The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards (Mammoth Books)

by Robin Barratt

  That Jeff Beck tour set the tone for my future life on the road. The hassles, the chaos and the loose cannons would be the same despite the fact that in my career I’ve worked with a diverse range of artists that includes Led Zep, David Cassidy, Adam and the Ants and the Sex Pistols among many others. In the end, as I learnt, the musical trends may come and go but that quintessential rock ’n’ roll attitude, like the song, remains the same. And long may it stay that way! Frankly, it wouldn’t have been much of a challenge if I’d been in charge of a bunch of choirboys – and nor would it have been as lucrative!

  The rock ’n’ roll attitude was constant – and so were the hassles. They might be different in their precise nature, but I learnt to anticipate the unexpected so that in the end there wasn’t much that could shock or faze me. I became an accomplished “firefighter”. When things got heated I cooled the situation; when tempers blazed I extinguished them; and when bands’ self-destructive urges looked like making them crash and burn I usually managed to control the fire without losing the vital spark that made these guys legendary. I think it was Neil Young who said it’s better to burn out than fade away – well I’m not so sure, but I certainly got the impression that most of Zep and the Jeff Beck Group would have gone along with that philosophy! Sadly, there were to be times when I couldn’t prevent a great talent from falling prey to his own volatility and unquenchable lust for excess. More of which later …

  A perennial problem that always rankled with the acts was when greedy agents booked them into venues that were entirely unsuitable – in terms of size, access, acoustics or even sheer mortal danger for fans and performers alike. One of Jeff and the lads’ gigs was a perfect example of the bookers’ total lack of concern for their performers’ image and style of music. To their horror they found that they’d been booked to perform at a kids’ summer camp – one of those places where American parents dump their stroppy teenagers for the school holidays. Playing to an audience of 13-and 14-year-olds was not a job for serious rock musicians – that was for children’s entertainers and cutesy pop performers. To say the band were unhappy would be an understatement and, when the inevitable on-stage shenanigans started and they began to treat the gig as little more than a private party, the organizers and their charges were unhappier still. Always the wild card, Tony Newman abandoned his drum kit and kept up the percussion as he staggered from tabletop to tabletop by banging his sticks on anything that would make a noise – bottles, pipes, chairs, you name it. At least he stopped short of banging out a paradiddle on a teenage head – well, at least I think he did! And then Jeff and Woodie joined in. Not to be outdone by their drummer’s antics, they picked up a fire extinguisher and liberally doused the first few rows of the audience with foam. Talk about dampening the audience’s spirits – sheer bloody pandemonium broke out! The organizers were evidently not amused. As they picked up the phone to call the police I realized that it was time for action. The ability to think on your feet is one of the first attributes anyone should look for in a prospective road manager – and I pride myself on the number of scrapes and brushes with the law I got my bands out of over the years. On this occasion a quick getaway was called for – my speciality! I bundled the band out of the hall and into the waiting limousine as quickly as I could and the sleek, stretched motor screeched out of the compound in a mad dash for the state line and immunity from arrest.

  We made it in the nick of time – but that wasn’t much consolation to my assistant, Henry (the Horse) Smith, who’d had to stay behind with the truck and all of the band’s gear. When the cops arrived they didn’t see the funny side. Quite the contrary, in fact, because they were determined to confiscate anything they could lay their hands on in an attempt to force the band to come back and face the music. And when you consider the vast value of a major band’s touring technology, we probably would have had no alternative but to turn ourselves in and cough up the fines and/or backhanders, if not face jail sentences, to get it all back. But the appropriately named Henry had “horse” sense. He claimed that all the equipment belonged to him and that he’d simply lent it to the group for the performance and didn’t expect to ever see them again. Unbelievably, the police swallowed the story and let him – and the band’s equipment – go free. All we lost was Ronnie’s bass guitar and a few odds and sods – not that that stopped the boys sulking about it for a day or two!

  I’ve had better times – but few of them were entirely without some kind of incident, such as the Jeff Beck Group’s gig at Schenectady Hall in upstate New York, for example. It seemed that things were really looking up when we heard that Peter Grant’s latest managerial signing – Led Zeppelin – were also on the American East Coast at the time on their inaugural US tour and arrangements were quickly made for the two bands to hook up for some serious partying. Led Zep and the Jeff Beck Group – talk about an explosive combination!

  Those two now legendary bands may have been volatile, but their signing was a major coup for Peter. The downside, for Peter and for me, was that great talents are notoriously hard to handle. In Beck, he had one of the world’s greatest guitarists and a proven recordseller – temperamental, often stroppy but always ready to pull a rabbit out of the hat. In the end, though, it was Zeppelin that was to be Peter’s biggest cash cow – and one he’d take to rich new pastures and milk for all it was worth.

  Right from the off, everyone knew that Led Zeppelin were a cut above the rest of the rockers – a true supergroup in the making. Formed by Jimmy Page, one of the key songwriter/producers of his generation, from the ashes of the Yardbirds, Zep blended vintage blues and heavy rock with consummate musicianship, and made all those elements add up to something far greater than the sum of their parts. Added to Page’s prodigious talents was lead singer Robert Plant. And what a find he was – an imposing, handsome, blond Viking of a man whose sex appeal was as powerful as his thunderous, yet soulful and vulnerable voice. John Paul Jones on bass was no less gifted – both at laying down the deep, throbbing basslines that melded the Zep sound together and at laying the countless women that fell willingly at his feet. And then there was Bonzo on drums. I would grow to love John Bonham dearly. He was a good – even great – man; a funny man and a great friend. He was also one of the wildest I’ve ever known – and I’ve known some very wild men in my time. I’d describe him as a playboy – but the term has too many suave and pretentious associations to sum up an irrepressible character like Bonzo. He was a walking bag of contradictions: a gentle soul who was nevertheless the epitome of the “wild man of rock” with an iron constitution capable of withstanding his prodigious and insatiable appetite for booze and drugs. His formidable drumming was the kingpin of Zep’s musical direction and rightly made him a rock legend – but his offstage antics were equally hardhitting and were to become equally famous.

  Given their origins, it was almost inevitable that media interest in the band verged on the rabid – even before the release of their first album. And if the critics were a little sniffy about them at first, the live audiences fell in love with Zep at first sight and sound! America was similarly smitten, thanks largely to the heavy radio promotion of “Whole Lotta Love” (later the “Top of the Pops” theme for many years).

  Anyway, Zep were coming along on the Jeff Beck Group’s tour bus to the Schenectady Hall gig – but it soon became clear that they weren’t just there to appreciate the performance. Richard Cole, their notorious road manager, lost no time at all in getting up to mischief, with the rest of Zep following his lead. While Jeff, Rod, Ronnie and Tony were grooving away on stage the majestic Zep boys held court in the dressing room with numerous excited females in attendance. Knowing their reputation, you’d have thought it would be John Paul, Jimmy or Bonzo who’d make the first lecherous leap on the compliant assembly of girls – but no, it was Richard Cole. When a pleasantly plump, rather innocent-looking girl walked shyly through the dressing room door in search of her rock gods, Richard lunged at her and literally swept her off he
r feet, spinning her upside down and rubbing his face lasciviously in her crotch. And that was just for starters. For all I know she enjoyed it – but I’m pretty sure the victims of the next little prank weren’t at all happy.

  One of the boys, unnoticed in a corner of the dressing room, decided to urinate into a big jug of Coca Cola – and, as you’ve probably guessed, he offered this foul, tainted chalice to every hapless girl who stepped tentatively into the room in the hope of having some contact with her heroes. Poor girls, I thought. It wasn’t funny. Just crude. And cruel. But it wasn’t the worst abuse of these innocents who threw themselves at the rock ’n’ roll animals they lionized. I’d just about had enough of that kind of behaviour and had stepped outside with Peter for a breath of fresh air – both literal and metaphorical – only to walk straight into a distraught young girl as she emerged from the toilets in floods of tears. Clearly grateful to find two potential knights in shining armour, she turned to us and wailed, “There’s a guy in there who’s just been groping me!”

  Fired up with righteous indignation, Peter and I stormed into the toilets (or should I say “restroom” since we were in America!) and immediately confronted the groper – who was about to regret the sexual assault bitterly because he, and I, were introduced to Peter’s celebrated “kicking trick”. This involved taking the terrified bloke by the scruff of the neck and kicking him in the shins, again and again. And then again and again. And again. And again – boot cracking against bone with a rhythmic precision that Bonzo would have been proud of. This treatment was followed up with Peter’s other mode of administering punishment – namely a stiff four fingers shoved into and under the ribcage, which really takes your breath away! As I’ve mentioned, Peter was a whale of a man, about six foot two and weighing in at something over 300 pounds. A kicking from Peter was like one from a carthorse – and one that the groupie groper wasn’t going to erase from his memory or his shins for a helluva long time! After a minute or so, which must have seemed like a lifetime to the groper, Peter finally laid off, dragged the guy’s limp and crippled form to the door and hurled him through it like the sack of shit he clearly was. Unlike a sack of shit, however, he actually bounced off the floor before hauling himself painfully to his feet and wobbling off, dazed and confused, in the immortal, and accurate, words of the Led Zep song. The message came over loud and clear: urinating in a bottle was one thing, but nobody messed with Zep’s fans when Peter was around, whether they were male or female.

  The two bands’ paths were to cross several times over the next few days as their respective tours wended their way across the States – but it was at the Singer Bowl, a massive sports complex doubling as a concert venue just outside New York’s Flushing Meadows, that things really came to a head.

  Jeff and the boys were supporting America’s flavour of the month, Vanilla Fudge. More significantly, as it turned out, Alvin Lee’s new band, Ten Years After, were opening the star-studded bill. The Zep boys and their entourage said they’d be there to lend Jeff a bit of moral support. I thought that was quite touching to begin with – such selfless solidarity between two of the UK’s best bands while they were touring on foreign turf. But of course it wasn’t as simple, or as innocent, as that. Nothing ever was! Hindsight being 20:20, maybe I should have sussed that there was more to their eagerness to attend than geeing their mates along. In fact that had nothing to do with it. The Zep boys were there to get their own back on Lee for some pretty nasty remarks he’d once made about Jimmy Page – and Jeff Beck’s roadies seemed happy to help them wreak their revenge, egged on, inevitably, by Bonzo and Richard Cole. Chick Churchill – one of Ten Years After’s associates – was unlucky enough to be caught without backup in a locker room by a vengeful rabble of roadies who scared the crap out of him before ruthlessly stripping him of his clothes. Then they stripped him of his dignity by dumping him naked and trussed like a lamb to the slaughter in the starkly lit corridor outside.

  Next it was Ten Years After’s turn for the revenge of Zeppelin. Hidden in the anonymity of the shadows in a corner in front of the stage, the Zeppelin crew pelted Alvin Lee mercilessly from the moment he took the stage with anything that came to hand – including hot dogs, burgers, orange juice and probably much messier and more painful missiles. It was glorious! Lee and his band had no idea who the mysterious assailants in the shadows could be. The shower of debris stole their thunder, undermining the storming performance they’d had their hearts set on and, understandably enough, mediocrity was all they could muster.

  In retrospect, Peter and Jimmy – the two partners in crime – had to be behind this. It was their way of saying, “Don’t ever mess with the Zeppelin!”

  If that had been the sum total of their retribution for an offcolour comment, I guess it would have been “fair dos’’, but they’d already planned a master-stroke that would add insult to injury. Of course, as far as the audience was concerned, Led Zep’s joining the Jeff Beck Group on stage was an impromptu jamming session. I knew different! Having ruined Alvin Lee’s set, a band that hadn’t even been booked to play was about to steal the show. And steal the show they did. But even the Led Zep boys hadn’t planned the finale that was to be the highlight of the night.

  Bonzo had been at the backstage booze. Nothing unusual about that – or about the fact that, drunk as a lord, his drumming on the fast blues the galaxy of rock stars were playing was as blisteringly bang-on-the-nail as ever. What was a bit unusual was the fact that he’d suddenly decided to do a “Full Monty” while he was at it, still hitting that kick drum with mechanical, maniacal precision and venom despite the strides and underpants tangled round his ankles. For most of the audience, the sight of his private parts made public was just a bit of a Bonzo bonus to the already exciting event.

  But, among the ogling crowd, some punters were less impressed at the sight of Bonzo’s manhood flapping about on the drum stool. I clocked one humourless woman talking animatedly to one of the fairly heavy local police presence. Like a chill wind, the prudish outrage swept through the crowd and it was clear to see that the cops were not amused. Now, I’m not saying I’d normally think Bonzo getting his kit off was going too far. On the contrary, high spirits and outrageous behaviour like that are the all part of the sheer joy of rock ’n’ roll – and long may it stay that way. A few people will always be upset by it, but when the police are among the ones with the hump, that’s when the fun stops and the trouble starts. Of course, it was my job to make sure it didn’t.

  I could see the cops rallying together, conferring and calling for backup. I had to get Bonzo off the stage before they could arrest him. Suddenly I had a plan. I took Henry the Horse aside and told him to kill all the lights the moment the performers finished their song. He did so, plunging the stage into darkness for about ten seconds – just long enough for Richard Cole and I to grab Bonzo by the arms, pull his pants up and drag him, full-pelt, backstage. Obviously we couldn’t hide him in the band’s dressing area – that was the first place the cops would look for him. So we lugged him into another locker room nearby which, since it was fully equipped with shower facilities and such-like and plastered with sporting paraphernalia, I assumed was an American football players’ changing room. Somewhere out there, the police were stumbling about in the darkness, their mood turning as black as the blackout we’d plunged them into.

  I kicked the door shut and locked it. Hearts banging as loud as Bonzo’s drumming and holding our breath in case we were heard, Richard and I set about tidying up the legless sticks-man. We waited. Bonzo, by now, was unconscious, draped lifelessly over a chair, marooned helplessly in the empty tiled expanse of the backstage changing room. The distant rumble of angry men echoed along the corridors outside – then suddenly sounded uncomfortably close. And then there was an explosion of outraged voices. At first it was an incomprehensible babble. Then it was way too close and way too clear.

  “Where is the dirty motherfucker?” one loud American voice kept roaring with an authorit
y that cut through the general furore. At least, I thought, we were safely locked in this room. No one could hear us. Bonzo was temporarily out of the game. Keep schtum and we’d be in the clear.

  But then there was a thunderous banging at the door – the kind of banging that won’t take no for an answer. The door burst open to reveal five or six huge cops with waists as wide as their minds were narrow. Some traitor must have given them the master key. We were outnumbered, out-muscled, outweighed and, most importantly, outlawed.

  Richard and I stood in front of Bonzo in a forlorn attempt at solidarity – as if we could hide and protect him. Two of the police posse strode forward – too close for comfort, intimidating, demanding to know if this was the drummer who’d just given his public a pubic performance (not that they put it that delicately!).

  “Look, he’s just drunk – he’s harmless,’ I spluttered. “Look at him – he didn’t mean any harm …”

  The cops looked with distaste over my shoulder at the inert figure sprawled over a chair in the middle of the bleakly lit and spartan room. Neither was impressed. Their collective sense of humour bypass was obviously complete. I suppose it wasn’t much of an excuse. It can’t have been – because then they whipped out their batons threateningly, making it utterly clear that they meant business.

  To be honest, at that point, Richard and I had given up the ghost. We were all going to get nicked and that was that. But neither we nor the cops had reckoned on a far superior authority. I’d thought the police had made a fairly impressive entrance just minutes ago. But the door through which they’d marched with such self-righteous import suddenly exploded open to admit the furious and fightingmad figure of Peter Grant. He was always almost ludicrously huge – but fluffed up, furious and bristling with rage like a giant Mother Hen hell-bent on protecting her chicks, he almost took the door off its hinges. The door wasn’t the only thing almost unhinged by his entrance: the cops clucked in panic – overshadowed and overawed and chickening out completely.