Peter Grant: The Man Who Led Zeppelin

by Chris Welch

  “The businessman was taken away in handcuffs and the FBI men were very nice to us. They wanted to know if we’d press charges but Peter told them just to let the guy sleep it off. Then as we went to collect our luggage the guy in handcuffs appears again and shouts, ‘Have a nice day!’ We all turn round, give him the finger and shout, ‘You have a nice day too!’ Peter wouldn’t have done anything on the plane because he knew how serious and dangerous it could have been. He just gave him ‘the look’. I was a bit frightened but Peter sure kept his cool.”

  Despite her respect and affection for Grant, Maggie still felt let down after she came home from America to a deathly silence. “It all went quiet. Nothing! I’d phone Peter and go down to his office and say, ‘What am I going to do?’ But he kept saying he had to find the right producer for me and time went by without much happening and he kind of lost the plot with me. He spent most of his time with Bad Company and Led Zeppelin. But then I never had a contract with him, only with Atlantic. I was on Swan Song too and we tried a couple of recordings with Dave Edmunds but the material wasn’t right. Mark London got married and he left the company so it went quiet for me. But we stayed in touch. It was 15 years ago when I was living in Spain that I got a brown envelope in the post and there was this book with a picture of a motorcyclist on the front. I opened it up and there was a letter inside from Peter. It said, ‘Here Mags, what do you think of the way I’ve lost weight – trying my best. I feel like a new person. Hope we can meet up soon.’ It turned out the boys had bought him a big motorcycle and that was him on the cover. I never even recognised him, he had lost so much weight. He then used to ring me up at one o’clock in the morning and apologise for what had happened to me at Swan Song and how he’d never had any time for me. What could I say?”

  Swan Song got off to a terrific start with their first release. Bad Company’s début album topped the US charts and the single ‘Can’t Get Enough’ was also a hit in both the UK and the States. Peter had helped put the new band together, went to their early rehearsals and accompanied them on their US tours. “I stood outside the hall, as I always did and just listened,” he said of his initial introduction to the band. “Now I don’t ever pretend to have the greatest pair of ears in the world but I heard them play ‘Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love’ and I just knew they had what it took. Paul Rodgers, though, was probably the most difficult person I ever had to work with. He would always get himself into trouble and I’d have to pull him out.”

  Peter Clifton remembers a meeting with Paul Rodgers at this time that was besieged by visitors. “I was still in the middle of post production on the Led Zeppelin film when Peter Grant wanted me to interview Paul, who had just signed to Swan Song. When he turned up at my home studio it was in the early afternoon and I was busy editing, So I plonked him into my office and put on a film projector to show him some of my favourite clips. As the screening was about to start there was a banging on the door. An outlaw friend of mine from Australia called Jimbo had turned up looking for some action. I told him to wait for me upstairs. Again I started the screening and there was another knock at the door. Tony Secunda walked in. He looked after Procol Harum and now wanted me to launch his new band Motorhead. I asked him to wait upstairs with Jimbo and get into a bit of mischief while I finished the screening for Paul. In the middle of this, Peter Grant arrived with his cocker spaniel dog. I didn’t hear him arrive but my assistant told him we were inside the screening room, but he couldn’t come in as the door was locked.

  “The dog started barking and Peter banged on the door with his huge fists shouting, ‘Open up, open up it’s the police!’ Now Tony Secunda was a very paranoid guy and he and Jimbo were busy chopping lines. They grabbed Jimbo’s huge bag of cocaine and poured it down the garbage disposal unit. By the time I got upstairs their faces were as white as sheets. When they saw it was a wind-up they began scraping the last of the coke off the blades of the garbage disposal. I wasn’t in anybody’s good books after that.”

  While Peter was busy launching Bad Company and overseeing the first British Swan Song release, The Pretty Thing’s album Silk Torpedo, Led Zeppelin was off the road, which gave him breathing space. Meanwhile he kept an eye on developments at the King’s Road office. Richard Cole was not impressed by the new venture. “I don’t think Peter regretted starting Swan Song, although in my personal opinion it was a waste of time, if only for the simple reason that when you’ve got five people owning a record company, they could never decide between them what they wanted to sign,” he says. “It was good they signed Bad Company to the label. That was a sure-fire winner. But they only ever signed two other bands, The Pretty Things and Dave Edmunds. I don’t know how The Pretty Things got signed. It was just something from their old hippie days. And Dave Edmunds was a great rockabilly musician. Of course Maggie Bell was signed because Peter managed her. They also signed Michael Des Barres’ band Detective. But the whole business was a nightmare. The office in King’s Road had no furniture and there was never anyone there.”

  The first man appointed by Peter to run Swan Song in the UK was Abe Hock, a record promotion man from Los Angeles. “He lasted five minutes,” says Cole. “It was difficult to get the five of the band down there to a meeting to make a decision or do anything. It never seemed to happen. That was all they signed in three years and once John Bonham died the whole lot dissipated.”

  Alan Callan, a former musician and a friend of Jimmy Page, succeeded Abe Hock. “I got to meet Peter and Jimmy in about 1968,” he says. “When I first met Jimmy we were both quite young and Zeppelin was just being formed. People have sometimes described me as their tour manager or business manager, but I wasn’t good enough to be their business manager. They asked me to do a very specific job, which was to do with the record label. Jimmy phoned me and asked me to work for them and it was a great job.”

  Alan travelled extensively with Zep and got to see Peter Grant exercising his authority in his own inimitable way. “I did four tours with the band. It sounds like Vietnam, doesn’t it? I should have got a Purple Heart! I remember once when a senior member of their road crew was misbehaving. Peter got hold of this guy and showed him a ticket. He said, ‘What does it say on this ticket? It says on the ticket, Led Zeppelin. And how much is it worth?’ The guy says, ‘Ten pounds Peter.’ Says Peter: ‘Does it have your name on it? No? Well just remember, nobody is coming to pay ten pounds to watch you and they certainly wouldn’t pay ten pounds to watch me. Right? So cool down, get things into perspective and behave properly.’

  “Everybody did some very extreme things in those days. Led Zeppelin were like four medieval princes cavorting across Europe, indulging in their every whim. All this stuff about Zeppelin – if you see it from the inside it all seems different. That was an incredibly honest and open view that Peter had about the band. I learnt a lot of things about him when I was on tour with them.”

  Callan soon discovered the source of Zeppelin’s ‘wild men of rock’ image – it was to do with insurance policies. “When you are in America and you’re going to play in front of half a million people and you are the centre of a huge industry that’s worth a $100,000,000, everybody needs insurance. The insurance companies say, ‘Okay, we’ll cover this tour provided you have guards outside every hotel and dressing room door, and you have police escorts on your cars to and from the gigs.’ Eventually what happens is you isolate the musicians from the rest of the world. You stop them interacting, even amongst themselves. They can’t knock on each other’s hotel room door and say, ‘Fancy a walk down the street and getting a pair of jeans?’ If one of them is injured then the tour is cancelled and everyone has to get their money back. That’s why the insurance companies started imposing conditions. So when the band went on the road they’d find themselves being locked into hotel rooms for months on end. This is where the room trashing came from, which led to that famous story about Peter Grant and the hotel manager.”

  Peter told the oft-repeated story himself: “We w
ere in the Midwest and I said something to the hotel manager about the fact that it must be tough to have all the rock groups in there throwing furniture and TVs out the windows. He said they had something worse once and that was the Young Methodists Convention. Apparently they threw the carpets and everything out and the guy went into this rap saying, ‘It’s all right for you guys, throwing all your things out, but how do you think I feel?’ So I said, ‘You’d really like to do that too, wouldn’t you?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I’d love to do that.’ So I said, ‘Well, have one on us. I’ll treat you. Do whatever you want.’ And he went around and threw all the furniture out the windows and I went down to the desk and paid the bill, which was $490.”

  The famous motorcades, which seemed such an extravagance, were also part of the requirements of the insurance companies, as Alan explains: “People thought that when Led Zeppelin had six limousines and police motorcycle outriders that they were just being flash. What they didn’t understand is that the insurance companies wouldn’t let them all travel in the same car together. It was all done for a purpose. I remember being at one of their big shows at Madison Square Garden. I watched the show from the edge of the stage and then walked up the sound tower or the mixing desk and it was absolutely fantastic. One evening for some reason I had to go back to the hotel for a meeting. So I came down the tower, walked through the crowds and found the band’s convoy of limos all waiting to go. I just went up to one of the cars and asked the driver if he could take me back to the hotel. He said, ‘No problem, get in.’ So I got in the front of the limousine and the big gates of Madison Square Garden swung open and off we went. The police outriders thought this was the signal that everybody was going. So the police bikes roar out and all the other limousines follow me. I’m now taking the entire motorcade back to the hotel for my meeting. I’m thinking, ‘Oh no, G is gonna kill me!’ The band were going to come off stage and there’d be nothing waiting for them. So I get to the hotel and I’m saying, ‘You’ve all gotta go back!’ And the police are saying, ‘Waal, we’ve only been booked for one journey.’ And I’m saying, ‘No, this is terrible, you’ve gotta go back!’

  “Peter found out and gave me a hard time. But he played all kinds of pranks on people, including me. I went to see them at one of their very early shows at the Royal Albert Hall in 1969, before I joined them. I’d bumped into Jimmy Page at Sloane Square and he told me to go to the stage door. He’d leave my name on the door and I could see the show. I thought there would be a support act and so I turned up at 8.30 pm. Of course they were the only act and had been on since 7.30 pm. I turn up banging on the stage door and I hear a voice saying, ‘What the fuck do you want?’

  “I’ve been invited to see the show.”

  “Oh yeah, what’s your fucking name?”

  ” ‘It’s Alan Callan.’ This was my first encounter with Richard Cole. He opened the door and he said, ‘Peter and Jimmy are livid with you. They were waiting for you before the show and you never turned up. Peter is screaming, ‘Where the fuck is he?’ and Jimmy is furious you let him down. He’s a mate of yours and you should have been here! Go up there, through those fucking doors and sit down!’ I started walking up this corridor and they’re all shouting at me and I’m absolutely petrified. I open this door and I’m on the stage. Jimmy comes over and says, ‘What are you doing out here? Go and sit by Jonesy’s bass bins!’ So I sat on the side of the stage for the whole show and the place is going crazy. And afterwards in the dressing room Peter Grant is going, ‘Ha, ha, ha – that’ll teach yer!’”

  Alan Callan saw Peter Grant in many moods and situations but insists: “What Peter most enjoyed in life was watching the artists he worked with becoming successful. Peter always wanted to create the perfect stage for the perfect performance. He wanted to take care of everything in their lives and he was an extraordinary man. There was a time when he wanted Mel Bush to be Zeppelin’s promoter in the UK and Mel said, ‘When do I get the contract?’ Peter just stuck his hand out. That was the deal! Peter had this huge reputation for being intimidating. People quaked in their boots in his presence. But he had to use all the tools at his command and whatever circumstances demanded. In America he encountered lots of people who thought they were very tough and Peter’s attitude was they weren’t very tough.”

  Callan insists that in all the years he knew Peter he never saw him physically assault anybody. “He drew a consistent line in his relationships. People would say to him, ‘I hear I’ve upset you,’ and he’d say, ‘Don’t you think if you had upset me, you would have heard about it by now?’ He once told me a wonderful story that he’d gone to the hospital because his hand was hurting and he was concerned that he had arthritis. So the doctor said to him, ‘Mr Grant, do you use your hand in your work a lot?’ ‘No but I do a lot of this,’ he said and prodded the doctor in the chest. Only Peter would talk to a doctor like that.”

  Alan didn’t quake but he was certainly stunned when he was invited by Mr Grant to work at his behest. “They’d already set up Swan Song when I came along. First they had somebody from Warners, who ran it very briefly. Then they had B.P. Fallon their publicist as their A&R man – briefly again. Then they got Abe Hock from Motown who ran it for six months. Then one day I got this phone call from Jimmy who said, ‘I’d really like someone we know on the inside. Call Peter and discuss what it’s all about.’ So I called Peter and he asked me to the office. We just talked and laughed about stuff and then he suddenly said, ‘Okay, Jimmy and me and the boys have decided we want you to run the record label for us.’ I remember thinking, ‘God, this is amazing!’

  “He asked me how much money I wanted, so I told him and he said, ‘I think that’s too much.’ So I said, ‘What do you think’s fair?’ He said a figure and I said, ‘Why don’t we split the difference.’ And he said, ‘Okay, right, let’s go.’ I then said, ‘Well, when do you want me to start?’ He said, ‘Well, you’ve been here an hour. That’ll do.’ I actually started about two months before they were due to go on tour and he took me straight from his office down to Manticore where the band were rehearsing.”

  Manticore was formerly a cinema – and is now a supermarket – in Fulham. The Beatles had once rented it and it was now owned by Emerson, Lake & Palmer, who’d christened it Manticore after their own label, as their headquarters. Led Zeppelin also found it a useful place to rehearse, as it was nearer than Shepperton.

  Callan: “Peter once said that the perfect office was any building with two staircases. That was so if somebody really boring was coming up the stairs, he could leave by the other staircase! I worked on three projects for Swan Song, none of which came to fruition. I wanted to sign Vangelis, and John Lennon and I wanted to make an album with Maggie Bell. My view of Swan Song was that it was uniquely positioned in that whilst other artists had set up record companies, the artists’ own flow of income was mainly responsible for the outcome of that label. With Swan Song that was not the case. Atlantic were perfectly happy for the label to become a successful label in its own right and take the risks. I remember Ahmet Ertegun saying to me, ‘Alan, if you’d signed a guy who shook matches and sung I’d be happy to pay the bill.’ My original approach was to go out looking at bands, but I thought I’d have to be careful. We’d brought on Bad Company and Dave Edmunds, who were going to be successful, but we were going to struggle with The Pretty Things and we’d got Maggie Bell who hadn’t done anything in four years.

  “If we signed somebody completely new it would be perceived by everybody as somebody so far down the food chain it would never happen. So I thought the greatest statement Led Zeppelin could make about their label was to demonstrate that this was going to be a major record label and not just a vanity label. So I talked to Peter and said there were three artists that needed attention that we might get going. They were Vangelis, Lennon and Maggie. John Lennon was then living in New York and everyone was wondering if he’d ever make a record again. So Peter and I spent days at Peter’s house sending messages to Jo
hn Lennon, trying to get him to come back. We were trying to figure out a way to create something for him. In the end what happened was David Geffen just walked in and gave him a big fat cheque, and so we lost him to Geffen. Vangelis was with RCA and I thought his musical ability was fantastic and would be appreciated by the boys. It might have been a great meeting of minds.”

  It was frustrating for Callan that he couldn’t get these projects off the ground and he also experienced some problems with Dave Edmunds. “There was some resentment from Dave Edmunds’ management. It was like, ‘Why do I have to deal with Led Zeppelin to be successful?’ There was a kind of strange friction there. But Dave became successful and his talent was allowed to blossom. He was a studio man, producer, guitar player, writer, and arranger. I thought he was a great guy and yet he was conjured into this position where they thought they had to offend Swan Song in order to be successful. There was no need for that. Jimmy and Robert were committed to making sure his band was successful. Dave wasn’t arrogant but the people around him were. It was just due to insecurity. They felt – well, ‘I’m just as good as Peter Grant and Dave Edmunds is just as good as Led Zeppelin,’ which was not true!”

  Whenever business matters became ‘boring’ Peter was ready to forget the day’s agenda and entertain his friends with stories of the good old days. “Peter grew up in a show business era,” continues Callan. “It always amused me when he told me he was a stand-in for Robert Morley on Crackerjack.* I could never figure out what Robert Morley had to do with Crackerjack and why he would be the stand-in! His introduction to show business was really quite extraordinary. I remember him telling me about Gene Vincent and the time Gene was firing a gun in Brighton or somewhere and the police surrounded his house. A gun going off in Britain in the early Fifties was something else. Somehow Peter got to hear about this and rushed over to Gene Vincent’s house and charged up the front garden path while the police were shouting, ‘Come away from there Mr Grant, he’s gotta a gun!’ And G is banging on the door shouting, ‘Vincent, open this fucking door! What are you doing you stupid bastard!’ It turned out it was only a starting pistol. But nobody knew that at the time. There he was, with a bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand, a so-called gun in the other and the police thought Peter was a fantastic hero when he stormed up and disarmed him.”