Led Zeppelin, page 46
Despite everything, Led Zeppelin was never more up for a show than they were for those at Earls Court. There was something about playing in front of the hometown crowd that was undeniable. Friends and family made plans to attend, colleagues from the British rock empire, fellow musicians—everyone clamored for tickets. It was more a homecoming, a celebration, than another gig to play.
For Jimmy Page, it brought back an early, indelible memory. The last time he was in the exhibition hall he’d been fourteen years old.
“The BBC had a little studio there, where they did live broadcasts—The Radio Show,” recalls Dave Williams. “Jimmy and I went to see what it was all about (and to see if any girls were around). There was a little trio that played popular songs, and one of the guys had a sunburst Telecaster. Jimmy’s eyes almost came out of his head! The only person who’d had one before was Cliff Gallup. Jimmy had to touch it.”
There was a line to get up to the stage and Jimmy waited his turn. “The kid in front of us was exactly our age—Laurie London, who’d sung ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.’ ” Jimmy eventually elbowed past him and reached for the guitar. “It was the first time he’d laid his hands on a Fender.”
Now, sixteen years later, he had a shelf full of them at the side of the stage, along with his Harmony Sovereign, a number of Les Pauls, the Danelectro, a Martin D-28, and the inimitable Gibson double-neck.
The expectation in the hall was enormous, unrestrained. As the lights came down and a roar rose up, Whispering Bob Harris, the BBC Radio 1 deejay, bellowed, “We’d all like to welcome back to Britain . . . Led Zeppelin!” The sound the crowd made was inhuman, matched only by the detonation of “Rock and Roll” and an explosion of lasers, smoke, and lights.
Robert was especially loose at the mic—“a jolly raconteur,” as one observer tagged him—and in superb voice, a welcome relief after his bout with laryngitis in America. Following the first song, he laid out Led Zeppelin’s initiative. “We want to take you through the stages of six-and-a-half years of our relationship.” That meant a trip through highlights of all the albums, a breathtaking cross section and contrast of styles, including a reprise of the acoustic set in which all four musicians played from chairs at the front of the stage. It was fascinating to hear them give relaxed, if uneven treatments to “Tangerine,” “Going to California,” “That’s the Way,” and “Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp” before hammering back with “Trampled Under Foot” and “No Quarter.” Three and a half hours of transcendent music.
There was ongoing levity from Robert about the band’s tax predicaments, with a shout-out to Denis Healey, the chancellor of the exchequer. It was tasteless and tone-deaf. Most of the audience was suffering the effects of woeful economic stress, the result of ongoing labor strife, power outages, and an OPEC oil embargo that had plagued Britain through an extremely harsh winter and spring. Rich rock ’n rollers who dodged paying their fair share weren’t exactly objects of sympathy.
Nevertheless, the British press carried on like a varsity cheerleading squad. An effusive review in Melody Maker called Led Zeppelin’s show “the definitive rock performance, so much so that it’s inconceivable that another band could do as well.” Not to be outdone, Record Mirror proclaimed the concert “a nocturnal delight, one which should be remembered for eons to come.” Even customary fusspots at The Guardian, the Daily Mail, The Observer, and The Times waxed rhapsodic, jumping on the bandwagon.
Be that as it may, Led Zeppelin remained thin-skinned in regard to the press, continuing to feel they were owed more respect than they received. Melody Maker’s Chris Welch, who had sung the band’s praises the way Caruso sang arias, with euphoria and abandon, “arrived at Earl’s Court to be told that no review tickets were available to Melody Maker, which meant he had to buy a pair from a tout.” It seems someone in the band had taken offense at a throwaway remark in his lukewarm review of Houses of the Holy and sought to teach him a lesson. No objectivity, no matter how insignificant, was countenanced when it came to reviewing a Led Zeppelin album.
The same punishment was dealt to Charles Shaar Murray, one of the band’s longtime champions in the pages of New Musical Express, who happened to have reviewed a show when Robert had muffed the words to “Stairway to Heaven.” Robert decided it was time to settle old scores. During the May 23 show at Earls Court, just before launching into “Stairway,” he grabbed the mic and started having a go at Murray—from the stage. “Despite Charles Shaar Murray, we kept going,” he told a uniformly indifferent audience. “I believe there’s a psychiatrist on his way, Charles. Just hang on. Keep those teeth gritted. But here’s one for you in your better moments, Charles.”
“The audience didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about,” says Chris Charlesworth. “But that’s how touchy and insecure they were.”
Digs and sarcasm aside, the Earls Court concerts reminded fans in the United Kingdom that Led Zeppelin wasn’t lost to the temptations of America. They hadn’t forgotten where they came from. They’d played their hearts out “for our families and friends and the people who have been close to us through the lot.” They left everything they had on that stage, knowing that it was anyone’s guess when they’d be back on British soil.
“Thank you for very good health, and keep your fingers crossed for mine,” Robert proposed.
He had no idea how that request would resonate. It would be the last public comment he’d make for nearly two years.
[2]
Led Zeppelin’s migration was immediate. On May 26, 1975, the day after the last concert at Earls Court, everyone took off for his respective safe haven. John Paul Jones flew to Switzerland with his wife, Mo, and their daughters, while John and Pat Bonham moved their family into a villa in St.-Paul-de-Vence. Jimmy Page joined Peter Grant in Montreux to go over plans for the summer tour, then headed to Rio de Janeiro to check out the effervescent Brazilian music scene. Robert Plant was raring to explore. He, his wife, and their two young children packed up and traveled to Agadir, a Moroccan beach town at the foot of the Atlas Mountains that might have served as a stand-in for Nice or Miami. From there, they intended to bump around the country, eventually winding up in Marrakesh.
Was the getaway idyllic? Not for everyone. John Paul despised being forced out of his home. “He used to ring me at the office all the time, saying how desperate he was to come back to the UK,” recalls Carole Brown, who operated much like an air traffic controller in London’s Swan Song office. The novelty soon wore off for Bonzo as well. He was exasperated living in the South of France, where he didn’t speak the language. “He couldn’t stomach the elaborate French food and insisted on steak and chips all the time,” says Sally Williams, the girlfriend of Mick Hinton, whom Bonzo imported as his personal servant. Richard Cole also showed up to splash in the villa’s pool with Bonzo and his son, Jason. “When John wasn’t drunk, he was like a kid,” Williams says. “But after a few drinks or if something hit him the wrong way, things turned violent in an instant.” That was exactly what happened one evening in June when the party moved to a casino in Monte Carlo and Bonzo was ejected by the French authorities.
Swan Song’s acts also suffered because of the exile. Maggie Bell’s second album, Suicide Sal, urgently needed a shot in the arm to raise its profile with the public. The release had stalled at radio and with the press, owing to the lack of a meaningful tour. “She was desperate to do some promotion, a few gigs.” says Unity MacLean, who was working overtime to drum up support. The album had generated mostly lackluster reviews, but management also had to take responsibility. Abe Hoch, the acting label head—emphasis on acting—was impotent when it came to matters of real importance. He had no authority whatsoever. He was beating himself up for taking the job. “Nobody was around to make any decisions, and we could never get ahold of Peter.”
Dave Edmunds was another Swan Song casualty. “There was no plan for him,” MacLean says. “We brought out ‘Here Comes the Weekend,’ but there was no one appointed to plug the record or generate airplay or drum up interest at the BBC, no one to help get press interviews. Dave was absolutely furious with the whole thing.”
Bonzo had warned MacLean not to expect much support. “We’re musicians,” he told her before disappearing into exile. “We’re not record executives. That wasn’t part of the deal.”
“What it came down to was: nobody was home,” Abe Hoch explains. “If I needed Peter, I would have to call him, and he might—might—call me back two or three days later. He’d always be sleeping when I needed him, so I might have to wake him up, and he’d growl unintelligibly over the phone. This is how the record company was being run.”
Peter remained in Montreux for most of June, palling around with promoter and fixer Claude Nobs, whose house he had rented as a base of operations. The rest of the band was expected to turn up toward the beginning of July. G wanted to gauge how they were faring away from home and to iron out details for the next major tour.
Robert and Jimmy arrived together. They had met in Marrakesh a month earlier to begin a car trip through Morocco with their families. Jimmy had heeded William Burroughs’s advice about digging into the native music scene, so in Marrakesh they spent several nights at a local folk festival that, as Robert noted, “gave us a little peep into the color of Moroccan music and the music of the hill tribes.” Afterward, they squeezed into a Range Rover—Robert, Maureen, Karac, and Carmen, along with Jimmy, Charlotte Martin, and their daughter, Scarlet—and headed across the Spanish Sahara toward the port of Tarifa, in Gibraltar, with Bob Marley songs blaring through the tape deck.
They were thwarted by army roadblocks every thirty miles or so, freaked out by having machine guns pointed at their windshield. Hostilities between Spain and Morocco prevented them from crossing the border. “For two months, I’d lived at a Moroccan speed, which is no speed at all,” Robert recalled, “and then suddenly I was in Spain being frisked.” Reluctantly, they turned back to Tangier before reconvening a week later in Switzerland.
The band was relieved by the news in Montreux. The summer tour Grant set up was modest in scope—only eleven U.S. dates, beginning at the end of August, just long enough to satisfy their tax-exile status but immensely profitable. Mostly stadiums seating upward of 35,000 people, beginning on August 23, 1975, with two shows at the Oakland Coliseum for 90,000 fans and culminating at the Superdome in New Orleans, with a capacity of 76,000. They’d net pretty much the same amount they would have from a marathon through the States. The merchandising alone would keep everyone well endowed—all in cash, as usual, and off the books.
The rest of the exile would encompass a world tour, “playing possibly in South America, Hawaii, Japan, and Asia Minor, and ending up doing dates in Europe, especially Scandinavia,” before resuming a normal residency in Great Britain.
Robert and Jimmy hung around Montreux for a while. The jazz festival was in full swing, and the 1975 edition featured an extraordinary lineup of all-stars—Dizzy, Mingus, Ella, the Count, but also Albert King, Etta James, and Rory Gallagher, whom they were eager to see perform. Eventually, Robert came down with a case of wanderlust.
“After a while,” he said, “I started pining for the sun again—not just the sun, but the happy, haphazard way of life that goes with it.” The dozy pace of Morocco had been a blessing after six tumultuous years of go-go-go. And Greece. “Rhodes seemed like a good idea.”
Roger Waters owned a house on the bucolic Greek island, which he’d rented to Phil May, the Pretty Things’ lead singer, and his wife, Electra. Robert accepted an invitation to join them and decided to drive to Greece with his wife and kids. Jimmy, Charlotte, and Scarlet followed in another car, with Maureen’s sister, Shirley, and her husband.
On August 3, 1975, Jimmy got sidetracked. He heard through the grapevine that Aleister Crowley’s Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù, Sicily, might be for sale. To occultists, it was a shrine, the spiritual center where Crowley and his disciples indulged in “sex magick” and drug rituals throughout the early part of the twentieth century. Jimmy decided to detour there, perhaps even buy the place, leaving Robert and the others to go on ahead. If all went according to plan, he’d meet Led Zeppelin in Paris for a week of pretour rehearsals.
For the rest of the party, Rhodes couldn’t wait. The island was everything they’d fantasized—perfect climate, a gorgeous coastline with fresh, rosemary-scented salt air, sun-washed pastel villages, and snug harbors, all framed against the Mediterranean Sea. Everyone was so taken with the resplendent scenery that it was all the more of a shock when an Austin Mini sedan Maureen Plant was driving skidded off the road and toppled over a precipice before crashing into a tree. Robert, who’d been riding in the passenger seat, knew he’d been badly injured—but he was alive. He couldn’t say the same for his wife.
“I looked over at Maureen,” he said, “and thought she was dead. [She] was unconscious and bleeding, and the kids were screaming in the back seat.”
Charlotte Martin, who’d run up from the follow car, took one look and “was hysterical.”
It was a bad scene. No one could move. Robert figured it was only a matter of time before an ambulance arrived. But Greek speed matched the Moroccan speed he had so adored a week earlier. As far as he could tell, Maureen still had a heartbeat; there was no time to spare. “Finally, the driver of a fruit truck loaded us onto his open flatbed.” A small clinic was located nearby.
Robert had suffered a broken ankle and elbow, and the bones in his right leg had shattered in several places. His six-year-old daughter, Carmen, had broken her wrist, and four-year-old son, Karac, had a broken leg. Maureen was more seriously injured. She’d ruptured her pelvis and had a fractured skull, among other issues. Worse, she’d lost a lot of blood and was “near death,” Benji Le Fevre was informed in a phone call later that night. “Robert told me she technically did die for a couple minutes and was resuscitated.”
She was in dire need of emergency transfusions. The hospital was primitive, woefully understaffed, and lacking crucial supplies, without a reserve of Maureen’s rare blood type on hand. Her sister, Shirley, was a match but could provide only so much. The sole doctor on duty was near exhaustion. They needed outside help, a miracle.
Charlotte Martin phoned London, raising Richard Cole. Ricardo, perhaps better than anyone, knew how to grease wheels and spent several hours working the phones. He convinced a British physician who provided medical services to the Greek embassy in London and an orthopedic surgeon to leave immediately for Rhodes, then rustled up a private jet to fly them there. He even managed to find eight pints of Maureen’s blood type and stored them in the plane’s fridge, much the way he provisioned the Starship with champagne.
In the meantime, Robert was stranded in a squalid ward next to a drunken soldier who recognized him. “I was lying there in some pain trying to get cockroaches off the bed,” he said, “and he started singing ‘The Ocean’ from Houses of the Holy.”
Upon arrival, the British doctors sized up the lamentable situation, ordering the patients transferred to a hospital in London. The Greek authorities, however, refused to cooperate. Police were investigating the accident to determine if alcohol or drugs were involved. Complicating matters, Maureen had sideswiped another car.
“Apparently, under Greek law, if you cause an accident, they can charge you with assaulting whoever was in the other vehicle,” says Jeff Hoffman, the lawyer who’d represented Peter Grant during the aftermath of the Drake robbery and was now appointed to represent Maureen Plant. “In this instance, there was a Greek family involved.” No one was injured, but once they realized who Robert was, Maureen was charged. Extricating her was a straightforward if slippery process. “You work out a deal, and whatever they deem your sentence to be, there is a daily rate you can pay to make it go away.”
Richard Cole wasn’t waiting for the outcome. Over the objections of the doctors, he staged a great escape from the hospital that would have impressed Steve McQueen. “I hired a private ambulance and rented two station wagons and had them parked at a side entrance,” Richard recalled. “At two in the morning, Charlotte and I wheeled Robert, Maureen, and their children—along with their IV bottles and other medical equipment—down the hospital corridors to the getaway cars.”
The police had specified that the Plants couldn’t leave the country, but little attention was paid to private jets. Before the authorities could intervene, Robert and his family were in the air and headed to London. Richard had ambulances waiting at Heathrow to transport the patients to Guy’s Hospital in the center of the city. It might have gone smoothly, had Led Zeppelin’s accountants not realized that by delaying Robert’s arrival an hour or two they could add another day he could spend in the country to satisfy the tax-exile mandate. As a result, Cole ordered the pilot to circle outside British airspace until after midnight.
Robert was placed in a body cast that ran from his hip to his toes. “The doctor in London told me I wouldn’t walk for at least six months, and he gave me some odds of various possibilities about the future,” Robert said. “I didn’t know what the implications and the final outcome of the wounds or whatever would turn out to be, but they were of minimal importance at the time.” There was an outside chance he might be permanently disabled. “I didn’t think about the possible consequences for the band.”
One thing was for certain: there would be no summer tour. That was a best-case scenario. Peter Grant feared it “could be the end of the line.” Grant felt that Robert was irreplaceable, as was any member of Led Zeppelin. If he was unable to perform, they’d have to pack it in. Jimmy was more optimistic. “I’ve always felt,” he said, “that no matter what happened, provided [Robert] could still play and sing—and even if we could only make albums—that we’d go on forever.”
