28

Dark Days for a Cocksman

Last night while I was crouching and leaping up in the air and doing a spiral, as I came down again I thought, “I wonder if David Coverdale does that yet.”

—Robert Plant, March 1988

JOHN PAUL JONES At first, I didn't realize that I'd be pigeonholed, because before Zeppelin I did television, radio, films, all of that. So I never worried that I'd have to go get a real job, but it was kind of hard in the '80s.

When I first decided to try and get some work, nobody took me seriously at first. I was like, “Now wait a minute, I'm a professional musician and an arranger and a producer. I've worked with more people than you can possibly imagine.” Once I did the production for the Mission, it got better, but even then it was tough. I remember wanting to produce a John Hiatt album, and these record company people would say, “We really can't see your relevance to John Hiatt.”

I like to do arrangements, because they're usually very quick projects, and they're really a lot of fun. The most I usually get in terms of instruction from the artist is something like what happened when I did the arrangements on Automatic for the People. Michael Stipe wrote me this little handwritten message, saying, “We like what you're doing and if you could have the strings come in about halfway through ‘Everybody Hurts,' that would be great.”

DAVE LEWIS (editor, Tight But Loose) It's incredible when you tell people what it was like in the early '80s, because until Live Aid it was not happening for Zeppelin, and their catalogue was shoved under the carpet. The likes of Def Leppard and the Cult were all to follow. Live Aid changed it a bit, and Robert started doing Zeppelin numbers again. Suddenly, you're in the '80s, and you have the Beastie Boys sampling them, and it all took off again. Then came the 1990 re-masters. It was evident that I should bring Tight But Loose back, which I did in 1992. And we had a big convention that year in London.

JACK WHITE (singer-guitarist with the White Stripes) American rock radio just played the shit out of Zeppelin, to the point where it was almost embarrassing to like them. Because it was too obvious. They kind of represented so much in that realm, because of punk rock destroying prog rock and all the big regular rock. It was almost like you were more likely to have a statue of Led Zeppelin in your house than to actually mention them in conversation.

DOMENIC PRIORE (L.A. music historian) One day, my two super-garage gal-friends Audrey and Neala and I were all sitting around, and quietly—after years of knowing each other—we slowly began admitting that we'd all found out about the Yardbirds because we'd been fans of Led Zeppelin first. We never could have admitted that to each other on the Mod/Rockabilly/Garage scenes we were all basically living inside of during the '80s and '90s.

JOHN PAUL JONES At Live Aid, it was great when we got there. I forced myself onto it, really. I guess that was the beginning of not being asked to do these things.

BENJI LeFEVRE (producer for Plant) We were in the middle of Robert's tour, and it was all a bit bonkers. Jimmy's brain was scrambled: brain cannot tell fingers what to do. He was incredibly nervous, but he wanted to prove himself.

PHIL CARLO (assistant to Page) We rehearsed at a place called the Warehouse in Philadelphia. We had a break in rehearsing, and Robert announced that he didn't want to do “Stairway.” Jimmy said to me, “I fucking knew this would happen. We've just got to play this game all fucking afternoon until we get up tomorrow morning, when he'll announce that he'll do it. It's just a fucking game, and he's a fucking old tart.” So at Live Aid, I'm sitting with Robert watching Queen on a TV, and he goes, “Fucking hell! We've got to try and top that.”

PHIL COLLINS (drummer with Genesis) I got together with them in the dressing room, and I had the funny feeling of being the new boy. Tony [Thompson] is a great drummer, but when you're playing with two drummers, you have to have a certain attitude—you have to back off and not have so many egos…. Tony didn't seem to want to do that, and within five minutes of me being onstage, I felt, “Get me out of here.”

PHIL CARLO It was a shambles. Phil came on, but when it came to “Stairway” we had to turn all his mics off because he couldn't play it. He'd been given tapes to listen to and told what we were going to do, and he said, “I apologize, I didn't realize how complicated your stuff was.”

ROBERT PLANT We virtually ruined the whole thing because we sounded so awful. I was hoarse and couldn't sing, and Page was out of tune and couldn't hear his guitar. But on the other hand, it was a wondrous thing, because it was a wing and a prayer gone wrong again—it was so much like a lot of Led Zeppelin gigs. Jonesy stood there, serene as hell, and the two drummers proved that … well, you know, that's why Led Zeppelin didn't carry on. The rush I got from that size of audience, I'd forgotten what it was like.

PHIL CARSON (head of Atlantic and Plant's Es Peranza label) After Live Aid, we did a sold-out Robert Plant show at Meadowlands, and I invited Jimmy and Paul Shaffer and Brian Setzer to come along. And when Jimmy stepped onto the stage, the roof came off the place. On the way back to the hotel, Robert was kind of unhappy. He said, “Is it always like this when Jimmy steps onstage?” And I said, “No, only when he steps onstage with you.”

GLYN JOHNS (engineer on first Zeppelin album) I was asked to put together the English contingent for the Atlantic 40th Anniversary show in 1988. We get a truck behind the stage, and Zeppelin go on—and then a monitor amp blows up in the truck. I can't hear anything, and I'm screaming for someone to give me a pair of headphones, anything. Eddie Kramer, who's crept into the truck, sneaks off and tells Jimmy I'd fucked it up and run screaming from the truck.

JIMMY PAGE There were a lot of nerves involved in the Atlantic bash. Jonesy and I had rehearsed with Jason [Bonham], and it had gone particularly well. We'd agreed on what we wanted to play. Then at the eleventh hour … Robert decides he doesn't want to do “Stairway.” So there's this running confusion and harsh words between us, right up to literally the last minute, and that shook me quite a bit, I can tell you.

PETER GRANT [Live Aid was] fairly dreadful, really, in my view, because they were obviously underrehearsed. But it was nowhere near as bad as the Atlantic anniversary show. Actually, I was really upset that I didn't get an official invitation for that show. I may not have gone, but that's not the point. Phil Carson apparently felt that I wasn't healthy enough. I think Ahmet expected me to be there.

DANNY MARKUS (artist relations at Atlantic, subsequently comanager of Luther Vandross and others) When Luther played his ten-night stand at Wembley Arena in 1988, Peter came down to see me. He looked like a dying man. He didn't smell good.

ED BICKNELL (former manager of Dire Straits) Peter realized that if he didn't stop the drugs, he was going to kill himself. He locked himself in the bedroom for three or four days and flushed about three pounds of coke down the toilet. Ray Washburn apparently said, “If you'd told me, I'd have got you a refund.”

HELEN GRANT (daughter of Peter Grant) I remember I was with Dad one morning, and he woke up and just said, “I'm not gonna do this anymore. I'm gonna stop it now.” And he did stop it, quite sort of abruptly. He never went into rehab. Never went anywhere like that.

SIMON KIRKE (drummer with Bad Company) He got his act together and lost a ton of weight. “Si, I've lost an entire person,” he told me when I met up with him. He also told me, when he sold Horselunges, that “the fuckin' VAT men stitched me up.”

ED BICKNELL Peter got into some financial difficulties. I'm pretty sure he was paying off a debt to the Revenue even then, and he sold Horselunges and moved into a flat in Meads in Eastbourne. I don't know how much money he had left. He'd certainly burned through a lot on the drugs. But the early Zeppelin royalties were not as high as you'd think. In fact, one of the biggest myths regurgitated about Led Zeppelin is that they had this great record deal.

JACK CALMES (Showco) I talked to one of the Concerts West people, and they said that Peter got into serious habitual high-stakes gambling, and that that was what happened to his money.

ED BICKNELL He came to see the Notting Hillbillies in Eastbourne. The door at the side of the stage opened, and this large guy shuffled in and plonked himself down on a flight case. When we'd finished rehearsing backstage, I went over to say hello, and he thanked me for some kind things I'd said about him.

I told Paul Crockford, the promoter, that Peter was my manager, and Peter immediately picked up on it and said he'd come down to count “the dead wood”—the ticket stubs. Paul, in a sort of panic, said, “But this is a council venue, it's all computerized.” Peter didn't miss a beat and said, “Oh dear, I do hope we're not going to have a problem.”

He once walked into my office and said, “Can I watch what you do?” After about three hours, he said, “I can't believe what you're doing. It's so boring.” And I said, “You're absolutely right, Peter. It's become mind-numbingly boring.” He said, “I couldn't do it now,” and I said, “I can't imagine why you'd want to.”

What Peter liked to do was to get on the bus with his band and go off and have a good time. He wasn't an office-bound manager, and he wasn't very interested in the minutiae of deals. He liked seeing the crowd go wild; it was a sort of pride by association.

HELEN GRANT When Dad moved to Eastbourne, I still saw things about him that the business hadn't taken away. Part of his persona was almost like bordering on very traditional and old-fashioned, not the big Svengali covered in turquoise and black hair and all this heavy stuff. Dad could really lack confidence and be very insecure around people.

He was scary, but if you didn't stand up to him, he'd be scarier. But the real Dad, the Dad I knew, was a very sensitive, normal person that liked to do normal things. You know, he used to wear pretty straight clothes, he liked his nice polished lace-up shoes. He wasn't this sort of ogre.

He would get cross with me if I wasn't there to see him. I'd just met somebody, and he had been so used to having me around. I used to come home, and when I opened the fridge, there'd be a note saying, “Clear this fucking flat up! Or else!” Spelled wrong, usually.

ED BICKNELL I remember when the second Zeppelin box set was being put together, Peter rang me at home and mentioned a royalty rate and asked what I thought, because he continued to represent Bonham's estate for Pat. And I said, “Peter, that's the kind of rate a new band would get now if only one record company was interested in it.” And he went, “Well, that's what these cunts have agreed to.”

Then he asked, “What's this packaging deduction on compact discs?” I said, “Well, it's 25 percent, and it's across the board, and you won't get any of the companies to break it.” He said, “Well, it's outrageous.” And what he did then was call Ahmet and get a proper deal that didn't need writing down. Because Ahmet came from that era when you could shake hands on it.

The other thing I remember is that Peter didn't like Steve Weiss very much. I think some iffy dealings went on there.

HARVEY LISBERG (manager of Herman's Hermits and other acts) There were murders going on between Led Zeppelin and Steve's office. It got very nasty, I think. They really didn't like Steve by the end.

ED BICKNELL Peter once rang me at the office, and he was sobbing. I thought something awful must have happened, but he said, “This book's come out.” It was the Bill Graham book. I asked Peter to fax through the pages about Oakland, and after I'd read them, I called him back and asked if it was true. He said, “Yes. But I don't want to be thought as a bad person.” He was aware of the way he'd been, and I think he realized there were moments when he hadn't been very pleasant.

RICHARD COLE I saw Peter with Jerry Greenberg in L.A. in 1989, and he was about to sell Horselunges. In the early '90s, when I'd come over from America, he would always come up to London to see me, and we'd have coffee at the Dome on the King's Road. The last time I saw him was about 1992.

ROBERT PLANT I want to believe Hammer of the Gods [1986 Led Zeppelin biography by Stephen Davis], because it's done us huge favors, in terms of aura.

RICHARD COLE I was excommunicated way before Hammer of the Gods came out. I got out of the nick [jail] after six months in 1981. When I got out, I called Bonzo's house, but I could only reach his daughter Zoe. Planty didn't answer my calls. I can't remember if I called Pagey or Jonesy. Peter answered my calls. He didn't give a fuck about Hammer of the Gods, either, probably because they'd already shat on him and fucked off with Phil Carson. I mean, wouldn't you feel hurt?

DAVID BATES (A&R man for Robert Plant and for Page and Plant in the '90s) When Richard put out his own book [Stairway to Heaven], I can fucking tell you how angry they were. He was persona non grata, and anyone who talked in it was persona non grata.

JIMMY PAGE It's totally inaccurate, and he's the sort of person who ought to know better, considering he's been in AA, and the whole thing about AA is that you keep things discreet. He went into AA as a chronic alcoholic and came out a chronic liar.

RICHARD COLE He's a funny old sod, Percy. I saw him in 1991 in Wolverhampton, and he was quite happily talking about the old days. I saw him at the beginning of 1993, and he said to my daughter, “Is Richard a good dad?” And she said yes. And he said, “Well, he was my dad for many years.”

DAVE LEWIS Mick Hinton was very sore. At the end of it, he didn't come out of it very well. As I understand it, they gave a certain amount of money to all the roadies, and Mick had enough to set himself up with a little post office and blew it. I was doing an author tour for my Zeppelin book A Celebration, and I turned up at BBC Radio Nottingham, and I looked up and I thought, “That's Mick Hinton.”

He said, “I've seen on the radio that you're talking about Zeppelin, and I wanna have my say.” So we did a joint interview, and he was a good talker and knew the stories and he told good versions of them. He lived in this dreadful flat with a minder. He said, “Do you want a drink?” I said, “Yeah,” and the Tennant's Extra came out. He had a crate of it. I started drinking, and Mick was great on the tape. He showed me his memorabilia, and he had lots of signed stuff, lots of tour materials. He said to me, “I could sell these, couldn't I?” I said, “You probably could.”

He rang me up a couple of Saturdays before the Convention we had in 1992 and said, “I want to make a lot of money out of this.” I said, “Look, I'm not an agent, I'm just organizing the Convention.” I put him on to a couple of memorabilia guys, and he brought all his stuff along. We booked him in the hotel very foolishly and said we'd pay his expenses. He turned up on the Friday for the launch and was pissed when he got there. He proceeded to be sick in front of everyone when Debbie Bonham was on. It was all going pear-shaped.

The next morning, Mick turned up at about seven o'clock. He said, “I want a word with you. I need £500 now. I haven't come here to fuck about.” He lost it a bit, and I lost it as well.

Eventually, he was sweet on the day and did a good job. Debbie got wind that he'd been nasty and made him apologize to me. In the end, it all calmed down. We then got a bill from the hotel for his bar bill, which was £200.

I know for a fact that Mick rang up Peter Grant and told him not to come. He said, “You don't want to be a part of this.” Which was a fucker, because Peter was going to come.

• • •

ROBERT PLANT If anybody was to say to me, “Well, some of your career has been a bit patchy, and you've been a bit schizoid with the way it's danced around,” I would say absolutely and merrily so.

There was stuff I could do that was so far away from the rock 'n' roll star persona or my contributing factors in Led Zep. It seemed just as likely to me to be working with a guy from some punk band in New York one week and then doing something more tasty for an Arthur Alexander tribute a year later.

PHIL JOHNSTONE (keyboard player and Plant collaborator, 1988–1993) He wanted to find some people to write some songs with … and he found what he was after. As a joke, one time when we were working on [“Tall Cool One”], we flew in some Led Zeppelin samples, thinking, “He'll laugh, but there's no way we'll get away with this.” But no, he embraced it.

There were two pressures brought to bear, one by his songwriting partner—that is, me—and one by his manager, and it was, you know, “If we're gonna go for this—if you want to have solo success on a par with your previous success, and you want to play stadiums—then you're going to need to do Led Zeppelin.”

ROBERT PLANT With Now and Zen we were looking for a hit, and that's what we got. We got three hits in America. That was the first time in about five or six years. It was a compromise at the time. When I look at it, with its techno splendor, more organically oriented singers might have said, “I'll never do that.” But at the time I was thrilled with it, and it allowed me to work more with Toni Halliday. I loved her voice against mine.

AHMET ERTEGUN (head of Atlantic, speaking in 1988) Robert's album is a big hit, but you know what—there's still something missing from the music. I think he should do more stuff like that John Lee Hooker song he played—that was great. It began to sound like the old Zeppelin. You know what he's got to do? A little less adventuresome, less intellectual. Most intellectual rock is like bullshit, you know? Because you know something, you have a few intellectual verses, and then you come to the middle part: “Rock me, mama, with the long green dress …'' That's what gets it, right? The old blues thing.

DAVID BATES I had an assistant named Lara, who would go home at weekends telling tales of madness and debauchery in the record business. Unbeknownst to me, her parents were best friends with Robert Plant, who was amused and intrigued by these stories. He was having a bit of a bad time with Atlantic U.K. His deal was coming up for renewal, and he wasn't sure what he wanted to do. And one day he just turned up in reception.

I said, “You'd better show him up.” The double doors burst open, and in strolls the Viking with a great big grin on his face. All he wanted to talk about was records. All of a sudden, he started singing—blues songs, Moby Grape songs. I told him about the New Yardbirds gig I'd seen at Sheffield University. I said, “And now you're sitting here in my office, singing to me for free!” And then from that, he just suddenly sort of said, “I think I need a new home.” He came to Fontana and signed with me, and that was that.

I asked him for some demos, and he looked at me sideways—like, “No one's ever asked me for demos before!” He brought some cassettes up, various recordings of him singing in the shower and singing in the car. It was Phil Johnstone on keyboards and Charlie Jones on bass, and they all seemed to be writing with Robert. That seemed to be very sacred.

ROBERT PLANT [Charlie] is so adaptable, really into the Doors and that type of stuff, which means he can lay down an amazing groove, similar to “The End” or “Riders on the Storm.” We can be led into beautiful crescendos, subtle waves of explosion.

DAVID BATES I wasn't sure about all the songs, to be honest—especially after the previous two albums he'd done, where he'd strayed into computerized techno-rock stuff. Looking at my iPod, I see I only have three tracks from Manic Nirvana. After the first two albums, everything just seemed to noodle along, and nobody ever challenged Robert on what he was doing.

PHIL JOHNSTONE Now, listening back to [Now and Zen] in the light of listening to the Felice Brothers or other bands like that—or even Raising Sand—it's horrible to listen to. It's 1988. It really is 1988. Robert definitely wanted more guitar on Manic Nirvana—less pop, more rock. And I think Manic Nirvana adequately reflects that change.

ROBERT PLANT On Manic Nirvana, the personalities were so strong, Phil and Charlie especially. Everybody was up for writing the next Sgt. Pepper, so there was an energy level that was really good, and there was a faultless work ethic. Everybody was really going for it.

DAVID BATES It struck me that people had got very comfortable around Robert, doing what they were doing without any great benefit to him. And I just wanted him to think about it: “What do you really want to do?” It was a slow process. Fate of Nations got pretty mixed reviews, but I think a lot of Robert's fans now think it's one of the best albums he's done.

In “I Believe,” he addressed his feelings about the death of his son. I realized that this guy had been through a lot of pain. As a character, he's got a big heart and a big soul and a lot of feelings, and he fights hard to be a normal guy … to the point sometimes where he overfights, I think. Behind the onstage Viking persona, there is a guy who is really fragile. I think that what happened around his son's death was never really dealt with at the time.

It was amazing that he wrote a song about his son, and that he wrote about other people in his life, including girlfriends. The girlfriend up until recently had been Alannah Myles, and that was now over; “29 Palms” was written about her. He wrote things about John Bonham [“Memory Song”] and other very personal subjects. He'd had an experience meeting the leader of one of the American Indian tribes and had a long conversation with him. It had had quite an effect on him, and he wrote about that.

The band evolved and changed at that point. And that period was amazingly creative for him. He was going off and doing things in Texas with Rainer Ptacek. We went to Paris and met with Martin Meissonnier and other people.

MARTIN MEISSONNIER (French world-music producer) When Robert came to my studio, he came with the Complete Recordings box set of Zeppelin, but also with some of the Alan Lomax stuff that had been released. And he said that those prisoners' chants that Lomax recorded had really helped him find his voice at the start of his career. I think I already knew that Led Zeppelin were more interesting than a lot of other bands for those kinds of reasons. Basically, they never were about straight rock 'n' roll. When you listen to “Four Sticks,” for instance, you have all this influence from the East. It's always something more than rock 'n' roll.

ROBERT PLANT Maybe Fate of Nations was the time when I really did start putting my shoulders back and moving into another gear. By that time, I was working with all sorts of different people: Moya [Brennan] from Clannad, Nigel Eaton was playing the hurdy-gurdy; Nigel Kennedy was playing violin with me. I had string sections with sarod from south India playing on records. I was growing up…. I was really coming around.

PHIL JOHNSTONE Robert was in a hurry, but I definitely felt that Manic Nirvana had been rushed, and this time he wanted it to be organic. The machines and the synthesizer noises and the bells and all that stuff should go and be replaced with proper organic music. Well, that was sort of fine, but, of course, I was still pulling toward the pop-song side of things, whereas he was much more, “Let's get the Indian orchestra in,” and we did. Chris Hughes and I, we're poofy white soul pop boys, influenced primarily by the Beatles and the Beach Boys, so we couldn't realize it. We tried our best, and then he tried lots of other people … and when Robert was satisfied, it came out.

DAVID BATES When Fate of Nations was finished, Robert and I had to fly on the Concorde to New York, because his deal was open for North America, and Polygram wanted a shot at getting him. And, of course, Atlantic wanted him to stay. So we went for lunch with all the Polygram people, and then we went to tea with Ahmet.

It was very interesting to see how Robert dealt with Ahmet. He clearly loved the man, and his respect for Ahmet was very evident. And the way Ahmet dealt with Robert, it was like a father-and-son thing. Robert loved his dad to bits, but this was like having another dad. Polygram had put up a case, but when we went across the road to see Ahmet, Robert knew he wasn't leaving. The second he walked into Dad's study, he wasn't leaving home. God knows what Ahmet thought of the album.

• • •

PHIL CARLO On the Outrider tour, with John Miles and Jason Bonham, Jimmy had a different manager by this time, Brian Goode.

GUY PRATT (bassist with Coverdale/Page) Brian was the only man who ever called me to discuss business on a Sunday night because it's the cheapest time to make phone calls. I think he and Jimmy fell out because of something to do with him unveiling his master plan that he'd been working on for years, whereby he would get “Stairway to Heaven” to be the anthem for Club Med. It was like, “Here we are, Jimmy, it's all been leading up to this.” Jimmy just said, “You're fired.”

PHIL CARLO On the first gig, Jim and I got to the hall, and Jason had his dad's symbol on the bass drum. I'd already seen it, so I said to Jim, “You'd better come out the front and have a look at this.” We walked out the front, and he took one look and said, “Get fucking Cartoon”—meaning Carson—“to me here now!” So I went in and got Carson, and Jim absolutely tore him to bits. He said, “Anything for another fucking dollar, isn't it? He's not his dad. Get that fucking symbol off.”

JIMMY PAGE When I was writing material for Led Zeppelin, I knew exactly what the approach was going to be, and I was writing songs with Robert's voice in my head. I guess that's where Outrider might have been a little shaky.

JOHN KALODNER (A&R man who signed Coverdale/Page to Geffen Records, speaking in 1991) Jimmy had really wanted to get Zeppelin back together, but when that fell through, he realized that he had a real urge to tour America and play that material for the kids here. [He and David Coverdale] met in New York at the end of March and hit it off so well, they went right to Reno and started writing.

BRAD TOLINKSI (editor, Guitar World) When Jimmy decides to do something, he believes it's the best thing. He doesn't necessarily speak about it in glowing terms, but he always talks about the actual project, the actual work, in positive terms. He seemed to really enjoy David Coverdale, who is a hilarious and charming guy. But I would say that Jimmy didn't have great personal energy at that time. I don't think he was doing drugs; it may have been alcohol.

I went back recently and listened to all the solo stuff and felt that Coverdale/Page was the culmination of a lot of things he'd been experimenting with. It's a very intricate record from a guitar perspective. In places, the album had eight or nine guitars on one track. At that point, he seemed super-positive and thought he had done good work.

JOHN KALODNER (speaking in 1991) First off, David Coverdale is an improvement on Robert Plant. Once you hear David do a Led Zeppelin song, there won't be any debate about it. This is totally something Jimmy and David wanted to do for the music. This isn't a corporate decision, like an Eagles reunion tour. Jimmy Page couldn't spend all the money he has. It's hard to speak for Jimmy, but I think he wants to show he still has something to say. I think he wants to enjoy being Jimmy Page again.

GUY PRATT Lionel Ward, Jimmy's guitar tech, called to say he had a gig for me. My manager nicknamed him Secret Squirrel because he wouldn't tell us who it was. He just rang up and said, “Do you want to do this tour?” I said, “Maybe. If it's Chris de Burgh, probably not.” He said, “No, you'll like it.” It was all top-secret and hush-hush until the day before my audition.

The vibe was very good, very funny. It was a world that was completely alien to me. I was a post-'80s London musician, and that world doesn't really register with you. It was like Spinal Tap, so I was very much a voyeur. I'd never played that full-on rock stuff, and it was actually really challenging. Obviously, Jimmy was a huge hero of mine and nowhere near as intimidating as I thought he'd be. He was quite overweight. He was drinking, but he wasn't doing anything I wasn't.

Coverdale would have a pop at Planty any chance he could. He was so unashamedly who he is. He said to me, “Guy, you either catch some dreadful disease, or they slap a lawsuit on you. Dark days indeed for a cocksman … ” He and Jimmy got on pretty well. Whenever we had to learn Whitesnake songs, Jimmy was absolutely fantastic at picking them up. Of course, I'd forgotten that he was the ultimate old session dog. It was completely in his blood.

DAVID BATES Jimmy tried with the Firm, with Coverdale, with Outrider—the worst album ever—and nothing worked. He clearly knew he had to get a singer in, and it had to be someone with a blues-rock voice. But where do you go after Robert?

JIMMY PAGE David was really good to work with. It was very short-lived, but I enjoyed working with him, believe it or not. I was going to play in Japan with David—the only time we played live—and I had a call from Robert's management to pop in and see him in Boston on the way to L.A. to rehearse.

GUY PRATT On the way back from Japan, Jimmy got me up in first class because he didn't want to be there on his own, and he had all these Japanese bootlegs. He said, “Right, four hours. Then let's go to sleep.” So I had four hours of anorak heaven, with him telling me everything, about all the gigs and about the night Bonzo died. After four hours, he said, “Right, let's go to sleep.” I said, “How do I do that?” He said, “Take this.” I was actually wheel-chaired off the plane when we got to Heathrow. The New Orleans wife, Patricia, was at the airport when we arrived back in England. I have a feeling that was pretty much the end of the marriage.

PHIL CARLO Patricia never got up in daylight. She thought England was going to be like being on tour: you'd be in the Plaza or the Beverly Hilton, you'd have strawberry daiquiris from the minute you opened your eyes, and you'd go to a concert every night and drive round in a limo. When she had to go down to the garden center, and it was freezing cold and there were no strawberry daiquiris, she didn't like it so much.