Peter Grant: The Man Who Led Zeppelin

by Chris Welch

  The giant from Battersea proved his worth as the reconstituted Yardbirds set off for America one more time. One of his first decisions was to bring back Richard Cole as his assistant. Recalls Cole: “I had worked for him for a year with The New Vaudeville Band during 1967. Once again I lost my driving licence, so basically I was out of work. Then Tony Stratton-Smith gave me a job. He knew I couldn’t drive but I had an international permit and I did his band The Creation. We did a three-week tour of Germany and Holland with Ronnie Wood on guitar, Kenny Pickett singing and Kim Gardner on bass. After that tour I flew over to America and got a job with Vanilla Fudge. Then I found out The Yardbirds were coming to America, so I wrote Peter a letter and said I’d love to be their tour manager. So from then on I worked for Peter Grant from the beginning of 1967 until 1980. In 1968 I worked for him with The Yardbirds, Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart, the New Vaudeville Band and Terry Reid.”

  The Grant management empire was expanding, but the biggest and best was yet to come. In the event it was all thanks to his association with The Yardbirds. Says Chris Dreja emphatically: “The best manager we ever had was Peter Grant. Giorgio was very creative but hopeless with money. Peter would almost die for his artists. We were booked to do a State Fair in Canada one winter and we were travelling in a Greyhound coach. We hit terrible weather and we were many hours late. There were lorries jackknifed on the highway and you couldn’t get through. Of course the State Fair, like so many venues, was Mafia run and we’d arrived late and virtually missed the first performance. These two Mafioso guys with veins popping in their necks were going to kill us. Peter was sitting in the back of the bus and they pulled guns. They actually pulled a pistol on him. I’ll never forget this but he got up and he barrelled them away with his stomach.

  “He said: ‘You’re gonna do WOT?’ And they were so taken aback that someone had the nerve to do this, they just ended up laughing. It broke the ice, but it was quite something to take a pistol in your stomach.”

  Thanks to the assiduous attentions of their gutsy minder, The Yardbirds finally began to make money out of their gruelling tours. But they were becoming exhausted. The young musicians who had set out with dreams of recreating the authentic blues found life had now become a dreary pop music treadmill, without even a supply of new hits to boost their confidence. They were increasingly confused over their musical identity. Many of the original Yardbirds team had gone. Jeff Beck would be next to quit.

  Chris: “Unfortunately for us, by the time Peter Grant came on the scene we were going downhill and we were knackered. There was no break in that four-year period. It was one of the reasons Paul left. There was no time to do an album. If we had taken a year off and regrouped, the band would have sustained a lot longer. But there were so many gigs to perform.”

  Jim McCarty: “It stopped being fun a long time before we broke up. We were travelling huge distances in the States and we didn’t have limousines or private aircraft.”

  It was a bad time for a British band to be on the road in America. The country was still stuck in the Vietnam War, and anti-war protesters used rock gigs as platforms to stage demonstrations, turning concerts into battles between police and hippies. Elsewhere conflicts erupted over civil rights for black Americans. “There was a lot of bad vibes and a lot of rioting going on,” says McCarty. “We once drove to California in a couple of station wagons from Virginia and we inadvertently drove into Los Angeles via Watts right in the middle of a riot. Houses were burning, there were tanks on the streets and we were lucky to get out alive. All that takes its toll, because we were constantly in the front line. We were put on some crazy tours by Simon Napier-Bell like the Dick Clark tour. We were travelling huge distances to do two gigs a night and that was the tour when Jeff walked out. In fact he didn’t do it. The only person who pulled through that show was Jimmy Page, because he was still fresh. But that’s when we sacked Simon Napier-Bell and went with Peter.”

  Jim: “Jeff Beck became unreliable, especially in America. When Jeff kept letting us down, Chris went on bass and Jimmy played lead. The Dick Clark tour was really heavy, hard work, playing two towns a night. Jeff did a couple of nights then he blew his top and smashed his Les Paul up in the dressing rooms. So he went back to England and we finished the tour with Jimmy on lead. Originally it was Jeff’s idea to bring Jimmy into the group, but I think they had a few differences. They would try and outdo each other’s solos and it put Jeff under quite a bit of strain. It was exciting but it was bloody loud! They used to do ‘Over, Under, Sideways, Down’ as a stereo dual guitar riff. I remember we did a tour with the Stones and they got quite worried. We finished the band, with Jimmy as our lead guitarist, around 1968. We did a string of pretty dire singles, which were Mickie Most’s ideas, but we did some good gigs.”

  Chris: “I liked Jimmy’s energy and he was so professional. Obviously the ideas and material and arrangements were undoubtedly moving towards Led Zeppelin, but it was fresh enough to keep my interest.”

  As well as the singles and album Mickie Most produced there was also a live Yardbirds album from the Anderson Theatre, against which Jimmy Page later injuncted to ensure its withdrawal. The band was already playing a version of a song Jimmy played called ‘Dazed And Confused’, but it seemed he’d have preferred to earmark this for a future project. As it turned out the Most-produced album Little Games was released only in America and British fans began to assume the group had dissolved. Indeed, the group spent most of early 1967, its final months, touring the US, Australia and the Far East.

  Despite Peter Grant’s best efforts, The Yardbirds were crumbling. “Jimmy had already seen Led Zeppelin coming towards him,” says Chris Dreja. “Everybody had their own different agendas, and at the end of the day, we didn’t make it work for ourselves.”

  The group played its last date at Luton Technical College in July 1968. Relf and McCarty went off to form new group Renaissance, while Dreja hoped to stick around with Page to form the next version of the band, which they intended to call The New Yardbirds. In the end Dreja decided to quit music entirely and become a photographer. Oddly enough, many years later, when Peter Grant reminisced about the end of The Yardbirds, he could not remember the band playing their alleged last date in England.

  “As I recall, we never played a gig after that American tour, so in reality it fell apart in America. Jim McCarty wasn’t in the best of health and we had to use a session man. We had a club date in the States for $5,000. That was a lot of money. Jimmy wanted to do it and so did Chris, but the others didn’t. There was a big row in a Holiday Inn. So I drafted out a letter giving Jimmy the rights to the name, which they all signed. I don’t remember them doing a gig in Luton, but distinctly remember driving Jimmy around Shaftesbury Avenue near the Savile Theatre after the split. We were in a traffic jam and I said to Jimmy, ‘What are you going to do. Do you want to go back to sessions or what?’ And he said, ‘Well I’ve got some ideas.’ He didn’t mention anybody. So I said, ‘What about a producer?’ He said, ‘I’d like to do that too, if you can get a deal.’ He seemed keen to form a new band, so I thought, great, let’s do it. We took the name New Yardbirds to get some gigs.”

  As a first step to promote the new band, Peter went to see his old journalist pal Keith Altham of NME, who politely turned down the opportunity for an interview with Jimmy Page. The Yardbirds, old or new, weren’t big news in 1968. “It was something he always regretted,” said Peter.

  It is generally assumed that after Chris Dreja dropped out, Page immediately thought of John Paul Jones as his first choice recruit for the new band. However, John says that he first heard that Page was forming a band when he read about it in Disc magazine. “My wife Mo read the story and she told me to give Page a call. I wasn’t doing much for Mickie Most at that time but I was always going up to his office with Peter. There was lots of banter flying around and it was always a fun place to go.

  “Now how did I get in touch with Page? I didn’t have his number, so I probably asked
Peter about it and he must have spoken to Jimmy, who must have said, ‘Yes.’”

  Peter and Jimmy had found their bass and keyboard player. Now there was the matter of finding a singer and drummer. They clearly wanted the sort of powerful performers who could wipe the floor with the competition. One contender for the job of vocalist with The New Yardbirds was Terry Reid, whom Peter was already managing. “But he had a dreadful father who I had to deal with,” recalled Peter. “Jimmy was keen on Steve Marriott too but he wasn’t approached. I knew Jimmy was really keen on Terry Reid and one day we came out of Oxford Street and bumped into Terry. It was at that point he told us he didn’t want to do it and suggested Robert Plant instead.”

  Peter, Jimmy and Chris Dreja went up to Birmingham to find Robert, who was then singing with a group called Hobbstweedle. At first they couldn’t find the lad Reid had enthused about. Said Peter: “This big guy with a University of Toronto sweatshirt appeared to let us in backstage and I remember Jimmy saying, ‘Crikey, they’ve got a big roadie!’ He came back and he turned out to be Robert Plant! Jimmy loved Robert straight away.”

  Various names were bandied about as a possible drummer, including Barrie ‘B.J.’ Wilson, the heavyweight from Procol Harum, and Aynsley Dunbar, another alumni of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers who had also worked with Jeff Beck. “We definitely approached Aynsley Dunbar,” says Dreja. “I knew him well and he was a great drummer – but he went off to Frank Zappa’s band.”

  While Jimmy debated who to have on drums, Peter went to America with The Jeff Beck Group. It gave him an opportunity to observe how young, principally male audiences, many of whom were strung out on ‘downer’ drugs like Qaaludes, lapped up the loud, frenzied, blues-rock music that the group offered. He also couldn’t help but notice that for all their musical invention, Beck’s group was desperately unstable. With ten years’ experience of the music industry behind him, a clear head on his broad shoulders and an ambition that matched his physical strength, Peter Grant was in a unique position to take advantage of the change from pop to rock. He must have seen it coming. With Jimmy Page delivering the music and Peter providing the kind of management muscle hitherto lacking in British pop, they were unstoppable.

  Back in the UK in the meantime, singer Robert Plant had recommended to Page his old Birmingham mate John Bonham, whom he described as the loudest and heaviest drummer in the country. Jimmy went to the Marquee to see him play with American singer Tim Rose.

  Jimmy was so impressed he called Peter Grant in San Francisco. “I saw a drummer last night and this guy plays so good and so loud we must get him,” he told his manager. “He plays so loud promoters won’t re-book him!”

  Peter was with Jeff Beck when he got the message that Jimmy had called. He was astonished. Jimmy’s parsimony was a source of much mirth within Yardbirds’ circles. “Jimmy Page? Making an outgoing phone call to America? I knew something important had happened,” said Peter.*

  The problem was that John Bonham, whose financial circumstances were fairly dismal, didn’t have a working telephone. Grant came back to London and sent what in the end amounted to 30 telegrams to try to get Bonham to join the band. John, a former bricklayer and builder’s son from Redditch, was convinced that his gig with Tim Rose was much more viable than an unlikely future with an outfit called The New Yardbirds. It sounded like The New Vaudeville Band. He was convinced it was a cabaret act, until Robert told him, “Look mate, you’ve gotta join this band!”

  Eventually Bonham was dragged down to London and the four musicians finally met up to play for the first time, in a tiny, hot and cramped rehearsal room in Gerrard Street. As soon as they played together they realised there was a magical chemistry at work. They seemed very well suited to each other, although the unpredictable and bombastic drummer was prone to great outbursts of panic.

  Recalled Peter: “They had been rehearsing at the weekend and Bonham came to see me on the Monday and said: ‘Mr Grant, I might have dropped a clanger. I was meant to go to the Isle of Wight to play with Chris Farlowe this week.’ I said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ He was supposed to be working for Rik Gunnell, a heavy-duty promoter.

  “And he says, ‘I’ve already had the 40 quid last week as I needed the cash’. So I said I’d phone Rik and sort him out. Rik told me to forget it and we left it at that. Both him and Robert were a bit naïve in those early days.”

  Rumours were rife on the London music scene that Page and Grant were going to poach many ‘name’ musicians and even turn The New Yardbirds into a five-piece band. Steve Winwood was among those mentioned. “The only time we talked about a five piece as I recall was after the first couple of tours,” said Grant later. “There was talk of adding a keyboard player and I can remember that Keith Emerson was mentioned. And there was also a thing that Brian Lane, the manager of Yes, was paranoid that we were going to nick Chris Squire as a bass player and move Jonesy to keyboards. But that was never a serious proposition.”

  Oddly enough Peter Grant never went to the band’s first rehearsal in Gerrard Street. “No, I wasn’t there. The first time I saw them play was in Scandinavia. I remember standing on the side of the stage and being amazed. Bonzo was only on £50 a week and he came back afterwards and offered to drive the van for another £30!”

  John ‘Bonzo’ Bonham, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones, would soon be earning much more than £50 a week, once Peter Grant got into his stride. But if the new boys thought they would be pampered prima donnas, they were in for a shock. John Bonham was the first to receive a Grant tongue-lashing.

  When John started to play in his usual busy and boisterous fashion, Jimmy Page told him, “You’re going to have to keep it a bit more simple than that.” Bonzo bashed on regardless and Jimmy was annoyed.

  Peter Grant came over to Bonham. “Do you like the job in the band?” he asked coldly.

  “Well – yeah,” said Bonham.

  “Well do as this man says – or fuck off,” said Grant menacingly, adding for good measure: “Fucking behave yourself Bonham, or you’ll disappear – through different doors.”

  The modus operandi of the man who led Zeppelin had been established at the outset.

  * * *

  * The recalcitrant trumpet player went back to England to form Bob Kerr’s Whoopee Band, which lasted some 35 years, outliving both Led Zeppelin and their manager.

  * It was a nickname bestowed on him in honour of Aleister Crowley, himself known as ‘The Great Beast’. Richard Green was notorious for his heavy drinking and monosyllabic conversation, which consisted of intoning the word ‘Accept’ – meaning he’d accept a drink from anyone. He was once seen parading around London with a sign around his neck from a defective elevator, which read ‘Out Of Order’.

  * Peter once quipped, “If you want to bump off Jimmy Page, all you have to do is throw tuppence in front of a London bus.”

  4

  A WHOLE LOTTA PETER

  “In Peter’s day, you put the money in the Hammond organ and you made a dash for the border.”

  – Ed Bicknell

  Peter Grant and Jimmy Page spent the summer of 1968 plotting their strategy for the concept born out of The Yardbirds that became Led Zeppelin. It was a combination of skill, timing and an indefinable chemistry that resulted in the triumph of their enterprise.

  While the manager was crucially important to the band’s commercial activities, it was the artistry of Page, Plant, Jones and Bonham that ensured that what they played mattered and had relevance. This was no mere Machiavellian ploy and exercise in pop exploitation. Led Zeppelin undoubtedly played a crucial part in the vast outpouring of creative youth culture that made the late Sixties so special. Dozens of bands, singers and songwriters blossomed in the wake of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones’ achievements earlier in the decade. Yet somehow the band devised by Jimmy Page and backed to the hilt by Peter Grant captured the mood and expressed the energy of the times with all-conquering gusto.

  This was the band t
hat eventually produced such songs and arrangements as ‘Kashmir’, ‘The Song Remains The Same’, ‘Black Dog’, ‘Trampled Underfoot’, ‘Achilles Last Stand’ and, of course, the pantheon of Zeppelin standards, ‘Communication Breakdown’, ‘Dazed And Confused’ and ‘Stairway To Heaven’, songs that ensured the band’s place in history. As radio stations played their records around the clock, the albums sold in millions and the band toured for months on end, it seemed as if Grant’s merry men had become the rock industry. But it was a hard struggle to get Zeppelin off the ground.

  There can be no question that Peter Grant loved Led Zeppelin. As the only child of a single parent, strong relationships were especially important to him. He was married to his wife Gloria and they cherished their two children, Warren and Helen, but there was no doubt that Grant treated his band as if they were an extension of the family, surrogate sons perhaps, to be indulged and disciplined, as required. He certainly spent more time with them than anybody else during the first exciting years of the band’s existence. Peter rarely missed a gig, was always there when they needed guidance or protection, and was out battling for them in the wider world of the music industry and media.