Peter Grant: The Man Who Led Zeppelin

by Chris Welch

  Many were left wondering why Grant had found it necessary to employ John Bindon, a former TV actor, as a bodyguard. After all, Peter had managed his own security perfectly well for years with a glare and the butt of his stomach. The effect on Grant’s own prestige and image of his association with such a notorious thug was insidiously damaging. People who once rather admired the man with the patched elbows began to instinctively back away and avoid contact.

  John Bindon was the son of a merchant seaman who had fought his way up from the back streets of London. He was raised in a council flat in Fulham and left school at 15. He could barely read or write and spent time in Borstal, the young offenders institution. He also served 15 months of a two-year prison sentence for assault. Determined to ‘go straight’ he met British film director Ken Loach, who was looking for an actor to play a wife-beating thug. Bindon seemed perfect for the part and appeared in Loach’s 1967 movie Poor Cow with Carol White and Terence Stamp. He played Carol’s ‘swinish husband’ Tom, a petty thief who is sent to jail. More film roles followed. He played ‘Moody’ in the controversial Mick Jagger movie Performance, a gangster flick so realistically violent that it dismayed leading man James Fox. Bindon went on to appear as a drug dealer in Quadrophenia, the film based on The Who’s album of the same name, and was a tough guy in the TV cop series Softly Softly. Having tried to break away from the reality of a life of crime, Bindon found himself playing criminal roles in all his movies. Playing rugby for the London Springboks and – irony of ironies – the Law Society seemed a good way by which to burn off his natural aggression. It was said that he was particularly impressive when playing against the Metropolitan Police. He was even awarded a medal for bravery in 1968, when he rescued a man from drowning in the Thames.

  Bindon developed a reputation as a playboy and his good looks and physical strength made him especially appealing to women. He once met and was photographed with, Princess Margaret, while on holiday in Mustique. It did nothing for the Princess’s prestige, especially since at the time he was wearing a T-shirt bearing the legend ‘Enjoy Cocaine’. He also had affairs with the model Vicki Hodge and a Playboy publicity girl. In his case it seemed the lines between show business and the underworld were never so finely blurred.

  Peter Grant later tried to explain how and why he’d brought Bindon into the Zeppelin camp. “John Bindon was a friend of Richard Cole’s. I had decided I wasn’t going to do much clubbing and John was an aide who ended up looking after Jimmy quite a lot. He had once looked after Ryan O’Neal and looked after Tatum. He had a lot of good points. He took care of my situation and he took care of Jimmy.”

  The ‘good points’ were lost on Bill Graham as he pointed out in his book Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock And Out. It wasn’t until the publication of this book in 1992 that Graham told his side of the San Francisco story, a chilling and damning testimony, backed up by statements from his employees, including the injured Jim Matzorkis. In prefacing the episode Graham stressed how the band always drew an aggressive, all-male element* to their shows, but even so, he still liked their music. “They were a great rock’n’roll band,” he allowed. He recalled how they had worked their way up through the ranks and that he’d frequently put them on at the Fillmore East and West. He described their manager as, “A bull-necked man who wore huge satin shirts with ruffled collars.” He noted the denims specially made for an oversized man, the long stringy hair and scrubby beard and the silver jewellery and big rings on his fingers.

  Graham described how on the Friday afternoon before the two weekend shows Led Zeppelin’s tour manager had rung him and said, “We need some money.” It was late in the day but he would go to the bank and see what he could get. They were demanding a $25,000 advance on their earnings for the shows – in cash and up front. Graham knew they would make hundreds of thousands of dollars as both Oakland stadium shows were sold out, but he couldn’t understand why they needed money so urgently. He spent some hours going round the city getting the cash together, mainly in single dollar bills, which he carried in a large shopping bag and three shoe boxes. He went to the band’s hotel and walked past a security guard into their room where he saw and recognised a local drug dealer. “Then it hit me for the first time. This was drug money.” Graham said he felt like walking out and taking the money with him, but then he shrugged and realised it was their money and he had no right to withhold it, even if he strongly disapproved of their actions.

  On the following day, the Saturday, the band was late on stage. Although they were twenty minutes overdue, it was actually the earliest they had started any show on the tour. Graham confessed that he didn’t like what he had been hearing about Grant’s recent behaviour. “What I didn’t like about Zeppelin was that they came with force. I heard how they muscled promoters to get better deals and had shaken them down for money. And then what they had done with the money. I heard about the ugliness of their security, how they were just waiting to kill. They had these bodyguards who had police records in England. They were thugs.”

  Graham’s own road crew eyed up the ‘Limeys’ with great suspicion. Said one: “They were evil people. Just the worst.” One of the Americans, Jim Downey, recalled how he was standing by the steep ramp up to the stage when Grant and Bindon walked by. When he said something like, ‘It’s a long way up that ramp,’ Grant took offence and Bindon went over and knocked him out. “The next thing I remembered was waking up on the ramp. I never saw it coming.” Other members of the road crew held off the two men with a chair. Meanwhile the row with Jim Matzorkis was developing. Said Matzorkis: “After the show on Saturday I noticed this young kid pulling these wooden plaques off the trailer doors, which had the names of the acts on them. We still had another show to do and so we really didn’t want the signs stolen. I told him in a manner which I thought was courteous that he couldn’t have the signs.” A brief argument ensued and Matzorkis just took the signs away from Warren. “It wasn’t a violent act. I just took them away and didn’t think anything of it. It really was not a major incident.”

  He was storing the signs in another trailer when John Bonham came up to him and called his attention. Said Jim: “Peter Grant was with him who kept saying, ‘You don’t talk to my kid like that. Nobody does. I can have your job. Who do you think you are? I heard you hit this child.’”

  Matzorkis tried to explain it was all a misunderstanding and just then Bonham came up and kicked the man in the crotch. He fell back into the trailer but was rescued from further attacks by some of the band’s bodyguards, who got between him and Grant and Bonham. Matzorkis seized this opportunity to escape and ran off to hide in another mobile home outside the perimeter fence.”

  The matter was reported to Bill Graham and he and Peter Grant met up to try to resolve the issue. They spent twenty minutes arguing and debating, while Graham tried to calm Grant down. The latter insisted on meeting ‘this man’ and eventually Graham – rather foolishly – led him to the trailer where Matzorkis was hiding out in fear. Said Bill: “Hey Jim. Here’s Peter Grant. I know it was a misunderstanding and I want you guys to get together. I opened the trailer and went in first to where Jim was sitting. I said, ‘Jim, Peter is the father of the young man.’”

  It seems that the guard stretched out his hand in greeting. Grant grabbed Matzorkis’ hand and pulled him towards him. “He took his fist with all the fingers covered with rings and smashed Jim in the face, knocking him back into his seat. I lunged at Grant. He picked me up like a fly and handed me to the guy by the steps. That guy shoved me out. He threw me down the steps and shut the door. Grant and one of his guys went inside with Jim and I couldn’t open the door. I heard Jim say, ‘Bill! Help me, Bill!’ And a lot of noise.”

  Matzorkis also told how Grant and Bindon threw Graham out of the trailer and, while Bindon held him in a full Nelson, Grant worked him over, punching him in the face with his fists and kicking him in the groin. “It was horrifying having this three hundred pound guy just beating the crap ou
t of me,” he said. The victim tried to crawl under a table and then to his disbelief and terror, Bindon began to try to gouge his eyeballs out. “When he went for my eyeballs, that got every bit of adrenalin going and somehow I got to the door …”

  Outside Bill Graham was running up and down trying to get help while Richard Cole guarded the door of the trailer with a length of pipe. One of the Americans, Bill Barsotti, claims he shouted at Cole, “You limey cocksucking sonafabitch” which drove him so wild he chased after him, leaving the way clear for others to get into the trailer. It also enabled Jim Matzorkis to escape, bleeding from the mouth and face. “Our guys were just showing up when I got out. Bill and the others were deciding whether they were going to shoot their way in. Our security guys never carried guns but they all had them in their cars. They had gone to get their pieces out of the trunks. For all they knew, they were killing me in there. If I hadn’t been able to get out, they might have.”

  In the council of war that followed, the American security men told Bill Graham: “Before the show tomorrow, after the show tomorrow … we’re gonna do those guys.” Bill said he wouldn’t try to stop them unless he could come up with a better way. He dubbed the Zeppelin men “vicious fucking wild animals” and said, “I’ll fly 25 guys of your choice to New Orleans, the next stop on their tour, and you can do them there.”

  When Zeppelin’s lawyer approached Bill Graham the day after Matzorkis was taken to hospital the latter referred to ‘that minor altercation’.

  “What minor altercation?” yelled Graham. It was anything but minor as far as he was concerned. There then followed discussions about the waiver that would supposedly indemnify the band against all lawsuits. While Graham appeared to agree to the plan he held meetings with his lawyer and also got the band’s limo drivers to keep a watch and report on their activities, to make sure they didn’t skip town. He promised his security men that although he’d sign the waiver, he would ensure that they would seek retribution. “We’re going for jail. We’re going for financial retribution for the guys who got hurt. If we do it the other way, we’d be taking the law into our own hands.”

  That afternoon the band made their way to Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum under heavy escort, arriving an hour and twenty minutes late. Graham considered they were ‘behind enemy lines’. No one spoke. No one greeted them. No one smiled at them. After the show was over the band got into their cars and headed out of the stadium surrounded by their entourage. Bill Graham stared at Peter Grant through the window of his limousine and said nothing. It seemed to him that Grant was saying, “See who I am? I can do anything I want.” Graham, however, knew that within 24 hours he would be arrested. It seemed the band were going to stay on in San Francisco on the Sunday night. The limo drivers were instructed to tell the promoter of their every move. The next morning Bill went to the Hilton Hotel where they were staying and found the place full of off duty cops from Dallas acting as Zeppelin’s security men. The hotel was swarming with guards, police and detectives all searching for the culprits. It could have been another ugly scene but the men the police wanted to arrest finally gave themselves up. As Bill Graham watched he concluded it was, “A pretty sight. I watched those guys walk through with their hands cuffed behind their backs. That was worth everything. I saw them with their heads bowed down and their tails between their legs.

  “As far as I was concerned every one of those guys in the band was accountable for that shit, because they allowed it to go on. And we weren’t the only ones it happened to. We were just the last ones.” Bill had heard all about the hotel rooms and restaurants they had trashed and the waiters and people in restaurants they had abused. Although the fans remained loyal, the music business was glad to see the back of them.

  Grant, Bindon, Bonham and Cole got bail and went back to England and then a suit was filed for two million dollars. Zeppelin offered to settle and then the day before a criminal trial was due to start they pleaded nolo contendere and reached a settlement with the judge. The civil case went on for a year and a half and was eventually settled out of court. Bill Graham was disappointed. He wanted to see them all go to jail. He said later: “I didn’t like those people. I didn’t like their influence on society or their power. Back then Zeppelin were kings of the world. They fucked with promoters by cutting costs and cutting corners. When I think back to that whole incident, I think about that dealer sitting in that hotel room in a cowboy hat, waiting for his twenty-five grand. They surrounded themselves with physical might and they were ready to kill at the slightest provocation. If it hadn’t been that way before, they took on that demeanour because of the power they represented.”

  In the aftermath the band were clearly embarrassed and upset by the whole affair. As Robert Plant said of events at Oakland, “It was an absolute shambles. It was so sad that I would be expected to go on and sing ‘Stairway To Heaven’. People now know how I feel about that song. I had to sing it in the shadow of the fact that the artillery that we carried with us was prowling around backstage with a hell of an attitude. It was a coming together of these two dark forces which had nothing to do with the songs that Page and I were trying to churn out.”

  Years later when Peter Grant read Bill Graham’s frank account and judgement on him for that dark day in California, he burst into tears and wept.

  * * *

  * Peter was still suffering a year-long ban from entering Canada after his fracas with the noise-monitoring engineer he thought was a bootlegger.

  * Members of Graham’s family had died at the hands of Nazis in concentration camps.

  * Not strictly true, as anyone who’s seen The Song Remains The Same will testify, since it features many a girl transfixed by Robert Plant.

  11

  THE LAST HURRAH

  “I don’t want to be thought of as a bad person.”

  – Peter Grant

  Peter Grant and Led Zeppelin returned home to England in a state of shock. Their last hours in America were nothing short of a humiliating disgrace, which left even their most ardent supporters in the music business stunned and disappointed. The Oakland incident became the talk of the industry. Bill Graham was held in enormous respect throughout that industry, and he enjoyed good relationships with booking agents and concert promoters everywhere. Sympathy for Graham and his staff was mixed with anger, the prevailing attitude among most Americans within the rock fraternity being that Zeppelin and Grant “had it coming”. Sooner or later, they felt, something like this was bound to happen, given their increasingly aggressive behaviour. However, the fans were angry with Graham for causing John Bonham in particular to be arrested and for refusing to rebook the group. Hate mail deluged the promoter as a result, although few of those expressing their outrage knew what really happened backstage at the Alameda County Stadium.

  Generally there was a feeling of sorrow. So much good music had been played and yet so much goodwill had been dissipated. Said one commentator later: “It seemed quite extraordinary that after all the massive, overwhelming success Led Zeppelin achieved in America, it should all have ended in California like this – Jimmy Page sitting down for their last show, Grant and Bonham led off in handcuffs, John Paul Jones doing a runner and poor Robert’s son dying. No scriptwriter could have come up with a more dramatic, tortuous final scene. The later events – Knebworth, the band’s last European tour and even John Bonham’s death, seemed like a postscript. The sad thing about this whole ugly episode was that the people involved were probably so out of it on heaven knows what, that they didn’t really know what they were doing and couldn’t remember much about it afterwards – not that that in any way excuses them for their truly dreadful behaviour. One cannot help but muse on the fact that of the four people arrested, Richard Cole is the only one left alive and he – of all people – is now a teetotal, born-again Christian.”

  “Maybe the power that we had went to our heads along with the drugs and the alcohol,” admits Cole. “Do I regret what we did? I don’t believe i
n all that shit. You either did it or you didn’t. You have to pay the consequences and that’s it. I’ve been sober for 15 years and the only time I’ve been arrested since is for a speeding ticket! I haven’t been in a fight for 15 years either.”

  Cole admits there were outbreaks of violence around the all-powerful supergroup right from the start of their tumultuous years together. “Oh yes, there were fights on the road. Because of my background I could see things coming a lot quicker than most people. The band never really understood when there was trouble brewing. All of a sudden they’d see my fist go out and someone drop to the ground. They didn’t realise they were sitting with some guy’s girlfriend and I could see by his eyes that he’s coming over to do something. Before he got there, he’d be put away. Often the band wouldn’t even know they were nicking someone’s girlfriend. The girl would come over and the boyfriend would get pissed off. I was very good at divining their intentions and stopping them before any trouble started. It was the way I was brought up.