by Chris Welch
“Peter always said to me starting Swan Song was a mistake because there were only 24 hours in a day. ‘You’ve gotta have a life,’ he said. ‘Artists are very demanding.’ He did not encourage the phone call in the middle of the night but he got them just the same. After 1980 he sank into what I am sure a doctor would call clinical depression. Doing cocaine made him paranoid and it got worse and worse. After John died he got all these drummers ringing up saying they had been offered the gig with Led Zeppelin, which was a load of bollocks. When he and the other three decided, quite rightly, to knock it on the head, almost everything he had lived for had gone. Although he had worked with other artists like Bad Company and Maggie Bell, he repeatedly said that Swan Song was the worst thing he ever did. As any manager knows, when you have success with one thing, it creates an illusion in your mind that you have some sort of magic touch, which is rubbish. What you had was a bit of luck!
“Managers credit themselves with having much more impact on things than they really do. If you are really successful, then you are on a roller coaster ride and your skill is hanging on. You get paid a large amount of money mostly for doing the job, but the rest for putting up with the grief. Being a manager is probably the worst job, because you are the bridge between the art and the commerce and you’re never going to get into a situation where you are keeping both sides happy. That’s impossible.”
Bicknell does not share the naïve belief that the rock business was the great artistic crusade so fondly portrayed in the days when earnestly emulating the blues was likened to pursuing the Holy Grail. “It was driven totally by greed and the greediest people were the artists. Unquestionably,” he says. “They may not start out that way, but as soon as they acquire that lifestyle they have to keep it going. So you get pop stars living in big mansions with trout farms thinking, ‘Fucking hell, I need some money to put a roof on that extension – better see if we can get the band going again.’ Look at The Rolling Stones, who have turned what they do into an enormous money-making machine. Mick Jagger once said, ‘Anybody who doesn’t make the most money possible out of this business is a fool.’”
Ed Bicknell first encountered Peter Grant after an appearance on a Tyne Tees TV show called Wired which was made by the same production team responsible for the ground breaking pop show The Tube, hosted by the late Paula Yates and Jools Holland. The new show planned an item on rock managers and, as well as inviting Metallica manager Peter Mensch, they wanted to interview Ed Bicknell and Peter Grant. Ed was surprised to hear they had filmed Grant at Horselunges in late 1989, as he thought he was still a recluse.
“When it came to my spot on the show I made some complimentary remarks about Peter Grant in my interview. The show went out and I thought nothing more about it. Then in May 1990 I was playing drums with Mark Knopfler in our spin-off group The Notting Hillbillies. We had put out an album that to our great surprise sold two million copies. We did a 42-date tour of the UK and one of the shows was at the Congress Theatre in Eastbourne. The back door behind the stage opened and I saw this large figure shuffle in, accompanied by a man who looked like a second-hand car dealer who in fact turned out to be a second-hand car dealer in a sheepskin coat!
“These two men came in and sat on a flight case and I turned round and realised one of them was Peter Grant. He had changed in appearance by then. He was a lot older and had lost a lot of weight. The long hair, the turquoise rings and the caftan-like apparel had gone. I went over and was introduced and he said, ‘Hello young man, I’ve come along to thank you for the really nice things you said about me on that TV show.’ I invited him into the dressing room for a cup of tea.”
The concert was being promoted by a friend of Bicknell’s called Paul Crockford, who managed Level 42. Crockford was also a fan of the Zeppelin. “He [Crockford] came into the dressing room and an interesting thing happened which summed up Peter Grant in a way,” continued Bicknell. “He was a bit young and nervous and recognised Peter, who I introduced as ‘my manager’. Paul said, ‘What do you mean manager?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m a musician now. I’ve gotta have a manager, so I’ve got Peter Grant!’ Peter immediately picked up the joke and with a twinkle in his eye he said, ‘I’ve come to count the tickets.’ The blood drained from Paul’s face and he said, ‘You’re not serious?’ Peter said, ‘Oh, I do hope we’re not going to have a problem.’ Crockford fled from the dressing room quaking in his boots. I said to Peter, ‘That was brilliant the way you picked up on that.’ And he said, ‘Yes, I’m going to come backstage during the interval and count the dead wood.’ Dead wood was an expression we used for the stub part of the ticket. When Peter checked out promoters in his day, there wasn’t any computerised ticketing. You had to count all the ticket stubs and you could sit there for hours in the dressing room at 2 a.m. counting blocks of tickets.
“We got Peter a couple of seats and he watched the gig. He came back to the dressing room later. After everybody else left there was Crockford, myself and a couple of roadies. We stayed up until 3 a.m. and Peter regaled us with anecdotes for four hours and we were heaving with laughter. He and I struck up this friendship and it transpired that by this time he had sold Horselunges and had moved into an apartment in Eastbourne. I had a house eight miles away in Polegate. We used to get together all the time and go to a Chinese restaurant called Mr Hau run by a man called Elvis Hau! He [Grant] came over the house as well and my girlfriend cooked us dinner. He was on a diet by then and working very hard at reducing his weight. But he stayed for dinner, tea and supper and by midnight my girlfriend Jenny whispered in my ear, ‘There’s nothing left!’ And he’d eaten everything in the house.”
And so began a friendship in which the old master took advice from the young contender. Bicknell and Dire Straits were making a killing from the introduction of the compact disc, the new user-friendly format that took over from black vinyl. He believed that the record industry pulled off the most successful feat in its history when the CD format was devised. As he puts it, “They managed to sell to people the same stuff twice and get more money for it the second time around!”
Peter Grant knew nothing of CDs. When a Led Zeppelin boxed set was planned for release in the early Nineties, Peter rang Bicknell and confessed that he had never had to deal with compact discs before. Bicknell: “He said, ‘Ere Ed, what can you tell me about packaging deductions?’ This is a device record companies have for clawing back money. On a CD it is 25 per cent, which is charged back to the act. Pete told me about a deal for this Led Zeppelin boxed set and asked me what I thought of the royalty rate. He was still acting on behalf of John Bonham’s estate. I said that particular royalty rate was what a baby band starting now could expect to get on its first record. He said, ‘Well that’s what these cunts have agreed to.’ He rang Ahmet Ertegun and the rate was lifted substantially. They were taking the piss. But record companies will do that because they can.”
As Bicknell got to know Grant better he saw that the ogre of the music business was in reality a family man who had old-fashioned values and believed in providing stability and home comforts for his offspring. “One of the most remarkable things about Peter was that he brought up his kids as a single parent in a completely mad environment. Peter was very proud of Warren in particular, because he had become the head green keeper at the Royal Sussex Golf Course. Peter was also devoted to his grandchildren, probably because he hadn’t been around so much when his own children were very small.”
Grant evidently decided to put an end to his isolation around 1990 and then started coming out of his shell. Says Bicknell: “He just literally decided one day that he was gonna kick the drugs. He had a bag of cocaine, about three pounds of the stuff in weight … something ridiculous. He locked himself in a bedroom with flagons of orange juice. He threw the bedroom key out of the window and stayed in the room for three or four days doing cold turkey. He never took another drug after that. Instead he took homeopathic medicine on a little dropper. He decided he was going to lose weig
ht and get his health back together. He was going to be 16 stone by the time he was 60. So he would go for a walk up and down Eastbourne front nearly every day to exercise. In the meantime, he got the drugs and flushed the lot down the toilet. One of the guys looking after him said, ‘Oh Peter, if only I’d known, I could have got you a refund!’ He then sold the house to a friend called Anna.”
Ed and Peter were both keen collectors of art deco glass and furniture. Bicknell was greatly impressed by Grant’s huge collection of Tiffany lamps and William Morris glass. “He turned up at my house one day with a cardboard box full of straw. I thought it was half a dozen eggs and I nearly dropped it on the floor because it was so heavy. I opened it up and inside was an enormous chunk of decorative glass from the Maples furniture store in London. It had once been part of a frieze around the store and it had been dismantled when the store was knocked down. He had bought some of these sections of glass. He gave it to me and said, ‘This is for you because you helped me live again.’ I was quite touched by that. Not long after that he gave me a collection of framed rare cigarette cards. He was very generous in that way.”
Peter sold Horselunges and moved into an apartment in Eastbourne where over a period of time he became a local dignitary. Even in retirement he seemed such a figure of authority that the local bench asked if he would like to become a magistrate. In effect he was being asked to mete out justice to the local villains.
Says Ed: “He thought that was wonderful! The irony of him of all people being asked to be a magistrate. He turned it down saying, ‘It wouldn’t look very good on my CV, would it?’ I remember we were in a Chinese restaurant one night and he was chatting to a fellow at the next table. I said, ‘Who’s that?’ And he said, ‘Oh that’s the Mayor of Eastbourne. He’s my mate. ‘Ere they’re having a talent contest on the pier. Do you want to come and judge it with me?’ So there we were, the managers of Led Zeppelin and Dire Straits, judging a talent contest on the end of the pier on the seafront. As I remember the bands were bloody awful!”
Thus, in the autumn of his years, did Peter Grant become a respectable, upstanding citizen of the Borough of Eastbourne. He was recognised as he drove around the town in any of his collection of unusual automobiles. He became a well-known figure, though certain myths persisted that no one could quite understand, or get to the bottom of. “When I moved down there, the local paper ran a headline that said ‘Beverley Hills Comes To Polegate’,” says Ed Bicknell. “I’m reading this and I’m thinking, this can’t possibly be about me. The local rumours about Peter were that apart from keeping crocodiles in the moat, he was holding black magic orgies inside the Manor house, whereas in fact he didn’t do any of those things. Once the drugs had been got rid of he started to live again, although he didn’t want to get back into the business. He realised that his time had gone.”
Peter maintained an interest in vintage American cars which he shared with an eccentric aristocrat called Lord John Gould, who helped Peter look after them and had access to the barn where they were garaged. One of the vehicles had belonged to Al Capone, and had a compartment fitted into the front passenger door which was designed to hold a Thompson machine gun. Gould hired the cars out for wedding receptions and Pete even dressed up as a chauffeur. “They once got paid £50 each and he said to John, ‘I haven’t been paid cash in years. Great!’” says Bicknell. “It’s funny to think Peter Grant was driving around these young couples in a car that once belonged to Al Capone. And they didn’t know who he was. During his last five years, Peter really enjoyed his life.”
That same year – 1989 – Grant and Page renewed their friendship and went to see Frank Sinatra perform at The Royal Albert Hall, where they still owned a private box. Peter boasted it was the only place in the building where he could smoke cigarettes “and get away with it!” Further bridge building occurred in May, 1990, when Peter attended the wedding of Jason Bonham to Jan Charteris at St Mary’s Church in Stone, Kidderminster. Peter joined in the wedding photographs outside the church with Jason, John Paul Jones and Robert. Although Jimmy was absent during the picture session, he later jammed with Robert, Jones and Jason at the reception.
As Peter’s condition improved he began to venture further afield. In October 1992 Ed Bicknell took him out to Barcelona to see one of a string of Dire Strait’s concerts. The band was playing to crowds of 15,000 in a vast auditorium for seven consecutive nights. “We sat him on the side of the stage on a flight case. The place was heaving and the punters were going mad. We had all the lights, bombs and dry ice and he said to me afterwards, ‘That was so exciting.’ He hadn’t been in that position on stage for years and then we jumped into a limo to make a runner back to the hotel. It was like re-living the Led Zeppelin experience for him. My band was very nice to him and we went to a great restaurant in the old part of Barcelona with Mark Knopfler.”
The friendship between the two men was enhanced by a mutual respect and understanding. Ed Bicknell was going through problems with his own band at the time, largely due to ‘road fever’. Peter proved to be a man he could confide in. “That was partly because he was very discreet and partly because he could completely relate to what I was talking about. Also, he wasn’t directly involved in the band business anymore. After meeting my band he said, ‘I didn’t realise what you were going on about. Now I understand.’ He was very helpful to me.”
The two managers knew the importance of keeping up a ‘front’ – appearing all-wise and all-powerful. It was a relief to be able to discuss the problems they each knew only too well. Says Ed: “He was still in touch with Jimmy and would help him out, but he’d had a falling out with Robert over business matters. A lot of people had deserted him over the years. In our game you have genuine friends who will always be there for you. There are also a lot of people who are there, because of who you are and because you control a large economic asset. When you break up with a band it’s interesting to see whose Christmas hamper list you get taken off! You go straight off the record company and publisher lists. After Zeppelin split there were quite a lot of Peter’s friends who bailed out. That’s why he enjoyed our friendship. I didn’t have a motive. I liked him, loved him actually.”
Peter and Ed would often go out to a local village restaurant near Eastbourne and reminisce about the old days until the last customers had gone and the waiters were hoovering around the tables. “He’d be telling me stories about Elvis Presley and Colonel Parker until one in the morning. It was amazing. He was actually advising them on the possibility of touring Britain just a few days before Elvis died.”
Not all of Peter’s former colleagues had forgotten him however. Some had simply moved on and lost touch, like his former PR Bill Harry: “I knew he had been incapacitated for a few years and I tried to get information about him. I was very surprised when I heard he had got into drugs. I never thought Peter of all people would get into drugs or anything like that. Why would he need to? He’d got his family and his successful career. When people began telling me that he couldn’t move out of his bed and that he’d been on drugs, I thought it was very sad. I couldn’t believe how much weight he had lost.”
Peter himself admitted as much in one of the few interviews he gave later in life. “It’s true I went through a drug period, particularly with cocaine. In the Seventies it was a coffee table drug. If you went to a movie executive’s in Hollywood for dinner they wouldn’t offer you After Eight mints with the coffee, they’d pass around a small bowl full of white powder with a straw.”
Peter was proud that he’d managed to recover from the wasted years. He rang Mickie Most and told him: ‘I’ve lost a load of weight. You wouldn’t recognise me. I lost fifteen stone, because I had a heart attack.’
“Said Mickie: “Did you really? I never heard about that.”
“No,” said Peter. “I kept it quiet. It was a bit of a frightener.”
The last time Peter Grant phoned Mickie Most he said, “I’ve just passed 60.”
“I never
thought you’d get to 60,” replied his old friend.
“Nor did I!” replied Peter.
Others made more determined attempts to track him down. Since his incarceration in an Italian prison Richard Cole’s situation had gone from bad to worse. He needed help and hoped his old boss might help him out. “I remember, just before I got sober, in Christmas 1985, I was absolutely broke. I called him up and asked him if he’d lend me £500. He said he was skint and didn’t have a penny. In a strange way it was a blessing because a week later I got sober. On the one hand I was pissed off. I would have thought he’d have at least five hundred quid hidden under the bed somewhere! But no – he wouldn’t lend me anything – he was broke and didn’t have any money. Then a pal of mine, Peter Nash, wanted to buy his house. So I brought him down to see Peter.”
As ‘executive producer’ of so many Zeppelin albums it seemed extraordinary that Grant would suddenly plead poverty, but it was noticeable that his name seemed to disappear from the re-issued Zeppelin albums on CD. Maybe he had spent too much of his money on ‘Peruvian marching powder’ or he simply didn’t want to encourage his former aide.