Stairway To Heaven (28 page)

In light of the robbery, our return to London had been postponed a day, and Danny recommended that Zeppelin face the press—answering questions
about the incident in hopes of quickly putting it behind us. The band considered his suggestion, but then ultimately rejected it.

“This is ridiculous!” Robert said. “Can't we just play our music and ignore the rest of this bullshit?”

Peter decided to face the press alone. He walked into a hotel meeting room that had been transformed into a lion's den teeming with two dozen reporters and a row of TV cameras. Dressed in a polka-dot shirt, with a scarf around his neck, Peter showed the strain of the last twenty-four hours while he struggled to keep his composure as the questions escalated to an absurd level:

“Was this just a publicity stunt to get the band's name in the papers?”

“Absolutely not. The only kind of media attention Led Zeppelin is interested in revolves around our music.”

“Does the band despise America now? Will you ever come back?”

“This robbery is certainly no indictment of America. We love the country, and we love the people.”

Upstairs, the band was becoming increasingly impatient, eager to get home. Jimmy in particular seemed to be feeling the pressure. Pagey always looked a bit pallid and malnourished, but he appeared much more weary than usual. “The fatigue doesn't hurt my playing,” he said, “but offstage I have trouble staying on an even keel and keeping the adrenaline and anxiety under control. This robbery doesn't make things easier. When can we get the hell out of here?”

 

Finally, on July 31, the band piled into limousines and headed for JFK airport and the flight back to London. Even at the airport, however, we couldn't put the robbery completely behind us. As we waited to board the plane, repeatedly ordering rounds of drinks in the Pan Am Clipper Club, Bob Estrada and an FBI colleague unexpectedly walked in.

“Hi, guys,” Estrada said. “So you're leaving now?”

“Yeah,” I said, bewildered by the FBI's presence.

“Well, have a good flight.”

They left as quickly and mysteriously as they had arrived. We exchanged puzzled expressions.

“What was that all about?” Jimmy asked.

“They must still think we have the money,” Peter said. “I bet they're going through our luggage right now.”

Perhaps they were. When we claimed our baggage and went through customs at Heathrow, the clothes in our suitcases were disheveled, in much greater disarray than when we had packed. A pair of Bonham's brown snakeskin shoes were gone, as if the FBI had confiscated them to rip them apart,
searching for the $200,000 inside their custom-made, thick platforms. Two other pairs of Bonzo's shoes—his pink and green ones—were nicked and damaged.

Once we had moved through customs, limousines were waiting for us at curbside. Jimmy had recently bought a beautiful house from actor Richard Harris in the Kensington section of London; he was eager to get home and rode by himself in his own limo. Robert and Bonham, who lived just ten miles apart, shared a limo that took them to their homes. John Paul, Peter, and I each had our own limos.

The drive home, however, was never nonstop. Bonham and I instructed our chauffeurs to stop at pubs along the way. We each had about a two-hour drive, and that was too long to wait for our next drink. No matter what time it was, we could always find open bars with ample English beer: the Copper Kettle…the George…the Swan.

 

Perhaps out of frustration with the sour ending to the 1973 tour, Led Zeppelin would not return to the road for eighteen months. I was simply fed up with things and figured it was time to reevaluate my own future. With no new Zeppelin tours on the drawing board, there wasn't much work for me around Peter's office, so I spent a lot of idle time at the local pubs and alone at my house, a seventeenth-century barn that had been converted into a beautiful split-level home. But with my brain fogged by alcohol so much of the time it was hard to do much planning for what might lie ahead.

I took a brief vacation in Romania on the Black Sea, and when I returned to London there was a message for me from Peter, asking me to stop by his house. It was one of the shortest meetings I had ever had with him. “Are you sure you had nothing to do with the robbery in New York?” he asked.

I couldn't believe this was still an unsettled question in his mind. “Absolutely,” I said, raising my voice enough to show my frustration. “I don't know who took the money. That's the truth.”

“Do you think one of the porters could have gotten the key off of you without your knowledge?”

“No way. The whole thing's a mystery to me.”

That was the last time the subject of the robbery ever came up. The band later sued the Drake and won a reasonable settlement. What an ordeal!

I
n October 1973, Joe Massot and his crew were about to begin filming the most creative portions of the Led Zeppelin movie. He was pleased with the concert footage he had shot in New York, and now he was ready to begin developing individual segments with each band member, mostly shot near their homes. Massot told them to let their imaginations run wild and bring their personalities into the filming. John Bonham thought he was out of his mind.

“I'll show him a few of my fucking bulls, but I don't know how he's going to make something interesting out of that,” Bonzo said. “We should take him to a bar and he can film us getting blotted out of our minds.” Then he asked, “Does this guy really know what he's doing?”

At the same time, the band began making some demands on Massot's patience and abilities. Jimmy wanted to film a segment on a steep rock face, where he would meet a hooded figure who ages a century or more before the camera's eye. Jimmy not only wanted to play both parts in the scene, but he also wanted it filmed at night.

Massot and his crew shook their heads as if to say, “Another spoiled rock star with another crazy idea!” Nevertheless, they erected some scaffolding on the side of the mountain and kept adjusting and readjusting the lighting until the cameras could capture the scene without it looking like a London blackout.

Jimmy, however, soon found out that he himself was in over his head. Massot had to keep reshooting the scene, and after the sixth or seventh take
Jimmy was exhausted from climbing and reclimbing the hill. He tried to recuperate between shots, but just as he would catch his breath, the camera rolled again.

When Bonzo heard about Jimmy's ordeal, he was amused. “If the bastard would just start eating meat, he'd have the energy to climb the Alps. I'll even sacrifice one of my bulls if the guy will just get off this fucking vegetarian kick.”

 

Later in the fall, Peter asked to look at the footage that had been shot. And he didn't like most of what he saw. “Some of this stuff is just fucking ridiculous!” he told me. “I'm fed up! This is turning out to be the most expensive home movie ever made!”

Near the end of 1973, Peter agreed to have his portion of the movie filmed during a large party at his house, celebrating his wife's birthday. Although he was becoming disillusioned about the movie, he was willing to see it through to the end. Peter had a medieval-style home, so for the party he had caterers wearing costumes from the Middle Ages. When they weren't serving food, they were jousting on the lawn for entertainment.

Months later, as the progress of the movie moved at a snail's pace, Peter reached the breaking point. Massot left the project and was replaced with a filmmaker named Peter Clifton. Even so, the movie still had a long way to go. It wouldn't be released for almost another three years. It was a project that wouldn't end.

 

As the movie took on an unpredictable life of its own, Zeppelin began its first rehearsals for its next album. Jimmy had invited the band to his Plumpton Place home, and they began discussing and writing new material. They still had some unused cuts dating back to the last trip to Headley Grange—most notably, “Houses of the Holy” and “Night Flight.” Plant even pulled out a song called “Down by the Seaside” that he and Pagey had written years before at Bron-Yr-Aur.

At about this time, Jimmy was also working on the soundtrack of a movie by Kenneth Anger, an American filmmaker who had made a series of short cult movies—
Scorpio Rising
was probably the best known—that some critics found incomprehensible. Like Pagey, Anger was a devotee of Aleister Crowley. Anger was particularly fascinated that Jimmy had owned a house that once belonged to Crowley. Pagey told him the story about a man being beheaded at the house centuries ago, and how his spirit supposedly continued to live long beyond the time of decapitation. There were also stories of murders and suicides in the house, although no one really knew whether this was just Jimmy's imagination running wild.

Page and Anger became close friends, and as Anger worked on
Lucifer Rising
, a new film with a satanic theme, he asked Jimmy to write the music for it. Jimmy, however, always put his Led Zeppelin work first. Even when he had free time, he procrastinated about finishing the Anger project.

When Pagey finally played Anger some of the music he had written, the filmmaker didn't like what he heard. Anger thought the music was too macabre, and he asked Jimmy to start over again. The process dragged on, and finally Anger began attacking Jimmy's lack of discipline in the press. We heard that Anger was suggesting to friends that Pagey might be a drug addict.

I was shocked by Anger's accusations. After all, if Pagey was a drug addict, that meant I was, too. We were both using a hell of a lot of cocaine. But I wasn't ready to admit that I had a problem, so I figured Jimmy didn't have one, either. If we had been more honest with ourselves and faced up to our addictive behavior, we might have avoided a lot of agony down the road.

A
s the New Year approached, I promised myself that 1974 would be a better time. We seemed to have put the New York robbery behind us, but it was difficult for me. It wasn't something I thought about every day, thanks in part to the escape that booze and cocaine provided. But when it did surface, I would slip into periods of melancholy.

The new year, however, seemed to hold more promise. I had met a young woman named Marilyn, a gorgeous actress and
Playboy
model. She was warm, sensitive, creative, and had a good sense of humor. Her looks didn't hurt, either. I was needy, and she filled a real void in my life. I fell in love quickly, and so did she. Before long, we were talking about marriage.

When I introduced Marilyn to my family, my little Irish mother sized her up and said, “Well, bejesus, Richard, you've had a lot of women in your life, so it's time to settle down. And by the looks of your lady here, she's had quite a few fellows as well! Good luck to both of you!”

Mom never was very diplomatic. Marilyn's face sank so low that it almost struck the floor. I felt so bad for Marilyn. I don't think she ever really liked my mother after that.

As 1973 drew to a close, Marilyn and I set a date for our marriage—January 2. I bought myself a gray suit and arranged to get married at Caxton Hall. I was extremely happy and felt my life was finally getting back on track.

Our wedding reception was held at the Playboy Club in London. Members
of Led Zeppelin, the Who, and Bad Company were there, which required that we hire thirty security people to keep the event under control and make sure that the high-profile guests were well protected. The security forces did such an excellent job that they even refused entrance to Victor Lownes, the owner of the Playboy Club, until I had okayed it.

Ironically, as I was signing the register at Caxton Hall, the registrar—a short fellow with a bald head and missing teeth—looked past me at the celebrities in line and shouted, “Oh, can I have your autograph, sir?” I figured he might be talking to Pagey or Plant or Keith Moon. Instead, he walked right past them and handed a pen and paper to Lionel Bart, who had written
Oliver!
“I guess that puts rock musicians in their proper place!” I joked with Peter.

Robert Gaines Cooper, a gaming-machine manufacturer who lived in my village, gave me the use of six Rolls-Royces—Phantoms I through VI—as a wedding gift. The wedding reception itself was a gift from Peter, and as sloshed as I became that day, I repeatedly let him know how grateful I was.

Nevertheless, as a newly married man, I began thinking more seriously that maybe it was time for a new beginning professionally, too. Led Zeppelin, committed to spending the early part of the year in the studio recording their sixth album, still had no touring planned for 1974. Peter asked me to go to the States for six weeks to run Maggie Bell's American tour. I knew that back in London, there was not much work, but I liked living in the U.K., and that's where my friends were. So I decided to keep my ears open for other opportunities there.

 

In the meantime, just days after my wedding, Peter Grant had called a press conference announcing that Zeppelin was forming its own record company, Swan Song. Their five-year contract with Atlantic Records had expired the previous month, and Jimmy and Peter believed that with their own label the band would have more creative control—and probably even greater financial rewards.

Over the years, other artists—including the Beatles and the Stones—had created record labels of their own. So often it seemed more like an ego trip than anything else, and with Zeppelin it certainly did seem to boost their sense of self-importance. At the press conference, they took the opportunity to sing their own praises and boast of what they hoped to accomplish. Nevertheless, Jimmy said, “It's not going to be an ego thing. We're going to be signing and developing other acts, too. It will be much more than just Led Zeppelin.”

Within weeks, their new label had signed Bad Company, Maggie Bell, and the Pretty Things and was looking for other talent to bring into the company.

Danny Goldberg was hired away from Solters, Roskin, and Sabinson to run the new record label from offices in a high-rise on Madison Avenue in New York. A London office was opened on the King's Road as well. And then came the parties. To celebrate the launching of Swan Song, we flew to the States to host receptions at the Four Seasons in New York and the Bel Air Hotel in Los Angeles.

On the plane to New York, all of us were drinking heavily, but Bonzo was setting records in first class. Gin and tonic. Chardonnay. A few glasses of champagne. Almost single-handedly, he kept the stewardesses running during the entire seven-hour journey.

More than midway through the flight, Bonzo was either too drunk or too lazy to get up to use the bathroom. So he did the next best thing—he just pissed in his pants and kept on drinking.

A few minutes later, Bonzo began to feel uncomfortable sitting in his own urine. “I can't take this anymore,” he said, leaping up from his window seat, bustling his way past me, and moving toward the coach cabin. As he paraded down the aisle, the large wet spots on his tan pants drew a few stares and snickers from other passengers, although he really didn't seem to care.

Bonham stopped in front of Mick Hinton, who was innocently reading a copy of
Sports Illustrated
in his coach-section seat. “Mick, you're my assistant, right?” Bonzo said.

“Right.”

“You're supposed to do whatever I ask you to, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, I finally want to return the favor. I'd like to give you my first-class seat for the rest of the flight to New York. You deserve a lot better treatment than you're getting. You fly first class and I'll fly coach! Go sit in seat 3A.”

Mick was ecstatic. “That's bloody nice of you, Bonzo. That's just wonderful.”

Mick stood up, patted Bonham on the back, and walked to the first-class cabin. “Pardon me, Richard, let me slide in by you,” Mick said. “Bonzo is letting me sit in his seat.”

“Well, I hope you've got some waterproof pants,” I said. “It'll be like swimming in a urinal.”

Mick looked at the seat and almost became ill. “Is that what I think it is?” he asked.

Before I could answer, a stewardess announced that all passengers would have to take their seats as the plane entered some turbulence. Mick made himself as comfortable as possible, but he kept squirming during the remainder of the flight. As we got closer to New York, the entire first-class section was reeking from the odor coming from seat 3A.

 

Once in Manhattan, we checked into the St. Regis Hotel. At the Four Seasons party, I took a plate from the buffet line and poured the contents of my bag of coke on it. “Hors d'oeuvres, anyone?” I said, extending the platter under the noses of the band members.

We were behaving like little kids sneaking candy when no one was looking. Huddled in a corner, we snorted the drug right off the plate, with Jimmy, Bonzo, and I monopolizing most of it.

The Four Seasons party was expensive, but Peter felt it was worth the $10,000 price tag. Even so, not everything went according to plan. The restaurant was supposed to supply white swans to glide elegantly among the guests, representing the Swan Song name. But unfortunately, white swans aren't native to the traffic-congested, crime-infested island of Manhattan. The best they could do was import some aging, asthmatic white geese who could barely honk.

“I think we should fire up the ovens and have those little suckers for dinner,” Bonham cackled, sinisterly rubbing his hands together.

We finally got tired of seeing the geese stumble around the party, and Bonham and I began to chase them out onto East 55th Street. Two of them darted into traffic and became instant casualties of the mean streets of New York City.

At the Bel Air, things were much classier. There were man-made lakes on the grounds already stocked with elegant white swans. It was a more beautiful setting, and the party's guest list included an array of Hollywood celebrities, most notably Groucho Marx.

 

In L.A., we stayed at the Hyatt House on the Sunset Strip. Even though the band was not in town to perform, FM radio jocks were announcing around the clock that Led Zeppelin had invaded the city. Hundreds of Zeppelin fanatics just assumed that we'd be congregating at the Riot House—and so they did, too. The lobby was swarming with photographers with their cameras cocked and excited and with tawdry girls aching for a touch, a pinch, or even more from the band.

Before the trip, Peter and I had sat down and discussed security. Because of the Drake robbery, I felt we needed to heighten our protection. Peter had been thinking the same thing. With all the publicity about the large amounts of cash the band carried, we were afraid some particularly greedy criminals might assume that Zeppelin would be the perfect target for another big hit.

So at the suggestion of Bill Dautrich, our security consultant, we took over and secured the entire ninth floor—and parts of the tenth and eleventh floors—of the Riot House. “You'll have better control of your immediate envi
ronment that way,” Bill said. Each member of the band had his own corner suite, with a security guard—usually an off-duty Los Angeles policeman—stationed at each door and others positioned at the elevators to keep uninvited guests off the floor.

No one in the band liked those kinds of precautions. Jimmy in particular was perturbed. The cops, he said, made him
more
nervous, constantly reminding him that maybe there really
was
something to be worried about. “We've always had a great relationship with our fans,” Jimmy told me. “It's terrible to give the impression that we've surrounded ourselves with a goon squad.” Nevertheless, it was hard to argue that the band wasn't becoming more vulnerable as their success and fame grew. Peter and I won this argument.

 

I loved the Hyatt, but the staff wasn't always very reliable about following through on wake-up calls. So one night, I approached one of our own security guards. “Tell the guard who relieves you to awaken me at noon,” I said. “Just have him take the butt of his gun and smash it against my door.”

This “alarm clock” worked flawlessly. Once I was up, I decided to invite Bonham to have lunch with me. I called his room repeatedly, but he wasn't answering his phone, so I took the elevator up to his eleventh-floor suite. The security guard in front of Bonzo's door, a Schwarzenegger clone, told me, “Mr. Bonham specifically instructed me that no one is allowed to disturb him.”

“Well, I certainly wouldn't want to get you into trouble with Mr. Bonham,” I said and strolled back to my own room.

I immediately went out onto my ninth-floor balcony and climbed two floors up the outside of the building, from balcony to balcony, to Bonzo's suite, stopping midway to take a snort of coke from some fans. Bonzo's sliding door was ajar, and I walked in and began to awaken him.

“Get up, ol' boy,” I said, shaking him as violently as possible, arousing him cobweb by cobweb. “Let's go get ourselves something to eat.”

“What the hell time is it?” he asked in a groggy, barely coherent voice.

“Just meet me in my room in ten minutes.”

I exited out the front door of John's suite, choosing to take the stairs back to my room. As I did, Bonzo's security guard took one look at me and his eyes almost popped out of his head.

I politely nodded to him. “Good day,” I said.

“How did you get in there?” he asked, scratching his head.

“Hell if I know,” I answered as I turned and headed down the hall.

 

We spent a lot of time at the Rainbow Bar and Grill and would bring girls we met back to the hotel with us. We talked them into sunbathing topless by the rooftop swimming pool during the day. There was something about L.A. that
brought out the decadence in us. And as long as the girls were cooperative, which they always were, who could really complain?

Even without the Rainbow girls, Jimmy already had his hands full. Of course, there was Lori Maddox, but other girls were vying to become one of his “regulars,” too. Bebe Buell, a tall blond model once attached to Todd Rundgren, captured some of Jimmy's attention during that tour. So did Krissie Wood, whose marriage to Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones was rocked by the mutual attraction between Pagey and Krissie. Even Charlotte Martin flew in for a couple of days from London.

When Ronnie's solo album,
I've Got My Own Album to Do
, reached the record stores, Warner Brothers hosted a party for him, and we were invited to the festivities. Jimmy brought along Charlotte, but was arguing with her most of the night. Their relationship had survived some rocky moments, and I figured this was just another short-lived although heated feud. But when the party finally broke up, Pagey left with Krissie, while Ronnie left with Charlotte. All's fair in love and war, I guess.

Later, however, Ronnie told me how pissed off he was over the swap. “I wasn't real happy with the way things turned out. My end of the deal didn't last too long.” I assumed Ronnie didn't get what he wanted out of the bargain.

 

Lori Maddox, who by this time was barely sixteen years old, couldn't handle this kind of competition. She was a sweet, still somewhat innocent kid who spent half of her time dying to embrace Jimmy and the other half dying to kill him. It was all part of the jealousies that ran rampant among the girls for whom attention from a member of Zeppelin was their Oscar, Pulitzer Prize, and Nobel Prize all in one.

The band members themselves, of course, loved being fawned over. Who wouldn't? No wonder people used to shake their heads when I'd occasionally complain that, even with all the girls and all the booze, things were getting boring at the Riot House. One late afternoon, to relieve the monotony, I suggested that the band dress up in drag. There didn't seem to be anything better to do. “Let's see how pretty you ‘girls' really are!” I challenged them. “I'll take a few pictures, and maybe we'll use 'em on the next album cover. I'll put Annie Leibovitz right out of business!”