When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin

by Mick Wall

  Everywhere else in the world, Page and Grant agreed, everything would rest on the success of the album as a stand-alone product, something no other major rock artist had ever attempted before but which Grant correctly reasoned would, in time, become a cause célèbre for the band. Moreover – and what really appealed to Jimmy – proof positive that Led Zeppelin was anything but some record company-manufactured hype. Let the critics stick that in their pipes and smoke it. Or as John Paul Jones told me in 2003, they were young and it was the era, but also, ‘Page and I were fairly well experienced by then. We’d already played on a lot of hit commercial records as session musicians. We didn’t benefit, in terms of celebrity or royalties, because we were very much behind the scenes. But we’d learned all about the art of compromise – in order to make a living. Which we were prepared to do, there’s nothing wrong in paying the rent. But that wasn’t the way I wanted to make my way in my own musical life. If I was going to join a band, it was to do music that I wanted to do and not compromise. The aim wasn’t to be hugely successful. We felt fairly confident that we would be able to make a living by making music that we wanted to do without compromise. The fact that we were so successful couldn’t have been planned. It was a lucky time as well. Album-oriented artists hardly even existed five years before we made our first record. There was the Beatles and the Beach Boys, and Dylan of course. But this was kind of a cultural step on even from that. I wasn’t even listening to much pop or rock music, at the time. I had one Beatles album, Revolver, and Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, but apart from that I was listening to jazz and soul music.’

  As a result, while there would eventually be nine Zeppelin singles officially released in the US no Zeppelin single was ever officially released in the UK (with the sole exception of the ‘Trampled Underfoot’ seven-inch in 1975 – a much-trumpeted limited edition release, swiftly deleted). The immediate effect of the decision to block a single release in Britain was to ensure little or no radio exposure for the new band. The only Radio 1 DJ who went out of his way to regularly play any Led Zeppelin initially was John Peel, on his Top Gear show, aired on a Sunday afternoon and specifically directed at non-chart-oriented music, such as ‘heavy’ and/or ‘progressive’ acts like Zeppelin. Grant felt he had the solution to the lack of airplay when he arranged the first of four live sessions the band would record for the station that year, beginning with a behind-closed-doors performance at London’s Playhouse Theatre on 3 March, and subsequently broadcast on the Peel show on Sunday 23 March. Radio was also a medium Grant felt he had some measure of control over (certainly more than TV where there were so few outlets for rock music in the late Sixties, unless you were a singles-oriented act), especially at the BBC, where production chief Bernie Andrews was someone he’d known since his days working with Bo Diddley, and felt he could trust. It was the start of a relationship with Radio 1 that would endure throughout the Seventies, when Saturday Rock Show presenter Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman would always be the first British DJ to receive an advance copy of a new Zeppelin album.

  Although they didn’t realise it at the time, the BBC sessions were an important milestone for the band. John Paul Jones: ‘We were very young and cocky at the time, very sure of ourselves. I don’t think too many bands were doing the sort of improvising we were doing and the BBC, particularly the [later] In Concert live recordings, allowed us the scope to do that on the radio. This was in the days of restricted needle time so we were determined to make the best of every BBC radio opportunity.’

  More reluctantly, Grant also allowed the band to undertake a handful of TV appearances throughout March 1969. With the advent of all-music satellite and cable channels, it’s hard to imagine now how little opportunity there was in 1969 for live rock music to be broadcast on TV. Consequently, the band found itself performing at often ill-conceived productions such as the so-so guest-spot they made their television debut with, on 21 March, on a BBC1 pilot show intended as all-round family entertainment called How Late It Is, performing ‘Communication Breakdown’. There were occasional highlights, like the thirty-five-minute live performance on Denmark’s TV-Byen channel, filmed at Gladsaxe, on 17 March, where they steamed through ‘Communication Breakdown’, ‘Dazed And Confused’, ‘Babe I’m Gonna Leave You’ and ‘How Many More Times’, surrounded by a small but attentive studio audience seated cross-legged on the floor before them. The same month there was also a lip-synching performance of ‘Communication Breakdown’ on Swedish TV, and a somewhat self-conscious live performance on a short-lived commercial TV programme in Britain called Supershow, recorded in Staines on 25 March, where they noodled around on ‘Dazed and Confused’ for ten minutes. ‘That was a mate of Jimmy’s who buttonholed us into that,’ said Grant. ‘I wasn’t that keen. I didn’t even go to the filming.’

  In the main, the band’s attitude towards doing TV was bad right from the start. In the UK they weren’t exactly spoiled for choice anyway. The only regular music show on British television in 1969 was Top of the Pops, a show specifically designed to reflect records in the Top 30 singles chart, which ruled Zeppelin out immediately. (Of course, a pop version of ‘Whole Lotta Love’ was later used as the theme tune for the programme, but Zeppelin, like The Clash, would go to their graves never having performed on the show.) Even with the arrival in 1971 of the album-oriented, late-night weekly BBC2 show, The Old Grey Whistle Test – filmed in a small back room studio entirely unsuited to the full-on Zep experience – they would steadfastly refuse to appear on TV. As Jones told me, ‘Most other big-name groups had a lot of hit singles. Therefore, they did a lot of television and therefore had a lot of publicity, which we didn’t. It was kind of our own fault, in a way. We decided we didn’t have to do all of those pop shows if we didn’t do singles. Some places in the early days you had to. Like Denmark, whose radio wasn’t very good and that show was the only outlet they had for music like that. We were never really part of the pop scene, though. Doing pop shows on TV just wasn’t us. It was never what Led Zeppelin was supposed to be about. Our thing was always playing live.’ Or as Peter Grant memorably put it, ‘Led Zeppelin was an in-person band.’ Meaning: ‘They weren’t a band you saw on TV, they were the sort of band that to really appreciate you really had to see in-person, live on stage.’

  However, one TV slot Grant was happy to give his blessing to was for a team to come along to the Marquee show on 28 March and film it for the BBC1 programme Colour Me Pop. Having talked it up to Jimmy as their best opportunity yet to get the real live experience of the band over to a huge potential audience, Grant’s good mood on the night soon turned to embarrassment and then fury when nobody from the BBC bothered to show up or even have the decency to phone ahead to let him know they would not be coming. Having given it the big build-up, Grant now had the odious task of informing Page and the others he’d been let down without any explanation. He vowed then never to allow himself or Led Zeppelin to be placed at the passing whims of a TV company again, no matter how big or well known. It was a decision that would have fateful ramifications for Zeppelin’s career that neither Page or Plant could have foreseen, not least the large degree of misunderstanding that would increasingly envelope their legacy as the years passed and more TV-friendly contemporaries like The Who and the Stones overtook Zeppelin in terms of both critical appraisal and historical importance, if not actual record sales. ‘That’s when I knew that we just wouldn’t need the media,’ said Grant. ‘It was going to be about the fans.’

  As with America, by tour’s end in April the album had started to sell steadily. By the end of the year it would reach the 100,000 sales mark in Britain, reaching no. 6 in the national chart. But that was still some way off and when the band returned to America that spring they did so with a sense of relief. Where on the first tour they had been an opening act, often an afterthought not even included on the advertising for the gig, when they returned for their first show on 18 April at the New York University Jazz Festival, it was the start of twenty-nine shows in t
hirty-one days as co-headliners with Vanilla Fudge – the deal being whoever was biggest in any particular city going on last. With sales topping 200,000 and the album on its way to the Top 20, perception in America was now of a band on the verge of a major success.

  The other change on this tour, as Robert Plant would note, was that ‘people started taking an interest in the other members of the group, and not just Jimmy alone.’ As the frontman, inevitably much of this new-found attention was centred on Plant himself. The fact that he hadn’t written any of the material on the album was neither here nor there. Joe Cocker and Rod Stewart didn’t write their own material either. And, like the latter, Plant didn’t just sound great; he was tall, blond and looked good enough to eat, a veritable golden god shaking what he’d got – the perfect visual foil to Page’s darker, more slender, slightly effeminate stage persona. With recognition came a resurgence of confidence, a quality Plant had never lacked in the past but was now rediscovering on a nightly basis. While Page was relieved to see his frontman visibly growing in stature on stage, off it the person who really felt the change was Richard Cole. Having already noted the singer’s mixture of ‘nervousness and arrogance’, Cole recalls in his book that suddenly: ‘He seemed intent on harassing me, at times seeming to even belittle me, making it clear who was the boss and who was the employee. When we were in hotels, he would call my room with requests like, “Richard, ring up room service and have them send up some tea and breakfast for me.” I wanted to tell him to call the hotel kitchen himself. But he appeared to get a kick out of making me angry…’

  And, of course, no-one could fail to notice Bonham’s immense prowess as a drummer. While his rhythm partner, John Paul Jones, often looked and felt left out – a shadow on stage lingering by the drums while Plant and Page hogged the spotlight – no stage shadows were ever big or dark enough to contain Bonzo, not least when he went into his ever-lengthening drum solo, throwing the sticks down halfway through and pummelling the drums with his hands while cursing loudly. ‘Cannons!’ he would roar before bringing down the hammers. ‘I yell like a bear to give it a boost,’ he’d later explain. ‘I like it to be like a thunderstorm.’

  It was. Other musicians became particularly fascinated by Bonham’s wildly untutored technique. Page told me a story about bumping into veteran drummer Ronnie Verrall on the second tour. ‘Ronnie was from a previous era,’ Jimmy explained, ‘an amazing drummer who’d played in Ted Heath’s band. Now he was playing in Tom Jones’ touring band, along with Big Jim Sullivan, and we bumped into them at the Chateau Marmont. After saying hello he said, “Where’s your drummer? I wanna talk to him.” He wanted to know if Bonzo was using a double bass drum on “Good Times Bad Times”.’ When Jimmy explained that he wasn’t, Ronnie was even more desperate to meet him. ‘So I took him along to Bonzo and the first thing he said was, “How do you do that?” And I saw his face as Bonzo’s showing him. Ronnie was like, “Fuck!” And here’s a man who was like one of the tops, you know? I thought, wow, when you’ve got this level of musician paying attention to what this kid is doing, that’s fabulous, you know?’

  It wasn’t just old jazzers paying attention, either. There was a whole new generation of rock’n’roll drummers coming along who were watching what Bonham was doing. Not least his old pal from Brum, Bill Ward, who was about to discover a similar level of success with Black Sabbath. ‘Today’s drumming masters can really lay down some hot shit and are full of tricks, aided by the amazing new technology that exists,’ he told me. ‘But I heard Bonham doing it on one bass drum when he was seventeen. The only guy I can think of who’d been laying it down close to that, before him, was Buddy Rich, who John was a big fan of. In fact, you have to really look back to the old timers to see that kind of work. Bonzo’s feel and what he put into rock is so refined, he’s the best model that any drummer could listen to. If you wanna know where to put a one, or you wanna know how to use syncopation then listen to the master, because Bonham was the absolute master even as a kid.’ Or as Bev Bevan, another pal from Bonham’s teenage days and later a star in his own right with first The Move and then the Electric Light Orchestra, later told me: ‘What Bonzo could do on the bass drum with a single foot pedal was just outrageous. He certainly overtook me, in regards in sheer ability. It was just his over the top personality that people found hard to take sometimes.’ Bevan said the fledgling Move originally considered offering the drumming job to Bonham, but thought better of it and asked Bevan instead. ‘The Move didn’t drink at all in their earliest days and they thought John might be too much of a loose cannon…’

  By the time you met Robert you already knew you were good. It was at the Oldhill Plaza and he was dressed up like a poof doing the MC bit. Then he came on with his group, Crawling King Snake, in T-shirt and jeans. Group was crap and you told him so afterwards, but he was all right, actually. So you told him you’d do him a favour, offering to play with them. He looked at you and laughed and you thought he must be taking the piss and nearly chinned him. But it was obvious he could sing so you let him off just that once. One of them blokes who even looked like a proper singer and you didn’t get many of them to the pound. You were both sixteen but you were always the eldest. And it was all right, doing regular spots at the Wharf, that pub in Worcestershire. You’d play with a pint of bitter at your feet, downing glass after glass. Never missed a fucking beat, though, doing things on the kit nobody else would. Hitting them cunts hard! Never mind the pretty boy singer, have some of that!

  You were still living at home then, in Redditch, in the caravan at the back of your mum’s shop in Astwood Bank. You’d already played with all sorts by then: Terry Webb & the Spiders, the Senators, now this lot. They’d either get rid of you for playing too loud – wankers! – or you’d get bored and just naff off. Tell ’em you had to have the drums cleaned, then once you’d got them back out of the van that would be the last they’d see of you. Ta-ta!

  Crawling King Snake only lasted five minutes, too, before you got bored propping them up. Then there was the Nicky James Movement – great singer, no bloody songs – then Locomotive, then A Way of Life – another great group with no poxy songs of their own, none you liked anyway. Those were the ones you remembered anyway. Some you were in only lasted one night. Some wouldn’t let you near them, had already heard of you. Dave Pegg, the bassist in A Way of Life, then later of Fairport Convention, used to say: ‘If you were in a band with Bonham you knew you’d never get booked again. Often we only did the first half of the evening.’ Yeah, all right, but it was like your mate Mac Poole said, you might have got the boot for being too loud or being too drunk or not turning up on time or missing a rehearsal or whatever the bollocking hell it might be. But you never got the sack for not being good enough, sticking silver foil in the bass drum to make it louder. The way you looked at it: I’m doing what I wanna do – you don’t like it, fuck off.

  The only thing you liked nearly as much as drumming was having a pint – or ten! It was like your other mate Jim Simpson from Locomotive always said: ‘Time passed quickly in John’s company.’ Didn’t stop the cunt sacking you though, did it? The first time, fair enough, cos you’d stood up on the drums and started taking your clothes off. But he was a gent was Jim, he’d always have you back again in the end. Especially when you’d bring him 200 Benson & Hedges or a bottle of whisky you’d nicked from the shop. Course, you’d end up helping him drink it but it’s the thought that counts, innit?

  Even the day before your wedding, you couldn’t help but get pissed big time. You’d been to see Mac play, wearing your wedding suit, and you got on his kit and pepper-potted the skins. He yelled at you, ‘Fucking leave it out!’ But you’d just laughed. You never understood what the fuss was about drum kits anyway. You’d look at blokes like Mac treating theirs like gold dust and you’d pull a face. When the job was done and it was time to pack away the gear you’d just throw the bloody things off the stage and into the van. Mac said it was cos your dad had bought you your kit w
hile he’d had to pay for his own on the HP. Bollocks, you told him, you’re only fucking jealous.

  There were some other things besides drums. Like the wife. You’d met Pat Phillips when you were both sixteen, after a gig you’d done at the Oldhill Plaza with Terry Webb. She’d asked you why you didn’t wear a lamé suit like Terry and you’d just looked at her and laughed. You and your brother Mick would go out together with Pat and her sisters, Sheila, Margaret and Beryl and it would be like Mick said, ‘a party every night!’ It was only a few months later when Pat found out she was expecting, like, and so you did the decent thing. Even though you were out of work again at the time, you ordered a made-to-measure suit for the wedding from old Robinson’s in Redditch who allowed you to pay for it in instalments. Years later, after you’d made your dough in Zeppelin, you paid him back good and proper, going in and ordering a dozen different suits.

  It was different when you were first wed, though. You’d set up home in your mum and dad’s fifteen-foot caravan. It was all right till the boy came along – Jason – and the rows started about getting a proper job. That was in July 1966. You’d do some work as a brickie for your dad but it never lasted long. You were eighteen and there was no way in hell you were gonna stop drumming completely. Instead, you offered to quit smoking to help save some money. That never lasted either, though. You swore to Pat you’d give up the drums if you had to but she said you’d be so bloody miserable if you didn’t drum you’d make life unbearable. Anyway, Dad was always there with a few quid when you needed it.