Peter Grant: The Man Who Led Zeppelin

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Peter Grant: The Man Who Led Zeppelin Page 12

by Chris Welch


  A press release was put out stating that Zeppelin would be recording a ‘special single’ instead of releasing ‘Whole Lotta Love’. “It was just a cover-up,” admitted Grant later. “We never ever went in just to record a single. That was the golden rule. No singles. I could never understand why he only pressed five hundred. I mean, thanks for your confidence in us, Phil!”

  Grant’s stubborn attitude towards singles was matched by his approach towards Zeppelin film footage. He was adamant that many of the films made of the band during their early years would never be shown. If he or the band was unhappy with the quality, they stayed in the can. One such event was the Royal Albert Hall concert on January 9, 1970, which was filmed for posterity but never reached the screen. Explained Grant: “We filmed that and some of the Bath Festival. The wrong speed film was used and it came out too dark. So that was no use.”

  As well as battling record executives, Peter was still taking on those promoters who didn’t fully acquiesce to the idea of giving up such a large percentage of the take. One man, who thought he could pull a fast one over Zeppelin’s formidable manager, was quickly disabused of this idea.

  Peter: “We had to watch the promoters. I remember we caught one guy fiddling on a date we did with Jethro Tull. I went out front to see what the crowds were like. The box office was on a corner. This guy was taking five dollars from the fans in the queue and selling them tickets [so as to avoid using the box office]. So I took my rings off, joined the line and as it came to my turn I shouted ‘Gotcha!’ and took him back to the dressing room and had him empty his pockets and took every last dime and nickel from him. He didn’t do it again.

  “We went to the States a lot that year [1969] and we did loads of festivals. We had a falling out with Blood Sweat & Tears. They wouldn’t come off. So I stood on the steps and nobody got through until they cleared off. I recall another row with Chicago Transit Authority or whatever they were called. I used to say to our boys on these big bills: ‘Tear the place apart, take the roof off. I don’t want to see you afterwards unless you succeed.’ That normally got the required response.”

  Says Bill Harry: “Peter had this image and people said he was ferocious and terrible, but throughout all the years I knew him he was always very polite and thoughtful. He made sure there were no problems and he was a complete gentleman. He was good company and always smiling. And yet when we went to gigs like the Royal Albert Hall and he was laying down the law to people, they would be visibly shaking. People were actually terrified of him. He had this immense power to project strength. I always found he was like a cuddly bear. But theatre managers and staff were in awe of him when he went marching backstage. He would come in and demand things and if they weren’t done properly he’d soon let them know. In the States he always insisted that the promoters gave the band the best rooms and the best food. He would stand no nonsense.

  “But it didn’t always work out, even for Peter. I remember we were booked into the best hotel in Amsterdam and they were appalled at Led Zeppelin’s hair and clothes. They refused to allow them into the hotel. So we had to go to another one out of town. Same reaction. Peter had to talk them into letting us stay. Zeppelin were allowed in but only if they wouldn’t eat their meals in the restaurant. Everything had to be served in the rooms.”

  As they sat incarcerated in their hotel room John Bonham began getting very frustrated. Bill: “People don’t realise how very tedious it can be sitting around waiting for hours and hours in recording studios, concerts, airport lounges and hotel rooms, waiting for some action to start. Sitting all day in a hotel, the band felt like prisoners. You can feel the stress building up. They wanted to tear their hair out.”

  The room was equipped with a large radio set for guests and Bonham began playing with it, trying to get an English station so he could listen to some news or music. He switched the channels around and he couldn’t get what he wanted. “In the end he kicked the whole thing to smithereens,” says Bill. So began the first steps on the road to a policy of complete hotel destruction.

  By the end of 1969 Grant’s poll-winning band were showered with gold albums. Sales of $5,000,000 worth of records in the US alone, coupled with the high royalty deal that Peter had negotiated from Atlantic, enabled them to buy country homes and estates. Peter himself, who by now had moved his family from Norwood to Shepherds Bush, began looking at property on an upmarket estate in Purley, south of Croydon.

  At the start of 1970 the group began a short British tour, which included the Royal Albert Hall show. During February and March they toured Europe and played at the Montreux Jazz Festival. A fifth North American tour began in March, which included 27 dates and grossed $800,000. The group now had ten roadies in tow and during the Southern States stretch of the trip, they had to employ eight bodyguards to protect them from gun toting rednecks.

  And after a rare trip to Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, on June 22, they flew back to England to play a blockbusting show in front of 200,000 fans at the Bath Festival at Shepton Mallet, Somerset, for local promoter Freddie Bannister. It was a show that would long remain in the memories of fans and all those associated with the band. Grant was absolutely determined his boys would blow all the other groups off stage and he took pains to ensure they had the optimum conditions amidst the competitive atmosphere. It was considered so important that Zeppelin had turned down offers to play at Boston and Yale, US gigs worth $200,000.

  For British fans the Bath Festival was the first opportunity to see Led Zeppelin playing a full-length set at an outdoor show. It was also the first time many local music business folk got an eyeful of their manager, who seemed to have taken over control of the festival from the promoter, at least during the hours immediately before, during and after his act was playing.

  Grant planned his campaign carefully. “I went down to the site unbeknown to Freddie Bannister and found out from the Meteorological Office what time the sun was setting. It was going down right behind the stage. By going on at sunset I was able to bring the stage lights up a bit at a time. And it was vital we went on stage at the right time. That’s why I made sure the previous band Flock, or whoever they were, got off on time.”

  Among those who witnessed the traumatic scenes at the side of the stage was an open-mouthed young reporter from Melody Maker. Chris Charles-worth, soon to become the paper’s news editor and later its American correspondent, would come to enjoy privileged access to the band and travel extensively with them across America. But his first taste of Zeppelin-mania took place deep in the heart of the Somerset countryside.

  Says Charlesworth: “The first time I met Peter Grant was at the Bath Festival in 1970. I was hanging about backstage and there was an incident. The band were due on stage on Sunday night at 8 p.m. which Grant correctly assumed was the time when the sun would be going down behind them and would make a nice setting on stage. The trouble was the previous group were overrunning. They were the American band Flock, led by a violinist called Jerry Goodman. When they came to the end of a song at about 8 p.m. they still had more songs to go – and an encore. So Grant led his team of roadies onto the stage and he started unplugging their equipment. ‘Hey, we haven’t finished yet man,’ said Flock’s crew. ‘Oh yes you fuckin’ have,’ shouted Peter. There was a stand-off between the two sides but Flock’s roadies took one look at Led Zep’s gang, led by Grant and Richard Cole, and decided there was no way they were gonna fight these guys. So Zeppelin came on a few minutes after 8 p.m. just as the sun was setting.

  “Whenever Zeppelin did a show, Peter was in charge, not the promoter. As the manager of the headlining act, he just took control. The attitude was – his band were attracting 200,000 people to the festival – if it wasn’t for him the show wouldn’t happen.”

  As it turned out Peter Grant didn’t have too much to worry about, even if his tactics at manhandling Flock off stage seemed more than a tad unfriendly to these American visitors. Grant: “We hadn’t got anything to lose as we’d already b
een paid £20,000 upfront! Bath was a turning point in terms of recognition for us. It was a great day. I remember Jonesy arriving by helicopter with Julie Felix and his wife Mo and we had to get the Hells Angels to help us get them on site. I’d made a contact with the American Hells Angels in Cleveland with The Yardbirds, so we had no bother with them.”

  The band was accorded five encores by the massive festival audience and the music press acclaimed their triumph. The following month the band went to Germany for a tour where they broke all attendance records, including the show where 11,000 fans packed into the Frankfurt Festhalle.

  Peter Grant and Jimmy Page took time out from the mayhem to visit the town’s flea market, where they looked out for items of antique furniture and art nouveau. Away from the gigs, the groupies and the parties, the band and their manager were often quiet, contemplative and far more concerned with domestic matters at home. If they had broken up in 1970 they would still have been able to look back on a remarkable success story and remained happy, healthy and sane. But they had another decade to go and much more music to make. Given their workload during these early years, it was a miracle they ever had time to produce music of such quality.

  In August they started their sixth US tour, which ended in September with two shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden, which grossed over $100,000 each. By the autumn they had released the relatively low-key Led Zeppelin III with advance orders of 700,000 in the US alone. They were winning magazine popularity polls and being showered with awards, some even from HM Government who were pleased at the unexpected windfalls of tax revenue from these high earners and their contribution to the balance of payments.

  Said Peter: “They wanted to give us the Queen’s Award for Industry and I turned it down. That was too Establishment for Led Zeppelin.” However the band accepted their gold records, presented on behalf of the record industry by Mr Anthony Grant, Parliamentary Secretary to Trade & Industry. “We had a string quartet come down for the presentation and we told the press they played on the album!” said Peter, who never missed an opportunity to wind someone up for laughs.

  When work began on Led Zeppelin’s fourth album in London at the beginning of 1971, Peter decided that in a belated attempt to combat his weight problem he would spend time on a health farm. It had got to the point where he had to book two seats for himself on every aircraft. There were problems with broken toilet bowls and chairs and quite apart from these personal embarrassments, he was aware that being so overweight could only have a detrimental effect on his heart. His heavy smoking, over-eating and unhealthy diet coupled with constant stress and all the travelling through different time zones contributed to a potentially-life threatening condition.

  It was all very well looking like a man mountain with a reputation to match, but his bulk was a sensitive subject and a self-perpetuating source of anxiety. It did not do his temper much good to be the object of ridicule, real or imagined, from passers-by. It is said that when the two young recruits from Birmingham first came to London to join the band, John Bonham asked Robert loudly, “Who’s that great big fat bloke?” Replied the stick-thin singer, “Sssh mate – that’s our manager.”

  On one of their early American tours, the road crew spotted a gigantic pair of trousers on a pole above a clothing store shop, displayed as a kind of crude advertisement. The crew went in and offered to buy the trousers for cash. When they presented the enormous pants to their boss he took it in good part and joked that although they were a little too big for him, he might grow into them by the end of the tour.

  Grant took a less amiable attitude when a cartoon published in Melody Maker portrayed him as a whale. It was drawn by Gibbard, a political cartoonist briefly employed, and probably briefed, by editor Ray Coleman. The cartoon was supposed to depict a rumour in the music business that Peter was poised to take over the management of Emerson, Lake & Palmer alongside Zeppelin, and featured a truly enormous whale, its face resembling Grant, complete with luxurious moustache. Inside its vast stomach was a pair of rafts floating on water, one of them holding Led Zeppelin, the other ELP. Out of the whale’s blowhole gushed dozens of £5 notes. “Peter called up Ray Coleman and indicated his displeasure,” recalls Chris Charlesworth, then MM’s news editor. “He wasn’t just mad about the whale but because the story wasn’t true. He was angry that Led Zep might have thought he was deserting them, which he’d never have done. Ray was a bit shaken by the call. Gibbard didn’t stay on the paper long after that.”

  Often Peter would be irritable and uncomfortable, suffering from back trouble exacerbated by his condition. He would fly off the handle, even when proffered compliments or gifts that were well meant but open to misinterpretation. He once let slip that he was partial to raspberries, his favourite dessert fruit. When a well-wisher sent him a large box of raspberries, he went ballistic; convinced it was some kind of piss-take. He didn’t want anybody’s flattery, sympathy or patronage.

  Away from the grind of constant touring, negotiating deals and handling his artistes, his own family life provided an escape route to stability and normality. He doted on his son Warren and did his best to be a supportive father. Warren was growing up in a hectic household where telephones rang constantly and strange hairy people turned up at the door clutching guitar cases. Yet he regarded the band business as a normal adjunct to everyday life.

  As a child Warren was more interested in football than rock’n’roll but he couldn’t help but notice how his father’s success meant the family was able to move up in the world. Warren: “I can remember when I was a wee lad I asked my dad for a football kit and he got me an Arsenal outfit, so I have followed them ever since. I was born in South Norwood and then we went to live in Shepherds Bush for a few years. When Dad started getting successful we went to a posh estate in Purley. Ronnie Corbett the comedian lived opposite us. From there we moved to Horselunges near Eastbourne. We worked our way down the A22!”

  Richard Cole suggests that Zeppelin’s need to start buying property was not just a personal whim or wild extravagance. Big spending was usually the result of sound advice from accountants. “When they finally made a lot of money they had to get rid of it, for tax reasons, so that’s why they bought the big houses and cars. In 1971 Peter bought a house in Purley, Surrey, which cost £36,000. Everyone thought it was absolutely insane when George Harrison spent £100,000 on Friar Park in Henley. That was the most expensive house at that time that any musician had ever bought. John Bonham’s farmhouse, which he bought and converted, never cost anywhere near that much. Plant never spent much on houses and Jimmy’s house in Lewes, Sussex, cost about £100,000. When Peter bought Horselunges Manor in Sussex, it cost him about £100,000. Then the prices started to jump and hit the million pound mark.”

  When Grant eventually sold his Purley house to buy Horselunges Manor, he laid on a surprise for the new owners. The couple buying the attractive, neat and tidy red brick house arrived while Peter was in the throes of packing. “I’m in a hurry,” he told them. “I’ve got a plane to catch. The thing is, I think I’ve left a package with £20,000 in cash somewhere in the house. I haven’t got time to look for it now, but if you can find it, well good luck!”

  Peter got on his plane at Heathrow and chuckled all the way to America. It was another of his wind-ups, and from time to time over the next few hours as he gazed down on the Atlantic Ocean from his first-class seat at the front of the plane, he laughed out loud at the thought of the new owners desperately ripping up the floorboards to find the nonexistent treasure trove.

  * * *

  * ‘Tobacco Road’, The Nashville Teens only Billboard Top 40 entry, actually only reached number 14.

  6

  MR GRANT GOES TO WAR

  “I would step on anyone who fucked around with my band – personally. I would never send in a heavy, I’d deal with it myself, just as I would go to any lengths to get the band the money they were due.”

  – Peter Grant

  If there was one topic
guaranteed to arouse Peter Grant’s ire, it was the vexed question of ‘bootlegging’. With the spread of more sophisticated mobile recording equipment in the early Seventies, it became easier for members of an audience to make good quality recordings of top rock bands in concert. Often these were fairly innocent ventures, intended solely for fans’ own listening pleasure, but the more mercenary minded bootleggers were recording concerts to fuel a growing and illicit trade in unofficial albums. One of the first, and certainly the most famous, was The Great White Wonder that featured studio sessions by Bob Dylan and The Band. These tapes, containing several of Dylan’s best known songs, were recorded at Big Pink, the group’s farmhouse in Woodstock in upstate New York, and formed the basis of the first ever big selling bootleg album.

  It soon became common practice for bootleggers to tape live gigs and manufacture vinyl LPs which were sold in plain sleeves by unscrupulous record dealers, usually back street record shops in central London or stalls in markets like those in Berwick Street in Soho, Camden Town or Notting Hill’s Portobello Road. Many fans thought that such bootlegs provided an invaluable service, giving an insight into a band’s career and supplementing the restricted official output. This was an opinion shared by many writers in the weekly music press, New Musical Express, Melody Maker and, especially, the more underground magazines such as Oz and Friendz. In some circles, it was even regarded as something of an honour to be ‘bootlegged’, since this demonstrated that a band was held in sufficiently high esteem that there was a clear demand for their live shows and outtakes to be made available illegally.

 

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