In April 1975, shortly after the American tour ended, Marilyn and I agreed to work at patching up our marriage. I was still more involved in heroin than she would have liked, but she tried to be understanding. We decided to take a vacation in the Canary Islands, where we could concentrate just on one another for a while.
Nevertheless, I routinely checked in with Led Zeppelin’s office. And having me away for two weeks was more than Peter could bear, particularly since he already was plotting the group’s next move.
“Here’s what I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I want the band to play at Earls Court. I want to go in there for at least three nights, maybe more. How soon can you get back to start arranging those shows?”
“Well, I’m on a holiday,” I told him. I didn’t want to come back at all.
“Richard, listen to me,” he said. “Earls Court is one of the biggest venues in England. It’s real important to me. Real important.”
So Marilyn and I caught a plane to London the next morning. In the days we had spent in the Canary Islands, we seemed to have done some repair work on our relationship. “Let’s see how we do back in the real world,” I told her on the flight home.
By the following day, I was back in Peter’s office, working out details for the Earls Court performances, which were scheduled to begin May 17. Earls Court had a seating capacity of 17,000, and Peter felt we shouldn’t cut corners. “I want to stage the entire American production—laser beams, special lighting, and PA equipment, plus adding an oversized video screen,” he said. “And I want to keep the ticket prices down.”
Of course, we could have charged just about anything and still been assured of sellouts. But even though Peter was very good at making money for the band, he also was sensitive to their image. These would be the first Zeppelin concerts in Britain in more than two years, and after a lot of thought he concluded that the public relations benefits of inexpensive seating would outweigh the financial gains of a much higher price. At his insistence, the ticket prices were kept low—one to two and a half pounds a seat.
On April 19, 51,000 tickets went on sale for three dates. In five hours, they were completely sold out. Two more concerts were added, and those 34,000 tickets were gobbled up instantly, too. Many of the ticket buyers had been Zeppelin fanatics since those earliest days in late 1968. Others had only come aboard with the Physical Graffiti album. But their shared enthusiasm transformed the lines at the ticket windows into outdoor festivals in their own right, a celebration of rock music’s biggest band.
I chartered a 747 private cargo plane to fly the high-tech equipment from the American tour to London, and we brought in Showco’s experienced crew to oversee the entire production. A 20' × 30' video screen was positioned high above the stage. The 70,000-watt speaker system was carefully erected in place. Meanwhile, trains were chartered to bring fans from throughout the country for the five concerts.
The band rehearsed for three days, but after the American tour they knew exactly what they wanted to do. From the first bars of “Rock and Roll,” Zeppelin exploded with some of their most energetic, memorable shows. Robert, wearing denim jeans and with his blond curls longer than most British fans remembered them, told the crowds that the band was offering more than music. “This is a journey through some of our experiences—the positive ones and the negative ones—over the last six years.”
The band guided the audience through a three-hour Zeppelin retrospective, playing songs from every era, from the early days of Led Zeppelin to the gentler acoustic sounds of Led Zeppelin III to the most contemporary songs of Physical Graffiti. On the final night, after the last encore and the last notes of “Black Dog,” Robert shouted a thank-you to the packed house. “We’ve enjoyed playing for you so much. We’ll see you again, maybe in the nineteen eighties.”
In fact, the band would only play in the U.K. two more times—both at the Knebworth Festival in Hertfordshire. For many, perhaps most, of the 85,000 who saw them at Earls Court, that was their last live glimpse of Led Zeppelin.
A few weeks later, Peter told me his own reasons for the Earls Court concerts. In a sense, he saw them as “good-bye gifts” to the country. “We’re moving out,” he said. “The tax man is driving us out of England. These will be the last concerts here for quite a while.”
Essentially, Led Zeppelin was just making too much money. And for financial reasons, their accountants had recommended that they become tax exiles. Other rock stars like the Stones had preceded them in seeking refuge outside Great Britain. But even though it made financial sense, it wasn’t an easy decision for any member of Led Zeppelin to make. At first, all of them resisted. “This is home,” Bonzo told himself. “I’m not going anywhere.” Then the numbers were laid out on the table in front of them. It would have been foolish to turn over most of what they made to the government.
Robert had some second thoughts, too. It didn’t feel right to abandon his homeland purely because of money. But he and the others had worked like hell for the riches they had accumulated. They felt they might as well keep as much of it as possible.
All the members of Zeppelin maintained their homes in England, but were limited on the number of days they could spend in the country without being gouged by an atrocious tax bite. One by one, they started relocating themselves and their families to Switzerland or France.
Bonzo held out longer than the others. Pat Bonham was pregnant with their second child, and John wanted them to stay together in England, at least until the baby was born. “Fuck the money,” he said at one point. “I’m gonna spend time with my wife right here where she needs me.”
But once their daughter, Zoe, was born, Bonzo came to his senses. He still had time to start his tax exile that year, which he began in Europe.
Eventually, the entire band ended up in Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands near the west coast of Normandy. Jersey is a popular tourist spot, but according to Bonham, “The natives here don’t seem to do much but drink and wife-swap.” For a while, the band rented a big house, and we spent weeks killing time, largely by drinking Pimm’s, then Tropical Pimm’s, then King Pimm’s. It was the next best thing to wife-swapping.
While on Jersey, Bonham had even more time to indulge himself with his passion for cars, particularly luxury models. He had purchased dozens of automobiles over the years—twenty-eight of them in the first eighteen months of Zeppelin’s success. After that he stopped counting. He never kept any of them very long; he didn’t buy them as investments, but rather because he loved driving fast cars. Still, perhaps not surprisingly, his selection of vehicles sometimes leaned toward the bizarre. Once, he even purchased a Model T bread van, just because he felt in the mood to buy one.
During the time that Bonham owned the bread van, it was one of his most prized possessions. Once while the band was rehearsing at Shepperton Studios, he had parked it in front of the building. A priest from the church down the street paused as he walked by the van. “This is a very dangerous-looking automobile,” he told Bonzo and me, making a stab at some light humor. “I better bless this car and this boy.” Bonham smiled politely while the priest actually fetched some holy water and sprinkled it on the car—and on Bonzo. It was probably the closest Bonzo had been to a religious experience in years.
On Jersey, Bonzo’s favorite vehicle was a Rolls-Royce that he used to drive around the island. One afternoon, he had parked the Rolls outside one of his favorite pubs. Dressed in cutoff jeans and a T-shirt, he began washing the car with a sponge and a bucket of soapsuds and was making quite a mess of himself.
An elderly man in a coat and tie walked by and paused a moment to survey Bonzo’s efforts. He was clearly amused by what he saw. Finally, the bystander said with an arrogant smirk, “Well, well, well…this is the first time I’ve ever seen a man have to wash his own Rolls-Royce!”
The comment struck Bonzo the wrong way. He gritted his teeth and shouted, “Is that right!” He slammed shut an open door and began furiously kicking the Roll’s side panels…one kick after another, pounding and pounding again the sides of the car. He’d take a brief break to catch his breath, and then the bizarre outburst would continue, ultimately lasting for several minutes. By the time he was done, there were dozens of dents in the expensive automobile.
Both the elderly man and I stood there, startled by Bonzo’s behavior and wondering what he had planned next. But just as quickly as his anger had erupted, Bonzo suddenly calmed down. He turned to the startled onlooker. “I suspect that’s the first time you’ve ever seen a man smash his own fucking Rolls-Royce as well! Why don’t you fuck off and mind your own business!”
Bonzo strode into the pub and ordered a Pimm’s. The passing years had had no sobering effect on his eccentric behavior.