by Chris Welch
He was no stranger to such situations. As a former minder, bouncer and ‘bag man’ he’d often been called on to confront heavies or provide a degree of intimidation himself. According to the memories of some former security men, Grant had a history of using strong-arm tactics as far back as the Fifties. During such moments a dark shadow would pass over his face and he became an angry, dangerous and vengeful man. He may have been feted as a new captain of the music industry, but there were plenty who had reason to fear and dislike him. He had his rivals too, and there were those who felt that his power was purely down to the success of his band. There was the unspoken feeling that he only had to make one slip and they would be down on him, ready to usurp his position. This lingering, silent threat led to a heightened sense of mistrust which escalated over the years into a form of paranoia. Like most manipulative people, he could be suspicious and hostile, assuming that everyone around him was ‘on the make’. Then it was his job to be alert, to second-guess people’s motives. Doubtless there were times when his suspicions were entirely justified, but on other occasions it seemed that Peter Grant was unnecessarily obsessed with maintaining his grip on power.
As a result he appeared to many outsiders as a coarse, harsh tongued and threatening man, at odds with a music scene wherein youthful performers and an increasing number of switched-on promoters had eagerly adopted the high-flown idealism of the hippie era. For ‘bootlegging’ read ‘freedom’. Although Led Zeppelin had superseded such bands as Love and The Jimi Hendrix Experience, it was still the era of ‘free concerts’, love, peace and communal living. Quite how Peter reconciled this attitude and lifestyle with his own deeply protective and basic materialist instincts was something of a mystery. But at least he made an attempt to fit in. He exchanged his old shirts and ties for a caftan and beads. He made an unlikely hippie, but he felt comfortable about the loins as he waded into those promoters still grumbling about his modus operandi.
Many of his predecessors had experienced difficulties trying to promote their acts in America. Their gentlemanly behaviour simply didn’t wash. An oft-cited example of mismanagement is Brian Epstein’s problems with The Beatles, specifically his inexperience with regard to merchandising which led him to virtually give away valuable rights in this area. The Beatles’ merchandising fiasco preyed on Epstein’s already fragile psyche, inspired numerous lawsuits and cost him and the group untold millions of dollars. Though Grant took little interest in subsidiary merchandising, he was quick to pounce if he discovered anyone selling unauthorised Led Zeppelin T-shirts or photographs. This being the era before merchandising became such a money-spinner for top acts, for most of their career there was no such thing as ‘authorised’ Led Zep T-shirts, other than those given away free by their record company. Grant was also keen to remind commentators that he had seen how the US market worked during his tours with The Animals and The Yardbirds, and fully understood the ground rules. Unlike Epstein, he wasn’t about to be conned by sharp American businessmen who saw Led Zeppelin only as a cash cow.
Chris Dreja of The Yardbirds was one of those British artists who appreciated that Peter was on their side and at the same time, fully cognisant of American business practice. “A lot of managers didn’t discuss money with their artists, not necessarily because they were ripping them off but they themselves were very naïve,” he says. “They didn’t understand how the Americans worked and they didn’t know about transportation costs or withholding taxes in different States. Peter had learned all about that before he began to manage Zeppelin. He was a streetwise, sharp cookie.”
Mickie Most understood the kind of problems Grant faced in America and the need to be on guard. “I don’t think he was involved with gangsters,” says Most today. “He was a sweetheart really. All that stuff about being a muscle man and beating people up … it was all nonsense really. It was more bravado. I only ever had one argument with him and that was in the days of The Animals and it almost came to fisticuffs. We laughed about it afterwards. ‘What are we doing?’ In those days I admit we did use a bit of the old-fashioned scare tactics. But nobody had any guns. It was handbags at ten paces really. You had to use scare tactics sometimes because there weren’t the rules around there are today to protect artists. They used to get ripped off terribly. Record companies are notorious for being thieves. They never paid you too much. It was always too little. They are dishonest! Not all record companies of course, but I can’t think of too many that are not. The bigger they are the worse they are.”
Most points out that today’s artists are now responsible for their recording costs, but they never own the tapes. “So they pay for them, but they don’t own them. Think about it. ‘You’ve just paid for that car. But you don’t own it. Do you like that?’ Of course you wouldn’t like it. Not only that, the artist has to pick up fifty per cent of the bill for promotion. So they pay for the recording costs, the video and any promotional costs, which could be up to a million dollars, especially in America where you have to give the radio stations money to play the records. So you sell three million albums – but you’re still in trouble. Peter wouldn’t allow that to happen. He’d say: ‘We made the records and we paid for ‘em. We want paying from record one.’ And that’s what happened.”
Most is at pains to point out that the way Peter managed Led Zeppelin was at odds with the way many current pop groups are exploited. “The record companies today deduct everything. They send a car for you? They deduct it. They send someone to take you to Top Of The Pops? It’s being deducted. Can’t you get to a TV studio on your own? You need someone to take you? It’s ridiculous! Go on a bus. ‘Oh no, I’ve gotta have a limo to take me and I’ve got to have a make-up artist, a dresser and a stylist.’ You mean to say you can’t dress yourself? Who takes you to the toilet these days? Grow up!’”
Although some dubious record company practices still exist, Mickie Most insists that Grant made a difference; certainly to the way bands continue to earn income from their all-important live performances. “Peter changed the industry. He could dictate. He really was the 90/10 guy. Before that it was 60/40. He said, ‘90/10, take it or leave it.’ ‘Waal we’ve gotta promote the show …’ ‘Promote it? You don’t have to promote Led Zeppelin. Just take an advert in the Jewish Chronicle. Face it; you didn’t have to put up any posters for Led Zeppelin. Just announce on the radio that they’re playing at Madison Square and an hour later there won’t be a ticket to be had. So what is the “promoting” about? You’re gonna get ten per cent for just turning up.’
“So he turned it from 60/40 to 90/10. Peter didn’t care really. He cared about what he was doing, but he didn’t care about how he did it! He didn’t have any great conscience about anything. If he had to be aggressive and tough he would. The Americans are the toughest business people in the world. We are pansies compared to them. But he stood up to them because he had product. He said, ‘I want the best for my band.’ The Americans had never met anyone like him before. I remember him talking to Bill Graham, who had the biggest venues in rock. He’d say to him, ‘It’s 90/10 or you don’t fucking get Led Zeppelin.’ I’d be sitting there listening to the conversation and the phone would ring again. I’d hear Bill Graham say, ‘How about 80/20?’
” ‘What, are you deaf? It’s 90/10’. He’d put the phone down. Then Bill would phone back. ‘Okay, you’ve gotta deal.’ Then it became normal practice. Everyone now does that. Peter Grant started it. If you’ve gotta band you are trying to break, you give ‘em 50/50. The promoter has got to try and fill the venue with people who don’t really wanna come. That’s promoting. So they deserve every penny. But when you just have to whisper ‘Led Zeppelin’ and it’s sold out in an hour, well you don’t need to promote. Even at 10%, if they took a million dollars at the box office, they’ve got a hundred thousand bucks for doing absolutely nothing! All they have to do is announce on the local radio that Led Zeppelin will be playing at the Cow Palace on May 14. An hour later, every ticket is sold.
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�Did Peter need to act tough? Well every now and then some guy would come up with a gun and wanna shoot him. ‘So fucking shoot me then. Go on!’ He used to front them out. Peter Grant was good at that. ‘Go on. Shoot me. If you’re not gonna shoot me, put the fucking thing away.’ That happened quite often. I remember being backstage and a guy pulled a gun on us and we started to laugh. It’s laughable really, like playing cowboys and Indians. But the people who did all this stuff, we knew wouldn’t really shoot us. But the ones who really would do it, wouldn’t get an argument. Fortunately the guys who were into promoting rock concerts – they weren’t gangsters. Record companies? Strike a hard deal but don’t fuck around with them. Some of them are connected.”
Most can recall that many record companies in America had their origins in the jukebox business, which began in the Forties. “The Mob ran the jukeboxes,” he says. “They’d go into a place and say, ‘You don’t want a jukebox? You’re having one.’ They’d put them in all the cafés and bars and then they’d say, ‘We’re putting in all these juke boxes, why don’t we own the records as well?’ So they started record companies and that’s why they are all so gangster-ish.
“When I first went to America in the early Sixties, the heads of the record companies were all tough guys like Morris Levy who owned Roulette Records. He was one of the first people I went to see in New York with my three records. I went to see all the record companies and couldn’t get a deal with any of them. I went to Philadelphia and Los Angeles and I couldn’t get them released. They weren’t interested.
“Eventually I got them released and they all went to number one. So that shows you what they knew. The records were by The Animals, The Nashville Teens* and Herman’s Hermits. They were the three records I took to America in 1964. I wasn’t asking for any big money. ‘Just put ‘em out!’ They couldn’t see it at all. I wasn’t impressed because I realised they didn’t know. The Beatles were only just breaking, they weren’t up to speed. I was just surprised they didn’t know.
“In Peter’s case, even as the manager of a big rock group, there are areas you don’t go wandering down. It’s a difficult thing and you don’t need it. There are some serious people in the music business, especially now in rap music. That’s a whole new phase. Now they really kill each other. You wouldn’t want to fuck around with them. At least, I wouldn’t! There’s money in music and where there’s money there’s crime.”
In planning his battle front strategy, Grant wasn’t a one-man army. He had his able-bodied assistant Richard Cole who had now been joined by another likely lad, Clive Coulson. He could certainly rely on Richard to sort out difficult people and situations on his behalf. After working with Grant on The New Vaudeville Band and The New Yardbirds, Cole was back in the fold just in time for Zeppelin’s early tours of America, but even he was daunted by the job in hand. The logistics were alarming and the pressures enormous. The band had to be ready to cover vast distances in short spaces of time. You didn’t miss a gig because that would have meant having to apologise – and Peter Grant was never one for saying sorry.
Road crews had to be marshalled; equipment set up and taken down and shipped out each night. He had to ensure the band’s security and travel arrangements and get everyone from gig to hotel and on to the next city. He was rough and tough but everyone agreed, Richard was the man for the job. And he took pride in his work on behalf of ‘G’ – his ultimate boss.
“Peter had a master plan and he did a lot of smart things,” says Cole. “Zeppelin was moving so fast I had to come up with ideas for him and virtually design how touring was done. That’s when we decided to hire a private jet and base ourselves in one city, stay in one hotel and just fly in and out. We were the first British band to bring our own gear to America. Most people used to rent and you never got what you wanted. When our bands started using Marshall equipment, Marshall hadn’t even arrived in America. So we brought in everything ourselves.”
As well as blitzing the States with gigs, the band understood the importance of US radio. “In those days it was primarily AM radio and FM had only just come out,” says Cole. “So they could play the whole of Zep’s first album on FM. That’s why Peter didn’t want to release singles, so people would have to buy the album. We did one or two television shows, but because the sound was so bad, we would never do anymore TV shows after that. Peter said if you wanted to see the boys, you had to go to a concert. He had a lot of shrewd ideas, believe me.”
Bill Harry confirms the view of Grant as a mover and shaker in the burgeoning rock business. “Promoters had always ripped off artists for years. Peter changed all that. He had the vision. Just as The Beatles changed the face of pop music, so Led Zeppelin made many innovations. Peter really looked after the band and made sure they weren’t fiddled or screwed. He went out of his way to get the highest percentage from the gate and he was a tough negotiator.”
During the first year of heavy US touring Led Zeppelin’s fees continued to rise dramatically. When they first played at the Kinetic Playground in Chicago on February 7 and 8, 1969, they earned $7,500. When they returned to the same venue on May 23/24 of the same year they were getting $12,500 a night. Jimmy Page enthused about his manager’s negotiating skills in a 1969 interview. “The new system is to put groups on a percentage of the gate money and we drew $37,000 from one amazing gig in Los Angeles.”
By the middle of 1969, less than a year after Led Zeppelin were formed, Grant knew he could guarantee to sell out any venue, and so he was able to impose his ‘take it or leave it’ deal for the promoters. After Zeppelin got 90 per cent of the gross, the promoter was left to pay his expenses and take a profit out of the remaining ten per cent.
Peter rationalised the new arrangements: “The days of the promoter giving a few quid to the group against the money taken on the door are gone. Managers, agents and promoters ran the business when the funny thing is it’s the groups who bring the people in. I thought the musicians should be the people who get the wages. We take the risks. We pay the rent of the hall, we pay the local supporting groups and we pay the promoter to set it up for us. That’s the way big names are made these days. Not by the press, but by people seeing them and making up their own minds.”
Grant’s much vaunted philosophy and his attitude towards management policy was, he claimed, based on ‘handshakes and trust’ rather than highly detailed contracts. He saw Zeppelin as a kind of personal crusade. As he once explained: “A manager needs real enthusiasm; belief in the band, their music and the people. You can’t just think, ‘This is great, I can make X amount of money.’” Whatever his behaviour in situations that called for strong-arm tactics, he saw himself as a man of principle in a sea of sharks.
Observed Ahmet Ertegun: “Peter put his artists on a pedestal. Their word, their wish, their music, that was the most important thing in his life.”
Grant: “In the old days everybody thought the artist worked for the manager. In America they’d say: ‘Oh, so and so owns those people.’ You don’t own artists. They hire you and give you a percentage of their money to do your very best for them.”
Matching his policy of obtaining the best deals was his determination to avoid old-fashioned methods of promotion. Refusing to allow Zeppelin’s Atlantic Records to release singles could be compared – in the current era – to refusing to co-operate with MTV; in other words commercial suicide. Explained Peter: “The reason we decided not to put singles out was because of that trip you had to go through. It was also such an El Greaso job! You had to go and wine and dine all these people and all that crap and they weren’t even keen on anything that didn’t sound poppy. I think Led Zeppelin failed their audition.
“As long as the people wanted to see you, you were all right, and that’s the way it should be. If musicians are talented, why should they have to do a grease job on the media?”
In October 1969 Led Zeppelin’s second album was released with advance orders of over 400,000. The fact that it was called simply Led Zeppelin
II, and not some clever title, further reflected Grant’s basic approach to everything surrounding the band. It leapt straight to number two in the UK album charts and before long was topping the LP charts in both the US and UK.
The first album had already gone gold and both eventually achieved platinum status. The following month Peter appeared to have bowed to commercial pressure when the album’s standout track ‘Whole Lotta Love’ was released as a single by Atlantic, albeit only in the States. It was an edited version, cut by two minutes to make it suitable for US radio play. It got to number four in the Billboard chart in January 1970.
It would have been logical to put the single out in England but Peter and the band had other ideas, enforcing their ‘no singles’ policy, at least at home, where they had more control over Atlantic. Phil Carson was in charge of the London office and had already made plans to release ‘Whole Lotta Love’ in the UK. Then he got a phone call from Peter Grant. “‘Ere Phil, it’s Peter here. What the bloody ‘ell do you think you’re doing …’
Speaking to Carson with a directness that left no room for discussion, Grant emphasised that ‘no way’ did they want a single out. He advised Carson to check with Ahmet Ertegun in New York. The agreement with Atlantic stipulated he had the right to say whether singles could be released or not. Those singles that had already been pressed had to be swiftly recalled and destroyed.
Recalled Peter Grant years later: “That was down to Phil Carson. He came to the office and told me he had pressed five hundred copies and they had been shipped to Manchester. I said, ‘Look – we don’t do singles.’ He was a bit pushy in those days. I said, ‘Have you told Ahmet?’ He promptly called him and there were red faces all round. Our contract clearly stated we had the last say on such decisions.”
