Led Zeppelin’s summer 1969 tour of America ended on the last day in August with a performance at the Texas International Festival in Dallas. Peter Grant had negotiated a fee of nearly $14,000 for the hour-long set, which was more than we had earned for any single show to date. Still, we were counting on the second album, finally scheduled for release in late October, to drive our asking price much higher.
We returned to London and scattered for a long-awaited but short-lived vacation. Six weeks after the curtain fell on the U.S. tour, the band reluctantly reassembled in Paris to begin the promotion of Led Zeppelin II. The relationship between the band and the press, of course, already had a nightmarish history, and anything that smacked of courting the press was almost more than the band could handle.
“I guess it’s part of the game,” Robert said. Nevertheless, he despised this aspect of the business—to have to sit there politely and chat or answer questions with people whose knowledge of music was often pretty pathetic.
Eddie Barclay, whose Barclay Records distributed Led Zeppelin’s albums in France, had talked Peter into flying the band across the English Channel to perform a one-hour set at a private party, celebrating the imminent release of Led Zeppelin II. “Let the band do their talking with their music,” Eddie said. “They’ll play a few songs, and the promotion people and the media will love it.”
That all sounded great. But even the best-laid plans can go awry.
We had checked into the Westminster, an expensive, 100-room hotel with marble fireplaces and parquet floors located on the Rue de la Paix. As we were settling into our rooms, the phone rang. It was Clive Coulson.
“Richard, we’re down here setting up the equipment for tonight’s show. I don’t think the band is going to want to hear this, but the stage is a boxing ring. They’ve never performed in one of these before, have they? Do you think they’ll want to perform in a boxing ring?”
I knew the answer without even asking the band.
“This is absurd,” I said. “Take all the equipment out, Clive. The band isn’t going to play tonight. If they want someone to perform in a boxing ring, let them sign Muhammad Ali to a recording contract!”
Although there was no live music that night, we did show up for the party. “Act as cordial as you can,” Peter advised the band before we left the hotel. “I know it’s terrible to have to endure these things. I’m going to be having just as bad a time as you are. Let’s just bite our lips and make the best of it.”
We survived the party, pretending that we were having a good time mingling with the press. We also discovered just how influential Eddie Barclay was with the French media. Even though the band never performed that night, our “show” was nevertheless reviewed in the papers the next day. “Zeppelin was called back for repeated encores,” one critic wrote. “Even blasé record company executives couldn’t get enough of them. No matter what the band played—from ‘Good Times Bad Times’ to ‘Ramble On’—the party crowd screamed for more.”
“Oh, brother,” John Paul muttered when we read the reviews in the Paris newspapers. Because of Zeppelin’s shaky relationship with the media, he joked that these French reviews were the nicest articles ever written about us. At that point, they probably were.
“Maybe that’s the key to winning the press to our side,” Jimmy wisecracked. “Let’s just stop showing up for the concerts! Our phantom performances sound a lot better to the critics!”
After the Paris party had ended, we went our separate ways late that night, heading for the clubs, taking with us some of the cute birds who worked for Barclay. “Just stay out of trouble,” Peter cautioned, knowing that his halfhearted advice wasn’t going to be taken seriously, but feeling some obligation to offer it. “I want to get out of Paris sometime tomorrow without too many scars.”
The next morning, I woke up at about eleven o’clock and called Bonham’s room to ask if he wanted me to order him some breakfast. He didn’t answer the phone, nor did I hear any rustling when I knocked on his door.
“That bastard is the soundest sleeper I know,” I mumbled to myself. “I’ve got to wake him up somehow.”
I climbed out the window of my own third-story room, figuring I could inch my way along the ledge to Bonham’s room and enter through his window. But as I began the sixty-foot journey from my room to his, I looked down at the street for the first time. Suddenly, I realized that an unexpected slip or a sneeze that threw me off balance could pose some serious risk to my life expectancy. Instantly, the trip became a much more cautious, more deliberate one. Step by step.
“Just take it slow, Richard,” I told myself. “There’s no hurry. I’ve got all day.”
At about the halfway point, I heard shouts from the street level. “Oh, shut the fuck up down there,” I thought. The last things I needed at that moment were distractions.
The chatter from the street was all in French, and I lost most of it in the translation. I hesitated to look down at all, focusing instead on getting to my destination without injury. When I finally did glance down, there was a small but growing crowd of people who were watching my every move. In the midst of my cheering section were two very vocal gendarmes.
Finally, their French started to make sense. “Get down from there as quickly as possible,” they were yelling. “If you’re headed for Cartier, the store has been secured. Come down, we’d like to question you.”
Cartier! What the hell were they talking about?
Then I realized that Cartier was next door to the Westminster. Apparently, the gendarmes were convinced that I was a Parisian cat burglar on my way to steal a few thousand francs’ worth of jewelry.
I suddenly became very nervous—something that’s not usually recommended on a ledge three stories above street level. “If they shoot and ask questions later,” I thought, “I’m in trouble.” I shifted directions and crept back to my room. Along the way, I smiled at them and occasionally waved politely, hoping to forestall any warning shots.
A few minutes later, when I climbed back into my room, I heaved a sigh of relief. The gendarmes were there waiting for me, and I tried to explain that I had only been trying to awaken a friend. They, however, were skeptical. They gave me one of those looks that said, “Is that the best story you can come up with?” But when they searched me and discovered that my pockets weren’t packed with gems and stones, there was nothing they could arrest me for. After half an hour of questioning, they let me go.
Ironically, I apparently risked my life in vain. Bonham wasn’t even in his hotel room at the time. About three hours later, a cab dropped him off in front of the Westminster.
Back in Jimmy’s room, John tried to make some sense of his own night. “I just don’t understand it,” he said, with a perplexed expression on his face. “I guess I had too much to drink last night and somehow ended up on a farm about twenty kilometers outside of Paris. I have no idea how I got there or who I was with. When I woke up this morning, I was all by myself, sleeping on a sofa in this farmhouse, with these cows mooing off in the distance. I used the phone to call a cab and get the hell out of there.”
Just another boozy adventure!
Once we were back in England, Peter Grant couldn’t get America off his mind. There were no more savvy managers in the rock music business than Peter. He could taste an opportunity from thousands of miles away. He could evaluate its pros and cons and reach an instant conclusion about its viability that was nearly always right on target. And whenever the band was home, he was salivating to get them back to the States.
“It’s purely a dollars and cents game,” he said one afternoon in the fall of 1969. “This band can make a lot of money and get a lot of attention by spending as much time as possible in America. At this point, I don’t think we have to worry about overkill. And with the new album coming out, now is the perfect time for another tour.”
Peter spent the rest of the day calling each of the band members, explaining his rationale for getting Zeppelin back on the road. He didn’t have to arm-twist too aggressively, particularly when he explained what was already tentatively on the agenda. “The band’s been offered a two-night gig at Carnegie Hall,” he told Jimmy. “It’s just too tempting and too prestigious to turn down. The Stones played Carnegie Hall in the midsixties; no rock band has played there since. I think this is something we should do.”
As good as it sounded, there were mixed feelings among the band. “Not America again!” Bonzo thought. “We’re all tired. Give us some time off!” They all wanted to spend more time with their girlfriends or their wives. At one point, a frustrated Robert echoed a complaint that had been heard before: “We’re making all this money now; isn’t money supposed to buy you some relaxation time?”
But after all, this was Carnegie Hall. The more Peter talked to them about it, the more irresistible it sounded. “Let’s go for it!” Jimmy finally said. With that, Peter and I spent a week on the phone, patching together a three-week, seventeen-city tour. It would take us from the East Coast through the Midwest and out to the Western states, as well as give us a few engagements in Canada.
With the new album set for release in the States in the midst of the tour, the band concentrated on the music from Led Zeppelin II in its set: “Whole Lotta Love”…“Bring It On Home”…“What Is and What Should Never Be.” “Thank You” was built around a keyboard solo by John Paul. “Moby Dick” became a part of their act, featuring a drum solo by Bonzo that, over the years, eventually extended to twenty minutes, then thirty minutes, and sometimes even longer. When the band performed songs from the first album, there was often a new twist to them, like variations on “Dazed and Confused,” with Jimmy taking the song in imaginative directions—eventually even inserting small pieces of other songs by Joni Mitchell or the Eagles and letting the band follow his lead. “Let’s keep it loose,” Jimmy used to tell the band. “Nothing needs to be very structured.”
Everyone in the group had the latitude to grab onto a song and shape and sweeten it into what he wanted it to be on any given night. They had developed confidence in each other’s musical instincts. As a result, they often hit paydirt.
About midway through that fall tour, Zeppelin performed at Boston Garden to a throng of fans—nearly 20,000 paying customers. The Garden was sweltering that night, and the air-conditioning system had melted down within the first half hour. But it didn’t matter. The fans were maniacal from the first song to the last.
“This is the performance that puts Zeppelin over the top for me,” Peter said backstage. “This band could be just as big as the Beatles or the Stones. Or even bigger.”
Peter’s judgment, of course, was usually worth paying attention to. I decided to brace myself for Led Zeppelin’s ascent into the rock heavens.
That night after the Boston concert, fans stopped Peter in our hotel and talked to him about a Zeppelin “force” still echoing through their heads. “At this point in their careers,” Peter told me, “even if I wanted to hold them back and take things a little slower, it couldn’t be done. They’re unstoppable.”
When Led Zeppelin II was released, it hardly had the record stores all to itself. Other new albums were released at the same time—Let It Bleed by the Stones, Abbey Road by the Beatles, The Best of Cream, and Crosby, Stills and Nash. But Zeppelin’s true believers couldn’t be bothered with them. Once Led Zeppelin II had landed in the record racks, fans lined up around the block in some cities for a first-day purchase. Sales began during the third week of October, and they were so monstrous that by November tenth—two days after the end of the band’s fall American tour—the Recording Industry of America had awarded us a gold album. As a Denver disc jockey proclaimed, “Hundreds of thousands of stereo needles are being sacrificed tonight playing, replaying, and then replaying again Led Zeppelin II.”
During that fourth U.S. tour, the titanic sales of the new album put the band in festive spirits. It helped ease the fatigue that seemed to come and go with little predictability. It helped boost egos that sagged when an uncomplimentary review would strike a nerve. It also gave us one more excuse to throw a party.
In San Francisco, we rented a suite at the Villa Roma, an elegant hotel built around a courtyard, to stage a celebration of the album’s success for about twenty-five guests, mostly locals. A couple of absolutely gorgeous girls showed up—tall, long hair, breathy voices, seductive body English, and virtually every other feminine quality that could snap our libidos to attention. The band members almost trampled each other in the rush to introduce themselves to these ladies.
One of the girls had brought three gray doves with her in a cage, although she kept taking them out and letting them soar around the room. One of the doves in particular was like a kamikaze pilot, banging into walls as though it were on a suicide mission. Somehow, the stunned bird would regain its strength and equilibrium and begin flying again. With the doves as entertainment, we consumed alcohol as quickly as room service could supply it. The festivities were finally called to a halt at about 3 A.M. By that time, I was so drunk that I had very little recollection of much of anything, including who ended up with the girls.
We spent the night in our own rooms at the Villa Roma, and the following morning I walked with Jimmy and John Paul through the hotel courtyard on our way to breakfast. Our attention on that stroll, however, was drawn to the sound of running water—a waterfall, really—plunging off the balcony of a second-floor room, splattering on the cement below.
“My God,” John Paul suddenly exclaimed. “That’s the room where we had the party last night.”
I could immediately see a bill for damages flashing through my brain. In unison, we turned and sprinted up the stairs. I fumbled through my pants pocket, desperately groping for the key to the room. When I finally located it, I jammed it into the lock, shoved the door open, and stormed inside. Within the first couple of steps, we were up to our ankles in water.
“Oh, shit!” I exclaimed. “It’s a fucking swimming pool in here.”
I splashed into the bathroom, looking for the source of the San Francisco flood. The culprit was the bathtub, overflowing with a tidal wave of water that had probably been spewing out for seven or eight hours by then. I turned the faucet off, quickly surveyed the scene, and shook my head in disbelief. “Who in the fuck left the damn water on?”
Jimmy peered into the bathtub and saw the source of the problem. “Look at this,” he sighed. “One of those fucking doves got sucked into the drain. That’s what clogged it up.”
I reached in and picked up the remains of the little bird. He had flown his last suicide mission. The water in the tub began to drain.
“This carpeting is a total loss,” Jimmy said, sloshing through the water damage in the room. “Do you think the hotel has dove insurance?”
“This one could be costly,” John Paul chimed in. “We may have to sign over the royalties from the new album to pay for this.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I told them. And, in fact, I felt confident that we had absolutely no reason for concern. After all, when we checked into the Villa Roma, I registered the band under someone else’s name. My reasoning: To avoid being bothered by fans and also to minimize the paper trail if we accumulated additional charges.
A couple of days later, I told the story to Bonham, who burst into hysterics over what I had done. “That’s spectacular,” he said. “I can’t believe you can get away with something like that.” Then he asked, “Whose name was that room registered under?”
“Frank Barsalona,” I said. Frank was the agent with Premier Talent who handled the band’s U.S. bookings. “He should be getting the bill any day. I hope he has a sense of humor.”
“If he doesn’t,” said Bonzo, “maybe he’s good at laying new carpeting.”
As the new album sales became astronomical, and with the increasing popularity of Zeppelin seeming all but inevitable, the band members would occasionally chat with Peter during their idle hours about how to protect their individual nest eggs. They were also receiving advice from the home office in London, where our accountants were offering recommendations designed to turn them into instant tax experts.
During a short break in the tour, everyone in the band made a quick exit off the U.S. mainland on the advice of our tax attorneys, who had added up the numbers on the band’s likely earnings for 1969 and arrived at a figure of about $1 million. Because the band had worked in the States for a cumulative total of nearly six months, we were on the brink of having to pay both U.S. and British taxes—not an appealing thought for a band earning a seven-figure income.
Jonesy, Bonzo, and Peter decided to fly directly to London to be with their families during the break. The rest of us convened in San Juan, Puerto Rico. For tax purposes, Puerto Rico was not considered part of the States, yet it was still within striking distance of the mainland.
Jimmy, Robert, and I stayed at the Caribe Hilton Hotel in San Juan. We squeezed in as much midday sunbathing, early-evening piña coladas, and late-night revelry as possible.
One evening, I convinced Robert and Jimmy to accompany me into Old San Juan, a seven-square-block area that was the original city, with buildings dating back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A bellhop at our hotel had warned us, “Señors, Old San Juan is fine during the day. But don’t go there at night. It’s too dangerous for the tourists. Too much crime.”
I dragged Robert and Jimmy there anyway, although you could see the anxiety etched into their furrowed brows and tight lips. I began looking for a bar where we could find some good Mexican beer and maybe relieve some of their tension. We walked into the first club we approached on Calle San Sebastián—but it wasn’t what I had expected. In fact, I had the feeling that we had entered the Twilight Zone. The bar was so dark that I could barely see my companions, much less anyone else who might be in the place. As we edged our way across the bar, I could feel dozens of eyes staring at us. Then, a few seconds later, someone turned all the lights on in the club.
Clearly, we looked different from the rest of the patrons. They looked as if they had just disembarked from a pirate ship after a hard day of plundering and torture. We wore flowery shirts and earrings and had long hair—a bit too much on the effeminate side for this crowd.
“We’re getting out of here,” Robert announced, turning toward the door.
“Naw, Percy,” I said, grabbing his arm. “Let’s order some drinks.”
“You’re mad, Cole,” Jimmy said. “I don’t think they want to be our friends.” He was starting to tremble.
“We’re okay,” I said, letting my desire for alcohol smother any fear I was feeling. “They won’t touch us.” I wasn’t at all convinced of the truth of that statement.
The club itself was as sleazy as any I had ever seen—no wonder I wanted to stay. We sat at a table with one leg missing and ordered three beers. A few minutes later, just as Jimmy excused himself to go to the bathroom, a gorgeous brunette wearing about seven pounds of makeup—obviously a hooker—walked over to our table, sat down in Pagey’s chair between Plant and me, and tried to get friendly.
Before the conversation had even gotten beyond “Cómo estás?,” she reached down and put her hand on my crotch.
“Oooh,” she sighed. “Grande!”
I smiled and looked over at Plant. I was really beginning to like this place.
Then she placed her other hand on Robert’s crotch. “Ooooh,” she moaned. “Mucho grande!”
For the first time that evening, Robert laughed.
“This is a very perceptive young lady,” he said “Very perceptive.”
When Pagey returned, he refused to submit to her below-the-waist evaluation. “Let’s get out of here before we get killed!” he said.
Robert and I had already had our egos stroked for the night, and so we agreed to a quick exit.
At the end of the American tour, when we finally flew home to London, we talked about what an amazing year 1969 had been. The band had come out of nowhere and was on the brink of superstardom. We had toured at a merciless pace—160 performances since that very first one in Copenhagen fourteen months earlier. The group was making so much money that we had to do things like evaluate our tax status in the middle of a tour. At times, it was exhausting just to think about how far we had come.