I’ve got some horrible news, Richard. There’s been a terrible accident. Just terrible.”
Charlotte Martin’s voice was trembling. She had called Zeppelin’s London office from the Greek island of Rhodes, and as I listened to the anxiety in her voice, I developed a queasy feeling in my own gut, expecting the worst as Charlotte continued to talk over the static-filled line. Charlotte had a tendency to exaggerate and panic over even the most minor problems. But this time she sounded as if she was in a daze.
“The Plants’ car went off the road,” Charlotte said. “Maureen was driving, and it just crashed into a tree. It was horrible. Everyone’s been hurt pretty bad.”
Maureen Plant had been driving a rented Austin Mini sedan, Charlotte said, and Robert was sitting beside her. Their children were in the backseat, along with Scarlet, the daughter of Charlotte and Jimmy Page. Charlotte was in a second car with Maureen’s sister and brother-in-law and was not involved in the accident.
Upon impact, Robert’s right ankle and right elbow shattered. So did many of the bones in his right leg. Robert’s four-year-old son, Karac, fractured his leg, and seven-year-old Carmen broke her wrist. Scarlet escaped with only a few bruises. Maureen, however, was critically injured. She had broken her pelvis, fractured a leg, suffered cuts on her face, and had a fractured skull. She also had lost large amounts of blood, and because she had a rare blood type, doctors had to rely on her sister, Shirley, for immediate transfusions. A doctor told me later that if Shirley had not been in Rhodes and readily available, Maureen might not have pulled through.
“Can you get here as soon as possible?” Charlotte pleaded. “And, Richard, if you can, bring some British doctors with you. I’m not sure these doctors here know what they’re doing. They’re having trouble locating more blood for Maureen. I’m going to find out what type of blood it is, and maybe you can bring some of it with you from England.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can get a flight,” I told her.
“Richard, I’m really scared,” she sobbed just before hanging up. “I don’t know whether everyone’s going to pull through.”
In July and August 1975, Robert and Jimmy had taken their families on a vacation to Rhodes by way of Switzerland and Morocco. Jimmy, however, had then left the others on the Greek island to fly to Italy, primarily to look at a farmhouse in Sicily once owned by Aleister Crowley that he was considering buying. From there, he caught a plane to London, where he was overseeing the editing of the “Dazed and Confused” portion of the long-overdue Zeppelin film, now titled The Song Remains the Same. Robert and the other globetrotters were scheduled to return to England later in the week, and the band was due to begin rehearsals for an American tour in the late summer.
After my conversation with Charlotte, I was up most of the night, making phone calls in hopes of tracking down one of the best doctors in London and talking him into flying with me to Rhodes. I ultimately convinced two physicians to make the trip. One of them was Dr. John Baretta, a British physician with an office on Harley Street who provided medical services to the Greek Embassy. He spoke fluent Greek, and I figured he’d be as important a resource for his language skills as for his medical expertise. The other was Dr. Mike Lawrence, one of London’s most prominent orthopedic surgeons; from the accounts I was getting of the Plant family’s injuries, I figured we could use someone who knew what he was doing in the operating room.
Dr. Baretta had another important asset. He was the personal physician of Sir Robert McAlpine, a successful civil engineer and contractor who owned several private jets, one of which could be turned into a flying ambulance, equipped with special supports for stretchers. I had already tried to charter a private jet for the trip, but Zeppelin’s own accountants vetoed the idea. “You fucking asshole,” I screamed at one of them. “This is the band’s money you’re playing with. Robert and his family are badly injured, and now you tell me you’re not going to release the money!”
“That’s right,” he said. “Peter Grant’s out of town, and you don’t have the authority to do it.”
Dr. Baretta quickly arranged for the three of us to fly to Rhodes in one of McAlpine’s jets, leaving late at night. We had stocked the plane’s refrigerator with eight pints of blood matching Maureen’s type. I was so anxious that I didn’t sleep at all on the flight. I didn’t even have any booze or drugs to keep me company.
We arrived at six in the morning and took a taxi directly to the hospital, which was really not much more than a little emergency clinic. “I’m not impressed,” I told Dr. Baretta as we walked through the front entrance, dodging a few cockroaches crawling on the floor. There were two unattended patients sitting in wheelchairs, looking as though they had given up on ever receiving any medical care.
After evaluating the patients and the hospital conditions, Dr. Baretta and Dr. Lawrence agreed that we should get our patients back to England as soon as possible. They tried reasoning with the Greek physicians—“You are doing a wonderful job, but the patients need to be closer to home,” Dr. Baretta told them. The hospital, however, refused to release their patients. “The police are investigating the accident to see if alcohol or drugs were involved,” the hospital administrator told us, showing about as much compassion as the Berlin Wall. “Your friends can’t leave the country until the police have decided whether they’re going to press charges against someone.”
We were virtual prisoners. “This fucking hospital staff is behaving like a lynch mob, not health professionals,” I complained to Charlotte. In exasperation, I finally began contemplating sneaking Robert and his family out of the hospital in the middle of the night and back to London.
“I think there’s only one way out of this,” I told Dr. Baretta, “and I don’t think you’ll like it.” He was opposed to my “kidnapping” plot, but by this time I had made up my mind. He had described to me how Robert’s leg would have to be reset and how Maureen would need surgery, and I wanted all of it done in England.
As quickly as possible, I hired a private ambulance and rented two station wagons and had them parked at a side entrance. At two in the morning, Charlotte and I wheeled Robert, Maureen, and their children—along with their IV bottles and other medical equipment—down the hospital corridors to the “getaway cars.” If anyone saw us leaving, no one said a word.
Later that day, our plane was in the sky, headed for London, with a stop in Rome for refueling. It was a relief just to be in the air.
During the flight, Robert and I had our first real chance to talk. He told me they had been driving to visit Phil May of the Pretty Things and his wife, Electra, who had rented a house on the island from Roger Waters of Pink Floyd. “After the car hit the tree,” Robert said, “I looked over at Maureen and thought she was dead.” He paused for a moment, fighting back tears. “Maureen was unconscious and bleeding, and the kids were screaming in the backseat. Charlotte had come up to the car, and she was hysterical.”
Robert said that they waited forever for an ambulance, but none ever arrived. “Finally,” he explained, “the driver of a fruit truck loaded us onto his open flatbed. He took us to the hospital, but we were bouncing around so much that my leg was dragging on the road for most of the trip.”
Word traveled fast around the island. Phil heard about an auto accident involving some Englishmen and assumed it was the Plants. He and Electra went to the hospital and, along with Maureen’s sister, helped care for Robert and his family. “In the Greek hospitals, they don’t even feed you,” Robert said. “If you don’t have a relative or a friend to bring you food, they’ll let you starve to death! It’s completely ridiculous!”
As our plane approached England, I called ahead and had ambulances waiting for us at Heathrow. Although Maureen was sedated, she was still in a lot of pain. The Plants were transported to Guy’s Hospital, where Maureen immediately underwent surgery.
There was a bizarre twist to our arrival, however. The plane actually delayed its landing in England, circling at 15,000 feet for thirty minutes, so we wouldn’t touch down until shortly after midnight—a new calendar day. Even amid the chaos surrounding the accident, Zeppelin’s accountants had the presence of mind to advise me that Robert would need to limit the number of days he spent in Britain because of his “tax exile” status. “If the tax man has any questions, he’s going to ask for documentation of the flight schedules,” one of the accountants said. “If you land at eleven-thirty at night, that’s going to count as a full day that Robert spent in the country. See what you can do to delay the landing here.”
I was furious that financial considerations were receiving such top priority. “Forget it,” I said. “We’re going to get these people to the hospital as soon as possible.” But as the jet approached London, Dr. Baretta convinced me that the patients were stable. “If you need to wait another half an hour, they’ll be fine,” he told me. So I gave permission for the plane to circle outside the three-mile limit until just past midnight. I knew it might save Robert many thousands of pounds in taxes, although I still thought it was more important to save a life.
As a result of the accident, Led Zeppelin was put on hold for months. The mini–U.S. tour covering eight cities in late August and September was canceled. So were European and Far Eastern tours later in the year. All our attention turned to the recovery of Robert and his family.
It was a difficult, tense time for everyone. Maureen spent weeks in the hospital. Robert and his children were released within a few days, but doctors had a sobering message for him. “You probably won’t walk again for six months, maybe more,” one said. “And there’s no guarantee that you’ll ever recover completely.”
In the back of everyone’s mind was the fact that Zeppelin’s future was in jeopardy. “This could be the end of Led Zeppelin,” Peter said. “We don’t know yet, but this might be the end of the line.”