Stairway To Heaven (24 page)

P
eter Grant would sometimes wonder just how he got so lucky. Not only was he managing the world's top rock band, but it had been a relatively easy ride. Most Supergroups disbanded before they ever got any momentum going. But by late 1972, with Led Zeppelin celebrating their fourth anniversary, Peter often felt that they might go on forever.

“It's really amazing,” he told me. “I really haven't had to spend any time trying to settle conflicts within the band or trying to kept one member or another from jumping ship. My biggest decisions are figuring out where to book them next.”

Barely more than two months after we had returned home from the States, Peter had us out on the road again, this time returning to Japan for seven concerts in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, and Kyoto. We played in some of the same venues as the 1971 trip—Budokan Hall in Tokyo, Kaikan Hall in Kyoto, and Osaka Festival Hall—but this time the sellouts were instantaneous. A single advertisement, a single mention on the radio, and the kids were lined up all the way to Mount Fuji.

During a short break in the Japan tour, we had scheduled some R&R in Hong Kong. We checked into the Mandarin Hotel, and Andrew Yu, a friend of Tats Nagashima, met us there and took us to a five-star restaurant. About midway through dinner, I cornered a young fellow whom Andrew had introduced us to and asked, “My friends and I would like some cocaine. Do you think you can get us some?”

He nodded his head, although since he didn't speak much English I wasn't sure whether he understood what I had said. Fifteen minutes later, however, he had returned and waved me into the kitchen. The entire band followed.

With the passage of time, Zeppelin continued to become more enamored with cocaine. Not that we had forsaken alcohol. But people were constantly offering us cocaine, and it seemed silly to say no. Bonzo used to talk about a cocaine rush that would travel from his nose to his brain, quicker than he could blink an eye. “It's fucking indescribable,” he'd say with glazed eyes. When we wanted instant gratification, cocaine would become our drug of choice.

In the restaurant's kitchen, Andrew's friend asked, “Would you like some straws?” He handed one to each of us, then unrolled the white powder on the table. “Help yourself,” he said, beaming proudly.

We each took a few snorts. Something, however, didn't feel right. I finally dipped my finger in the powder and took a taste. “Holy shit!” I shouted. “What is this stuff? It sure isn't coke!”

“Couldn't find any coke,” our dealer announced. “So I brought you back heroin! Do you like it?”

Years earlier, I had had a similar experience; I had been given some heroin, although I thought it was cocaine. At that time, as now, the mere mention of the word “heroin” prompted images of down-and-out junkies injecting themselves in dark alleys. It wasn't the life I wanted.

This time, within minutes after snorting it, all of us started to feel terribly ill. Maybe some of our reactions were psychological, but everyone just wanted to get back to the hotel. “Are we gonna die?” Bonzo said. I don't think he was joking.

I had already lined up some hookers for us at the hotel, but we had lost interest in them. We just wanted to lie down. “Girls,” I told them, “we'll have to catch up to you during our next trip to Hong Kong. We're all going to be very sick tonight.” And we were.

 

Fortunately, by the next day we all felt back to normal. It had been a frightening experience, but we seemed to have recovered. Another of Andrew's friends had arranged a boating trip for us that afternoon, and it seemed like a healthier pursuit than what we had undergone the previous night. I figured the fresh air would do us good.

The cruiser left from Victoria Harbor, but after just fifteen minutes in the bay, the captain seemed terribly nervous. Finally, he shut off the engine and announced, “There's a leak in the boat, and we're taking on water.”

Taking on water!

At least initially it was a toss-up as to who was panicking the most. We all
began waving frantically for other boats to come to our rescue. After a couple of minutes, Jimmy was almost hysterical. “I can't swim,” he whined. “If we have to go overboard, someone's going to have to help me paddle to shore.”

There was silence for a moment. “Don't look at me,” John Paul said. “I can't swim, either.”

Peter finally volunteered me for an assignment. “You're the best swimmer here, Cole. Why don't you swim to shore and get some help?”

“Fuck you!” I shouted. “I'm not swimming in there. What if there are sharks?”

Fortunately, another boat began to approach us.

“Don't get too excited,” the captain told Robert as it got closer. “It's just a Chinese junk that's been turned into a floating market. He doesn't want to rescue us. He wants to sell us oranges!”

About ten minutes later, our captain finally got the bilge pump working and was able to start removing the water from the ship's interior. The cruiser began to limp to shore, with none of us even getting our socks wet.

There was a young blonde with an Australian accent aboard the cruiser whom I had noticed smiling at me through most of the trip. One of the crew members told me she was a friend of the captain's, but a lot more of her attention was directed my way. Finally, as the boat headed for land, she approached me. “You don't remember me, do you?” she said with a grin. “In Sydney earlier this year, you gave me a lift. And when you got mad at me, you shoved me out onto the street.”

“Oh, my God, was that you?”

“No hard feelings,” she said. “I had to walk back to the city, but I needed the exercise.”

Then she pulled a small plastic bag out of her purse. “Would you like to try some of this?”

It looked like heroin. As sick as I had been the night before, my first instinct was to grab it and toss it overboard. But there was something about the sight of drugs—and a pretty woman—that I found seductive. I decided to take my chances with both. We went to the back of the boat and shared a few snorts.

Later that afternoon, Zeppelin had to catch a plane back to Japan. By that time, I was starting to feel the full effects of the heroin. As a real novice with this drug, I hadn't known quite what to expect. But this time, more than anything, I was becoming incredibly anxious—even paranoid—as we waited for the inspection of our bags at the airport.

“What's wrong with you, Richard?” Jimmy whispered as we stood in line. “You're sweating like a pig. You don't have anything on you, do you?”

“Hell, no,” I said. “I'm not carrying anything. I just have this feeling that everybody is watching me. I can't explain it.”

By the time we got on the plane, I was hyperventilating and feeling completely dehydrated. “Can we get some drinks?” I said to a stewardess after we sat down. I was feeling desperate for something, even just a glass of water.

“You'll have to wait until the plane takes off,” she advised us.

“Fuck that!” I told Jimmy. I was breathing heavily as I walked over to the liquor locker, which they had padlocked shut. I picked up an empty food cart and began smashing it on the lock until I had broken it open. Passengers were looking on, wondering if they were getting onto a flight destined for some kind of insane asylum.

I helped myself to a couple of beers and sat down again. “Sorry if I embarrassed anyone,” I said to Jimmy. “Sometimes my thirst just can't wait.” If I had been smart, that was the day I should have sworn off heroin for good.

 

After the Japanese tour, we decided to make another attempt at entering Thailand. Our hair was just as long as it had been the previous trip when we were turned away at the airport, but this time we had an important ally working on our behalf: The King of Thailand. A few days earlier in Hong Kong, I had complained to Andrew Yu about the inhospitality we had encountered in Bangkok. “Don't worry,” he said with an air of confidence. “I know the King of Thailand personally. I'll get him to write a letter that you can show to the customs officials. They wouldn't dare turn you away.”

It's nice to know people in high places.

At our hotel in Osaka, we received a message from Andrew that when we changed planes in Hong Kong on the way to Bangkok, a courier carrying the King's letter would meet our plane. As promised, the letter was there waiting for us, and once Robert, Jimmy, roadie Ray Thomas, and I reached Thailand, we were escorted through customs with no questions asked. For the next three days, we got reacquainted with the decadence of Thailand.

From Bangkok, we flew to Bombay, where Jimmy and Robert had made arrangements to do some experimental recording. Jimmy had brought with him a Stellavox quadriphonic field recorder that was several generations more sophisticated than anything the Indians had ever seen. The Stellavox had been custom-made to Jimmy's specifications in Switzerland, and it produced a higher-quality sound than all of the eight-track studios in Bombay combined. Several of the Indian musicians offered to buy it, but it wasn't for sale.

Bombay's top musicians, including members of the city's symphony orchestra, were invited to participate in the recording session. Robert, Jimmy, and their Indian colleagues recorded raga-style renditions of some early Zeppelin songs, including “Friends” and “Four Sticks.” There were never any plans to release these recordings, and when the overall quality of the sessions
did not rise to Jimmy's perfectionist standards, there were no serious thoughts of changing those plans.

 

Once we were back in England, Jimmy put the tapes from the Bombay recording sessions in storage at his house. He had recently bought a new home in rural Sussex, a majestic manor called Plumpton Place. Bidding good-bye to the Thames, he had moved all his belongings—including his prized antiques and prized girlfriend, Charlotte Martin—into the new house. There were moats, terraces, and three interconnected lakes on the fifty-acre property, which had been designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens. Most important to Jimmy, there was room in the house for a recording studio. He spent extravagantly to furnish the home, adding more antiques, as well as various items from our tours to the Far East, including Buddhas and the flying horse from Thailand whose wings extended ten feet to either side and which might have become airborne if it had been outdoors when the night breezes turned to gusts.

John Paul spent the downtime after the Far Eastern tour with his wife and daughters at their home on a private estate in Northern London. It was a lovely house built in the 1920s, a cozy place that was perfect for a guy like John Paul, who was really just a homebody at heart. He remodeled it for his own needs, of course, adding a recording studio in which he spent an increasing amount of time. It felt so comfortable that he would have been quite content to rarely, if ever, leave home.

Robert retreated to his three-acre sheep ranch near Kidderminster, where he was clearly enthralled with his new baby, who was now six months old. When Robert first bought the ranch, the house on it looked as though it could have been on the brink of condemnation. But he and Maureen put their hearts into rebuilding and renovating it and furnishing it with lovely old English furniture.

Not far away, Bonzo was finding peace on his ranch in West Hagley, Worcestershire, although before long he bought a new, 100-acre spread called Old Hyde Farm. Bonzo rebuilt the existing structures there from the ground up, giving special attention to a game room, with a pool table as its centerpiece. He also began breeding and raising white-faced Hereford cattle, which immediately became a moneymaking enterprise for him as well as a source of real pride.

For a guy who made his living banging away at drumskins, I was amazed at the affection Bonzo showed for the cattle. “It's different from playing music, of course,” he told me, “but I feel some of the same sense of accomplishment with what I've done with these bulls.”

We were once on a commercial flight with Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones, who was accompanied by his girlfriend, Astrid. During the flight, Bill,
Bonzo, and I were talking about Bonham's Hereford bulls, which had just swept the top prizes at a local competition. “I love those bulls, just getting up in the morning and seeing them,” said John, beaming with pride like a father talking about his children. On the plane, he was wearing overalls and a wide-brimmed hat that any farmer could have put to use as a daytime shield from the sun.

A few minutes later, Bonham went to use the bathroom and Astrid turned to me and asked, “Why did you guys bring that farmer with you?” She obviously didn't recognize Bonzo. “All he talks about is those damn bulls! Does he work on one of the boys' estates?”

“Not exactly,” I said, breaking the news as gently as possible. “That's our drummer! That's John Bonham!”

She seemed genuinely surprised. And embarrassed. Led Zeppelin were more than musicians, although it was hard for most people to see beyond their music.

I had always felt that, more than the others, Jimmy was much too complex an individual to be living for music alone. I knew that his dabbling in the occult continued, although he still kept that side of his life very private. On occasion, he would mention the name Aleister Crowley to me. Crowley had been a part poet, part magician, part mountain climber who conducted rituals in black magic, many at his “satanic temple” on Fulham Road. Crowley had been a real mystery to people.

I occasionally became Jimmy's unofficial chauffeur on some of his Crowley shopping sprees. Despite Pagey's love of automobiles—over the years, he owned cars like a Bentley, an Austin Champ Army Jeep, a Cord Sportsman, and an old Mercedes with running boards—he never had a driver's license (“I just never bothered to get one,” he said). So several times he would call me and say, “Richard, I'm in the mood to go shopping for some Crowley artifacts.” We'd drive from auction houses to rare-book showrooms, where Jimmy would buy Crowley manuscripts or other belongings (hats, paintings, clothes).