In May 1980, there was still the threat of a potential lawsuit looming over my head as a result of the accident several months earlier; yet it was announced to the public that I would become the first American contemporary music artist to embark on a concert tour of Korea. I think it was a smart move to get me over to Seoul. By now, I think the clock was ticking on how much time I had left as a teen idol—at least in the United States. It had already been a few years, which could have been considered a pretty good run by any standard. But for countries we hadn’t tapped into yet, it would be a whole new experience while I was still a teenager. I would be doing ten shows in Korea after a quick European run through Spain and Italy. It was a big undertaking. We would be air-freighting ten tons of lighting and sound equipment from Los Angeles to Korea, transporting, housing, feeding, and paying a total of six performers including myself along with the crew of five people. The country was under curfew and a communist regime at that time, and from the second we touched down in Seoul, we knew we were dealing with something very different than usual.
We were transported by military escort from the airport to the hotel, and it was explained to us that the military would control the mobs of fans at the sold-out the shows. As Billboard magazine reported about our visit:
The big surprise and gamble was the audience reaction, and this paid off, too. The Garrett crew said they had never seen this kind of enthusiasm, even in extroverted Australia and faddish Japan. Which meant that the teenyboppers, a new breed in Korea, were suddenly out in force. Korean girls in the 13 to 18 age bracket live in a Confucian society still dominated by males. This has been changing, they are traditionally supposed to keep quiet, stay home and behave demurely at all times. But the Garrett groupies obviously learned other lessons from imported movies, TV shows and fan articles. They were out there shrieking and stampeding with the best of them, throwing flowers and streamers onstage, not to speak of themselves, waving banners and competing with the mind-blasting sonics of a very loud show.
Martial law was interesting to observe: the helicopters and tanks patrolling all through the night. A couple of my band members even spent a night in jail for violating curfew!
The cool thing was, by this time we started to gel as a band, and I think we put on good concerts. I don’t think my managers cared about that as much as they did how many tickets we sold, but I was more concerned with developing as a rock ’n’ roll singer. That’s now what I wanted to be. I had gotten a taste of what it was like to be up there, and I liked it. Even though I knew I was still sort of a fraud, I felt myself getting better, and that gave me hope. At the lounge atop the hotel where we were staying, my band and I would take over the bandstand and I’d get to really sing. Jim Haas never took part in those late-night jams; it was me behind the mic, and I finally started to feel as if I could hold my own. Was my management willing to work with me to help me get to the next level?
Something funny happened in Korea. Kind of. My keyboard and saxophone player’s name was Richard Cole. He was a guy from Texas. Unfortunately for him, Led Zeppelin’s road manager shared the same name, and so whenever we traveled, alarms always went off when they saw that name. Even though it was a different guy, it didn’t matter. Poor Richard got strip-searched every which way wherever we went. After Korea, he called it quits. He couldn’t take it anymore.
From Korea to Thailand to Singapore, the tour rolled on and the crowds got bigger and more enthusiastic. Even though my star was starting to fade back in the United States, in the Far East people were just catching up to me, and they loved what they saw. I still had some life left thanks to these countries.