Stairway To Heaven
Read Stairway To Heaven Online
Authors: Richard Cole
Led Zeppelin UNCENSORED
with
RICHARD TRUBO
To Claire and Daylen,
best wishes on your wedding
and for the happiest of
lives together in the years ahead.
âRC
To Donna, Melissa, and Mikeâ¦
years ago, when I would dream about a
family, you were exactly what I had in
mind.
âRT
Many people have played important roles in helping me reach the point of writing this book.
Thanks to my mother and father, who gave me love and steered me in the right direction; to Jenny Carson for Ibiza in the summer of 1984; and to Dr. Brian Wells, Mickey Bush, and Andrew Lane, who shared their experience, strength, and hope with me.
I am also appreciative of Richard Trubo for his writing talent and perseverance; Tom Miller and Jim Hornfischer, our original editors at HarperCollins, plus Josh Behar and April Benavides, who have guided us in creating this new edition; Jane Dystel, my agent, and her partner, Miriam Goderich; Skip Chernov for his encouragement and faith in the book; and Bernie Rhodes and Roger “Snake” Kline, as well as Toni Young and Carol Arnold, who helped with the transcripts. Taylor and his fine publication,
Zoso,
proved to be an excellent resource of Led Zeppelin history; and Allison Caine planted the seed for the afterword in this edition.
Thanks go to business manager Bill McKenzie and Debbie Mathews; my lawyer, Michael Hecker; Eric Wasserman; Michelle Anthony; publicist Laura Kaufman; and Black Sabbath. Thanks also to Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne for all their help, kindness, and opportunities over the yearsâand to the London Quireboys and Lita Ford as well. Appreciation also goes to Lisa Robinson, and to Tony, Mario, Michael, Mo, Miguel, and Steady at the Rainbow Bar and Grill in West Hollywood.
For their love and friendship, special mention to Tony Roman, Leslie St. Nicholas, Judy Wong, Jenny Fernando, Geoffrey Sensier, Marilyn Cole, Marguerite DeBenedict, Marty Brenner, David George, Ian Peacock, my computer angel and friend Julia Negron, and my oldest friend Percy Raines-Moore.
I appreciated the assistance and camaraderie of Led Zeppelin's road crew over the years: Kenny Pickett, Clive Coulson, Joe “Jammer” Wright, Mick Hinton, Ray Thomas, Sandy McGregor, Briane Condliffe, Andy Leadbetter, Manfred Lurch, Henry “The Horse” Smith, Perry, Cracky, and Pepe. Our sound engineers were Rusty Brutsche, David “Cyrano” Langston, and Benji Le Fevre. Ian “Iggy” Knight oversaw production, and Kirby Wyatt and Ted Tittle handled lighting.
Assistants to the band included Dennis Sheehan, Rick Hobbs, Johnny Larke, Rex King, John Bindon, Mitchell Fox, Dave Northover, Brian Gallivan, and Ray Washburn (Peter Grant's assistant). Our office staff consisted of Liz Gardner, Carol Browne, Cynthia Sacks, and Unity MacLaine in the U.K., and Shelley Kaye, Genine Saffer, and Sam Azar in the U.S. Steven H. Weiss was our attorney.
The band's security staff included Patsy Collins, Wes Pommeroy, Captain Bob DeForest, Bill and Jack Dautrich, Johnny Czar, Fat Fred, Don Murfett, Gerry Slater, Jim Callaghan, Paddy the Plank, Alf Weaver, Joe Tuths, Willie Vaccar, Gregg Beppler, Steve Rosenberg, Jack Kelly, Lou McClery, George Dewitt, and Bill Webber.
Since the original printing of this book, some friends who worked with me and Led Zeppelin have passed away, and it seems fitting for them to be remembered here (some were mentioned above). They include Peter Grant (Zeppelin's manager); concert promoters Tom Hulett and Phil Basile; lighting designer Kirby Wyatt; assistant John Bindon and security man Johnny Czar; and road crew members Raymond Thomas and Kenny Pickett; as well as my oldest friend, songwriter Lionel Bart; journalist Alan McDougal; my wonderful friend Nicky Bell, who made me feel part of his life and community by inviting me to his one-year-sober party when I was just a few months sober myself, and who tragically died of AIDS from IV drug use; and writer Stuart Werbin (who courageously helped me in my time of need, even when he was very sick himself). Also, my dear friend and neighbor Gloria Scott (a great inspiration who helped so many people get clean and sober). Last in this list, but certainly not least, is my dear mother, who was always there for her little devil of a son.
In this new edition, I'd like to thank a few others, including some who, in recent years, have helped me get work or employed me, including Bob Timmins, Jack Carson, and Tony Morehead. Thanks also go to Black Uhuru and Kyso, along with managers Nita Scott and Terry Rindal, and, of course, Valerie and Bruce. Charlie Hernandez, Nick Cua, Blaine Brinton, and Rhian Gittins are Ozzfest 2001 staff who were a great help to me, and old friends Bobby Thompson, Tony Dennis, and Michael Guarracino. Ron Geer, my Ozzfest bus driver, was a fantastic help.
Special mention also goes to Michael Lewis, Gary Quinn, and Peter Rafelson, my comanagers of Fem 2 Fem; the lovely Julie Ann, Christina, Lynn, Michelle, Lezlee, Alitzah, and LaLa, as well as Carl Strube and Gerry Brenner of Critique Records (who signed Fem 2 Fem), and Michael White for producing the Musical Voyeurz at the White Hall Theatre in London. I'm also appreciative of my friend and writing inspiration, Julia Cameron, whose book,
The Artist's Way,
got me back to writing. Also, many thanks go to my hairdressers, Sacha and Aaron Quarles.
I must also thank Danny Goldberg and David Silver for their support and encouragement; and Ed Gerrard, Daniel Markus, and Peter Himberger for hiring me to work with the Gipsy Kings (along with Pascal Imbert), and Sparky Neilson, the production manager. I am grateful for the wonderful time I had working with Olu Dara and the Okra Orchestra, Fu Manchu and Dan DeVita, along with crew Curly and Woody, and of course, Paul Rodgers and my present employers QPrime management and Crazy Town, especially Peter Mensch, H.M. Wollman, Tony DiCioccio and Randi of QPrime NY and Michelle and Erica of QPrime West, who've been invaluable in setting things up. Thanks also to Howard Wuelfing, Todd Horn, and Lee Ganz of Columbia Records New York and Stephanie Igunbor and Stephan Lange of Sony Europe for their help in guiding us smoothly through Europe. Much appreciation also for the Crazy Town road crewâChris Warndahl, Skip Payatt, Jeff Chase, and Craig Underwoodâalong with band assistant Boom Boom Kaluna and crew bus driver Ted Foltman. Thanks also to Crazy Town travel agent Jason Ashbury of Lindon Travel in New York, and Julie Zemil of Uniworld Travel in Los Angeles.
Most of all, thanks to Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, John Bonham, and Peter Grant for the opportunity to work with the greatest rock and roll band of all time.
This book has been inspired in large part by the loving memory of John Henry Bonham. Bonham was a dear friend and the most talented drummer that rock music has ever seen.
âRichard Cole
Numerous people contributed to the research, organization, writing of and inspiration for this book, but several of them deserve special mention.
Richard Cole, of course, is foremost among them. He submitted to seemingly endless work sessions, dug up facts, went back to original sourcesâincluding his own astounding memoryâand allowed the entire project to come together in a timely fashion.
Tom Miller and Jim Hornfischer, editors at HarperCollins, jumped into the manuscript with sharp pencils and even sharper suggestions. Josh Behar and April Benavides at HarperCollins were very helpful in preparing and editing this new edition of
Stairway to Heaven.
My agent, Jane Dystel of Jane Dystel Literary Management, introduced me to Richard Cole. Throughout the duration of the research and writing, Jane provided constant encouragement and insightful input.
Finally, thanks to my parents, Bill and Ida, who have always believed in me; and to Donna, Melissa, and Mike for their love, affection, and support.
âRichard Trubo
On New Year's Day, 1962, when the Beatles walked into Decca's West Hampstead Studio Number Three on Broadhurst Gardens, rock music was forever changed. By the time they had finished recording an audition tapeâwith Paul McCartney crooning “Till There Was You” and John Lennon warbling “To Know Him Is to Love Him”âthe Beatles had climbed aboard a musical fast track that literally revolutionized the cultural and social fabric stretching from Abbey Road to Hollywood and Vine.
Hundreds of British bands followed in the Beatles' wake. The Dave Clark Five. Herman's Hermits. The Rolling Stones. Finally, by the end of the sixties, the raw, back-breaking music of Led Zeppelin elevated the rock revolution to an absolutely manic pitch.
Before the dawning of the Zeppelin era, I had worked as tour manager with nearly a dozen other rock bands, helping to cultivate their talents, attend to their eccentricities, and nurse their egos. It was hard, often stressful work, but never boring. At times, I became exhausted; more often, I felt exhilarated. From the Who to Unit 4 + 2â¦from the New Vaudeville Band to the Yardbirdsâ¦they were my boot camp that prepared me for my twelve-year tour of duty with Zeppelin.
I had grown up in Kensal Rise, a working-class neighborhood light years removed from Zeppelin's recording sessions at Headley Grange or the prestigious stage of Royal Albert Hall. My father was a metal architect who, just before World War II, helped build the elaborate doors on the Bank of England. He then went to work for Rolls-Royce making cars, and when the war began, he moved to the assembly line that manufactured aircraft. He could work miracles with his hands, but he was also much more of a scholar than I ever was, reading history just for the joy of it. While he reveled in stories about Gladstone and Disraeli, I was more interested in Presley and the Everlys. While I wanted to spend time in record stores, he took me to the British Museum and to the halls of Parliament.
My parents finally accepted where my real interests lay, and they bought me a record player when I was thirteen. Immediately, I began building a library of 45s by artists like Elvis, Ricky Nelson, Buddy Holly, and Chuck Berry. A few British singers captured my interest, tooâLonnie Donegan had several contagious tunes like “Rock Island Line”âbut no one in England was quite as
daring or provoked quite as much youthful hysteria as Little Richard when he sang “Good Golly, Miss Molly (She Sure Likes to Ball).”
Although I did reasonably well in schoolâparticularly in subjects that I likedâeducation had never been a passport to success in my neighborhood. In fact, at age fifteen, as the new school term started, the headmaster suggested I might be better off going to work. As I soon discovered, however, the real world was hardly glamorous, at least not for a teenager with minimal skills. My first job was welding milk churns at a dairy supply company in Acton in Northwest London. It was hard, often dreary work, and it wasn't making me rich: For a forty-six-hour week, I earned just a little over three pounds, or about ten dollars.
All the while, however, my interest in rock music flourished. Songs like Roy Orbison's “Cryin'” and the Tokens' “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” got my adrenaline flowing and, for a time, even made me think that perhaps I could make a living as a musician. I finally bought myself an old drum set, hoping that I could unearth some latent musical talents.
Like millions of other teenagers, I developed a rich fantasy life. I could picture myself sprinting onto a stage, perching myself behind a kit of drums, and performing to the cheers of thousands of screaming fans, returning to the stage for encore after encore. It was a vision I replayed in my mind, again and again. Unfortunately, my talent was no match for those dreams. Much to my chagrin, after just a few hours of banging skins and crashing cymbals, I realized that Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich had no need to worry. Years later, neither would John Bonham.
With some apprehension, I began looking for a job with a future, which was a challenge for a kid from the wrong side of London. I jumped from one occupation to another, first delivering groceries, then working as an apprentice sheet-metal worker, and finally a carpenter. By age eighteen, I had gotten a job on the scaffold seven days a weekâhard, dirty work that often involved the demolition of old buildings, mostly in Wembley and West End of London. The pay: Thirty pounds a week.
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Eventually, it was my lust for club life that opened the doors to the music business. Beginning in 1962, I started hanging out at dance clubs in the West End, which were a crowded Mardi Gras of music and delicious-looking girls. Six nights a week, I binged and boozed from the State Ballroom to Saint Mary's Hall, from the 100 Club to the Marquee. It was wonderful just to be part of the action.
The early sixties were an exciting time when hundreds of rock and roll bands were descending upon London from throughout England, when the Rolling Stones and the Who still traveled in minivans and often played al
most unnoticed for a handful of pound notes a night, and when Led Zeppelin was not even a figment of someone's imagination. In those days, from the outside looking in, I thought the rock music world looked incredibly glamorous, and I felt a bit of jealousy from my vantage point on the periphery. The young, aspiring musicians who would eventually evolve into bands like Zeppelin would crowd into the London clubs in those days, looking for a piece of the action, salivating at the chance to realize their own dreams, and aching to make connections that might turn them into the next Rock Superstars.
I routinely overdosed on this nightlife, never growing weary of the partying, the alcohol and drugs, the loud music, the easy girls. I also became absorbed in the youthful trends of the style-conscious young men of the timesâsome called Mods, others Rockersâwho became as much a part of the London scene as Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey. We were kids from poor neighborhoods, most from the East End, others from South London. When the media were in a kind mood, they called us “trendsetters”; more often, we were “hoodlums” or “troublemakers,” “malcontents” or “provocateurs.” No matter what was written, the emotions running through this movement were universal: We were bursting with anger, furious about our economic circumstances. If you were to gather together a group of Mods or a group of Rockers, the energy created by their rage could have blown the Clock Tower off the Houses of Parliament.
As a way of setting ourselves apart from mainstream society, we conformed to particular types of fashions and aggressive, renegade attitudes and behavior. The Rockers were an outgrowth of the teddy boy hoods of the fifties. They were jeans and leather jackets and saw themselves as Brando-like nomads on their motorcycles. Their rivals, the Mods, had shorter hair and were impeccably dressed, with clothes custom-made at Carnaby Street shops, where a mass-produced, tailor-made pair of flared trousers cost about four pounds, and Fred Perry knit shirts became the “only” brand to wear.
I embraced the Mod look and lifestyle, one of thousands of Mods saturating the English landscape. We felt as if we were on the cutting edge of a social revolution, like we were Somebody. In Britain's class system, we may have been “have-nots,” the forgotten generation, even outcasts, but together, we believed we were VIPs. We'd flex our rebellious muscles, sometimes impressing, sometimes intimidating others. We'd live for the moment, spending whatever money we had and ridiculing our parents' warnings to “save for a rainy day.” And when my friends would say, “All I want to do is get drunk and have fun,” I couldn't think of any better way to spend the night.
Neither the Mods nor the Rockers ever shied away from violence. The worst of it erupted at seaside resorts like Clacton, often on bank holidays or during Easter weekends. There really weren't any good reasons for those ugly
confrontations; the violence was an end in itself, a chance to vent our frustrations and let off some steam. On one July night, we arrived in Clacton knowing the Rockers would be waiting for us, and we were equipped to fight with more than our fists. Our arsenal of weapons, in fact, might have made General Montgomery envious, with armor ranging from knives to pickaxes. The Rockers and the Mods congregated on opposite sides of the street, shouting epithets and then finally approaching one another. There were a few isolated confrontations here and there, and then a full-fledged brawl exploded in the middle of the street over the length of a block. For twenty minutes, it was absolute chaos. Brass knuckles connected with chins. Knives cut into skin. Blood splattered on the pavement. There were wails of anger and screams of pain.
Those kinds of riots made national and even international headlines (“The war of the teenage misfits”). One newspaper columnist warned, “The social fabric of England itself is disintegrating.” But the more attention the Mods and the Rockers got, the more committed we became to a life-styleâand to the rock musicâthat millions in Britain found repugnant.
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About this same time, while the musicians who would eventually become Led Zeppelin were finding their niches in the music industry, I was finally getting my own initiation into the business. In 1964, I had just returned from a summer-long vacation in Spainâmy first real exposure to what life was like beyond working-class London. And I came back feeling restless and hungry to find an escape from the hard, dirty life on the scaffold.
That opportunity finally presented itself at a club called the Flamingo in Soho, which was actually quite out of step with the times. While other clubs were preoccupied with the latest rock and pop music trends, the Flamingo was addicted to a soul and jazz sound. While its competitors were partial to the Beatles and the Dave Clark Five, the Flamingo embraced the music of Ray Charles and Marvin Gaye.
One of the Flamingo's regular bands was Ronnie Jones and the Nighttimers. The Nighttimers played a host of Otis Redding and Bobby “Blue” Bland tunesâ“Respect,” “Mr. Pitiful,” “That's the Way Love Is,” “Call on Me”âand other songs that reflected a rhythm and blues influence. I enjoyed their music, would hang around them before and after their gigs, and occasionally would talk to their road manager. I never really understood everything that he did, but his life seemed glamorousâcertainly more exciting than my seven days a week on the scaffold.
One evening, I noticed that the Nighttimers themselves were packing their equipment into their van, a task that had always been taken care of by their road manager. I walked over to Mick Eve, a tall, thin saxophonist who
was the Nighttimers' leader. Mick had once played with Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, but just about the time Georgie started making big moneyâ400 pounds a night as a headlinerâMick decided that the music had become too pop-oriented for his taste, and he broke away to start his own band.
“What happened to your roadie?” I asked.
“He's gone on to something else,” Mick said.
“I'm looking for a job as a road manager,” I told him.
“Do you know anything about it?”
Of course, I knew almost nothing. But I was desperate not to let this opportunity slip away. “Well, I can drive the van,” I said, groping for some way to peak his interest. “I've traveled and I certainly know how to get around.”
Then I remembered that for four weeks, I had once worked at a job soldering transistors. “And I know a lot about electronics, too,” I added.
Mick gave me one of those looks that said, “Can't you do any better than that?” Then he said, “Well, I really don't feel that we need a road manager any longer.”
“But you must need someone,” I pleaded. “Otherwise, you wouldn't have had a road manager in the first place.”
“But we never could pay him very much, Richard. He got one pound a night, and two pounds on the nights we did two shows. He averaged about seven pounds a week. The guy was always broke.”
It wasn't a very appealing picture, particularly for someone like me who was already making thirty pounds a week on the scaffold. Even so, I had this seductive image of a road manager's life brimming with travel, heavy drinking, and lots of beautiful girls. And at the time, I couldn't think of a more perfect way to live.
“I'll take the job, Mick,” I exclaimed, reaching to shake his hand before he could say a word. He nodded, although I'm not sure he was certain what he was agreeing to. But I couldn't have been more excited; I was finally in the music business.
The first show I did with the Nighttimers was on Boxing Day 1964, at the Carlton Ballroom on Kilburn High Road. We were one of the few rock bands that had ever been booked there, since the facilities were usually rented for Jamaican weddings or bar mitzvahs. In that initial gig, I told Mick, “I don't know whether we should be wearing dreadlocks or yarmulkes!” I don't think he ever got the joke.
Within those first few days, I discovered that the job as the Nighttimers' road manager wasn't that difficult for someone with a good head on his shoulders. There were hundreds of little clubs throughout England, and in my six months with the Nighttimers, we played a lot of them. I drove the band to and from their gigs in a small van, then set up their equipment and collected
their box-office receipts, which were enough to pay expenses and not much more. Nevertheless, the job seemed to have much more potential for glamour than the scaffold.
After just two weeks with the Nighttimers, I was thoroughly won over by the music businessâbut I also knew that I wanted something more than to work for a small band. A friend of mine played with a group called the Chevelles, and one Sunday night, I went to see them open at the London Palladium for the Rolling Stones. That was the first time I had seen the Stones live, my first exposure to the fury, the frenzy, and the power of truly great performers. Girls in the audience were absolutely hystericalâscreaming, crying, moaning, lunging toward the stage. Some even peed in their knickers, actually creating streams of water that, like the tributaries to the Mississippi, converged into a single river where the sloping seats joined the front of the stage. I had heard about bands making a splash, but this was unbelievable.
