26

The Swan Song

Phil Carlo used to send me postcards of old broken-down shacks, with comments on the back saying, “This is where you end up when you work for Led Zeppelin.”

—Sally Williams

AHMET ERTEGUN (head of Atlantic Records) [Peter] was a person with a lot of personal problems. As a result, we had a lot of ups and downs, especially in the later years after the group broke up.

Peter Grant Ahmet was the only one who ever said to me that I mourned too long over John. Maybe he was right.

ED BICKNELL (former manager of Dire Straits) After Bonham died, Peter went into what he called his “black period.” He literally pulled up the drawbridge at Horselunges and took cocaine. The house was sort of falling down around him. He had these two brothers who looked after him, and they'd go into the Marks & Spencer in Eastbourne and stock up on sandwiches and jellies for him.

We know you're in there, Peter: piping at the gates of Horselunges. (Art Sperl)

JOHN “JB” BETTIE (dogsbody for Peter Grant at Horselunges) I used to go down to M&S every day and spend fifty or sixty quid on sandwiches and trifles. [The manager] said to me one day, “What do you work at?” And I just didn't have the heart to tell him I was buying it all for one guy, so I told him I worked for a children's home.

HELEN GRANT (daughter of Peter Grant) Dad was alone. A lot of people turned their backs on him. I gave up everything, really, to look after him. I had a very promising dancing career, but I had to get him through it all. He did have people around him, but they weren't his friends. And I used to tell him that. I would drive people out of the house. But then, I wasn't on drugs. When you've got a parent that's like that, it really does turn you the other way. It doesn't make you want to go near anything like that.

MARILYN COLE (ex-wife of Richard Cole) We'd sit there with an ounce of coke; it never ran out. He blew huge amounts of his fortune on it. I'd be up for a week or more with him there. He used to send a Roller for me in London; I think he did the same thing with Krissy Wood. He'd always call around 11:00 p.m., knowing that I'd be high by then and be malleable. “Wot you doin', Marilyn? Fancy comin' dahn? I'll get the champagne in.” And he'd wake up this poor fucking chauffeur at midnight and have him drive me down to Horselunges.

DESIREE KIRKE (ex-wife of Simon Kirke) Jimmy and Peter used to watch The Night Porter over and over. The two of them were obsessed with Charlotte Rampling in that movie. Then I would watch it with him, and then Marilyn would watch it with him.

MARILYN COLE He knew every line. He'd say, “I'm just gonna freeze-frame this one!”

DESIREE KIRKE You didn't want to get in his bad books. He could become very vicious if you crossed him. I once upset him with something, and it was like, “The car will be waiting to take you back to London.”

MARILYN COLE There was one night there when we'd been up for days; I really felt as if the dark forces had come for me. It was probably cocaine madness, but it felt like one of those archetypal confrontations with the darkness. I tell you what, I wouldn't have wanted to be off my tits up at Boleskine.

DESIREE KIRKE I remember Joan Hudson sitting downstairs, getting cobwebs. She was there for at least twelve hours, and she must have been pretty pissed off. Most people had to wait to see Peter for at least a day and a half. It depended on whether he was sleeping or whether he was just cocooning. He did a lot of business on the phone in his bedroom. But if he didn't want to see anybody, he wouldn't see anybody.

BILL CURBISHLEY (manager of the Who) When Grant was really in a bad state, Ahmet did a lot to shore him up and cover his ass. He went to see Grant in his house in England and sat down for twelve hours, but Grant wouldn't come out of the bedroom. Toward the end, it was quite insane, and Ahmet never got that far with him because it all spiraled into madness.

JOHN “JB” BETTIE The house, which was quite fun and bright and breezy, was a bit like a morgue, really, for a while. People were frightened to make any noises. People were whispering, rather than talking. You were, like, walking on eggshells. You didn't know what to say, in case you said the wrong thing and he would take it badly.

ALAN CALLAN (president of Swan Song in the U.K.) The sad thing is that Peter and I had just started talking again about what we could do with Swan Song when John died. And then it really was all over.

DAVE LEWIS (editor, Tight But Loose) I went into Swan Song a few times after that, and they were dark days. It wasn't a nice place to be. It all fell apart and went grim, and I think we all went grim with it.

SALLY WILLIAMS (ex-girlfriend of Mick Hinton) When it was all over, I was glad I had a day job and people to talk to, other than a bunch of drunken stoned roadies. I left all the madness behind for good when I moved to Canada in 1981.

PHIL CARLO (roadie and assistant to Jimmy Page) When Swan Song went into liquidation, I said, “What happens to me?” They said, “You'll get two weeks' wages from the government redundancy fund.” I said, “Come on, you're all multimillionaires!” “Yes, but that's nothing to do with us.”

SALLY WILLIAMS Phil was very loyal: a good, good person who was treated really badly. None of those guys had any clue about the real world or the sort of salaries they might have been paid.

UNITY MacLEAN (Swan Song in the U.K.) I was pregnant with my son, and I thought, “I'm all done with death. I've got to think of my own future and my own family. If you guys are all hell-bent on death, that's fine.” When my son was three months old, Jimmy and Charlotte invited us down to a party at the Old Mill House. It was just a phenomenal party, and we had a wonderful time. Then after that, I said good-bye and good luck and thanks for the memories, I'm off to do something else.

I'd had enough. It was just Cynthia and Sian Meredith left in the office. And in New York it was Shelley, Mitchell, and Steve Weiss. After that, it was just Joan Hudson, who more or less took over. I think she was led by Steve, but she was a very smart cookie, and she made sure that every penny the band earned, they kept.

SHELLEY KAYE (Swan Song in the U.S.) Things became very problematic at Swan Song. It was literally all the people I had worked with just drowning in a sea of drugs and alcohol. We did other stuff, but really there was nothing going on. And then Atlantic pulled out its backing from Swan Song, and it was done. We moved the office out to a wing of Steve's house on Long Island and worked there. After a while, I couldn't watch it anymore. In 1985, I left Steve. I was done. And once I was gone, it was over. I never talked to Steve again. I decided it was time to get on with my life and grow up.

SAM AIZER (Swan Song in the U.S.) Steve just sat around, waiting for the other shoe to fall. He had plenty of money, though I got the feeling it was never enough. I mean, working out of Steve's house? Who would do that? But he turned a personal page in his life. He married Marie, who helped him put his life back together as regards his health, and they moved down to Florida.

I think Steve was always hopeful that Led Zeppelin would get back together. He got very prosperous, because he was able to keep his financial situation with Zeppelin and Bad Company and Swan Song without selling the rights, when they sold their rights. When CDs came into play, you're talking about a brand-new revenue stream. If CDs had come out in 1980, before Zeppelin had finished, the band would have made untold amounts of money. Unfortunately, they sold a lot of their rights when Steve Weiss didn't. But he went underground. When he died in 2008, I looked for an obituary, and I couldn't see one anywhere.

ALAN CALLAN There was a moment after John's death when the band made an agreement with Atlantic that Steve negotiated. What he never declared was that he was a beneficiary of that deal. He remained a shareholder in the deal but never declared it, so while he appeared to be negotiating on behalf of Peter and the band, he just wanted the deal to go through so he could take his piece out of it.

MAGGIE BELL (Swan Song artist) I'll never forget the day I walked up to the World's End to the offices, and the door was wide open onto the street. I went up to the first floor and shouted, “Is anybody there?” I went up to the next floor, and there was Mark London's velvet couch and a beautiful big desk. So I went up to the third floor, where Mark had kept all his files and stuff, and there was nothing in there except a leather chair and a little toilet and a kitchen where Dolly used to clean for us.

I heard rustling downstairs, and I went into the toilet and shut the door. I sat on the toilet seat, looking through the keyhole, and people were coming in and taking stuff out. In the toilet, there were four mirrors of all the albums that Zeppelin had ever made. I've still got them. I sat there for fifteen minutes; I was too frightened to go out. They tried to get in the door, but I'd locked it and put my foot against it. They even took the kettle and the toaster.

It was a strange feeling to come into a place that, years before, was so happy. I was the last person to leave that place. They'd taken everything. The carpets, the curtains, everything.

PHIL CARLO I worked for Peter for a couple of years, just being at Horselunges for a few days a week, talking to G and listening to him. Ray Washburn would be there Monday and Tuesday, and then me and a poor woman called Betty would do the rest of the week between us. I usually ended up doing the weekends, and then Ray would reappear Monday.

The food bill and the heating bill weren't cheap, and the swimming pool would have steam coming off it fifty-two weeks a year. You've got the gardeners, shopping, days locked up in a room with other people—it came to a lot of money. When you've got more staff than Robert and Jim put together, and you're doing a couple of grand's worth of coke a week, that's £100,000 a year. And if you don't bother paying the tax man, and you've got cars lying about the place, I can quite believe that at the end of it, the main part of G's fortune had gone.

• • •

BENJI LeFEVRE (producer for Plant) When we finished Robert's first album, the temptation was to go and play some live dates. But it was decided instead to do a second album, so that when we did perform, there would be no question of using any cover versions or any old Zeppelin stuff.

ROBBIE BLUNT (Plant's guitarist) It was a conscious “No-Zeppelin-Will-Be-Played” agreement, and Robert stuck by that deal. I remember Phil Carson trying to shoehorn it in through the back door. I took Robert to one side and said, “This is not what we were going to do, is it?” And he said no. I don't think Phil liked me very much after that.

BENJI LeFEVRE We spent some time at Roy Harper's house and some time in Ibiza. We got enough material together and went back to Rockfield. I really wanted Robert to do more blues-rock singing, and “Sixes and Sevens” was about as close as it got. He had this bee in his bonnet about wanting to be modern and up-to-date, but I could never get my head round what he meant by that at all. He put pressures on Jezz and pressures on Robbie.

ROBBIE BLUNT At one point, Robert disappeared and came back, and he'd made this video. I think it was Phil Carson's idea. Having the guitarist's face swathed in bandages was to try and stoke up this bloody thing where people thought Robbie Blunt might be Jimmy. When the girls from the New York office came over to England, one of them said to me, “Oh, you really exist.”

ROBERT PLANT I had the strangest feeling that at the back of everyone's mind was the conviction that—after a few months—Led Zeppelin would re-form, and we could go back to how it was before. They didn't realize how serious I was about it, for better or for worse. Atlantic soon came to realize I was serious, particularly when “Big Log” was a hit. The song they chose, “Other Arms,” was a top-requested record for four weeks, but I flatly refused to put it out as a single. I said, “No, I'm not a hard rock artist, I can sing from anywhere.”

JOHN OGDEN (pop writer on the Birmingham Express and Star) Maureen's sister Shirley had married Johnny Bryant, who was one of the singers in my band Little Acre. Robert came to see us quite a few times, and then he later nicked Shirley off JB. They were a nice couple, Johnny and Shirley, and seemed well matched, and then I suddenly heard she was living with Robert.

DENNIS SHEEHAN (assistant to Plant, subsequently road manager for U2) When Robert and Maureen were breaking up, he asked if I had a month or so I could give him. Carmen, I think, was fifteen or sixteen and had a friend; Logan was three or four. They were going on holiday to Madeira, and he couldn't go, so I went with Maureen and looked after the kids. When we got back, Robert thanked me. It was only later that I realized he and Maureen had been breaking up. She would have been suffering inwardly.

BENJI LeFEVRE In Worcestershire, there's Jennings Farm, there's the house he bought for Shirley, and there's his house. I call it the Plant Triangle: things go in there and just disappear.

ROBERT PLANT I was actually having to relearn and expand my gift just to see what I could do alone, because everything had been a four-way decision before, with Jimmy working in close collusion with the engineers or whatever, and everybody having their say. So to be left in that control room, suddenly controlling everything and bluffing a bit, was fantastic. I was flying by the seat of my pants.

BENJI LeFEVRE We put the tour together, and it was almost like going out with Bad Company again: brand-new territory, and would people come? And they did, and they fucking loved it.

ROBBIE BLUNT That first tour was the culmination of everything I'd ever hoped and wished for. The first show in Peoria, I suddenly realized what Robert meant to the American public. That was powerful, walking out on that stage. I still get chills thinking about it.

ROBERT PLANT I walked onstage, and the place just went nuts … and I wept. I looked at the microphone, and I looked to my left and my right, and I was the only one there who'd carried this thing, this myth state, to the center of the stage in a new time. There was a huge feeling of loss.