Stairway To Heaven (35 page)

Unfortunately, the Tampa incidents weren't the only violence associated with the '77 tour. After the band's concert at the Summit in Houston, rowdy fans went on a rampage, causing $500,000 worth of damage. Forty of them were arrested for disorderly conduct and drug possession.

A
s the 1977 tour continued, I became increasingly uneasy about how the band was functioning. Onstage, the music continued to be so strong that, at least while they were performing, it eased some of my anxieties about the band's longevity. But offstage, we spent less and less time together as the tour progressed, as though we were staying in different hotels, not just down the hall from one another. When we did socialize, streaks of hostility or maliciousness toward other members of the group sometimes surfaced.

We flew into Atlanta for a concert at the Omni. My girlfriend at the time, Rebecca, was traveling with us. So was another friend, Linda, who had been a waitress at the Rainbow in Los Angeles. On Caesars Chariot, Rebecca was wearing a beautiful Indian-style chamois dress. Someone apparently looked at her and decided to harass me a little. He must have talked one of our security guards into ripping the dress off my girlfriend, probably as a way to drive me nuts.

I was sharing a snort of coke with Jimmy when the security man approached us, grabbed Rebecca's dress at the collar, and jerked his hand downward. The dress tore down the front and, within seconds, she was standing in her bra and panties, screaming and trying to cover herself with her arms.

Pagey burst into laughter. Peter roared with such delight that his voice echoed off the cabin walls. I didn't see anything funny about it.

“You fucking assholes!” I snapped. I leaned back, raised my left leg, and aimed a karate kick at one of the airplane windows, smashing it with my left
foot and crumbling two of its three panes. As the window disintegrated, a platter of coke went soaring into the air, creating a snowstorm throughout the plane. Jimmy, who probably hated flying more than any of us, just about fainted. Linda dropped to the floor, figuring that the broken window would cause changes in air pressure and, in seconds, the plane would tumble out of control.

“I'll teach you not to fuck with me!” I screamed, pointing a finger at Jimmy. I had assumed, apparently by mistake, that Pagey was responsible for disrobing Rebecca. “Does this have something to do with your black magic shit? Is this what you're into now—tormenting women?”

 

Tempers had eased a bit by the time we checked into the Peachtree Plaza Hotel, although I was still pissed off. A short while later, the girls, Jonesy, and I were in Bonzo's suite, sitting around a table, making small talk. I noticed the table had a lever on its underside; by maneuvering a knee and pushing the lever to the side, we could elevate the table.

“Let's stage our own séance,” Bonzo suggested. “Jimmy isn't the only one who can get into this supernatural bullshit!”

Jimmy was deeper into Aleister Crowley than ever. He had even opened up a bookstore in London that dealt exclusively with the occult. In general, those interests, however odd they seemed, weren't that big a deal for the rest of us since Pagey still never tried to brainwash us with his own beliefs. But because we occasionally heard stories that Led Zeppelin was a “jinxed” band, they weren't something we could completely ignore, either.

I decided to get back at Jimmy. “Let's have a little fun with Pagey,” I said. “In fact, I'd like to scare the shit out of him!”

Jimmy's suite adjoined Bonham's, and the door between them was slightly ajar. I dimmed the lights, and, within earshot of Jimmy, we began chanting as loudly as possible.

“Ooomm…ooomm…ooomm.”

We had linked hands and closed our eyes. Fighting back laughter, we readied ourselves to communicate with the spirits.

“Ooomm…ooomm…ooomm.”

Bonzo whispered, “This stuff really is crap!”

Through squinted eyes, I finally saw Jimmy walking toward us, with Peter a step behind. As they moved closer, Linda gently pushed the lever with her knee. The table began to rise.

Jimmy and Peter were startled. Jimmy flinched and took a step backward. Both had expressions that seemed to say, “It's a fucking miracle!”

The table dipped and then rose two more times. Peter must have finally gotten suspicious. He walked over and flipped on the light switch. With the
room fully illuminated, he got down on his hands and knees and spotted the lever. Neither he nor Jimmy seemed to find it very funny.

 

As the tour proceeded, I wasn't getting along any better with Robert. Of course, he was having problems of his own just making it from one concert to the next without being overwhelmed by his leg pain. He spent a lot of time by himself, whiling away many of his off-hours in his suite, resting his leg, watching TV, and sampling whatever alcohol and drugs happened to be within reach. But during the concerts themselves, he continued to unearth a reserve of energy, clearly thriving on being the center of attention.

Even so, he was more short-tempered than usual offstage, caught up in the frustration of the incomplete recovery of his leg injury. A few minutes before the band took the stage at Landover's Capital Centre, Robert cornered Johnny Bindon and me backstage and began raking us over the coals. “What do you bastards do to earn your money?” Robert boomed, punctuating his sentence by poking his finger into my chest and then into Johnny's. “While I'm singing my ass off onstage, you guys don't do shit.”

I didn't appreciate the sentiments, particularly since I had devoted nearly nine years of my life to the band. “I go and collect the fucking money, that's what I do!” I countered. “If I didn't do that, you bastards would be hitchhiking out of here, not taking limos!”

Robert added, “Well, if you guys really want to make yourself useful tonight, go into the audience and get some nice girls for me.”

I was pissed. “What an arrogant son of a bitch!” I said to Bindon. Shortly after the concert started, Bindon and I decided to give Robert what he wanted—and drive him a little crazy, too.

We waded into the audience and spotted five gorgeous girls barely in their teens, sitting together in the front row. “How old do you think they are?” I asked Johnny.

“Who gives a shit!” he said. “As long as they're out of diapers, that's good enough for Robert.”

I leaned toward the birds, introduced myself, and said, “After the concert, girls, we're going to get you a limousine and take you out to Led Zeppelin's airplane. The band wants to meet you, and they'll give you drinks and autographs.”

They started giggling with excitement. The one closest to me, whose braces seemed to be vibrating with the music, said, “Groovy, man!” I knew immediately that we weren't lining the band up with a group of Rhodes scholars.

After the concert, I helped get the girls into the limo. Before I slammed the door shut, I told them, “There's one thing I have to tell you. When you get on
the plane, I don't want you to talk to Robert. He gets temperamental sometimes, and if you say the wrong thing, you might be sorry. So if he tries to talk to you, don't say a word. Just give him a blank stare. Okay?”

They seemed puzzled, but they all nodded their heads.

Once we had boarded Caesars Chariot, Robert saw the girls and, with a grin on his face, said to me, “They're fucking beautiful. Richard, you're finally earning your damn money!” Robert proceeded to flaunt himself as much as possible in front of the girls. He took his shirt off and smiled as he promenaded down the aisle.

When the jet took off, however, I suddenly became very alarmed. I had figured that we'd get the girls off the plane before we departed, but I'd been snorting some heroin and got distracted. It was suddenly too late. They were going with us to New York.

One girl in particular looked frightened and started to cry. “Where are you taking us?” she sobbed. “My dad's gonna kill me!” I figured maybe I had gone too far this time. I didn't have the nerve to tell them they'd be coming with us to the Big Apple.

Twenty minutes into the flight, one of the girls, a brunette with false eyelashes that almost grazed the tip of her nose when she blinked, walked up to me. “As long as we're here, can we at least get Robert's autograph or something?”

Since I had carried my scheme against Plant this far, I saw no reason to back down. “Listen,” I said sternly, “I don't want you to have anything to do with him. If you talk to Robert, I'll open the door of the plane and throw all of you out.”

She gulped and returned to her seat.

Sure, I was too hard on the girl. I even contemplated apologizing. But just then, Robert came over and tried to flirt with the girls. They kept looking over at me, and I shook my finger at them, warning them to keep quiet.

Just before we landed in New York, Robert finally gave up. “Those are the coldest little bitches I've ever seen. I'm trying to get something going with them, and they just sit there. Who the hell did you round up—a bunch of lesbians?”

When we touched down at J.F.K., I faced another dilemma—what to do with the girls. They had served their purpose in helping me piss off Robert, although I was feeling a little guilty about kidnapping them. They couldn't have been any older than thirteen or fourteen, which was too young even for my demented tastes. I finally got them their own room at the Plaza for the night and put them on a flight home the next morning.

Several years later, a beautiful young woman approached me in a bar
called the Cat and the Fiddle in Los Angeles. “Hi, Richard, you may not remember me. When I was fourteen, you kidnapped me and my girlfriends and flew us to New York. I got into terrible trouble for that. The father of one of the girls was a congressman. They had the police and everyone looking for us.”

 

Robert and I remained at odds during the tour. Whenever he was rude to me, I'd try to torment him in some way. I got another chance during one of the band's six concerts at Madison Square Garden. A girl named Audrey had been following Robert from city to city. She was a bit of a pest, but rather harmless. Before the start of the first New York concert, I saw her in the audience, sitting in an aisle seat about twenty rows from the stage. Audrey, I figured, would be game for just about anything, particularly if it gave her a chance to get close to Plant. Once I had talked to her and looked at the thin, gossamer dress she was wearing, I fantasized about all kinds of possibilities.

I told our lighting crew, “When Robert sings ‘Stairway to Heaven,' I'm going to have one of the roadies send this girl down the aisle. When I cue you, shine the spotlights on her. I think we'll be able to see right through her dress.”

After “Achilles Last Stand,” the band segued into “Stairway to Heaven.” As Robert started singing, one spotlight stayed on him while the other four lit up Audrey, parading down the aisle like it was her wedding day. The girl was absolutely beaming. I had already alerted security to let her climb up on the front of the stage. With most of the spots on her, the dress became almost transparent. Nothing much about her figure was left to the imagination.

Everyone on the stage was hysterical—except Robert. Bonzo was laughing so hard he almost stopped drumming. As the girl shyly stood beside him onstage, Plant glared at me with an evil look that said, “Your days are numbered, Cole.”

When the show ended, Plant was furious. He chased me through the backstage dressing rooms, eager to score a knockout punch. He never caught me. With his bad leg, his sprinting was no match for mine.

When he finally cooled down, I asked him, “What makes you think I did it, Robert?”

“I know you well enough, Cole. Who else would it have been?”

 

When we reached L.A. for concerts at the Forum, I suddenly found myself on a different kind of hot seat over a problem with the band's finances. At first, I thought it was some kind of retaliation by Robert. Then I realized it was more serious than that.

I had always been in charge of the band's petty cash, which in the case of Led Zeppelin, was anything but petty. But my honesty had never really been called into question by the band, even during the '73 robbery in New York. Something during the '77 tour had made Peter suspicious, however, and one day in my hotel room in L.A. I got a call from Shelley Kaye, one of Steve Weiss's associates. “Peter has asked me to make a complete audit of the cash that you've handled during the tour.” I was surprised and puzzled when she summoned me to Peter's suite to review all the paperwork, although I knew I had nothing to hide.

We went over the books carefully, item by item. We determined that I had requested a total of $110,000 in cash from local promoters. But as we balanced the incoming and outgoing funds, there was $10,460 unaccounted for. I was baffled by where the money had gone. “Not again,” I thought, exasperated and thinking back to the New York robbery.

By this time, Peter had joined us. Like everyone else on this tour, he wasn't in the mood to fuck around. “Where the hell is the money, Richard?”

“I can't imagine,” I said. “I really don't know.”

At the same time, however, I was becoming paranoid that with all the cocaine and the heroin I had been using, perhaps I had made a major blunder without even realizing it.

Shelley and I went over each financial transaction again. “There has to be a mistake somewhere,” I kept saying. Finally, I thought I had found it. “Wait a minute,” I said. “It says here that I picked up ten thousand, three hundred dollars in Houston. But I didn't. I remember I had originally requested it and then told the promoter there that I didn't need it after all. You can check that with Bill McKenzie of Concerts West.”

There was no way I was going to rip the band off. Shelley called Bill, an accountant with Concerts West, who confirmed my story. Taking that error into account, we did some recalculating. This time, there was just $160 unaccounted for. It was such an insignificant amount that Peter said, “Forget about it, Richard. I guess I owe you an apology.” We shook hands. That was the end of the incident.