Stairway To Heaven (37 page)

A
ll of us were stunned by the news of Karac Plant's death. There was never a question of getting Robert back to England as quickly as possible, even though it meant immediately canceling the last seven concerts of the American tour.

I tried to line up Caesars Chariot to leave right away with Robert on board, but our pilots hadn't had enough time to rest to handle a transcontinental flight. So I called our New York office, discussing the options for getting Robert home. While I waited for a return call, we all tried to comfort him. But it wasn't easy.

Robert somberly told us what little he had learned from his wife about his five-year-old son's death. Karac had become ill with a respiratory infection, and within twenty-four hours his condition deteriorated dramatically. An ambulance was summoned to the family home, but before Karac ever reached the hospital, he died.

“It puts things in perspective, doesn't it?” Robert said. “I've got all this money and all this fame, but I don't have my son anymore. How much is all of this really worth?”

As he talked, tears rolled down his cheeks. He never fully lost control, but he was in terrible emotional pain.

Led Zeppelin wasn't an organization in which any of us easily shared our feelings. Other than “I'm so sorry,” there really wasn't much we could think of to say. Robert had just experienced the most devastating loss of his life. We
all knew it. Over the next few minutes, we each embraced him, held him, let him know we were there for him.

How ironic, I thought, that this 1977 tour had been so full of turmoil and hostility. The band members had drifted as far apart as they ever had on a tour. There was constant tension. There were arguments and anger. Nevertheless, when a real crisis like this one struck, it deeply affected all of us. All the disagreements and dissension that had seemed so important over the past few weeks suddenly became very insignificant.

 

Back on the phone, I learned that although Atlantic–Warner Brothers had a corporate jet, it had been loaned to Jimmy Carter. So I made the decision to book Robert on a commercial flight to London, by way of Newark airport. Robert asked Peter if he could take some of us along.

“You name it,” Peter said. “Who do you want with you?”

Robert asked John Bonham to make the trip, as well as Dennis Sheehan, his personal assistant, and me. Dennis helped him pack a small bag, and we headed for the airport. Within an hour, we boarded a flight to Newark, which connected with a British Airways flight to Heathrow.

We flew first-class, and there was very little conversation on the flight. Everyone seemed to be lost in thought. I wondered just what would happen to Robert, whether he could rebound from this personal loss. The car crash on Rhodes was not that far in the past. And now this terrible tragedy had happened. Would Robert ever get back on his feet? And even if he did, what would happen to Led Zeppelin?

Robert tried to sleep on the flight, but he was stirring constantly. A couple of times he woke up with a start, then bowed his head, as if grieving over Karac's death. Bonzo, who was sitting next to him, kept one hand on Robert's arm.

When we landed in London, Bonzo and Robert were met by a private jet, which took them to Birmingham. A limo drove them to Robert's home, where they remained until the funeral. I went home, bought a suit the next day, and prepared for the trip to Birmingham for the funeral.

Karac's funeral was held later in the week. Aside from Robert, Bonham was the only member of the band who attended the services; Jimmy, John Paul, and Peter were still in the States. Robert was in terrible anguish through most of the ceremony, and he appeared exhausted. He kept his composure, but his eyes were puffy.

After the services, we went back to Robert's farm. Robert asked me where Peter, John Paul, and Jimmy were. He was clearly disappointed that none of them had attended the funeral, particularly Jimmy, his writing partner.

I was surprised, too, by their absence. Maybe they had business to take
care of. Perhaps they didn't like funerals or dealing with death. But Robert clearly had wanted them there.

For about an hour that afternoon, I sat with Robert and Bonzo on the lawn of Plant's farm. We drank some whiskey and tried to talk about the good times, but it was hard. Robert was clearly preoccupied. “It just doesn't make sense,” he said. “Why Karac?”

Before I left that day, I told Robert I would be in touch soon. “I just need time to think,” he said. “I need to sort things out.”

We embraced. I climbed into a limousine and rode back to London.

 

Almost immediately, the media started reviving the myth of the “Zeppelin jinx.” A tabloid in London quoted a psychic as saying that more bad times awaited the band. An FM disc jockey in Chicago claimed that “if Jimmy Page would just lay off all that mystical, hocus-pocus occult stuff, and stop unleashing all those evil forces, Led Zeppelin could just concentrate on making music.”

I doubt that Robert ever blamed Jimmy's dabbling in the occult for his own tragedies over the past two years. At least he never told me that. I'm sure he heard the speculation, and he may have even wondered about it from time to time. But curses and jinxes just weren't anything that Robert could relate to.

As for Jimmy, he was angry about all the talk of Zeppelin's bad karma or curse. “The people who say things like that don't know what in the hell they're talking about,” he told me, “and Robert sure doesn't need to hear that kind of crap. A lot of negative things have occurred recently, but tragedies happen. Why do they have to make it worse by talking that way? Why don't they let Robert mourn in peace?”

 

For those who believed in the legend of the Zeppelin jinx, more fuel was added to the fire in September, only two months after Karac's death. Bonzo had been drinking at a pub near his house. Well past midnight, he got into his Jensen to drive home. Less than two miles from his house, he tried to negotiate a curve at an excessive speed. The car veered off the road and careened into a ditch.

Bonzo was hurt. He had terrible pains around his mid-section and was having difficulty breathing. Nevertheless, he somehow made his way to a phone. He didn't call the police, however, or an ambulance. Instead, he phoned a chauffeur who often worked for the band and asked for a ride. He left his car behind and had it towed to a repair yard the next day. When Bonzo was finally checked by a doctor, he had two broken ribs.

As the news of the crash hit the papers, the true believers in the Zeppelin jinx theory had even more ammunition at their disposal.

 

In the aftermath of Karac's death, Robert went into seclusion with his wife and daugher. Not only was the boy's death a devastating blow to the immediate family, but everyone in the Zeppelin organization began to ponder whether the death knell for the band had finally sounded. After Robert's car accident, Zeppelin had been put on hold for months. Now, two years later, it was happening all over again.

Jimmy and Peter had a meeting at the Zeppelin office in London. They felt it was important for the band to give Robert as much time as he needed to decide his own future. “Let's just take things as they come,” Peter said. “We're not going to plan anything until Robert feels up to it, whether that's in three months or three years.”

Jimmy decided to take a vacation in Guadeloupe in the West Indies with Charlotte Martin and their daughter, Scarlet. “Why don't you join us?” he asked me. Since there was little work for me in London, I agreed. I didn't even back away when Jimmy suggested that we both try to get clean in Guadeloupe. “It means about two weeks without heroin, but with plenty of white rum,” he said. I figured if we were both drunk for most of that trip, maybe I wouldn't even miss the smack.

Even so, I still hadn't faced up to the seriousness of my problem. I continued to believe that anytime I wanted to stop, I could, and that I hadn't lost control.

On one Sunday afternoon in Guadeloupe, I left Jimmy at a bar and tried returning to the hotel on my own. Unfortunately, I was so inebriated that I became disoriented on the walk back. I stopped at a store selling Formica coffins and, in a stupor, climbed into one of them by the front window and passed out. I woke up a couple of hours later, aroused by the commotion made by a small crowd of people who had congregated outside, apparently fascinated by what appeared to be a dead body in a casket. My eyes opened, and I sat up with a horrified look on my face. “Where the hell am I?” I thought. “And who the hell are all these people?”

As scared as I was, I wasn't nearly as terrified as the people themselves. When I jumped out of the coffin and ran out of the store and down the street, an elderly lady fainted. I could hear screams for blocks.

 

Once we returned to England, Jimmy tried to keep active. In September, he performed at a benefit concert in Plumpton for a children's charity called Goaldiggers. He spent time in his home recording studio, listening to tapes of Zeppelin's concerts dating back to 1969. He had talked to Peter about putting out a live album—a retrospective of some of the best concert performances over the years—although it never materialized.

I had heard that Pagey got back into heroin before long, but because I didn't see him for a while, I had no way of knowing for sure. When the band finally re-formed the following year, however, he seemed as immersed in smack as I was. I had returned from Guadeloupe looking and feeling fit, and stopped at Peter's house on my way home. I drank more than forty cans of beer that night. Within two days, I had called my heroin supplier and lapsed back into the habit. Without much work to keep me occupied, I had too much time to fill. And I filled it with drugs.

W
hen 1978 dawned, Led Zeppelin's hiatus was approaching six months. Jimmy desperately wanted to get the band back into the studio, as much for himself as for Led Zeppelin. He wanted to make sure
he
still had it, that he hadn't lost anything, that he could still rev up this band's engines.

He was also anxious about the ongoing rumors—rumors that Robert was still in the depths of despair, that the band was splitting up, that after more than nine years, it was finally all over. “The only way to squelch the rumors is for us to get back to work.”

John Paul and Bonzo were ready, but no one felt comfortable pushing Robert. Finally, in May, Peter called them all together for a meeting at Clearwell Castle in the Forest of Dean, near the border with Wales. They brought their instruments with them, and they played music for a few hours. Robert sang a little tentatively, perhaps still searching for the enthusiasm to start all over again. Jimmy told them they needed to get serious about resuming their careers, that it was finally time. Robert, however, wasn't so sure. He knew that once the band got back into motion, there would be no turning back. And he wasn't yet convinced that he was ready, that music was as important to him now as it had been before Karac's death.

Robert eventually decided that if he was going to get back onstage, he needed to ease into it slowly, not by leaping onto a stage before a Zeppelin-sized crowd of 50,000 or more. In July, he asked a band called the Turd Burglars if he could jam with them, and a small, surprised audience at a hall
in Worcestershire saw him make his first public appearance in a year, performing songs like “Blue Suede Shoes.” He was nervous, he said afterward, but felt good. He had almost forgotten just how much he enjoyed singing for people. The next month, while on vacation on the island of Ibiza, he sang with a band called Dr. Feelgood at the Club Amnesia, and then in September he sat in with Dave Edmunds, a Swan Song act, at a concert in Birmingham.

Throughout most of 1978, however, the band members rarely saw one another. Peter urged the others to continue to give Robert the space he needed and eventually he would come around. Occasionally, they would see each other socially, and Jimmy would try to feel Robert out about his readiness to return to the rock wars. But Pagey refrained from trying to put Robert in a pressure cooker, demanding a commitment on when the music would be reborn.

In September, the entire band attended a reception at the Red Lion, a Fulham pub, to celebrate my wedding. I had gotten married for the second time, at the Chelsea Register Office, on the same day that Simon Kirke, Bad Company's drummer, tied the knot as well. We had a joint reception, which was the last time I did any kind of rejoicing over that marriage. A few years later, a friend told me, “If there ever was such a thing as a ‘Zeppelin curse,' your marriage was one of its victims.” Maybe he was right.

I had met my new wife, Tracy, while on vacation in Marbella, where I had gone that summer to try once again to clean up from heroin. My first night there, drunk but free of smack, I smashed up my Austin-Healy 3000. It was a total loss, and if I had been smart, I would have cut my losses and gone home. But I hung around long enough to drink a hell of a lot of champagne and meet and bring home with me the young woman I would eventually marry.

My first day back in London, I was already using smack again. And when my heroin dealer, Malcolm, told me he was getting married, Tracy and I decided to get hitched, too, almost on a whim. “I might as well have another crack at marriage,” I told myself. But Tracy and I hardly knew each other. It was a big mistake.

Jimmy Page was my best man that day because, he said, “I've never been a best man before.” I had a good snort of heroin before the wedding, had a great time at the ceremony, and made love to my new wife that night. But I never had sex with her again. After that, heroin took over. That was all I really cared about.

 

Nothing really brought me to my senses, not even the death of Keith Moon that same month. I had been out with Keith the night before he passed away. We had gone to a party that Paul McCartney had hosted at the Coconut Grove, celebrating the release of the movie
The Buddy Holly Story
and Paul's involvement with the music in it.

I was strung out on smack at the party. Moonie, on the other hand, was completely sober.

“Richard,” he said, “I feel great. I've given up everything…drugs, alcohol, everything but women. And I'm getting married again. I'm real happy, Richard. This time it's gonna last.”

I wasn't going to be outdone by my old drinking and drugging buddy. “Don't worry,” I told him. “I've got everything under control. I enjoy heroin too much to give it up yet. But the day I want to quit, I will!”

By this point, I was starting to wonder whether I believed myself or not. I knew that heroin wasn't doing me any good. But since I had tried and failed to quit before, I didn't know if I could ever pull myself out.

As that night at the Coconut Grove wore on, I decided to drive to another club, Tramps, to start doing some heavier drinking. I didn't feel real comfortable doing it around Moonie. “I'll stay here at the party,” he told me. “You go ahead and I'll talk to you soon.”

The next day, I heard that Keith had died from a drug overdose—too much of a medication he was taking to help combat his alcoholism.

At Moonie's funeral, Pete Townshend came up to me. He was visibly shaken by the death of his friend. “What the fuck is going on?” he said, shaking his head. “Keith is dead and you're alive. And your drug habits are worse than anyone's.”

I just smiled. I never was willing to recognize how much trouble I was in. I got into my car, reached into the glove compartment, and took out a bag of heroin. I took a snort, sat back, and felt relieved, even happy again. I put the key in the ignition, started the car, and drove away.

 

In December 1978, a reunited Led Zeppelin finally became a reality again. Sixteen months after the death of his son, Robert felt he was ready to go back into the studio. “Maybe I waited too long,” he said, “but I just couldn't push myself. I had to let the enthusiasm come back on its own. I'm anxious to get going and see what happens.”

The band had begun formal rehearsals for a new album at the EZEE Hire in London. It seemed like an eternity since the Oakland Coliseum concert in July 1977—the last time the band had seriously played together. Even so, they wasted no time recapturing the Zeppelin chemistry. In the first few hours in the studio, they knew Zeppelin was going to come back. John Paul thought to himself, “We're going to be as good as we ever were.”

We flew to Stockholm to record a new album—
In Through the Out Door
—at Polar Studios, which was owned by Abba. It seemed like an odd place to go in the dead of winter, but Jimmy and Robert had heard wonderful things about the studio. We spent three weeks there, although we flew home on weekends.
Robert still found it hard to be separated from his family for very long, as though he feared another tragedy might befall them when he was away. Each Friday, Jimmy would take the week's tapes back with him to work on at his studio at home.

At Polar Studios, Jimmy encouraged the band to drive themselves in new directions. So they experimented. Plant and Jonesy incorporated a samba beat into “Fool in the Rain.” In “Carouselambra,” John Paul took over and directed the ten-minute saga, opening the throttle on his own keyboards only to back away for Pagey's double-neck guitar magic on his Gibson. From cut to cut, John Paul leaped from the Mellotron to the electric piano to the clavinet.

Jonesy and Plant sat down and wrote “All My Love” together, one of the few songs in Zeppelin's history in which Pagey did not receive songwriting credit. When they recorded it, John Paul performed a magnificent classical solo, but it was Robert's singing that brought everyone to a standstill. Some people thought that “All My Love” was Robert's tribute to Karac. Certainly Plant's singing was never more emotional or touching. For that cut, Jimmy ended up using Robert's first vocal track. Bonzo felt it was the best he had ever heard Plant sing.

Pagey was convinced that “In the Evening” would shatter any skepticism that might exist as to whether Led Zeppelin could come back strongly. Robert sneered his way through the song as though he were daring the critics to ever again discount this band. The rest of the album, Jimmy felt, was icing on the cake.

While the band was recording, I spent a lot of time scrounging around Stockholm, trying to find a steady source for heroin. I finally located a dealer whose house was right across the bridge from Polar Studios. When he turned the light on in his living room, that was my signal that he had some stuff for me. Sometimes I felt so desperate that I would dash down the escalator, out the front door, and literally sprint over the bridge to his house.

On occasion, my drug contact didn't have anything available for days at a time. I got by the best I could. Because I seemed to be able to deal with the situation for a while without any serious withdrawal symptoms, I began to feel that maybe I was in control of this drug after all. I never risked carrying drugs with me from London to Stockholm. I was still thinking clearly enough to realize that it was just too dangerous to bring them through customs. So I picked up heroin wherever I could find it and coped as well as I could when it wasn't available. Mercifully, we were home by Christmas and obtaining heroin was no longer a problem.

 

In May, the rock press began running stories that Zeppelin was planning a return to the stage. The story had leaked that Peter was negotiating with pro
moter Freddie Bannister for the band to appear at Hertfordshire's open-air Knebworth Festival at Knebworth Park in August. For a time, however, the discussions were stalled by Peter's asking price: An astronomical one million pounds for two performances.

Bannister was shocked by Peter's demand. He didn't think it was possible. But he also knew about Zeppelin's drawing power. He wavered for days. Finally, he agreed. Bannister and Grant shook hands and signed the contract. Tickets went on sale for seven and a half pounds each.

Zeppelin's supporting acts at Knebworth included Fairport Convention, Commander Cody, Keith Richards' New Barbarians, and Todd Rundgren's Utopia. But the crowd—nearly half a million people for the two shows on consecutive Saturdays—was clearly most interested in Led Zeppelin. We didn't cut corners, importing Showco's most powerful outdoor equipment, including a 100,000-watt PA system, a 600,000-watt lighting system, and a complete laser network. Jonesy had his white grand piano, his synthesized Mellotron, and his clavinet trucked to the site, where Brian Condliffe and Andy Ledbetter—who had been flown in from the States—nursed his equipment into perfect shape. Mick Hinton checked and rechecked Bonham's metallic Ludwig kit to ensure that everything was in order and properly miked. Ray Thomas propped five guitars for Jimmy in a line, poised to be pushed to their limits. Benji Le Fevre and Rusty Brutsche came in to run the sound equipment, and Chris Bodger directed the onsite video as he had done at Earls Court. J. J. Jackson had flown in from New York to provide moral support and lend a hand in any way he could.

That first night, I could see the band's tension and anxiety during the opening numbers—“The Song Remains the Same,” “Celebration Day,” “Black Dog.” But once they began to relax, they hit home runs with nearly every song. The show lasted three and a half hours. Robert, wearing charcoal cords and a long-sleeve, polka-dot shirt open almost to the belt, struck lofty poses and created high-voltage vocals like the Robert of old, before the personal tragedies that had crippled his body and mind.

On “Stairway to Heaven,” the night became electric as the crowd spontaneously began to sing along—hundreds of thousands of voices harmonizing with one another. With wide eyes, Robert looked at Jimmy as though he could barely believe the incredible sound. It was like an entire city, a small nation, had joined together as one. It was a chilling, memorable moment.

Even as the lengthy show was winding down well past midnight, the crowd pleaded with the band for more. Some had camped out for a week, living in tents and enduring rain showers, to ensure themselves a perfect view for the concert. After multiple encores in which Zeppelin played “Rock and Roll,” “Whole Lotta Love,” and “Heartbreaker,” they finally had spent their last
ounce of energy and sprinted toward their limousines that sped them to a pair of waiting helicopters.

Jimmy felt renewed after the Knebworth concerts. It had been four years since the band had last performed in the U.K., and it was as if nothing had changed. Pagey proposed that the band abandon thoughts of any more lengthy, summer-long tours in favor of selected gigs in large venues. “We can still reach our fans without the wear and tear on our own bodies and psyches,” he said. No one argued with him.

 

In Through the Out Door
was released in mid-August, about a week after the second Knebworth concert. Fans were starving for some fresh Zeppelin, and in America alone the new album sold a staggering four million copies. That stimulated renewed interest in the band's earlier records as well, and by October all nine Zeppelin albums were in the
Billboard
Top 200. In an era when rock bands rise and fall with the speed of lightning, Led Zeppelin was more popular than ever, over a decade after it had taken flight.