22

Does Anyone Remember Laughter?

Egos and territories and domains and kingdoms and pecking orders and all the kind of crap that is rock 'n' roll came into being. It had nothing to do with money. It just had to do with that kind of intangible thing that hovers somewhere between your feet and the top of your hair. It's that power, you know?

—Robert Plant (1992)

AHMET ERTEGUN (cofounder of Atlantic Records) I hated some of the tactics they used. They had a very, very embarrassing encounter with Bill Graham in San Francisco that was totally uncalled for. But they got carried away with their own success and power.

BENJI LeFEVRE (Zeppelin sound technician) Oakland was a horrible and regrettable incident. I was not in any way present in the backstage area where the mobile dressing rooms were, so I was not aware that it was going down at the time. From what I've been told, Warren was being a pain in the ass … and, unfortunately, John Bindon was an animal.

DAVE NORTHOVER (assistant to John Paul Jones on the 1977 tour) Warren was spoiled and everything else—turned out all right, but he was a little toad back then. I can imagine that when he wanted the sign on the front of the trailer, he would have made a huge fuss about it.

JIM MATZORKIS (security guard for Bill Graham) He was just a young kid, seven or something like that, so I took the signs from him. It wasn't a violent act of any kind.

DENNIS SHEEHAN (assistant to Robert Plant on the 1977 tour) When Warren protested that he was the manager's son, the security guy sort of pushed him to one side, and he fell. Bonzo saw this and thought this was the wrong thing to do to any child.

DAVE NORTHOVER I didn't know that the security guy had smacked him, and I'm not even sure that he did. I remember Benji coming to get me, and we all ran round to see the trailer where it was all going on.

JIM MATZORKIS Bonham came up the little stair where I was standing, and he kicked me right in the crotch—a good unobstructed shot. I keeled over and fell back into the trailer. He wasn't alone, he had a couple of the bodyguards right behind him. All of this was happening fast.

DAVE NORTHOVER Within seconds it got to Peter, who unfortunately had Bindon with him—he was at Peter's right-hand side most of the time.

JIM MATZORKIS Peter Grant kept saying, “You don't talk to my kid that way.” Bonham was kind of backing him up. [Grant said], “Nobody does it. I'll have your job.” I remember saying to him, “No, you can't have my job.”

BILL GRAHAM (San Francisco concert promoter) I opened the trailer and went in first. Jim was sitting in the cubbyhole. Peter went in. I said, “Peter, after you.” Jim got up to say hello. I said, “Jim, Peter is the father of the young man.” In one move—I was behind Grant—[Grant] just grabbed Jim's hand, pulled [Jim] toward him, took his fist with the fingers all covered with rings, and smashed [Jim] in the face. I lunged at Grant. He picked me up like I was a fly and handed me to the guy by the steps, who just shoved me out, threw me down the steps, and shut the door. I was now outside the camper. Grant and one of his guys was inside, and the other guy was stopping me. I couldn't open the door, there was no way to get in.

JIM MATZORKIS Grant just started working me all over, punching me in the face with his fists and kicking me in the balls. He knocked a tooth out…. Grant sort of half-pounced on me, and Bindon reached down and was trying to rip my eyeballs out of their sockets…. I don't know how I did it, but I squeezed the hell out of there and ran.

DAVE NORTHOVER Matzorkis comes out, and his nose is a little bit bloody, but he's walking. Since then, I've heard stories that he couldn't walk, which isn't true.

JACK CALMES (cofounder of Showco lighting and sound company) I was outside the door, literally five feet away from this poor guy getting the living shit beaten out of him. It just shows you how disconnected from reality all of it had become at that point. It was totally unjustified. There was no incident that required any type of retaliation, nothing. Warren was just running around a little bit out of control backstage, as a kid will—nothing that caught my eye—but all of a sudden they come rushing out of the trailer and drag this guy in there, and he starts wailing.

MITCHELL FOX (staffer at the Swan Song U.S. office) What actually happened behind closed doors, I really don't know. It was a clash of the titans between Bill Graham and a band that had sold out two dates in front of fifty, sixty thousand people. It's all about whose playground you're playing in at that moment.

SIMON KIRKE (drummer with Bad Company) It was all drug-fueled, of course. G would normally have talked everyone down, but he was doing as much blow as everyone else, and tempers were constantly frayed.

JANINE SAFER (press officer at Swan Song U.S. office) Would Oakland have happened without Bindon? Absolutely not. Bill Graham and his pals were not exactly saints, but I lay the episode entirely at the feet of Bindon, with the flames stoked by Richard Cole and then bellowed by the paranoia of Peter Grant.

It was like a cross between The Sopranos and the final episode of Blackadder. The Sopranos is heart-wrenchingly real, but this had the added element of absurdist theater. Bindon was spoiling for a fight, as was Richard. They were looking for drama, and all hell broke loose so quickly. They were winding Peter up, saying, “Are you gonna take it?” and in their delusional, drug-fueled madness, within a minute and a half it was, “Go get 'em, boys!”

DENNIS SHEEHAN As far as the group themselves were concerned, I don't think they knew a lot about what was going on.

PETER BARSOTTI (Bill Graham staff) Plant seemed like the only decent human being there, although there were no innocents. There were no innocents.

ROBERT PLANT I had to sing [“Stairway”] in the shadow of the fact that the artillery we carried was prowling around with a hell of an attitude. It was this coming together of two dark forces that had nothing to do with the songs Page and I were trying to churn out.

JIMMY PAGE I don't know what happened because I wasn't there. I mean, I only heard about it afterward when we were all being whisked away from it, so I don't know. I don't really want to talk about it…. I don't know that either of them beat up anybody, so I'm not sure what they did. All these horrific stories about what's supposed to have happened there—I don't think it was as bad as it was built up to be, to be truthful with you.

JOHN PAUL JONES In Oakland, there was some fracas there, but … look, there's no way I like all that sort of thing…. I don't like the reputation … but there's two sides to every story.

BENJI LeFEVRE We were now taking villains on the road to maintain the position of physical power. Robert and Jonesy absolutely hated it. Bonzo found it amusing. Distasteful doesn't even cover it. I certainly didn't think when I went to work for Zeppelin at the end of 1972 that it could ever possibly degenerate into meaningless violence.

ELIZABETH IaNNACI (artist relations in Atlantic L.A. office) There was a part of me that wasn't surprised, but more than anything else I was really disappointed, in the same way that Altamont felt like a death knell. There was the high that had been created by Woodstock, and then a very short time later came this dreadful dark energy.

UNITY MacLEAN (manager of Swan Song office in the U.K.) It was so damn petty. I don't think even the Sopranos would have reacted like that. They'd have said, “Don't ever do that again, Warren. You leave that till the end of the show.” But Peter didn't say that to Warren. And Bindon and Cole wanted to please Peter, instead of pleasing Robert and Jimmy. So the band got tarred with the brush of being out-of-control, hotel-smashing loonies, and it just wasn't true: that's not what they were like. On one hand, it was wonderful what Peter had done for them; on the other hand, it was terrible.

HELEN GRANT (daughter of Peter Grant) I think the Oakland thing caused a lot of bad feeling between Dad and the band. Specifically, Robert.

JANINE SAFER I remember being back at the hotel, and there was a warrant out for the arrests of Bindon, Cole, Grant, and Bonham. We split in the middle of the night, and I don't believe they were ever charged with anything. Steve Weiss did something, and it was contained. But Bill Graham never forgave them.

CYNTHIA SACH (secretary at Swan Song office in the U.K.) We weren't allowed to be told what had happened in Oakland—especially not by Peter, because he had this Secret Squirrel type of behavior. Nothing must taint his boys.

DENNIS SHEEHAN After Oakland, we flew to New Orleans and arrived about six-thirty in the morning. I went to Robert's room and asked if there was anything he needed. He had Maureen on the phone, and he said his son wasn't well. After about half an hour, I came back to the room, and Robert was sitting on the side of the bed. He'd just had the call to say Karac had died.

RICHARD COLE Robert asked Peter if I could take him back to England. We were on a plane out of there in the afternoon. It was me and him and Bonzo and Dennis. It was one of those things where it's best to say nothing than to say the wrong thing.

MITCHELL FOX Richard looked at me and said, “Keep it together. This is a horrific situation.” All of a sudden, they've canceled a show in a really large venue, and everything is thrown into complete disarray. It was a reality check of cosmic size, on everyone in and around the band.

ROBERT PLANT If ever you want a quick reminder of what's going on in the real world, one minute you're in New Orleans and the toast of the new world, and you get a phone call without any warning. He'd gone. I was lucky that I didn't lose my will to sing altogether, because I could have blamed everything on singing.

JANINE SAFER I was on the plane with Robert from New Orleans to New York, and he was just mute with grief. I didn't even know what to say to this man. Only now that I have children do I realize how huge it was. But I also cannot believe that Jimmy and John Paul and Peter didn't go to the funeral.

RICHARD COLE John Paul was out of contact; he only knew to be back in New Orleans for the show at the Superdome. And no one knew where Jimmy was: he was either in New Orleans or he'd stayed in San Francisco with a Moroccan belly dancer. Peter and his kids and Biffo were in New York, and we didn't know when they were coming back.

NICK KENT (writer for NME) I'm told that Plant was very upset about Page and Jones and Grant not being at the funeral. It meant that Led Zeppelin was no longer a family situation.

BENJI LeFEVRE I don't think Robert would have wanted Jimmy and G at the funeral. I think he felt cheated by life—not that he held them responsible in any way, but he was angry with himself for going on tour when they were all fucked up anyway.

MICHAEL DES BARRES (singer with Detective) To even conjecture as to why Jimmy and Peter weren't at Karac's funeral is to misread a situation that is so dominated by narcotics. It had nothing to do with lack of love or respect.

RICHARD COLE After the funeral, we went back to Jennings Farm and just sat there drinking whisky straight out of the bottle.

ALAN CALLAN (president of Swan Song in the U.K.) I can't imagine how deep the hurt must be to lose your son. There must be moments even now when Robert sees someone and thinks, “Karac might look like that.” I don't think it was a question of walking away from the band; I think you just have to walk into your own emotional walled garden and try to deal with it. And everybody around you must respect that and let it roll.

Against losing Karac, the Bill Graham incident was trivia. One was vanity, and the other was humanity. In that moment, Robert's invincibility was rendered as nothing: that was the emotional bullet that got him. It doesn't matter whether you're the singer in the biggest band on earth or you're a bartender, what you're now reduced to is your basic humanity.

ABE HOCH (president of Swan Song in the U.K., 1975–1977) Robert and Maureen used to come over to my place on the Old Brompton Road. When Karac died, it was the first time we'd had to tell my son Jamison about somebody dying. Rob and Karac would come over, and Rob would let him run around naked like he was the embodiment of Thor.

BENJI LeFEVRE When Karac died, it was like, “What's the fucking point of any of this? I've been here with my fucked-up mate, who can't even play, when I should have been home looking after my son.” And that had been brewing for a while. If it had been the most fantastically creative time of his life, the guilt wouldn't have been anywhere near as intense.

SIMON KIRKE When Karac died, I heard a strange thing from Bonzo: “Fucking Jimmy and his magic shit.” As if Jimmy's dabbling in the occult had anything to do with this child's death. A knee-jerk reaction maybe from Bonzo, but the dark clouds of bad karma seemed to be rolling in for them. The ultimate tragedy for any parent is to bury a child, and I believe Robert never really recovered from it.

CYNTHIA SACH Elvis sent a wreath for the funeral. Colonel Parker rang and wanted to know where to send it.

GYL CORRIGAN-DEVLIN (friend of Robert Plant) Robert will be the first to tell you he sat on a barstool with a bottle of Jack Daniel's. As tough as his exterior is, he's quite a softie underneath it all. And I think that's when everything started to fall apart with Maureen.

CHRIS WELCH (writer for Melody Maker) You tended to skate around subjects like Oakland and Karac's death. You were frightened to ask. I did once ask Jimmy about the issue of “bad karma,” and he got really uptight about it. He said, “We're just musicians making music.”

RICHARD COLE After Karac died, I thought, “What the fuck am I gonna do with myself?” I hadn't been doing heroin on the '77 tour. My problem became a real problem when the tour finished.

DENNIS SHEEHAN I didn't see Richard for many years after Led Zeppelin. When I did see him, he was walking up from the Sunset Marquis to Sunset Boulevard, and I was walking down. I was quite surprised because he looked very healthy, and I said, “Richard, I'm glad you're alive.” He probably didn't know all the instances where he'd been almost at death's door and where I'd stopped him from going overboard.

When I said good-bye to him, he said, “Dennis, did you learn anything from me?” And I said, “Richard, I learned how not to do it.”