of you without your knowledge?”

  “No way. The whole thing’s a mystery to me.”

  That was the last time the subject of the robbery ever came up. The band later sued the Drake and won a reasonable settlement. What an ordeal!

  39

  PUT ’EM IN THE MOVIES

  In October 1973, Joe Massot and his crew were about to begin filming the most creative portions of the Led Zeppelin movie. He was pleased with the concert footage he had shot in New York, and now he was ready to begin developing individual segments with each band member, mostly shot near their homes. Massot told them to let their imaginations run wild and bring their personalities into the filming. John Bonham thought he was out of his mind.

  “I’ll show him a few of my fucking bulls, but I don’t know how he’s going to make something interesting out of that,” Bonzo said. “We should take him to a bar and he can film us getting blotted out of our minds.” Then he asked, “Does this guy really know what he’s doing?”

  At the same time, the band began making some demands on Massot’s patience and abilities. Jimmy wanted to film a segment on a steep rock face, where he would meet a hooded figure who ages a century or more before the camera’s eye. Jimmy not only wanted to play both parts in the scene, but he also wanted it filmed at night.

  Massot and his crew shook their heads as if to say, “Another spoiled rock star with another crazy idea!” Nevertheless, they erected some scaffolding on the side of the mountain and kept adjusting and readjusting the lighting until the cameras could capture the scene without it looking like a London blackout.

  Jimmy, however, soon found out that he himself was in over his head. Massot had to keep reshooting the scene, and after the sixth or seventh take Jimmy was exhausted from climbing and reclimbing the hill. He tried to recuperate between shots, but just as he would catch his breath, the camera rolled again.

  When Bonzo heard about
Jimmy’s ordeal, he was amused. “If the bastard would just start eating meat, he’d have the energy to climb the Alps. I’ll even sacrifice one of my bulls if the guy will just get off this fucking vegetarian kick.”

  Later in the fall, Peter asked to look at the footage that had been shot. And he didn’t like most of what he saw. “Some of this stuff is just fucking ridiculous!” he told me. “I’m fed up! This is turning out to be the most expensive home movie ever made!”

  Near the end of 1973, Peter agreed to have his portion of the movie filmed during a large party at his house, celebrating his wife’s birthday. Although he was becoming disillusioned about the movie, he was willing to see it through to the end. Peter had a medieval-style home, so for the party he had caterers wearing costumes from the Middle Ages. When they weren’t serving food, they were jousting on the lawn for entertainment.

  Months later, as the progress of the movie moved at a snail’s pace, Peter reached the breaking point. Massot left the project and was replaced with a filmmaker named Peter Clifton. Even so, the movie still had a long way to go. It wouldn’t be released for almost another three years. It was a project that wouldn’t end.

  As the movie took on an unpredictable life of its own, Zeppelin began its first rehearsals for its next album. Jimmy had invited the band to his Plumpton Place home, and they began discussing and writing new material. They still had some unused cuts dating back to the last trip to Headley Grange—most notably, “Houses of the Holy” and “Night Flight.” Plant even pulled out a song called “Down by the Seaside” that he and Pagey had written years before at Bron-Yr-Aur.

  At about this time, Jimmy was also working on the soundtrack of a movie by Kenneth Anger, an American filmmaker who had made a series of short cult movies—Scorpio Rising was probably the best known—that some critics found incomprehensible. Like Pagey, Anger was a devotee of Aleister Crowley. Anger was particularly fascinated that Jimmy had owned a house that once belonged to Crowley. Pagey told him the story about a man being beheaded at the house centuries ago, and how his spirit supposedly continued to live long beyond the time of decapitation. There were also stories of murders and suicides in the house, although no one really knew whether this was just Jimmy’s imagination running wild.

  Page and Anger became close friends, and as Anger worked on Lucifer Rising, a new film with a satanic theme, he asked Jimmy to write the music for it. Jimmy, however, always put his Led Zeppelin work first. Even when he had free time, he procrastinated about finishing the Anger project.

  When Pagey finally played Anger some of the music he had written, the filmmaker didn’t like what he heard. Anger thought the music was too macabre, and he asked Jimmy to start over again. The process dragged on, and finally Anger began attacking Jimmy’s lack of discipline in the press. We heard that Anger was suggesting to friends that Pagey might be a drug addict.

  I was shocked by Anger’s accusations. After all, if Pagey was a drug addict, that meant I was, too. We were both using a hell of a lot of cocaine. But I wasn’t ready to admit that I had a problem, so I figured Jimmy didn’t have one, either. If we had been more honest with ourselves and faced up to our addictive behavior, we might have avoided a lot of agony down the road.

  40

  “HORS D’OEUVRES, ANYONE?”

  As the New Year approached, I promised myself that 1974 would be a better time. We seemed to have put the New York robbery behind us, but it was difficult for me. It wasn’t something I thought about every day, thanks in part to the escape that booze and cocaine provided. But when it did surface, I would slip into periods of melancholy.

  The new year, however, seemed to hold more promise. I had met a young woman named Marilyn, a gorgeous actress and Playboy model. She was warm, sensitive, creative, and had a good sense of humor. Her looks didn’t hurt, either. I was needy, and she filled a real void in my life. I fell in love quickly, and so did she. Before long, we were talking about marriage.

  When I introduced Marilyn to my family, my little Irish mother sized her up and said, “Well, bejesus, Richard, you’ve had a lot of women in your life, so it’s time to settle down. And by the looks of your lady here, she’s had quite a few fellows as well! Good luck to both of you!”

  Mom never was very diplomatic. Marilyn’s face sank so low that it almost struck the floor. I felt so bad for Marilyn. I don’t think she ever really liked my mother after that.

  As 1973 drew to a close, Marilyn and I set a date for our marriage—January 2. I bought myself a gray suit and arranged to get married at Caxton Hall. I was extremely happy and felt my life was finally getting back on track.

  Our wedding reception was held at the Playboy Club in London. Members of Led Zeppelin, the Who, and Bad Company were there, which required that we hire thirty security people to keep the event under control and make sure that the high-profile guests were well protected. The security forces did such an excellent job that they even refused entrance to Victor Lownes, the owner of the Playboy Club, until I had okayed it.

  Ironically, as I was signing the register at Caxton Hall, the registrar—a short fellow with a bald head and missing teeth—looked past me at the celebrities in line and shouted, “Oh, can I have your autograph, sir?” I figured he might be talking to Pagey or Plant or Keith Moon. Instead, he walked right past them and handed a pen and paper to Lionel Bart, who had written Oliver! “I guess that puts rock musicians in their proper place!” I joked with Peter.

  Robert Gaines Cooper, a gaming-machine manufacturer who lived in my village, gave me the use of six Rolls-Royces—Phantoms I through VI—as a wedding gift. The wedding reception itself was a gift from Peter, and as sloshed as I became that day, I repeatedly let him know how grateful I was.

  Nevertheless, as a newly married man, I began thinking more seriously that maybe it was time for a new beginning professionally, too. Led Zeppelin, committed to spending the early part of the year in the studio recording their sixth album, still had no touring planned for 1974. Peter asked me to go to the States for six weeks to run Maggie Bell’s American tour. I knew that back in London, there was not much work, but I liked living in the U.K., and that’s where my friends were. So I decided to keep my ears open for other opportunities there.

  In the meantime, just days after my wedding, Peter Grant had called a press conference announcing that Zeppelin was forming its own record company, Swan Song. Their five-year contract with Atlantic Records had expired the previous month, and Jimmy and Peter believed that with their own label the band would have more creative control—and probably even greater financial rewards.

  Over the years, other artists—including the Beatles and the Stones—had created record labels of their own. So often it seemed more like an ego trip than anything else, and with Zeppelin it certainly did seem to boost their sense of self-importance. At the press conference, they took the opportunity to sing their own praises and boast of what they hoped to accomplish. Nevertheless, Jimmy said, “It’s not going to be an ego thing. We’re going to be signing and developing other acts, too. It will be much more than just Led Zeppelin.”

  Within weeks, their new label had signed Bad Company, Maggie Bell, and the Pretty Things and was looking for other talent to bring into the company.

  Danny Goldberg was hired away from Solters, Roskin, and Sabinson to run the new record label from offices in a high-rise on Madison Avenue in New York. A London office was opened on the King’s Road as well. And then came the parties. To celebrate the launching of Swan Song, we flew to the States to host receptions at the Four Seasons in New York and the Bel Air Hotel in Los Angeles.

  On the plane to New York, all of us were drinking heavily, but Bonzo was setting records in first class. Gin and tonic. Chardonnay. A few glasses of champagne. Almost single-handedly, he kept the stewardesses running during the entire seven-hour journey.

  More than midway through the flight, Bonzo was either too drunk or too lazy to get up to use the bathroom. So he did the next best thing—he just p
issed in his pants and kept on drinking.

  A few minutes later, Bonzo began to feel uncomfortable sitting in his own urine. “I can’t take this anymore,” he said, leaping up from his window seat, bustling his way past me, and moving toward the coach cabin. As he paraded down the aisle, the large wet spots on his tan pants drew a few stares and snickers from other passengers, although he really didn’t seem to care.

  Bonham stopped in front of Mick Hinton, who was innocently reading a copy of Sports Illustrated in his coach-section seat. “Mick, you’re my assistant, right?” Bonzo said.

  “Right.”

  “You’re supposed to do whatever I ask you to, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, I finally want to return the favor. I’d like to give you my first-class seat for the rest of the flight to New York. You deserve a lot better treatment than you’re getting. You fly first class and I’ll fly coach! Go sit in seat 3A.”

  Mick was ecstatic. “That’s bloody nice of you, Bonzo. That’s just wonderful.”

  Mick stood up, patted Bonham on the back, and walked to the first-class cabin. “Pardon me, Richard, let me slide in by you,” Mick said. “Bonzo is letting me sit in his seat.”

  “Well, I hope you’ve got some waterproof pants,” I said. “It’ll be like swimming in a urinal.”

  Mick looked at the seat and almost became ill. “Is that what I think it is?” he asked.

  Before I could answer, a stewardess announced that all passengers would have to take their seats as the plane entered some turbulence. Mick made himself as comfortable as possible, but he kept squirming during the remainder of the flight. As we got closer to New York, the entire first-class section was reeking from the odor coming from seat 3A.