Peter Grant: The Man Who Led Zeppelin

by Chris Welch

  Peter in the mid-Seventies, at the height of his career as the manager of Led Zeppelin. (Bob Gruen/Star File)

  The Rock And Roll Years: four of the Fifties acts that Peter Grant shepherded around the UK during the late Fifties and early Sixties, clockwise from top left: Gene Vincent, Little Richard, Chuck Berry andThe Everly Brothers. (Harry Goodwin)

  Peter Grant’s first management clients, The New Vaudeville Band, with trumpet player and leader Bob Kerr, front row centre. (Harry Goodwin)

  The Nashville Teens, whom Peter Grant worked briefly before he became involved with The Yardbirds. (Harry Goodwin)

  Mickie Most, Peter Grant’s friend and one-time business partner. (Dezo Hoffman/Rex)

  The Yardbirds in 1966, left to right: Jeff Beck, Chris Dreja, Jim McCarty, Keith Relf and Jimmy Page. (Dezo Hoffman/Rex)

  The Great Enterprise: Led Zeppelin, in 1969, at the start of their career; clockwise, from top left: Jimmy, Robert, Bonzo and John Paul. (Dick Barnatt/Redferns)

  Peter Grant and Led Zeppelin accept gold discs for their debut album from Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler. (©Popsie/Chris Welch Collection)

  Peter with Bonzo, Jimmy and Robert at the Melody Maker Poll Awards in the Savoy Hotel, London, September 1970. (Tom Hanley/Redferns)

  Peter on board the Starship, Led Zeppelin’s private airliner, with Jimmy (top) and Robert (bottom). (Neil Preston/Corbis)

  Peter with the gold single for ‘Whole Lotta Love’, the first of six hit singles Led Zeppelin released in America, though no singles were ever released in the UK. (PA Photos)

  These were not arguments that appealed to Peter Grant when Led Zeppelin, now famed for their live shows, became prime targets for live bootleggers. In fact he was so outraged he took personal steps to prevent bootlegging whenever and wherever he could. His anger was comparable to the reaction of Metallica, whose music was copied and sold over the Internet by the Napster website in the year 2000. The thrash metal band took legal action. It’s difficult to imagine quite how Peter Grant would have dealt with the new MP3 technology, but back in the early Seventies he tended to resort to traditional, old-fashioned, strong-arm methods. One notable confrontation occurred when a film crew tried to tape his band’s performance at the 1970 Bath Festival without permission.

  Said Peter: “Some people were trying to videotape the Bath Festival and they’d already been told beforehand they couldn’t, so I had no qualms about throwing a bucket of water on to the tape machine which blew the whole lot up. Whoosh! It made a horrible smell and then it melted.”

  Grant knew that firm action had a two-fold effect. Firstly it nipped rip-off artists in the bud and secondly it reinforced his image as a fearless enforcer. “I don’t believe in pussyfooting around,” he said. “That’s what the band hired me for. But as a supposed archetypal ‘heavy’ – most of these incidents have been on the spot situations, not the result of me sitting in an office and hiring a crew of heavies to go round. Let me put it this way. I would step on anyone who fucked around with my band – personally. I would never send in a heavy, I’d deal with it myself, just as I would go to any lengths to get the band the money they were due.”

  He was as good as his word. On the evening of September 4, 1970, Led Zeppelin performed a blinder of a show at the Los Angeles Forum which was taped by a member of the audience. There was something about the California sun, or the women who tanned themselves beneath it, that seemed to inspire Led Zeppelin to great things, and Los Angeles in particular would become their spiritual home-from-home. This particular LA show closed with a full-tilt rendering of Fats Domino’s ‘Blueberry Hill’ which provided the title for the ensuing bootleg release, initially issued on the mysterious Blimp label as Live On Blueberry Hill. Within a few weeks of the show, this double LP would be sold from a small record shop at the top end of Chancery Lane, near High Holborn in London.

  “This was a well-known bootleg outlet,” says Chris Charlesworth, then Melody Maker’s news editor. “I got several boots there, Beatles, Stones, Who, and the man who ran it told me about the upcoming Zeppelin release. I knew it would make a good story for the paper.” Charlesworth told MM editor Ray Coleman of the forthcoming Zeppelin bootleg and the story became the front-page lead in the following week’s issue. “LED ZEP DOUBLE LIVE ALBUM DUE” MM informed its readers in bold type.

  Peter Grant was not amused. He lost no time in assembling a small posse and paid a visit to the shop in Chancery Lane where he confronted the proprietor with a broom handle. Mickie Most and Richard Cole accompanied him on the trip. It was Cole’s proud boast that he had ‘connections’ and if ever he needed any help, he just had to make a phone call to summon the required number of heavies to sort out a spot of bother. “I knew more people than Peter, but most of the time Peter and I could take care of it ourselves anyway. I remember we went to visit this bootlegger and gave him a couple of whacks with a broom handle and took all the stuff out of the shop.”

  “We did ‘confiscate’ some merchandise,” Peter later confirmed, showing a mastery of understatement. During the confrontation he had implied that he was from Polydor Records who at that time distributed Atlantic in the UK. The proprietor evidently believed him.

  “I heard they arrived just before closing time and waited until they were the only people in the shop,” says Charlesworth. “Then Cole put the ‘closed’ sign on the door while Peter took an axe to the pile of Zep albums. I think he even chopped up a few Beatles bootlegs too, as a favour to them.”

  Interestingly, Grant and Cole had another accomplice that day: Peter’s mild-mannered business partner Mickie Most. “All I had to do was stand on the sidelines, watching,” he says. “I was the man of reason and Peter was the man of no reason! It was a nice combination. I remember that record shop. It was around the corner from our office and they were pirating Zeppelin. We got to hear about it so Peter and I went round and said, ‘Have you got the Led Zeppelin album?’ And the guy said, ‘I can make you a tape for half price.’ Peter got hold of this fellow and threw him against the wall, went behind the counter and smashed up the tape-copying machine.”

  Said Peter: “The funny thing was the guy rang me up the next day and said Polydor had sent these people down and it was disgusting how they’d treated him; he’d been terrified. He said one of the men had a beard, was six foot three, weighed 18 stone and he was really vicious. ‘It just shows you what the record industry is coming to,’ I said. He didn’t know it was me who had come to the shop, so I told him: ‘I think that’s really disgusting of Polydor.’ And he said, ‘I knew you wouldn’t approve.’ The next day he rang back and said: ‘Oh all right. I know you’ve made a fool of me.’ ‘Well we did have a laugh,’ I said, ‘because we tape recorded you on the phone!’ We hadn’t. But it was a good parting shot.”

  Peter had absolutely no qualms about his rough treatment of the record dealer. “Quite honestly it was a con on the kids because the albums they were selling were really crappy,” he insisted. “They wore out quickly and they were charging £6 each. It was a liberty and when I found out where the source was I simply decided to go and do something about it myself.”

  It didn’t matter what country Grant and the band were visiting. They’d cheerfully take the law into their own hands anywhere where they felt the code of Zeppelin was being transgressed. They didn’t buy the ‘free music for the people’ ethos that was postulated by the likes of the Edgar Broughton Band either.

  As leading lights in the hippie movement Edgar’s trio had campaigned for a wider policy of free concerts, which was in keeping with the political theme of their material. They appeared at the first free concert in London’s Hyde Park on June 7, 1969, which was headlined by Blind Faith, making their UK début, and was attended by over 100,000 fans. More than that turned up to watch The Rolling Stones a month later when their free Hyde Park show turned into a wake for Brian Jones. Free shows might have worked for the occasional supergroup in need of a publicity boost but it wasn’t a practical way to
run the music business. Nor were free concerts ever on Peter Grant’s agenda for Led Zeppelin.

  Many of the calls for ‘free music’ came from the continent, especially Germany where students felt increasingly obliged to create trouble at big rock gigs. When Led Zeppelin visited Germany in July 1970, Peter again took direct action against bootleggers. On this occasion he experienced a predictable backlash from those German youths who took the latest hippie slogans rather too literally, as was their wont in an era when hippie idealism seemed completely at odds with their aggressive tactics.

  The four-day trip took place shortly after the Bath Festival and included concerts in Cologne (9), Essen (10), Frankfurt (11) and Berlin (12) and was regarded as a ‘warm up’ for their sixth US tour due to start in August. The author travelled with the touring party and saw both Zeppelin and Grant in action at first hand. Each night the band would try to relax in their dressing rooms before a show, betraying nerves and even a degree of stage fright. It was no joke facing thousands of baying Germans, some bent on causing mayhem, who waited in the darkness of the vast sports halls.

  On the first night in Cologne Led Zeppelin played well but were distracted by the behaviour of the audience. There were only 4,000 fans inside the Sporthalle instead of the 7,000 they had expected – but outside over 1,000 politically motivated youths had gathered to demand free admission. When the mob was refused entry they took to smashing windows, causing DM4,000 worth of damage. It was the kind of riot situation that rock bands frequently endured during the turbulent early Seventies. In extreme circumstances even Peter Grant softened his approach if he thought the fans were getting a raw deal at such massive events. When Zeppelin played at the Montreux Jazz Festival for Swiss promoter Claude Nobs many were unable to get in to see them. In a welcome, albeit uncommon, gesture of altruism, Grant arranged for the fans outside to hear, if not see, the show. “It was so packed I had the idea of feeding the sound outside onto the lawn where loads of fans who couldn’t get in had congregated,” he said. “Claude loved that.”

  Back in Cologne, the German promoter, Fritz Rau, was visibly shaken and took the writer on a tour of the damage. He explained that after 9 p.m. they let in the fans although 1,500 refused to buy tickets even when they were reduced from 12 marks to six. “They think all concerts should be free,” he said. Rau explained that Edgar Broughton had evidently stirred things up on a recent German visit by proclaiming that all music should be performed free of charge. It was a nice idea, although Edgar failed to suggest how touring bands that played for free would eat, or pay their crew, air fares and hotel bills.

  Meanwhile, in the dressing room at Cologne, the head of security was explaining how they controlled the crowds to a bewildered and somewhat distressed Robert Plant.

  “The police use sheep dogs instead of sticks,” he said.

  “But the kids don’t come for trouble surely?” said Robert, betraying a modicum of sympathy for the fans that was in keeping with his own philosophy but wasn’t altogether shared by the security man.

  “Yes, and we use the sheep dogs!”

  When it was time for Led Zeppelin to go on there were whoops, screams and firecrackers. “Christians to the lions,” observed Jimmy Page sagely, aware that Zeppelin’s set at the time included an acoustic interlude. “Shut up you noisy buggers!” said John Bonham as he headed for his drum kit to play the pounding intro to ‘Immigrant Song’. These shows were like prize fights in a boxing ring. To achieve some sort of control over the crowd, the band had first to win them over with their music. It was a tall order that certainly sorted out the men from the boys in rock’s premier league. Each show was an exhausting two-hour marathon, and at some the Zeppelin magic worked better than at others. Often they had to abandon the acoustic numbers. Exasperated, Robert would say: “If you are going to make a noise, we might as well go away – so shut up!” When he scolded them like children, the Germans and Americans in the audience gave affectionate, ironic cheers. The music usually won them over. There was no band more likely to convert a distracted, unpredictable audience than Zeppelin at their heaviest.

  Between train trips, flights and hotel stopovers, Grant’s men would indulge, not in the wild anarchy for which they later became infamous, but in quiet, civilised pursuits. Peter Grant liked to go hunting for antiques, accompanied by Jimmy Page, and the pair would spend their afternoons happily rummaging around in flea markets. Nobody bothered them. They looked like father and son on an outing. Peter was quite an authority on art nouveau and Jimmy liked to buy odd items of furniture, which he insisted on carrying onto airliners as hand luggage. They boarded one Pan Am Boeing 737 ‘City Jet’ accompanied by a table and a mirror which had special seats booked for them under the name of ‘Mr Carson’.

  Zeppelin took delight in sending bills to the head of Atlantic in London, or cheerfully advising headwaiters in restaurants that ‘Mr Carson will pay’. Mr Carson frequently had to disabuse people of this notion. One night in London’s Speakeasy Club they even set fire to the pile of cash Phil had tendered to pay their bill.

  When Zeppelin arrived in West Berlin on July 12 they visited the Berlin Wall, which was still standing and something of a tourist attraction, at least on the Western side. Young Robert Plant was shocked when he discovered that Berlin was entirely surrounded by Soviet held territory. Peter Grant climbed up a viewing tower and glared over the wall like a Mongol warrior. A few years later the entire Soviet empire collapsed.

  The evening’s show was at the Deutschland Halle and before the lights went down Peter wandered out into the crowds milling around the stage, working his way around the perimeter on the lookout for pirate recording activity. Not surprisingly, there were blatant attempts to record the concert being made by organised professionals armed with stereo tape recorders and microphones on boom stands. Several disgruntled ‘engineers’ set up in front of the stage soon found their tapes being unceremoniously confiscated.

  Peter ripped one tape spool from a machine and began tearing it up. His hands full of mangled tape, his eyes glowering in fury, he began bumping the bootlegger away with his stomach, demonstrating a fascinating and effective offensive technique that he could only have learnt from his days as a wrestler. Even if the pirate had wanted to hit Grant, he couldn’t have reached him beyond that huge and apparently ironclad belly. Indeed, Peter looked more like a buccaneer himself, with his shiny earrings, black beard and fierce demeanour.

  The German was outraged that this manic Englishman was disrupting his private enterprise. He rushed off to find help and brought back a uniformed policeman armed with a stick and a gun in his holster. “Arrest that man!” he yelled into the policeman’s ear. Peter glared at them both without saying a word. The policeman blanched and retreated, shaking his head. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with an ogre who looked like the biggest load of trouble since the Battle of The Bulge. The thwarted bootlegger was beside himself with frustration. Such incidents explained the warning notices that would appear on concert tickets in the future – “No recording apparatus of any kind may be brought into the auditorium.”*

  Peter would continue to wage his one-man war for as long as he managed Led Zeppelin. Many thought he was behaving like a dog in the manger or being overprotective, but Peter knew from his experience at the shop in Chancery Lane that this was not just a few fans trying to tape their favourite band so they could replay the concert at home. This was a concerted effort by local villains to make money out of Led Zeppelin, the act he managed and was therefore charged to defend against exploitation. Some unscrupulous pirates were even demanding the band’s autographs and selling them on to real fans, or producing their own crude programmes and T-shirts.

  He could have ignored these activities, but in his heart Grant regarded it as a dead liberty. So it wasn’t surprising to hear that he launched into a man wearing headphones that he spotted beside the stage during a concert in Vancouver, Canada, the following year. Peter saw him sitting down, twiddling the dials on a l
arge piece of apparatus equipped with an aerial. Since the guy refused to identify himself and Grant thought the hall’s official stewards weren’t being sufficiently forceful in their investigations, he snatched up the mysterious black box himself and dropped it on the floor, smashing it to smithereens.

  It turned out the secretive man was an official from the local branch of the Noise Abatement Society who promptly swore out a warrant for Grant’s arrest. In the end, just like on TV, the Canadian Mounties came to the rescue, explaining to the noise buster that it was far from wise to mess with the man in charge of the world’s loudest rock group.*