Peter Grant: The Man Who Led Zeppelin

by Chris Welch

  Even the critics liked ‘Kashmir’. Yet its orchestral backing developed into a doomy, menacing soundscape that left some nonplussed, including their manager. Said Peter: “I remember Bonzo playing me the demo of ‘Kashmir’ and Jimmy running it down on guitar for me. It was fantastic. But the funny thing is when it was first finished it was decided it was a bit of a dirge. We were in Paris and we played it to Atlantic and we all thought it was a dirge, so Richard Cole was dispatched to Southall in west London to find a Pakistani orchestra. We put the strings on and Jonesy got it all together and the end result was just exactly what was needed. He was a master arranger.”

  Jonesy’s skills were now so well respected within the music business that he was accorded a high honour. Much to Peter’s envy John Paul was introduced to Grant’s all-time idol, ‘The King’ of rock’n’roll Elvis Presley. Recalled Peter: “Jonesy and Richard met him in 1974 during the launch period for Swan Song. Richard had a watch and they had a swop. Elvis gave Jonesy a watch with an east coast and west coast face. I met Elvis myself in 1975.”

  Peter and the band went to see Elvis perform at one of his Las Vegas shows. “We were sitting about twelve rows from the front of the stage. He had a big band with lots of singers. They did a number and the band was out of time and all over the place. Elvis goes, ‘Stop, stop, stop,’ and he turns to the audience and says, ‘We’re gonna do that again because we’ve got Led Zeppelin in the audience and we want to look like we know what we’re doing up here.’ I just went cold. It was the nearest I came to snuffing it! I mean, what a compliment. And we went backstage and that’s when I sat on Elvis Presley’s father.”

  This proved to be one of Grant’s funniest after dinner stories, which both he and friends delighted in recounting whenever a fit of nostalgia set in. “We were in this huge suite. Jerry Weintraub* told me we’d only got a 20-minute stay and we were up there for two and a half hours. Bonzo and Elvis had been talking about hot rods and about how much kickback you can get. And John was calling him ‘El’ and he says, ‘I’ve had one El that kicked back real hard’ and he pushes Elvis’ shoulder and knocks him backwards. All the minders jump up but Elvis laughs and says, ‘What did you do that for?’ And John replies, ‘Well I’ve got to tell you El, I was in reverse at the time!’”

  Meanwhile, as the evening wore on, Peter desperately needed somewhere to sit down. ‘I suffer from a lot of back trouble and I was talking to Ronnie Tutt and his wife. Ronnie was Elvis’ drummer. Behind me was a long couch and I said to Ronnie, ‘I’ve gotta sit down, cos my back’s hurting.’ I sat down and realised I had landed on somebody’s legs. I jumped up and looked down and realised it was Vernon Presley in a white suit. I said, ‘I’m really sorry Mr Presley for sitting on you, but I guess if anybody is going to do that in this room, it’s gotta be me.’ Well, when we were leaving after two or three hours, we shook hands and said goodbye. Elvis said, ‘It was wonderful of you to come up and visit me Mr Grant.’ I said, ‘Well I must tell you something Elvis, I’ve gotta apologise for sitting on your dad.’ He looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Stick around kid, you might get a permanent job.’ That was the best line anyone ever laid on me.”

  It was certainly friendlier than the response Grant got from the notoriously grouchy Bob Dylan. When Peter introduced himself to the harmonica blower at an LA party he said, “Hello Bob, my name’s Peter Grant. I’m the manager of Led Zeppelin.” Replied the great sage, “Do I come to you with my problems?”

  Grant renewed his acquaintanceship with the Presley camp a couple of years later in 1977 when he began to negotiate with Colonel Tom Parker to see if he could finally induce Presley to come to Britain for the kind of tour that his UK fans had long dreamt about. It would have been a great coup. Peter: “I was talking to Colonel Tom just before Elvis’s death, for him to come to England, but not as a promoter. He wanted me to advise him on where Elvis should play. Just before Elvis passed away I was living on Long Island just outside New York with Bad Company and that week he died, I was going to take the band to see him at Nassau County Coliseum. On the Sunday I was having lunch with Jerry Weintraub and the Colonel to discuss Elvis coming to England and who would be the best promoter. After seeing Elvis playing in Las Vegas and in New York I was sure he would have liked to get back to his rock roots.”

  Sadly Elvis passed away before this plan could come to fruition. Given Zeppelin’s penchant for playing rock’n’roll, it would have been marvellous to hear the first great white blues singer with the greatest white rock blues band. After all, they got close when Zep backed P.J. Proby on an album. It all depended on whether Robert Plant would have minded playing tambourine for ‘The King’.

  After the May 1975 concerts at Earls Court Led Zeppelin became tax exiles once again and set up a temporary HQ in Montreux, Switzerland. Robert Plant had set off on a family holiday in Morocco and later he met up with Jimmy Page in Marrakesh for a drive through the desert in a Range Rover. From there they drove back to Europe and met up with the band in Montreux to plan a 33-date US tour due to start in August. Once business was done, Page and Plant left with their families for a holiday on the Greek island of Rhodes. Page went on to Italy and planned to meet the rest of the band in Paris to start rehearsals. But on August 4 Robert and his family were involved in a crash in their hired Austin mini car. His wife Maureen was driving the car and hit a tree, suffering a fractured pelvis and skull while their children Karac and Carmen in the rear seat escaped with minor injuries. Jimmy’s daughter Scarlet was also in the car. Robert had multiple fractures of the ankle and elbow. They were taken to hospital and then airlifted back to London. Maureen spent several weeks in hospital and doctors told Plant he wouldn’t be able to walk again for at least six months.

  The band’s plan for a round the world tour to fill in their tax exile period had to be scrapped while all attention was focused on the treatment and recuperation of Robert and his family. Richard Cole recalls that Peter Grant told him, “This could be the end of Led Zeppelin.”

  Peter: “We had a second tour of the US all lined up as we were going to be away from England all year. I was in the South of France when I heard about Robert’s crash. It was a nightmare. We were trying to run the operation from a house in Malibu, which was a crazy idea. There was a lot of tension about that period because we were all holed up in houses we didn’t really want to be in.”

  Eventually Robert went to stay in Jersey in the Channel Islands with the rest of the band, as it was nearer to England. On this visit to the island they put on an impromptu show at Behan’s nightclub. When the club owner announced to a small crowd, “And tonight, we present Led Zeppelin,” nobody believed him, until they came on stage.

  In October the band went to Los Angeles where they rehearsed before starting to record their next album, Presence, in November at Musicland Studios in Munich, Germany. Robert had to sing while supported by a pair of crutches with his leg in plaster. They spent December 1975 back in Jersey, completing their year out. Presence, which contained the standout track ‘Achilles Last Stand’, was finally released in April 1976.

  Peter thought that the time recording the album in Munich was, “An uphill struggle. It was difficult in the writing and rehearsing stage and then we were pressured into recording it quickly. It was not one of my favourite albums but there again it’s got ‘Achilles’ which is a masterpiece. The song ‘Tea For One’ sums that period up for me really. That was Maureen’s song. She used to come out to Munich at weekends and Robert was pretty depressed when she was away.”

  The album sleeve was quite a departure for Zeppelin. The design by Hipgnosis featured a surreal object called an obelisk placed in photographs of normal everyday situations like family snapshots. “The idea was to put into perspective whether the obelisk was real or just an illusion,” said Peter. “The only time it becomes real is on the inner sleeve when you can see the shadow. On the sleeve it looks a bit stuck on. Our sleeves were often controversial. The Spanish authorities bann
ed Physical Graffiti because it had a picture of a nun on the inner sleeve. They stamped ‘censored’ on it.”

  The band’s tax exile period finished in spring 1976 and there were rumours that the band would play a small club like London’s Marquee for their comeback appearance. “We were always getting offers but we weren’t ready to do it,” said Peter. “It was getting a bit worrying at that time. There were problems with Jimmy having squatters in his house we had to get rid of.”

  While Zeppelin were undergoing an enforced fallow period, another Swan Song act were having the time of their lives. Grant’s signing Bad Company were ‘doing the business’ and he was especially pleased and delighted with their success. With their hit song ‘Can’t Get Enough’ constantly on the radio the band were a hot property. Melody Maker’s Chris Charlesworth reported on their progress, often in the company of their now legendary manager. Chris remembers going to San Francisco with Bad Company for a show at Bill Graham’s venue The Winterland, scene of many a British band’s triumph. Paul Rodgers and friends were in Frisco with Dr Feelgood as their support act. They also played to crowds of 18,000 at the LA Forum.

  Chris: “They were really making it big at this time. On the flight from San Francisco to LA in 1976, another private plane, I was sitting minding my own business when a roadie came down the aisle and whispered in my ear, ‘Peter wants to see you.’ It was like being summoned to the judge. I made my way to the private room at the back of the plane where he was sat with some of the band. There was lots of cocaine on a table and Peter offered me some. ‘Did you enjoy the show Chris?’ he asked, quite pleasantly, all smiles. ‘Er … yes Peter.’ ‘Well, mind you say so in the paper. You can go now.’ There was a big smile on his face but there was also a hint of menace. I wouldn’t want to say, ‘Oh the bass wasn’t mixed too well and the drummer was a bit speedy and the show dipped in the middle.’ It was not the place to say that kind of thing. The following night at the LA Forum Jimmy and Robert sat in with Bad Company. I had lined up a photographer to cover the gig but he was banned from the stage. Then when Jimmy and Robert got up, Richard Cole shouts at me, ‘Where’s your fucking photographer? This is your front page story!’”

  In vain Chris spluttered, “But you told him to go away!” He eventually located the snapper and the picture duly made the front page of MM. “We got there in the end but there was always this paranoia. If they had been milder in their attitude at the beginning, there wouldn’t have been all this stress at the end. I suppose they thought a photographer would get in their way. Yet they were often very indiscreet. A photographer once snapped Led Zeppelin at Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco with scantily dressed young girls draped all over them, and MM printed it. I heard it didn’t go down too well with their wives back home.”

  The Bad Company gigs coincided with a Swan Song summit meeting in Los Angeles and all of Led Zep bar John Paul Jones were in attendance. “I was in a limo on the way to the Forum with Plant when he opened the roof in the car park and stood on the seat, all bare chest and long curly hair. He looked out over the crowds and started saying something like ‘my people’ as if he was about to address them on matters of great hippy philosophical importance. Then someone in the car – probably Richard Cole – yelled, ‘Sit down ya’ fucking prat! You’ll start a fucking riot.’”

  When Bad Company’s first album was released it became an instant hit. In fact it was number one in the charts the week Charlesworth saw them supporting headliners Foghat at the Schaffer Music Festival in Central Park, New York, in 1974. Jimmy Page joined Bad Co on stage for an encore, and the audience went berserk. It was a hard act to follow and many of the crowd began to leave, much to Foghat’s distress. Jimmy Page, Peter Grant and Bad Company also left the park and it was on the way back to the hotel that Charlesworth witnessed the great ‘Peter Grant Foot In The Door Incident’.

  “Everyone was in a very good mood after the gig. There were two limos backstage for Page, Grant and us. Peter was getting into the back seat but the chauffeur was clearly overeager. He slammed the door shut and caught Peter’s foot in the door. Peter just exploded! The language was terrible. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing, ya’ fucking cunt!’

  “The driver realised he had made a terrible mistake. Mistake number one was crushing Peter Grant’s foot. Mistake number two was to say, ‘I’m terribly sorry Peter.’

  ” ‘Who the fuck told you you could call me Peter? It’s Mr Grant to you, ya fucking cunt!’

  “Peter went on like that all the way to the Essex House hotel,” says Charlesworth. “You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. He just didn’t stop abusing this driver. It went on for 15 minutes or more, just relentless abuse. ‘You’ll never drive another fucking car again, you fucking useless cunt!’ Even Jimmy Page seemed worried and we all sat there in embarrassed silence, not daring to speak while Peter shouted and ranted. The driver was really nervous and he was still getting grief, even when we got to the hotel. That poor man …

  “The strange thing was that Peter came on like a tyrant and his enormous bulk backed him up. He could act like a vicious thug yet underneath he was as gentle as a kitten. I’d see him cry like a baby with tears in his eyes if someone said something nice, some genuine compliment. The more vicious the person, the more sentimental they become. I could never understand why he later recruited real criminals like John Bindon to work as a security man for him. Nobody was going to hit Peter or start a fight with him. If Peter asked for something in an intimidating manner, then ninety-nine per cent of the population would give it to him and the other one per cent are stupid. The real violence was completely unnecessary. He could simply be abusive and no one was ever going to argue with him.”

  Even so there were signs that Peter was growing increasingly worried and disturbed by inexplicable events that impinged on the band. He was brave and strong but he needed help. It was tour manager Richard Cole who brought in Bindon, a London villain with a taste for show business, to act as bodyguard to Grant and Page. Cole and Grant had intelligence, humour and charm to counteract their pseudo villainy. Bindon had few such redeeming features and his presence would subsequently have damaging effects on the band’s image.

  Swan Song executive Alan Callan could see how the mood of the times was changing. The free and easy good time party atmosphere was being replaced by something more sinister: “In 1975 there were all these death threats and security got really tight with guards licensed to carry guns travelling with the band. It was unpleasant but necessary. Peter had to deal with all this. The job of being manager of a band of that scale brought enormous pressure. People always wanted something from him and there was always someone who thought they could get a buck from him. People wanted to deal in merchandising. In those days we didn’t make tour T-shirts because we thought it ripped off the fans. Whereas today bands think that for every ticket they sell, they sell two T-shirts.

  “Peter lived with enormous stress all the time and he was not only supposed to cope with the professional issues. He had to manage the personal affairs and relationships of a bunch of musicians. And that wasn’t always an easy task. And he was there 24 hours a day for the band.

  “I remember an incident where there was a guy in California who was making phone calls to Robert’s parents in England, pretending to be a doctor and having the results of a medical test which showed some very negative effect on Robert’s body. Peter’s immediate reaction was to get the telephone company to switch all the calls to his house at Horselunges and speak to his friends in America at AT&T to have the calls traced. He’d get on the phone and pretend to be Robert’s dad.

  “It was an all-encompassing job. Peter’s philosophy was very simple. You were either a friend or a foe. You were either somebody he could trust, or you weren’t. If he could trust you, then you’d do business with him forever. If he didn’t trust you, then you couldn’t get anywhere near him. It was all about moments in time. I never found the guy threatening or intimidating. I
thought he was a fantastically funny man to be around.”

  Alan loved the way Grant cooked up ways to cap a story. He experienced this one night at the trendy London club Tramp, in Jermyn Street. Grant was having dinner with Jimmy, John Paul Jones, Ahmet Ertegun, Mick Jagger, Keith Richard and Richard Cole. It was just after The Rolling Stones had left Atlantic and signed to EMI. “It was the first time Ahmet had seen them since the split from Atlantic,” recalls Alan. “Peter said to me, ‘At some point in the dinner, the question is going to have to be asked.’ Then eventually Ahmet turns around and says to Mick, ‘What was it that made you leave Atlantic and go to EMI?’ and Peter kicked me under the table. Mick said graciously, ‘Well Ahmet to tell you the truth, when we sat down to consider The Rolling Stones, we never thought we’d get to this peak. We look on this as our harvest period, when we went for the biggest amount of money we could get and EMI put the biggest amount of money on the table. That was the harvest we wanted.’

  “Peter turned round and said, ‘Oh, you should have signed with Swan Song. Alan gets our harvest up front.’ I think he’d been rehearsing that line in his head all evening.”

  Whatever wit Peter was inclined to show when out on the town, the mood of paranoia and aggression at the heart of Zep’s operations was on the increase, and the band’s friends could not ignore the telltale signs and its effects on their manager. Says Callan: “One of the sad things about success and wealth is that it does become negative.