Stairway To Heaven (13 page)

W
hen Zeppelin reached Los Angeles during the summer 1969 tour and checked into the Château Marmont for a six-day stay, there was something about that hotel that put us in the mood for some disorderly conduct. And in L.A., there were plenty of girls around who were game for just about anything we wanted to try.

One afternoon, a friend of mine showed up at the Marmont with a Great Dane—a large male that probably weighed 150 pounds, with a dark gray coat. The dog seemed pretty easygoing, and I figured we could get it to do just about anything—or at least it was worth a try.

I approached a girl named Jamie, who had been sitting near the hotel pool for two days, hoping for a little attention from us. “Have you ever made love to a dog?” I asked.

A stunned expression came over her face. I didn't blame her.

“Not lately,” she answered.

“Well, John Bonham and I have this bet. We've bet that this Great Dane we have will find you so attractive—and get so turned on—that he'll want to eat you.”

Jamie was startled.

“I know it sounds crazy,” I said, “but it would be fun to try, wouldn't it?”

Jamie thought about it for a moment. She probably flashed back on all those Sundays she had spent in church and everything she had learned as a
child at Girl Scout meetings. Then she shrugged her shoulders in a what-the-hell gesture. “Okay, I guess so. But I can back out whenever I want to. Okay?”

“Of course,” I said as we walked back toward Bonham's room.

Jamie and the dog sized one another up. As she began to disrobe, she giggled. “This is insane.”

When she was naked, Jamie sat down on the floor and spread her legs. My friend pointed his dog in her direction.

“Come on,” he said, kneeling down beside the girl, trying to coax the dog closer to her vagina. “Come on, boy.”

The scene was like an outtake from a very bad pornographic movie. The dog wouldn't budge.

“I've got an idea,” Bonham said. “We've got some bacon strips in the kitchen that are left over from breakfast. Does the dog like bacon?”

Bonham went to the kitchen and returned with the bacon, placing it in front of her vagina. “Come on, poochie,” he said, attempting to entice the dog forward.

The dog howled, then turned and walked away. The game was over.

Like the Shark Episode, the incident was something to do, something we had never done before. After some initial hesitation, the girl was cooperative. Later, Bonham rationalized the whole episode. “The girl wasn't that pretty anyway,” he said. “The dog had a lot better taste than we did.”

As a rock band with soaring popularity, we all knew that we had power that most people don't. At times, maybe we intimidated girls to do things that they might not have otherwise done. But we were young and crazy enough to take advantage of our position—in both sexual and nonsexual situations.

 

The Zeppelin wives joined us for a few days during that tour, including some of the shows in Las Vegas and other West Coast cities. Their presence was rather uncommon over the years, since they were generally quite content to remain at home, away from the hectic pace of touring. When they were around, however, the boys' behavior improved dramatically; the groupies, for instance, vanished almost instantaneously.

On this particular tour, I figured that by pulling a few strings, I could get us some front-row seats to Elvis Presley's show at the International Hotel. Elvis was one of the few performers the band looked up to. “There's nobody better,” Jimmy said. “Nobody.”

That afternoon, I had called Bill Miller, the entertainment director at the International, whose son, Jimmy, produced records for the Rolling Stones, Traffic, and Spencer Davis.

“My name is Richard Cole,” I told him. “I'm a close friend of your son's.” I really wasn't, but Pagey knew Jimmy Miller, and I figured that was close enough. “Jimmy told us that whenever we came to town, you could arrange for us to see Elvis.”

Bill never hesitated. “No problem,” he said. “Jimmy speaks very highly of you, Richard.”

I tried to contain my laughter.

“How many seats do you need?” he asked.

That night, we had front-row tables. It was the first time any of us had seen Elvis perform. And we weren't disappointed.

Perhaps the only dissatisfied person among us that night was John Paul, but it was good-natured despair. Before entering the showroom to see Elvis, we had spent a few minutes in the International's lounge, watching Ike and Tina Turner perform. And as Tina sang “River Deep, Mountain High” and “Come Together,” sensually and seductively teasing the audience with dozens of bumps and grinds, John Paul fell in love.

He turned to his wife. “Mo,” he said, “what would I have to buy you so I could sleep with Tina Turner? I've always wanted to screw her. Please, Mo. Name your price! Anything!”

Mo decided that it was a deal she wasn't interested in making.

 

Once the wives were gone, there were plenty of other opportunities for just about anything we were interested in doing. Back in L.A., we had spent many hours drinking at both the Whisky and a new club, Thee Experience. Jimmy and I had met Marshall Brevitz, the owner of Thee Experience, the year before at his club in Miami. He was a sweet guy, a little overweight and losing his hair. Jimmy liked Marshall, and when the new L.A. club opened on Sunset Boulevard, Pagey suggested that we give it some immediate notoriety by hanging out there.

Although the lines in front of Thee Experience often wound into the darkness when Zeppelin was in town, the club never enjoyed the success of some of the more famous rock establishments in L.A. Marshall made the mistake of locating his club at the corner of Sunset and Gardner, a few blocks west of La Brea, but too far away from most of West Hollywood's nightlife. The Whisky, the Roxy, the Rainbow, and Gazzari's were always packed because they were within a block of one another, and people often went to all four clubs in the same night. Thee Experience was just too isolated.

So we tried to help out. “Just keep giving us free drinks, and you can tell the world that this is where Led Zeppelin's going to be,” I told Marshall.

After a night of drinking, there wasn't much that we weren't willing to try, even in a public place like Thee Experience. We were becoming even
kinkier, even more uninhibited and bizarre, as the days and weeks passed. It seemed as if we were willing to attempt anything, knowing that if necessary we could flash the name Led Zeppelin and probably wiggle out of just about any situation.

One night, I was flirting heavily with a young blonde at Thee Experience, and I figured she was a likely candidate to come back to the Château Marmont with me. We began kissing and touching one another, and in the natural course of events I decided it was a shame to wait until we got back to the hotel.

“Let's push two tables together and do it right here!” I suggested.

At first, she thought—or perhaps hoped—that I was kidding. When she realized I wasn't, she began laughing nervously. “Okay,” she said, “but let's find some tables in the corner.”

She helped me rearrange the furniture, and then we pulled off just enough of our clothes to screw right there on top of the tables, in full view of half of the club. It may not have shown good judgment, but not a single person complained. It was not a G-rated performance.

The next night, as we drove back to Thee Experience, Robert joked, “I don't know how we could top the show you put on last night.” But, somehow, we almost did. While we were waiting for our third round of drinks to arrive, two girls volunteered to crawl under the tables and perform oral sex on the band. They did it in record time.

As Bonzo zipped up his fly, he said, “Marshall, I think we've found a big drawing card for your club. These girls have a special talent that could bring in a lot of new customers every night. Once the word gets out, you'll have the most popular club in Los Angeles.”

In those days, lots of women just weren't timid or self-conscious about anything. We saw no reason to show any self-restraint ourselves. The flesh was out there for the taking, and it was easy to become a hedonist. There seemed to be no reason not to.

L
ed Zeppelin's summer 1969 tour of America ended on the last day in August with a performance at the Texas International Festival in Dallas. Peter Grant had negotiated a fee of nearly $14,000 for the hour-long set, which was more than we had earned for any single show to date. Still, we were counting on the second album, finally scheduled for release in late October, to drive our asking price much higher.

We returned to London and scattered for a long-awaited but short-lived vacation. Six weeks after the curtain fell on the U.S. tour, the band reluctantly reassembled in Paris to begin the promotion of
Led Zeppelin II
. The relationship between the band and the press, of course, already had a nightmarish history, and anything that smacked of courting the press was almost more than the band could handle.

“I guess it's part of the game,” Robert said. Nevertheless, he despised this aspect of the business—to have to sit there politely and chat or answer questions with people whose knowledge of music was often pretty pathetic.

Eddie Barclay, whose Barclay Records distributed Led Zeppelin's albums in France, had talked Peter into flying the band across the English Channel to perform a one-hour set at a private party, celebrating the imminent release of
Led Zeppelin II
. “Let the band do their talking with their music,” Eddie said. “They'll play a few songs, and the promotion people and the media will love it.”

That all sounded great. But even the best-laid plans can go awry.

We had checked into the Westminster, an expensive, 100-room hotel with marble fireplaces and parquet floors located on the Rue de la Paix. As we were settling into our rooms, the phone rang. It was Clive Coulson.

“Richard, we're down here setting up the equipment for tonight's show. I don't think the band is going to want to hear this, but the stage is a boxing ring. They've never performed in one of these before, have they? Do you think they'll want to perform in a boxing ring?”

I knew the answer without even asking the band.

“This is absurd,” I said. “Take all the equipment out, Clive. The band isn't going to play tonight. If they want someone to perform in a boxing ring, let them sign Muhammad Ali to a recording contract!”

Although there was no live music that night, we did show up for the party. “Act as cordial as you can,” Peter advised the band before we left the hotel. “I know it's terrible to have to endure these things. I'm going to be having just as bad a time as you are. Let's just bite our lips and make the best of it.”

We survived the party, pretending that we were having a good time mingling with the press. We also discovered just how influential Eddie Barclay was with the French media. Even though the band never performed that night, our “show” was nevertheless reviewed in the papers the next day. “Zeppelin was called back for repeated encores,” one critic wrote. “Even blasé record company executives couldn't get enough of them. No matter what the band played—from ‘Good Times Bad Times' to ‘Ramble On'—the party crowd screamed for more.”

“Oh, brother,” John Paul muttered when we read the reviews in the Paris newspapers. Because of Zeppelin's shaky relationship with the media, he joked that these French reviews were the nicest articles ever written about us. At that point, they probably were.

“Maybe that's the key to winning the press to our side,” Jimmy wisecracked. “Let's just stop showing up for the concerts! Our phantom performances sound a lot better to the critics!”

After the Paris party had ended, we went our separate ways late that night, heading for the clubs, taking with us some of the cute birds who worked for Barclay. “Just stay out of trouble,” Peter cautioned, knowing that his halfhearted advice wasn't going to be taken seriously, but feeling some obligation to offer it. “I want to get out of Paris sometime tomorrow without too many scars.”

 

The next morning, I woke up at about eleven o'clock and called Bonham's room to ask if he wanted me to order him some breakfast. He didn't answer the phone, nor did I hear any rustling when I knocked on his door.

“That bastard is the soundest sleeper I know,” I mumbled to myself. “I've got to wake him up somehow.”

I climbed out the window of my own third-story room, figuring I could inch my way along the ledge to Bonham's room and enter through his window. But as I began the sixty-foot journey from my room to his, I looked down at the street for the first time. Suddenly, I realized that an unexpected slip or a sneeze that threw me off balance could pose some serious risk to my life expectancy. Instantly, the trip became a much more cautious, more deliberate one. Step by step.

“Just take it slow, Richard,” I told myself. “There's no hurry. I've got all day.”

At about the halfway point, I heard shouts from the street level. “Oh, shut the fuck up down there,” I thought. The last things I needed at that moment were distractions.

The chatter from the street was all in French, and I lost most of it in the translation. I hesitated to look down at all, focusing instead on getting to my destination without injury. When I finally did glance down, there was a small but growing crowd of people who were watching my every move. In the midst of my cheering section were two very vocal gendarmes.

Finally, their French started to make sense. “Get down from there as quickly as possible,” they were yelling. “If you're headed for Cartier, the store has been secured. Come down, we'd like to question you.”

Cartier! What the hell were they talking about?

Then I realized that Cartier was next door to the Westminster. Apparently, the gendarmes were convinced that I was a Parisian cat burglar on my way to steal a few thousand francs' worth of jewelry.

I suddenly became very nervous—something that's not usually recommended on a ledge three stories above street level. “If they shoot and ask questions later,” I thought, “I'm in trouble.” I shifted directions and crept back to my room. Along the way, I smiled at them and occasionally waved politely, hoping to forestall any warning shots.

A few minutes later, when I climbed back into my room, I heaved a sigh of relief. The gendarmes were there waiting for me, and I tried to explain that I had only been trying to awaken a friend. They, however, were skeptical. They gave me one of those looks that said, “Is that the best story you can come up with?” But when they searched me and discovered that my pockets weren't packed with gems and stones, there was nothing they could arrest me for. After half an hour of questioning, they let me go.

Ironically, I apparently risked my life in vain. Bonham wasn't even in his hotel room at the time. About three hours later, a cab dropped him off in front of the Westminster.

Back in Jimmy's room, John tried to make some sense of his own night. “I just don't understand it,” he said, with a perplexed expression on his face. “I
guess I had too much to drink last night and somehow ended up on a farm about twenty kilometers outside of Paris. I have no idea how I got there or who I was with. When I woke up this morning, I was all by myself, sleeping on a sofa in this farmhouse, with these cows mooing off in the distance. I used the phone to call a cab and get the hell out of there.”

Just another boozy adventure!

 

Once we were back in England, Peter Grant couldn't get America off his mind. There were no more savvy managers in the rock music business than Peter. He could taste an opportunity from thousands of miles away. He could evaluate its pros and cons and reach an instant conclusion about its viability that was nearly always right on target. And whenever the band was home, he was salivating to get them back to the States.

“It's purely a dollars and cents game,” he said one afternoon in the fall of 1969. “This band can make a lot of money and get a lot of attention by spending as much time as possible in America. At this point, I don't think we have to worry about overkill. And with the new album coming out, now is the perfect time for another tour.”

Peter spent the rest of the day calling each of the band members, explaining his rationale for getting Zeppelin back on the road. He didn't have to arm-twist too aggressively, particularly when he explained what was already tentatively on the agenda. “The band's been offered a two-night gig at Carnegie Hall,” he told Jimmy. “It's just too tempting and too prestigious to turn down. The Stones played Carnegie Hall in the midsixties; no rock band has played there since. I think this is something we should do.”

As good as it sounded, there were mixed feelings among the band. “Not America again!” Bonzo thought. “We're all tired. Give us some time off!” They all wanted to spend more time with their girlfriends or their wives. At one point, a frustrated Robert echoed a complaint that had been heard before: “We're making all this money now; isn't money supposed to buy you some relaxation time?”

But after all, this was Carnegie Hall. The more Peter talked to them about it, the more irresistible it sounded. “Let's go for it!” Jimmy finally said. With that, Peter and I spent a week on the phone, patching together a three-week, seventeen-city tour. It would take us from the East Coast through the Midwest and out to the Western states, as well as give us a few engagements in Canada.

With the new album set for release in the States in the midst of the tour, the band concentrated on the music from
Led Zeppelin II
in its set: “Whole Lotta Love”…“Bring It On Home”…“What Is and What Should Never Be.”
“Thank You” was built around a keyboard solo by John Paul. “Moby Dick” became a part of their act, featuring a drum solo by Bonzo that, over the years, eventually extended to twenty minutes, then thirty minutes, and sometimes even longer. When the band performed songs from the first album, there was often a new twist to them, like variations on “Dazed and Confused,” with Jimmy taking the song in imaginative directions—eventually even inserting small pieces of other songs by Joni Mitchell or the Eagles and letting the band follow his lead. “Let's keep it loose,” Jimmy used to tell the band. “Nothing needs to be very structured.”

Everyone in the group had the latitude to grab onto a song and shape and sweeten it into what he wanted it to be on any given night. They had developed confidence in each other's musical instincts. As a result, they often hit paydirt.

 

About midway through that fall tour, Zeppelin performed at Boston Garden to a throng of fans—nearly 20,000 paying customers. The Garden was sweltering that night, and the air-conditioning system had melted down within the first half hour. But it didn't matter. The fans were maniacal from the first song to the last.

“This is the performance that puts Zeppelin over the top for me,” Peter said backstage. “This band could be just as big as the Beatles or the Stones. Or even bigger.”

Peter's judgment, of course, was usually worth paying attention to. I decided to brace myself for Led Zeppelin's ascent into the rock heavens.

That night after the Boston concert, fans stopped Peter in our hotel and talked to him about a Zeppelin “force” still echoing through their heads. “At this point in their careers,” Peter told me, “even if I wanted to hold them back and take things a little slower, it couldn't be done. They're unstoppable.”

 

When
Led Zeppelin II
was released, it hardly had the record stores all to itself. Other new albums were released at the same time—
Let It Bleed
by the Stones,
Abbey Road
by the Beatles,
The Best of Cream
, and
Crosby, Stills and Nash
. But Zeppelin's true believers couldn't be bothered with them. Once
Led Zeppelin II
had landed in the record racks, fans lined up around the block in some cities for a first-day purchase. Sales began during the third week of October, and they were so monstrous that by November tenth—two days after the end of the band's fall American tour—the Recording Industry of America had awarded us a gold album. As a Denver disc jockey proclaimed, “Hundreds of thousands of stereo needles are being sacrificed tonight playing, replaying, and then replaying again
Led Zeppelin II
.”

During that fourth U.S. tour, the titanic sales of the new album put the band in festive spirits. It helped ease the fatigue that seemed to come and go with little predictability. It helped boost egos that sagged when an uncomplimentary review would strike a nerve. It also gave us one more excuse to throw a party.

 

In San Francisco, we rented a suite at the Villa Roma, an elegant hotel built around a courtyard, to stage a celebration of the album's success for about twenty-five guests, mostly locals. A couple of absolutely gorgeous girls showed up—tall, long hair, breathy voices, seductive body English, and virtually every other feminine quality that could snap our libidos to attention. The band members almost trampled each other in the rush to introduce themselves to these ladies.

One of the girls had brought three gray doves with her in a cage, although she kept taking them out and letting them soar around the room. One of the doves in particular was like a kamikaze pilot, banging into walls as though it were on a suicide mission. Somehow, the stunned bird would regain its strength and equilibrium and begin flying again. With the doves as entertainment, we consumed alcohol as quickly as room service could supply it. The festivities were finally called to a halt at about 3
A.M
. By that time, I was so drunk that I had very little recollection of much of anything, including who ended up with the girls.

We spent the night in our own rooms at the Villa Roma, and the following morning I walked with Jimmy and John Paul through the hotel courtyard on our way to breakfast. Our attention on that stroll, however, was drawn to the sound of running water—a waterfall, really—plunging off the balcony of a second-floor room, splattering on the cement below.