21

Roundheads and Cavaliers

1. Never talk to anyone in the band unless they first talk to you.

1a. Do not make any sort of eye contact with John Bonham. This is for your own safety.

2. Do not talk to Peter Grant or Richard Cole—for any reason.

3. Keep your cassette player turned off at all times, unless conducting an interview.

4. Never ask questions about anything other than music.

5. Most importantly, understand this—the band will read what is written about them. The band does not like the press nor do they trust them.

—Rules of Engagement on Led Zeppelin's 1977 tour of America, as outlined to journalist Steve Rosen by Swan Song press officer Janine Safer

BENJI LeFEVRE (Zeppelin sound technician, 1973–1980) We rented ELP's studio in Fulham Broadway, Manticore, for a month. And I think Zeppelin rehearsed there twice. Robert and Jonesy would turn up at midday, and we'd go to the Golden Lion. Jimmy and Bonzo would show up later, and we'd all get fucked up. Someone would say, “Shall we go and rehearse, then?” And they'd say, “Ah, not today.”

BP FALLON (Zeppelin's U.K. press officer, 1972–1976) I took Rat Scabies down to Manticore. They loved him because he was a Keith Moon type.

RAT SCABIES (drummer with the Damned) We got down there, and Bonham was off his face, banging the timpani and gongs in all the wrong places. So that was quite entertaining. I think the Sounds poll had been published that day, and he'd been voted the No. 1 drummer, and I was No. 2 or something. So he pinned me against the wall and said, “Listen, you little fucker, I used to be that fast!”

Janine Safer gives Bonzo a neck rub on the 1977 U.S. tour. (Neal Preston/Corbis)

ALAN CALLAN (president of Swan Song in the U.K., 1977–1980) Immediately after I started at Swan Song, Zep were going on tour. So for the next eighteen months, it was just Zeppelin.

JANINE SAFER (press officer at Swan Song in the U.S., late '70s) We opened in Dallas, and everyone was very excited because the Butter Queen was there. The initial vibe on the tour was good. There was no tension between any of the members. Jimmy was clean. They were always punctual and professional and never kept the crowd waiting very long.

RICHARD COLE (Zeppelin road manager) We got into Dallas a day before, and the next day we were getting ready to go to sound check when Peter arrived on a private jet. There was a knock on the door, and there was Peter with Steve Weiss and Bindon. None of us had any idea that Peter was bringing Biffo with him.

DAVE NORTHOVER (assistant to John Paul Jones on the 1977 U.S. tour) I couldn't really figure out what Bindon was doing on the tour. Robert was one of the most vocal when it came to not wanting him around. Bindon was a very funny guy, as well as being in possession of one of the biggest penises you've ever seen.

AUBREY POWELL (designer of Zeppelin album covers) I remember sitting with Bindon on the Zeppelin plane, and we were talking about Steve O'Rourke, the manager of Pink Floyd. I said I was pissed off with O'Rourke because he hadn't been paying us, so Bindon turned to me and said—in all seriousness—“Shall I fucking 'ave 'im away? I mean, he's a cunt, right?”

I sat there thinking, “I don't really want to be having this conversation about killing Steve O'Rourke.” And meanwhile Vicki Hodge was doing cartwheels down the center aisle without any knickers on. Eventually, Peter came up to me and dragged me to the back of the plane. In a funny sort of way, I think he was being fatherly.

JACK CALMES (cofounder of Showco sound and lighting company) I showed up on the third date at the start of the tour. The mood was ugly, and there had been a buzz in the P.A., and Jimmy had come over and thrown a trash can over one of the main techs, one of our guys who had been with us for a long time.

GARY CARNES (Showco lighting director on the 1977 U.S. tour) During the acoustic set one night, Jimmy put his guitar down, walked over, and spat in Donnie Kretzschmar's face. Donnie jumped up and was about to have a go at him in front of fifty thousand people. The security guys said, “Donnie, technically you are well within your rights to beat the shit out of him. But if you touch him, we are going to have to kill you.”

JACK CALMES Jimmy was prancing around in his storm trooper uniform backstage, goose-stepping and stuff, and it didn't go down too well with Steve Weiss. He would say it in a way like, “What's the purpose of this?” Jimmy would just look at him like he was crazy.

JANINE SAFER Jimmy Page? Not a very nice person. He was a looming presence in my life for several years, and my theory was—is—that he was a horrible four-year-old, a horrible eight-year-old, a horrible sixteen-year-old … and so on. If a child is born a bad seed, I don't think you can love him out of it. I think he's a profoundly lonely man. He has no friends, and the minute anybody tries to approach him in friendship, he spits on them. The only time I ever saw Jimmy exhibit affection was toward Peter. There was real warmth there. Why, I have no idea.

SAM AIZER Jimmy made Janine's life miserable. He was out of control, insane. I saw him in the storm trooper outfit after a Bad Company show in Fort Worth, and I said to myself, “What the fuck is that?”

UNITY MacLEAN (manager of Swan Song office in the U.K.) Jimmy had a problem eating, so they often had to put him into rehab just to fatten him up. Charlotte did her best to cook big meals, but by the time the food was ready, he wasn't interested.

JANINE SAFER I don't think I ever saw Jimmy eat. We would go out to dinner, and it was, “Fine, Mexican sounds good.” He would nibble at hors d'oeuvres, but that was about it.

JAAN UHELSZKI (writer for Creem) I remember him saying he had a blender in his room with vitamins and bananas. He didn't mention the alcohol content.

Grant and Page, O'Hare Airport, Chicago, April 17, 1977. (Neal Preston/Corbis)

JANINE SAFER When we went out, it would be the band, Peter, Richard, Rex King, BENJI LeFEVRE, Brian Gallivan, Danny Markus, sometimes Tom Hulett of Concerts West, the doctor—a slick, smarmy Californian guy—and the security man Don Murfet.

ABE HOCH Peter could be a little scary when he was surrounded by guys like Murfet. Don owned a security company, and he supplied the band with guys who had names like Paddy the Plank.

DAVE NORTHOVER Murfet had some very serious connections. They were owed some money in New Orleans, and they took Don down there to recover it … with a few well-chosen words.

RICHARD COLE The 1973 tour was still harmonious and friendly, as was 1975, to some degree. The last American tour was fucking horrible. There was no camaraderie between anyone.

JAAN UHELSZKI There were bodyguards everywhere, and that was a real big sea change from '75 to '77. There was just a cloud that seemed to hang over everybody. There had been much more of an ease in 1975. They'd joked around together, and they'd laughed and had much more of a back-and-forth between one another. In '77, it just seemed much more solemn.

JACK CALMES Part of it started out, in my mind, as the creation of a mythology that starts to consume. A lot of the mayhem was tongue-in-cheek and staged in the early days, but then it became real mayhem and turned into violence and worse.

SAM AIZER When you went to a Zeppelin show, it was like an FBI outing, the most paranoid thing. Everybody was nervous: “Should I stand here?” “Did you see that?” “What's he looking at?” It was just a constant look-over-your-shoulder. When the band would stroll in an hour late, nobody had the balls to say, “By the way, those people out there, they made you rich.”

MITCHELL FOX (staffer at Swan Song U.S. office) Beyond the mystique, from a dollars-and-cents point of view Zeppelin was a big moneymaker for everybody. So the preservation and safety of the band members was the utmost priority to anybody who worked with them. The band was surrounded to the point where, under most circumstances, you couldn't get near them.

GARY CARNES We were told, as the crew, never to speak to the band or the manager unless they spoke to us first. Peter Grant said one thing to me at a show one night. It was the 25th of April at the Freedom Hall in Louisville, Kentucky. I was sitting stage left, house right, and I got a tap on my shoulder. It was Peter. He said, “I don't like this gig, do you?” And I had to think real fast, because I could have gotten thrown off the tour for saying the wrong thing. So I said, “Well, I've seen better venues, and I've seen worse venues.” He said, “Alright, mate,” and walked away.

MITCHELL FOX On the plane, there was a front section and a middle section. And then there was the back section, to which I was never quite invited. They established boundaries and guidelines pretty early on. If you were smart, you took a couple of steps back even from the boundaries.

SAM AIZER There were times when they shouldn't have been onstage. If Jimmy Page has fallen asleep in the bathroom, hey, you've got all kinds of problems.

BENJI LeFEVRE They would come onstage God knows how many hours late because they'd been trying to pump caffeine into Jimmy to get him to function. Then Jimmy would make a sign, and a follow-spot would pick him up from behind, and he'd start “The Song Remains the Same” on his double-neck. But sometimes he'd have the chord shape on the twelve-string, and he'd be strumming the six-string. You could just see Robert cringing.

One night Jimmy was doing his fucking half-hour egotistical overindulgent bullshit—which is what it and Bonzo's drum solo became—and Robert said, “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Jimmy Page,” and just stood there onstage, watching him. Whereas normally he went offstage and had a blow job.

ROBERT PLANT Whatever was going on, to me it did go on a little bit. It's not that it wasn't that good, it's just that I had to start thinking about things to do, because after a while you can start to look a little bit of a jerk, wobbling your head around like some sort of Indian tradesman.

ROSS HALFIN (photographer and friend of Page's) Once, during “Dazed and Confused,” Plant went to the side of the stage and said, “Look at it, it's all just one big guitar solo, and what am I meant to do?” And, apparently, Peter prodded him and said, “Just remember whose fucking band it is, and it's not fucking yours.”

DENNIS SHEEHAN (assistant to Robert Plant on the 1977 U.S. tour) By 1977, Peter had tried to lose weight a few times. He was very top-heavy, with little pins as legs. On the tour, at times he was unable to go to shows. He'd call me, and I'd go up to his room, and all he wanted to do was sit and chat. The instructions were basically that no one should come into the room unless I'd been in to clean up and make sure none of the glass-top tables had white powder on them.

HELEN GRANT (daughter of Peter Grant) Warren and I went on the 1977 tour with Dad. We were kept away from all the hubbub. We were never allowed to stay for the encores, which really used to piss me off. “Stairway to Heaven” came on, and I was always sort of trundled off by this person I didn't really know. You could see my grumpy face as Dad shoved me into this horrible black funeral car.

JANINE SAFER We were in Phoenix, which was one of our bases on the tour, and Star Wars came out. Peter, me, Warren, and Helen went to see it. At that point, I had no perspective on parent-child relationships, but even I was touched. It was very sweet, and it was very sad.

SALLY WILLIAMS (girlfriend of Bonham's drum roadie Mick Hinton) The band always seemed to end up in Los Angeles, and I would sometimes join them there. Seeing the shows, I was really proud of them as this kind of Brit phenomenon. I was just sad about everything else that went with it.

ELIZABETH IaNNACI (artist relations, Atlantic's L.A. office) When I think about Led Zeppelin, I feel … blue. I ask myself why, and I think it has to do with the amorality of the time. The Eastern mystics say that if you go into a salt mine, you come out tasting like salt. It is impossible to be in a society of amorality and not be affected by it, because what becomes normal—what becomes the standard—is different.

SALLY WILLIAMS Everyone was falling apart by then, anyway. Mick Hinton was just drunk the whole time. Probably he was an alcoholic, but in those days you didn't get labeled as such. The last time he came home, I said to myself, “That's it, I've got to separate from all of this. It's time for Mick to go.” Benji was still holding it together, but Benji started off with … not quite a silver spoon in his mouth, but he wasn't short of money, and he had his head screwed on differently. He was one step removed from the madness that was around the other roadies.

GARY CARNES Benji could be the most outrageous, out-of-control person that ever lived and then, on a dime, turn and be Mr. Businessman better than anybody else. We all looked to Benji to keep things as calm as they could be. If he hadn't been there, we'd all have been in trouble.

BENJI LeFEVRE (right) with Brian Condliffe, 1977 U.S. tour. (Courtesy of Gary Carnes)

ROBERT PLANT (speaking in 1977) I see a lot of craziness around us. Somehow we generate it and we revile it…. What we are trying to put across is positive and wholesome; the essence of a survival band and almost a symbol of the phoenix, if you will. I don't know why the fans toss firecrackers. I think it's horrible. That's the element that makes you wonder whether it's better to be halfway up a tree in Wales.

SHELLEY KAYE (manager of Swan Song office in the U.S.) It was all over the top. The plane, the hotels, it was all top of the line. I remember flying out to Seattle with Steve and Marie, and Peter telling the manager at the Edgewater Inn, “Have a TV on me … kick it in!”

JAAN UHELSZKI The limos were unbelievable. It really was like a cavalcade for the president. They would even have fake limos to thwart the fans. To this day, I have never been on a tour that was so beyond the norm. They suspended all the normal rules of behavior.

SHELLEY KAYE I actually don't think they made a lot of money on any of the tours, because were spending a fortune. It wasn't like it is today, where you have a T-shirt deal, and you get a million dollars up front for it. Merchandise was a minimal part of the deal. Curtis Lentz, who did the T-shirts, would show up with a bag full of cash, and that was about it.

BENJI LeFEVRE Raymondo [Thomas] completely fucked up one night. He wouldn't put the guitar in this room where we had everything locked up. Next day we come in, and it's gone. Three hours before the show, a truck driver shows up at the back door with the guitar. He claims he picked up a hitchhiker who's completely out of it and says, “You'll never guess who this guitar belongs to …” The driver chins the bloke and brings the guitar back. Richard Cole is summoned to the door, takes the guitar off the bloke, and chins him.

DENNIS SHEEHAN Richard was in a fairly sorry state then. One of my jobs was to stop him from jumping off balconies. But he was still a great tour manager.

MITCHELL FOX What Steve Weiss did for the band relative to the business and legal aspects, Richard did as far as roadside logistics went: protecting the band and making sure they were where they were supposed to be when they were supposed to be there. He was ruthless to that extent. He would not be swayed otherwise by anything.

DENNIS SHEEHAN Robert had respect for Richard in the beginning, but by the end Richard was treading a very unsavory path, and Robert was very aware of that. He was quite vocal in pointing out that Richard was lucky to be there.

GARY CARNES Everybody was scared to death of Richard. He was just so mean to all of us. We would be up for days, so if you could catch a thirty-minute nap, you would. And Richard would walk around kicking anybody who was asleep.

SHELLEY KAYE We'd flown in on the plane to Scottsdale to do a show in Tempe. Richard was busy getting everyone into the cars. I wound up in a car with him and Janine, and in the front seat were two people who were unknown; how they came to be there, I have no idea. It's July, and it's a hundred degrees. The young lady says, “I need to go to the bathroom,” and Richard tells her to piss off; the rule is that nobody ever stops on a short journey like this one.

A little while later, the young lady turns around and says, “I'm going to pee in the car if you don't pull over.” So we pull over, and all the other cars pull over. The couple gets out of the car, and she's running into the bushes with her boyfriend. And all the cars take off again. We just left them there, because nobody cared who they were. It was typical Richard Cole stuff.

ELIZABETH IaNNACI The difference between the way I was treated and the way I saw them treat other women was very difficult to reconcile. Bonzo was the only one who treated me like I was one of the girls. I was on the plane going to San Diego, and Bonzo came over and grabbed me by the wrists and lifted me up—I was very tiny, five feet tall and maybe a hundred pounds. He carried me over to his seat and put me on his lap and tried to kiss me.

Now, I wasn't going to knee him in the groin—which is what I would do today—and at that time there was no such phrase as “sexual harassment.” This was what came with the territory, and you learned how to fend off advances from men. So I was putting his hands where they belonged, and he was very drunk and kept going, “Why not? Why not?” And I finally just said, “Because I'd never be able to have tea with your wife.” He just looked at me, dead serious, and said, “Well, why the fuck would you want to?” I said, “Honey, it's a metaphor.” But it was beyond him. Finally, he said, “Ach, you're Robert's girl,” and kind of tossed me off his lap. But it was perfectly in keeping with “Why are you here if you're not here to fuck?”

I do feel I was complicit in many ways. In looking the other way, you were almost being “a good German.” One time, Jimmy sent me to go get Lori in a limo, and she and her mother were staying in some motel on Sunset near the 405 freeway. I knocked on the door, and they were having an argument about a little beaded dress that Lori had borrowed from her mom: “You're not going out in that dress!” It was clear to me that Lori was groomed for this, which is why I have mixed feelings about Roman Polanski. There is a culture of older women who groom younger women to do their bidding, so to speak: “You're gonna land someone, and I'm going to benefit from it.”

Janine Safer The thing I enjoyed most about the tour was, in fact, the music. It was a wonderful life lesson in perspective, to see the same band perform the same show seventy-eight times. You learn a lot about crowd dynamics. Of course, they could have stood onstage with kazoos playing “Oh! Susanna,” and everyone would have been apoplectic with joy.

BENJI LeFEVRE Some nights “Since I've Been Loving You” made me cry, it was so mesmerizing. Other nights, it made me cry because it was so pointless. The word roller coaster doesn't come close to addressing the way the thing was so turbulently disturbed. Mainly, it was down to what state Jimmy was in, because when you play a wrong note on the guitar, everyone can clearly hear it.

GARY CARNES When all four of them were straight onstage, nobody could touch them. But all four of them straight was pretty rare. Sometimes Plant would announce a song, and Page would go into the wrong number. I was seven or eight feet away at the Chicago show when Page sat down after the first few songs and passed out … and that was the end of the show.

JAAN UHELSZKI They had to stop the Chicago show because Jimmy had a stomach ache, and there were all these little blips. You could really see the cracks, and you could also see that the whole tension between Robert and Jimmy was getting bad.

BENJI LEFEVRE When they did the acoustic set at the front of the stage, Bonzo would sometimes nod out while he was playing the tambourine. I think there must have been an enormous amount of personal frustration for him and for Jimmy, because they couldn't understand why they couldn't play properly anymore.

JOHN PAUL JONES Some nights the tempos would be really slow, and you'd just try and push them up, and sometimes Jimmy would start things off strangely.

JIMMY PAGE I don't regret [the drugs] at all, because when we needed to be really focused, I was really focused.

DANNY MARKUS I remember we were in New Orleans, and it was the first time Jimmy had gotten up while the sun was still up. He came to the window when everyone was down at the pool, and he got a standing ovation.

BENJI LeFEVRE It categorically divided into two camps: Bonzo and Jimmy, Jonesy and Robert. It was astonishing, the labored friendship that had to be portrayed onstage because of the famous Robert-sidling-up-to-Jimmy. They still had to do that, but I think Robert hated having to do it.

DAVID BATES (A&R man for Robert Plant and for Page and Plant in the '90s) Robert always said there were two camps in Zeppelin: the Cavaliers and the Roundheads. The Cavaliers were Page and Bonham and a number of the road crew—the ones that just partied, that went for the chaos and madness. The others were the ones who said, “Look, we're in Rome. Shall we go and have a look at the Colosseum?” Robert was never fully committed to one or the other. It all depended on his mood: “Today I feel like a bit of culture. Tomorrow? Hmmm … let me see what's on offer.” He can pull the “I'm Robert Plant” if he needs to, but he's also quite happy with people not knowing who he is. He is really quite secure, but he can also be very insecure. He is not the Viking that you see.

BENJI LeFEVRE When I went to work for the Stones, I had an interview with Jagger and immediately realized, “Wait a minute, I've been here before—here's the together extrovert Leo singer with his mate, the fucked-up guitar player.”

JAAN UHELSZKI Jimmy asked me how I'd liked one of the shows, and I told him I'd seen better. He said to me that the daily papers had said how good he was, and that was why Robert had hated the show so much. It was like he was taking great pride in the fact that he'd been able to outshine Robert.

JACK CALMES Robert had his own massive ego, but he did make an effort to keep that from bringing him down, and he was more an observer of everybody else crumbling. I never saw him with his face in the mud, fucked up and crawling around clubs.

ROBERT PLANT I think I could probably remember how to roll a spliff, but I know I haven't touched anything at all since 1977…. I make sure that, socially, I keep away from anybody who's unclean like that, because it is that eight-minute cycle of enthusiasm.

DENNIS SHEEHAN Robert was dead easy. He would go out to a club, order one drink, and that drink would be with him the rest of the night. When he got back, he'd slip a little note under my door, telling me what he wanted for the next day: “Can you wake me up at 12 and have a cup of tea ready?”

TONY MANDICH (artist relations, Atlantic's L.A. office) I took Robert to see the New York Cosmos, and he was driving a convertible Cadillac because he loves driving around the country. Anything shorter than five hundred miles, he would drive from city to city, so the two of us went to the Cosmos game in L.A. There were ninety thousand people there. I said, “We need security.” He said, “No, there's only two of us.” We talked about Wolves. We would talk about everything. I saw every moment of him, driving around the country and absorbing all those sounds and melodies and harmonies and guitar playing. When I heard Raising Sand, I remembered how he used to soak it all up.

JAAN UHELSZKI Robert was already becoming this kind of cross-pollinator … and he was so much more sociable than Page. You wouldn't see Page hanging out at the bar, but you would see Plant there, holding court. Jimmy was the dark to Robert's light, which was the thing that made it work musically. But whatever made it work was also what pulled it apart.

• • •

JANINE SAFER Why did they surround themselves with people like John Bindon? I think there's a one-word answer: cocaine. Or another, related word: paranoia. Peter and Jimmy were the most paranoid people I have ever met in my life, bar none.

Bindon was Richard Cole cubed. He was presented as a long-known quantity. I don't know that I have ever met anyone in my life who so thoroughly embodied all that is negative and all that is violent. I don't think anybody found him charming on the Led Zeppelin tour. Maybe Peter was charmed. He did seem to find Bindon amusing, and he was certainly the only person to whom Bindon was deferential. He was thoroughly bad news, and it infected the entire atmosphere and society around him.

DANNY MARKUS I met Bindon, but don't forget that I'd had to deal with Freddy Sessler when I worked with the Stones. There's always somebody like that. There's always a carousel of people passing through, so many people that get swept along.

ELIZABETH IaNNACI Bindon seemed to be the unofficial jester, and all the crew were quite taken with his antics. It was most likely he who, at the Rainbow one night, slapped a slice of hot pizza onto Phil Carson's crotch. He was not unattractive, just unbelievably crude. His little joke was that he would make a gesture that looked like fellatio. I once turned to him and said, “You know, John, you would be okay if you just didn't do that so much.” He never looked me in the eye again. It was as if I'd crippled him.

DANNY MARKUS I decided to leave Atlantic in the middle of the last Zeppelin tour. I said farewell to Zeppelin at the Forum, and Robert dedicated a song to me during one of the shows: “We will miss your credit card, and we will miss you.”

ELIZABETH IaNNACI Things seemed to spiral downward after I left Atlantic. The tone changed. There was a velocity of being on the road that carried with it all this detritus. The people that were on the road were different from the people who were there in 1975. It was so much more isolated and insular—like being on a movie set. And because it's a synthetic world that only exists at that moment, the rules of real life don't seem to apply.

DENNIS SHEEHAN With Zeppelin, there was nothing else around like them at the time, so therefore their life was that–and it was only that. With U2, their lives are about so many other things.

JANINE SAFER In Detroit, for the Silverdome show, we stayed one night in a really crappy motel to be as near as possible to the venue. I had to get Jimmy up for a phone interview, so I knocked on his door, and he was out cold. He woke and said he wanted a cup of tea. I prevailed on someone to bring him a cup of tea, but the water in the pot was so tepid that the water wouldn't even diffuse. He sort of looked at it, half-asleep, half-comatose, took a sip and just spat it out. And we both started laughing so hard. It's one of the few amusing memories I have of him on the tour.

Later that night I actually found him unconscious, because he had started using heroin again by this point. I believe it changed in New York, because Keith Richards had turned up. And that wasn't good for Jimmy.

ALAN CALLAN I was at the Silverdome show, and the collective energy of seventy-six thousand people having a good time was intoxicating and fascinating. To sit and watch the audience from a privileged position was just joyful. It was like having the best seat at the World Cup Final.

DAVE NORTHOVER Everybody was worried about how frail Jimmy was: how could he possibly do a three-hour set after two or three hours' sleep? But he did. Once in Los Angeles I had to wake him up and get him mobile for the concert that night. I walked around the suite and couldn't find him anywhere. Eventually, I realized there was a little bolster thing right at the end of the bed, and he was hiding in there.

JAAN UHELSZKI I'd been on the tour for about a week and had interviewed Robert, but I couldn't get Jimmy to commit to an interview time. And this was going to be a cover story for Creem. Finally, the day before I was supposed to go home, he agreed—but only on the condition that he had Janine there.

When I got to the room, he looked at me and said, “You have to put the questions to Janine.” So I had to ask her the question, and then she would turn toward Jimmy and say exactly what I had said to him, and he would answer to her, and she would tell me his answer. And we thought Michael Jackson was weird. It was not a particularly long interview, maybe forty minutes for a cover story, and at the end of it, Jimmy said, “I'm sorry, but this interview has come to an end.” It was like a line out of some drawing-room comedy.

JANINE SAFER I was the press wrangler, and there was no question that they were going to talk to John Rockwell at the New York Times and Robert Hilburn at the L.A. Times. But my agenda was more, “I'd like you to talk to my friend Dave Schulps from Trouser Press.”

DAVE SCHULPS (writer for Trouser Press magazine) At first sight, I was struck by how extremely frail he appeared, escorted by a bodyguard who seemed almost to be propping him up. [He was] remarkably thin and pale, his sideburns showing a slight touch of gray, his skin exhibiting a wraithlike pallor. I found it hard to believe this was the same person I'd seen bouncing around the stage at Madison Square Garden earlier that week. [He] spoke slowly and softly in a sort of half-mumble/half-whisper that matched his frail physical appearance.

ELIZABETH IaNNACI When the Jaan Uhelszki article came out, Robert called me and said, “Oh, things at home aren't good … my wife read the article.” I was stunned. My reaction was, “She didn't know?” How would I know that the farm in Kidderminster was out of touch with all of that?

NICK KENT (writer for NME) I think they expected that people would be afraid enough of their reputation to delete any references to groupies.

JAAN UHELSZKI When I put in the Creem piece the thing about “I hope this doesn't get back to England,” they were so mad at me that Janine said they would never talk to me again.

GARY CARNES At the Tampa show, people had sat in the boiling sun all day, consuming whatever they were consuming. That was the first time I ever saw anyone killed before my very eyes. A guy got pushed off the upper level of the stadium and died instantly. That was not a good omen.

The band came on, and they were just going into “Nobody's Fault but Mine” when the sky exploded. Within minutes, everything was under water. And when it was announced that there would be no show that night, war broke out. The cops called out to us through megaphones, “Everyone lay down behind the speaker cabinets and cover your heads. Do not get up.” And this huge riot squad came in through the back of stadium. There were bodies lying everywhere, bleeding. It was pretty scary.

ELIZABETH IaNNACI They were at the fabulous Forum on that '77 tour, and I was standing at the edge of the stage, watching. During “Going to California,” someone threw a bouquet of flowers onto the stage, and Robert picked it up. As he sang the line about the girl with flowers in her hair, he walked over and presented the bouquet to me. Twenty thousand fans went fucking wild, and I thought to myself, “This is why they do cocaine.” Until you have that kind of energy directed toward you, there really isn't any way to get it or to understand it.

GARY CARNES I used to get so sick of hearing “Stairway to Heaven.” Every night Plant would say that line “Does anybody remember laughter?” and sometimes he'd look over at me and say, “Gary, do you remember laughter?!” It was like he was saying, “Gary, are you still awake?”

ALAN CALLAN You put your album together, you record it and release it, you have all these preproduction thoughts about the stage show and the arrangements for the tour, you execute the tour … and at some point the thought must strike you, “We've got to figure out how to do this all over again.” To sustain that for twelve years takes an enormous amount of courage. Where's the inspiration? You've got to find something. And it's that search, that internal quest.

JANINE SAFER The band was very unhappy when I left Swan Song. When I said I was leaving, it was incomprehensible to them. It was like the Mafia.

I wanted to go work for Rockpile and Elvis Costello and Stiff Records, because that was cool. It was through Dave Edmunds that I met Jake Riviera and then Nick Lowe. Jake was one of the most brilliant people I've ever met in my life. A marketing genius with a tremendous visual flair. But so quickly, you could see the wide-eyed naïveté of Jake turning into something awful and assholey. He was always incredibly aggressive—like Cole and Bindon, ironically. I'm assuming Elvis fired him, and I'm assuming it was because he became unbearable.

JAAN UHELSZKI I always say to Brad Tolinski, “I just need one more crack at Page, now that I'm older and wiser and a better interviewer.” Jimmy likes me, apparently. He said to Brad, after I wrote a big Q piece, “Tell Jaan I really did steal the Quaaludes from Dr. Badgeley.” Then again, Lester Bangs and I used to say to each other—and it's a line that made it into Almost Famous—“Rock stars are not our friends.” And that's something we always have to remember.

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PHIL CARLO (roadie for Bad Company) There was a girl who used to work at the Rainbow, who was affectionately known as Linda Rainbow. She and Bonzo were really close, but there was never anything physical with them. She said to me, “All Bonzo talks about is his family and how much he misses being at home. He's such a lovely bloke, and everybody thinks something is going on between us. But there isn't.”

PAMELA DES BARRES Bonzo was a sweet, cuddly, goofy fella until he got drunk, and then you wanted to avoid him. I saw him slug my friend Michelle Myer right in the jaw just for being in the doorway with him at the Rainbow.

KIM FOWLEY (L.A. producer and scenester) Michelle was a fighter. A sensitive girl, but she could battle, and she and Bonzo had a bout of Greco-Roman wrestling on the floor of the Rainbow.

ABE HOCH I think Bonzo was a brute. I'm sorry to say that, but deep down inside the guy just did things sociopathically. He was terrifying at times. My dad was an alcoholic, and when you're around alcoholics, it is scary.

STEVEN ROSEN (writer for Guitar Player in the '70s; traveled on the 1977 tour) Just about everything written about Bonham these days is pretty positive. But he was one mean bastard. I was afraid to even look in his direction when I was with Zep. People don't really talk about that.

SIMON KIRKE (drummer with Bad Company) Amazingly enough, he still played well. Such was the pride between all of them that being impaired during the show was a big no-no. That's not to say that a drink or a line of coke before a show wasn't taken every now and then, but nothing to seriously affect the performance.

After the gigs, however, John was pretty much a loose cannon. He was not a womanizer, he didn't seek solace in the arms of ladies. He just liked to raise hell. He was the proverbial duck out of water. I remember going to the Whisky to join him for a tipple, and after asking which table he was seated at, I was told by Bear—the enormous four-hundred-pound bouncer—that John had been restrained after drinking fifteen Brandy Alexanders and taken to jail. Bear was quite apologetic because he'd had to apply a choke hold on a very drunk and combative Bonzo and had actually rendered him unconscious.

BENJI LeFEVRE Rex King was a carpet-fitter who used to drink in the Beehive in Marylebone. Bonzo was not particularly responsible for himself now and needed someone to pack his bags and get him out of bed and into the limo. Rex was considered a good candidate because they thought he would be neat and tidy. One day a carpet-fitter, the next day on tour in America on Zeppelin's private plane …

PHIL CARLO Rex was basically like a playmate for Bonzo on the road. I think he was a mate of Bindon's. They all looked the same: him, Bonzo, and Cole. Facially, they all had black hair and the same beard.

AUBREY POWELL On the last American tour, I knocked on the door of Bonzo's room at the Plaza to talk to him about some piece of artwork. Mick Hinton answered the door and said, “Er, he's not great today, so watch out.” And Bonzo was leery and incoherent, totally out of control. He'd obviously been doing smack, and he was nodding out and then fading back in. This was the middle of the afternoon, and I just could not have the conversation. Basically, he was bored, so heroin and alcohol passed the time of day.

DENNIS SHEEHAN The days between shows really got to Bonzo. If he could have got a jet to go home, he would have.

DANNY MARKUS At Swingo's in Cleveland, I had this room that was like something out of Indiana Jones, with bamboo furniture and a fan and a four-poster bed. The four guys came to the room one night, and each grabbed one of the posts and pulled it away so that the bed collapsed. Then Bonzo took one of the posts and battered the fan. I came back a month later, and they still hadn't finished repairing the room. Everyone has a story like that about Zeppelin.

GLENN HUGHES (bassist and singer with Deep Purple) It all ended up badly with me and John. When The Song Remains the Same premiered in L.A., he called me and said he wanted to meet me at the Rainbow.

The incident with Pat never comes up, we're having a drink and a couple of lines. We're having a good time, kinda, and we go back to the Beverly Hilton and have a couple of lines with Jimmy. The next night I go to the premiere, and there's no problem.

Then Robert invites me to go to the premiere in Birmingham. I get to the party, and I see little Jason playing drums. I go to the bar, and out of the corner of my eye, I see—fifteen or twenty feet away—the unmistakable figure of Bonzo in full Bonzo mode. Lo and behold, he springs up like a bear and clocks me right on the chin. Hurts me pretty bad, chips a big tooth out of the bottom of my mouth. And the same security team that did Deep Purple with me, only months before, now escorts me out of that venue.

Invitation to the premiere of The Song Remains the Same, Birmingham, November 1976. (Courtesy of John Crutchley)

The story was that outside the venue, there were six Rolls-Royces lined up, and John threw a house brick through the front window of one of them, thinking it was mine. That was the last time I saw him, and it still saddens me. I had so much love for him that it broke my fucking heart.