All of us were stunned by the news of Karac Plant’s death. There was never a question of getting Robert back to England as quickly as possible, even though it meant immediately canceling the last seven concerts of the American tour.
I tried to line up Caesars Chariot to leave right away with Robert on board, but our pilots hadn’t had enough time to rest to handle a transcontinental flight. So I called our New York office, discussing the options for getting Robert home. While I waited for a return call, we all tried to comfort him. But it wasn’t easy.
Robert somberly told us what little he had learned from his wife about his five-year-old son’s death. Karac had become ill with a respiratory infection, and within twenty-four hours his condition deteriorated dramatically. An ambulance was summoned to the family home, but before Karac ever reached the hospital, he died.
“It puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?” Robert said. “I’ve got all this money and all this fame, but I don’t have my son anymore. How much is all of this really worth?”
As he talked, tears rolled down his cheeks. He never fully lost control, but he was in terrible emotional pain.
Led Zeppelin wasn’t an organization in which any of us easily shared our feelings. Other than “I’m so sorry,” there really wasn’t much we could think of to say. Robert had just experienced the most devastating loss of his life. We all knew it. Over the next few minutes, we each embraced him, held him, let him know we were there for him.
How ironic, I thought, that this 1977 tour had been so full of turmoil and hostility. The band members had drifted as far apart as they ever had on a tour. There was constant tension. There were arguments and anger. Nevertheless, when a real crisis like this one struck, it deeply affected all of us. All the disagreements and dissension that had seemed so important over the past few weeks suddenly became very insignificant.
Back on the phone, I learned that although Atlantic–Warner Brothers had a corporate jet, it had been loaned to Jimmy Carter. So I made the decision to book Robert on a commercial flight to London, by way of Newark airport. Robert asked Peter if he could take some of us along.
“You name it,” Peter said. “Who do you want with you?”
Robert asked John Bonham to make the trip, as well as Dennis Sheehan, his personal assistant, and me. Dennis helped him pack a small bag, and we headed for the airport. Within an hour, we boarded a flight to Newark, which connected with a British Airways flight to Heathrow.
We flew first-class, and there was very little conversation on the flight. Everyone seemed to be lost in thought. I wondered just what would happen to Robert, whether he could rebound from this personal loss. The car crash on Rhodes was not that far in the past. And now this terrible tragedy had happened. Would Robert ever get back on his feet? And even if he did, what would happen to Led Zeppelin?
Robert tried to sleep on the flight, but he was stirring constantly. A couple of times he woke up with a start, then bowed his head, as if grieving over Karac’s death. Bonzo, who was sitting next to him, kept one hand on Robert’s arm.
When we landed in London, Bonzo and Robert were met by a private jet, which took them to Birmingham. A limo drove them to Robert’s home, where they remained until the funeral. I went home, bought a suit the next day, and prepared for the trip to Birmingham for the funeral.
Karac’s funeral was held later in the week. Aside from Robert, Bonham was the only member of the band who attended the services; Jimmy, John Paul, and Peter were still in the States. Robert was in terrible anguish through most of the ceremony, and he appeared exhausted. He kept his composure, but his eyes were puffy.
After the services, we went back to Robert’s farm. Robert asked me where Peter, John Paul, and Jimmy were. He was clearly disappointed that none of them had attended the funeral, particularly Jimmy, his writing partner.
I was surprised, too, by their absence. Maybe they had business to take care of. Perhaps they didn’t like funerals or dealing with death. But Robert clearly had wanted them there.
For about an hour that afternoon, I sat with Robert and Bonzo on the lawn of Plant’s farm. We drank some whiskey and tried to talk about the good times, but it was hard. Robert was clearly preoccupied. “It just doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Why Karac?”
Before I left that day, I told Robert I would be in touch soon. “I just need time to think,” he said. “I need to sort things out.”
We embraced. I climbed into a limousine and rode back to London.
Almost immediately, the media started reviving the myth of the “Zeppelin jinx.” A tabloid in London quoted a psychic as saying that more bad times awaited the band. An FM disc jockey in Chicago claimed that “if Jimmy Page would just lay off all that mystical, hocus-pocus occult stuff, and stop unleashing all those evil forces, Led Zeppelin could just concentrate on making music.”
I doubt that Robert ever blamed Jimmy’s dabbling in the occult for his own tragedies over the past two years. At least he never told me that. I’m sure he heard the speculation, and he may have even wondered about it from time to time. But curses and jinxes just weren’t anything that Robert could relate to.
As for Jimmy, he was angry about all the talk of Zeppelin’s bad karma or curse. “The people who say things like that don’t know what in the hell they’re talking about,” he told me, “and Robert sure doesn’t need to hear that kind of crap. A lot of negative things have occurred recently, but tragedies happen. Why do they have to make it worse by talking that way? Why don’t they let Robert mourn in peace?”
For those who believed in the legend of the Zeppelin jinx, more fuel was added to the fire in September, only two months after Karac’s death. Bonzo had been drinking at a pub near his house. Well past midnight, he got into his Jensen to drive home. Less than two miles from his house, he tried to negotiate a curve at an excessive speed. The car veered off the road and careened into a ditch.
Bonzo was hurt. He had terrible pains around his mid-section and was having difficulty breathing. Nevertheless, he somehow made his way to a phone. He didn’t call the police, however, or an ambulance. Instead, he phoned a chauffeur who often worked for the band and asked for a ride. He left his car behind and had it towed to a repair yard the next day. When Bonzo was finally checked by a doctor, he had two broken ribs.
As the news of the crash hit the papers, the true believers in the Zeppelin jinx theory had even more ammunition at their disposal.
In the aftermath of Karac’s death, Robert went into seclusion with his wife and daugher. Not only was the boy’s death a devastating blow to the immediate family, but everyone in the Zeppelin organization began to ponder whether the death knell for the band had finally sounded. After Robert’s car accident, Zeppelin had been put on hold for months. Now, two years later, it was happening all over again.
Jimmy and Peter had a meeting at the Zeppelin office in London. They felt it was important for the band to give Robert as much time as he needed to decide his own future. “Let’s just take things as they come,” Peter said. “We’re not going to plan anything until Robert feels up to it, whether that’s in three months or three years.”
Jimmy decided to take a vacation in Guadeloupe in the West Indies with Charlotte Martin and their daughter, Scarlet. “Why don’t you join us?” he asked me. Since there was little work for me in London, I agreed. I didn’t even back away when Jimmy suggested that we both try to get clean in Guadeloupe. “It means about two weeks without heroin, but with plenty of white rum,” he said. I figured if we were both drunk for most of that trip, maybe I wouldn’t even miss the smack.
Even so, I still hadn’t faced up to the seriousness of my problem. I continued to believe that anytime I wanted to stop, I could, and that I hadn’t lost control.
On one Sunday afternoon in Guadeloupe, I left Jimmy at a bar and tried returning to the hotel on my own. Unfortunately, I was so inebriated that I became disoriented on the walk back. I stopped at a store selling Formica coffins and, in a stupor, climbed into one of them by the front window and passed out. I woke up a couple of hours later, aroused by the commotion made by a small crowd of people who had congregated outside, apparently fascinated by what appeared to be a dead body in a casket. My eyes opened, and I sat up with a horrified look on my face. “Where the hell am I?” I thought. “And who the hell are all these people?”
As scared as I was, I wasn’t nearly as terrified as the people themselves. When I jumped out of the coffin and ran out of the store and down the street, an elderly lady fainted. I could hear screams for blocks.
Once we returned to England, Jimmy tried to keep active. In September, he performed at a benefit concert in Plumpton for a children’s charity called Goaldiggers. He spent time in his home recording studio, listening to tapes of Zeppelin’s concerts dating back to 1969. He had talked to Peter about putting out a live album—a retrospective of some of the best concert performances over the years—although it never materialized.
I had heard that Pagey got back into heroin before long, but because I didn’t see him for a while, I had no way of knowing for sure. When the band finally re-formed the following year, however, he seemed as immersed in smack as I was. I had returned from Guadeloupe looking and feeling fit, and stopped at Peter’s house on my way home. I drank more than forty cans of beer that night. Within two days, I had called my heroin supplier and lapsed back into the habit. Without much work to keep me occupied, I had too much time to fill. And I filled it with drugs.