When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin

by Mick Wall

  The A-side was ‘You Better Run’, a note-for-note copy of the American hit by the Young Rascals, only much, much better. The B-side was an original, ‘Everybody’s Gotta Say’, which should have been the A-side really, it was that good but you know what record companies are like, man. Either that or the other one you’d all come up with which everyone loved – ‘The Pakistani Rent Collector’. It wasn’t up to you, though, not yet, so ‘You Better Run’ it was. You had to think commercially when it came to singles and it was obvious it would sound good on the radio. None of the pirates really picked up on it, though, which really surprised you. I mean, come on, it was loads better than some of the old bollocks you heard on there. You were told later that Radio London had played it a few times, actually, but you didn’t live in London so only found out about it when it was too late, otherwise you’d have done something about it. At the end of the day though it wasn’t really a hit and you didn’t really blame CBS when they ‘declined to pick up the option’ on a second single. Bit of a bummer but you’d have done the same if you were them. That’s the way the biz works, you know? It was still a bit of a blow though when Listen sort of drifted apart after that. They could have made it if they’d stuck around, cos they were definitely good enough. Everyone said so…

  You weren’t discouraged though. You just started making tapes and posting them out to all the London record companies. In the end, good old CBS stepped in and offered you a solo deal. Obviously the boys in Listen weren’t best pleased when they found out but that’s the way it goes sometimes, you know, those cats in London, what can you do, they just really dug your voice. And what they were talking about was a little bit different, your first solo single a translation of an Italian ballad called ‘Our Song’. Some said it sounded a bit Tom Jones but they were only jealous. Anyway, it did okay, you know, though you never got to hear it on the radio again. But at least they went for a follow-up this time, another cover, not bad this time though, called ‘Long Time Coming’, which definitely was more your thing and got quite a good review in the New Musical Express actually. It was just a shame the bloody radio gits didn’t pick up on it. But then you had to buy wankers like that off, the whole thing was a rip-off, everyone knew that.

  It wasn’t long of course before you were singing in another group. It was a stroke of luck CBS not wanting to make any more records with you in the end cos this lot were even better than Listen, with a better name and everything – the Band of Joy. No more R&B covers with this lot. This was more West Coast, kinda like what came after the Animals and the Yardbirds. The sort of thing you could really relate to, though in fact you could actually sing and play a lot better than most of the groups you were listening to. And it was cool cos the band’s leader Vernon Perara was related to your bird, Maureen, from Walsall. You’d known Vernon since he’d been with the Stringbeats, the first white-and-coloured group in the world from Stourbridge, who you’d also sung with sometimes.

  Vernon was the one in charge though and after a while it began to get you down a bit so you left. Not left, just sort of stopped doing it for a while to give you a chance to get a change of scene and check out the vibe. By the time you came back the band had changed again. They’d kept the name but Vernon was gone and you all went on stage with war paint on your faces like Red Indians. Kind of like what Arthur Brown was into, only better. Then you were doing the Rainbow Suite in Brum one night and got carried away and jumped into the crowd, who all ran from you. That was the last time you went on looking like a Red Indian. You kept the make-up and stuff but made it more sort of mystical and far out, less cowboy-ish.

  When Band of Joy needed a new drummer in the summer of 1967, you mentioned Bonzo. The sort of thing you were doing now – covers of Love and Moby Grape and the Jefferson Airplane – was something different for John but he soon got stuck in. Nothing fazed that fucker. The face paint had given way to kaftans and beads and Bonzo was told to do his own thing, too. So he got hold of a milkman’s white jacket and dyed it mauve. Next thing he had a bright green kaftan with beads and bells and he’d grown a moustache. He told you that when he went to see Bill Harvey his dad had said, ‘Who’s that poof?’ He didn’t give a stuff. He even got his mum to make him a frock-coat out of old curtain material, getting on the 147 bus to Redditch with his hair all frizzed out like Jimi Hendrix. He even came on that ‘Legalise Pot’ demo you organised hoping to get into the papers, which you did. Then had to hide them at home in case your bloody old man saw them…

  In the end the Band of Joy became quite well known, playing all over, opening for Terry Reid, Spooky Tooth, Keith West’s Tomorrow, Aynsley Dunbar’s Retaliation. It was a happening scene. You even got a date at the Speakeasy in London. You were unloading the old Comma van outside the Speak when a Rolls Royce pulled up to let an old lady cross the road. Suddenly a voice boomed from the grill, ‘You’ll have to move faster than that, madam!’ Nearly gave the poor old dear a heart attack. It was Keith Moon in the car. You just stood and stared, wanting to laugh but not knowing whether to. Then on stage that night, singing away, giving it loads, bloody hell if there wasn’t Long John Baldry standing there ‘looking lovingly into my eyes’ as you later put it, Bonzo roaring at him to ‘Fuck off!’

  The size of Robert’s cock notwithstanding, so deeply disappointed was Jimmy with Massot’s work he instructed G to summarily fire him, installing an Australian filmmaker named Peter Clifton in his place. Viewing Massot’s rough-cut, Clifton could only agree with the band’s view that it was ‘a complete mess. There was no doubting Joe’s talent, but he was in deep waters with this filming attempt and he did not have the strength to push the band members around. None of the material he had captured on 16mm or 35mm actually created sequences. There were a few good shots but they didn’t match up, there was no continuity, and no cutaways or matching material to edit or build sequences.’ Though Clifton agreed to try and salvage the film, he felt that by then the spark had been lost and that ‘the guys weren’t terribly into it’ anymore. That it was now ‘more Peter’s idea’ to continue. As a result, it was another nine months before Clifton would have anything new to show them, during which time they had all but abandoned the idea in their minds – even G, who now began referring to it only half-jokingly as ‘the most expensive home movie ever made’.

  However, one significant addition Clifton somehow managed to persuade everyone to agree to before the shutters totally came down was to re-shoot the whole show on a soundstage in England in order to fill some of the ‘holes’ left in the original footage. Jimmy rolled his eyes at the memory. ‘We were like, “Oh, no! How are we going to remember the improvisations we did, how can we reproduce it?” But we booked into Shepperton Studios and proceeded with it – miming to our own soundtrack and doing a variation of the one thing we’d always tried to avoid doing – miming on Top of the Pops.’ So unprepared were they for this eventuality that John Paul Jones, who had recently cut his hair, was forced to wear a wig to match the lampshade style of ’73. ‘The office rang me up and asked if I needed anything for the Shepperton shoot. I replied, “Well how about six inches of hair for starters!”’ he laughingly recalled. ‘So I had to use a wig which caused some laughs.’

  But if the band film was becoming a pain in the arse, plans for their own record label were now proceeding apace and by January 1974 a deal was ready to be signed on a group-owned subsidiary label under the Atlantic aegis – to be named Swan Song. Originally the title of an unreleased twenty-minute Page instrumental (also sometimes known as ‘Epic’, yet another theme developed out of his original ‘White Summer’ showcase) then also the working title of their next album, Page brushed off concerns about ‘negative connotations’ by explaining, ‘They say that when a swan dies it makes its most beautiful sound.’ Based on apocryphal tales of mute swans ‘singing’ just prior to death, swans in fact are not mute and do not emit any particular sound when they die. Original suggestions for a label name, however, had included less inspired suggestions s
uch as Eclipse, Deluxe, Stairway, Superhype (the name of their publishing company) even Slut and Slag: ‘The sort of name one would associate with us touring America,’ joked Plant.

  Unlike the Stones’ label, said Page, Swan Song was not ‘going to be an ego thing. We’re going to be signing and developing other acts too.’ Plant added: ‘We didn’t start Swan Song to make more bread. I mean, what are we going to do with any more bread?’ First to be signed was Bad Company (initially only for America, as vocalist Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke were still under contract to Island in the UK as Free), followed by Maggie Bell (whose band, Stone The Crows, Grant had previously managed) and The Pretty Things, who Jimmy had known since his session days and whose 1970 album, Parachute, achieved the distinction of being the only album voted album of the year by Rolling Stone never to go gold in America. Roy Harper was also supposed to join the roster but eventually demurred. Plant, Page and Bonham had recently guested at his Rainbow concert in London, with Robert acting as MC. But Harper was privately dubious about the enterprise, fearing it would go the same way as Apple, and he remained with EMI.

  Offices were opened in New York’s plush Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, where US press agent, Danny Goldberg, was installed as vice-president. A London office, opposite the World’s End pub in the King’s Road, was also opened later that year – a delay caused partly by Grant using the new Swan Song deal as an opportunity to formally bring an end to the co-production deal he was still tied into with Mickie Most, and because for a time he had considered basing Swan Song’s offices from his own sixteenth-century country manor house, Horselunges, in Hellingly, Sussex (famously built by architect, antiquary and topographical historian Walter Hindes Godfrey). The split from Most also allowed Grant and Page to reorganise their publishing, forming Joaneline Music Inc to specifically publish all future Led Zeppelin songs. A sub-company owned by the group known as Cullderstead was also registered for Swan Song as a business name.

  Once the new King’s Road offices were established, Zeppelin initially turned to their UK PR man, B.P. Fallon, to head up the new company, but B.P. was a free spirit and didn’t relish what he foresaw becoming a full-time desk job. So the job went to LA record exec Abe Hock. But he only lasted a few months before being replaced by Alan Callan, another acquaintance of Page’s since Yardbirds days. Unlike their plush US offices, however, Swan Song’s London base was remarkable for its shabbiness, kitted out with unwanted second-hand furniture from a nearby Salvation Army building. Outside there wasn’t even a sign to let visitors know they had found the Swan Song offices, just grubby off-white walls with peeling paint and a plaque: ‘Dedicated to the memory of Aileen Collen, MBE, who devoted so much of her life to the welfare of ex-servicemen and their families.’ However, there was a sign in the Swan Song reception area that read simply: ‘If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.’

  An eye-catching logo was designed for the label, typically full of symbolism. Based on the painting Evening (The Fall of Day) by nineteenth-century symbolist artist, William Rimmer, completed circa 1869–70, the Swan Song logo is almost identical bar a couple of small details. The original painting depicts a winged-figure arching its back: a symbolic portrayal of the Greek mythological Sun God, Apollo, rising from the Earth at sunset. Similarly, the Swan Song logo, the only difference being that Rimmer’s painting shows the winged-figure with his left arm bent backwards, his left wing a large dark mass (as the sun declines into shadow), while the Swan Song figure has both arms outstretched, his left wing more straightforwardly spread before him, as though greeting the sun.

  Over the years, there have been many interpretations of both pictures. Many original observers of Rimmer’s painting mistakenly took it to be a portrait of Icarus, who perished when he flew too close to the sun. In recent times, Robert Plant has also maintained that the figure on the Swan Song label is that of Icarus. When the logo was first revealed in 1974, however, many Zeppelin fans assumed it was actually a mythologised depiction of Plant himself – with wings. But the most popular and enduring myth surrounding the logo is that the figure is, in fact, Lucifer. Given that at the time of the label’s launch Page was concurrently working on the soundtrack music for Lucifer Rising, it’s understandable why such rumours might circulate, with the figure on the Swan Song logo appearing to be Lucifer returning to the Light. Certainly, Page would not have found fault with such an interpretation, though this time he chose to remain silent on the subject. (Interestingly, you can now buy Zeppelin T-shirts on the internet with the words ‘Swan Song’ over a picture not of the logo but the Rimmer painting. Meanwhile, the William Rimmer original currently resides in the Boston Museum of Fine Art.)

  Officially launched in May 1974 with lavish, much publicised parties set a week apart in New York and Los Angeles, at the Four Seasons hotel in New York, where more than two hundred guests tucked into swan-shaped cream pastries, the food and drinks bill came to over $10,000. Everything went well until a furious Grant realised the ‘swans’ he’d paid to glide elegantly amongst the guests were actually geese. Bonzo and his ever-present accomplice Ricardo – suitably fortified by snorting coke off a plate from the buffet – chased the geese out into the street where two of them were killed in rush-hour Manhattan traffic.

  Things went more smoothly at the second party at the Bel Air hotel in LA, where guests included Groucho Marx, Bill Wyman and Bryan Ferry. After the party the band repaired to their usual half-moon table at the Rainbow, where Jimmy rowed with his new LA main-squeeze, nineteen-year-old model Bebe Buell, who felt he was being unnecessarily cruel ignoring his other girlfriend there, sixteen-year-old Lori Maddox. ‘The first time I heard Led Zeppelin was when this boy played their first album for me in his car as he was trying to get into my knickers,’ Bebe later recalled. ‘Everyone in my crowd was flipping out over them. There was a “who do you like better, Jimmy Page or Robert Plant?” thing. I thought Jimmy Page was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. He was angelic.’

  It was also during this LA trip that the band finally agreed to meet Elvis Presley, who was appearing at the Forum. Organised by Jerry Weintraub, agent for both Zeppelin and Presley, Plant recalled: ‘The King demanded to know who these guys were who were selling tickets faster than he was.’ Whisked up to his top floor penthouse suite, Presley strode straight up to them, ‘and the four of us and him talked for one and a half, two hours. We all stood in a circle and discussed this whole phenomenon, this lunacy. You’d have to go a long way to find someone with a better idea of what it was all about. He was very focused – very different to what you now read.’ Elvis also had a request: would they sign autographs for his six-year-old daughter, Lisa Marie? They would, then stumbled from the room to the elevator, before a fit of the stoned giggles got the better of them. They were signing autographs for Elvis? Far fucking out, man…

  The official UK launch of Swan Song occurred six months later on 31 October, Halloween night, at a party at Chislehurst Caves near Bromley, ostensibly to launch the new Pretty Things’ album Silk Torpedo. Amidst the gallons of booze consumed, naked women reclined before mock black-mass altars while strippers dressed as topless nuns mingled with fire-eaters and conjurers. Not everything ran smoothly, of course, and Bonzo had to be restrained after a Sounds journalist had affronted him by saying he thought Bonzo was the greatest drummer in the world, asking to shake his hand. ‘I’ve taken enough shit from you cunts in the press!’ Bonzo screamed before launching himself at the terrified journo, offering to ‘give that horrible little fucker an interview he’ll never forget!’

  Despite dire predictions in the press about the new label being little more than a vanity project, in the short term Swan Song was a much bigger success than even the egocentric Page and Grant could have imagined. When the first Bad Company single, ‘Can’t Get Enough’, and album, Bad Co., both hit no. 1 in America that year, it looked like Swan Song really was more than an ego trip. Within a year all four Swan Song artists – Zeppelin
, Bad Company, Maggie Bell and The Pretty Things – had albums in the US Top 100. Ironically, the Bad Company album had been recorded at Headley Grange, using Faces’ bass player Ronnie Lane’s mobile studio, in February 1974 during time originally booked for Zeppelin, but which they were unable to take advantage of, said Page, because Jones ‘wasn’t well’. The more likely scenario is that Jones was still making his mind up about whether he wished to continue with the band. At any rate, Grant was able to pull another rabbit from the hat by sending Swan Song’s first and most prestigious signing down there instead. ‘Grant suggested that we steam in and use the gear to record a few songs,’ Paul Rodgers says now. ‘We’d been rehearsing like mad and we went in and recorded the entire album – banged it all down in one. It was just a great place, a great vibe, you know.’

  With time on his hands and money to burn, Page turned his attention to adding to his growing portfolio of weird and wonderful properties when he paid the actor Richard Harris £350,000 – outbidding David Bowie along the way – for the famous Tower House, in London’s Holland Park, which he still owns today. A neo-medieval structure designed by William Burges, completed just before his death in 1881, as his biographer, J. Mordaunt Crook, puts it, the Tower House was a ‘palace of art’ where the architect’s ‘magical, alchemical process [had] converted archaeology into art’. Page’s interest in Burges and the whole pre-Raphaelite movement, he explained thirty years later, went back to his teens. ‘What a wonderful world to discover.’ Notable for the architect’s trademark attention to detail, ‘I was still finding things twenty years after being there, a little beetle on the wall or something like that.’

  As with his earlier purchase of Boleskine, Page’s intention was to return the Tower House to its original purpose, in this case an escapist fantasy retreat. A relatively small but architecturally imposing structure, not least because of its most striking feature, the tower, the walls and floors are as thick and solid as a fortress, exactly as the architect intended. It was to here that Burges was able to retreat, shutting out the world to revel in his own self-created fantastical visions. Small wonder Page took such a liking to it. Here he could be in the centre of London but, at the same time, a million miles away. Each of its eight rooms was given over to a particular theme. The master bedroom, which would have appealed to Page, had a colour scheme of deep scarlet, with convex mirrors on the ceiling that aimed to reflect the candlelight, appearing as stars in the sky above the bed. As Mordaunt Crook puts it: ‘Menaced by reality…Burges fled into a dream world of his own creation.’ As Burges so, too, Page. When, not long after its purchase, he surreptitiously invited Bebe Buell to the Tower House while she was in London with her official boyfriend, Todd Rundgren (Charlotte was blissfully unaware, living as she was at the country pile), she recalls in her book how she was awestruck at the bewitching surrounds she found herself in. ‘Maybe it was his Satanic Edwardian quality, maybe it was the medieval Sir Lancelot vibe, I didn’t know or care.’ She recalls how they took mescaline together in the master bedroom, after which, ‘I needed to pull myself together and realise that it was just an average-sized penis.’