“Most of what I was doing,” she says, “was arranging shipment of all the cars—Cords and Pierce-Arrows—he’d bought in America. I had to get in touch with Lord Beaulieu at the Montagu Museum in Hampshire to find out how to get old cars into the country and clear everything with DHL Air Freight at the airport.”

  Occasionally G focused on getting Led Zeppelin’s record label off the ground. Contrary to everyone’s wishes, Bad Company would not be the first release. They had a killer single on their album that everyone was convinced would be a smash hit. “Mick Ralphs had written ‘Can’t Get Enough’ for Ian Hunter when they were in Mott the Hoople, but Ian couldn’t sing it,” says Phil Carlo. Bad Company had turned it into an unforgettable, smoking-hot rocker. Unfortunately, Paul Rodgers and Simon Kirke, both late of Free, were still under contract to Island Records, so the album would be an Island release.

  Instead, the still-unnamed label would make its debut with Maggie Bell. Since the tragic end of Stone the Crows, Maggie had fashioned a solo career that paid dividends on her earlier promise. She was a riveting performer, animated, unflinching, able to wring every last ounce of emotion from a song. When she ripped into a feverish blues, it was as though Janis Joplin’s ghost were dubbing her voice. Few women artists demonstrated that kind of raw power. But getting it on a record was no easy feat.

  She made quick work of an album produced by Felix Cavaliere, the lead singer from the Rascals. “We did a number of Laura Nyro songs. Luther Vandross did the backup vocal,” Maggie recalls. There were a ferocious set of soul classics tailor-made for her voice: “Rescue Me,” “If You Want to Make a Fool of Somebody,” “I Know (You Don’t Love Me No More).” There was even a cover that featured a photo of Peter Grant dressed to the nines, sitting in a throne-like chair with a shotgun on his lap. “But the album just disappeared, as in disappeared. It never was mastered as far as I know,” she said.

  In fact, the album was rejected. “It was lousy,” says Janine Safer, the new record label’s press officer. “The production was an unholy mess, over-produced within an inch of its life. And more backing vocals than you could shake a stick at.” Peter Grant decided they shouldn’t put it out. So Maggie went back into the studio and cut another album, entitled Belle Star, with another Felix—Felix Pappalardi, the bass player and lead vocalist from Mountain. According to Maggie, “It was a nightmare. We’d have a session booked for ten in the morning, and he’d turn up at ten at night. He was out of control. They scrapped the whole thing.”

  Maggie, admittedly, was “upset, a real mess.” Peter Grant provided no comfort. He was “indisposed” or “unavailable” whenever she sought advice from him, and Led Zeppelin had taken a hands-off approach. Her career seemed to be in limbo when she took an unexpected call from Ahmet Ertegun. “Jerry Wexler wants to record you,” he said. Jerry Wexler! It was like winning the lottery. Wexler had rescued Aretha Franklin’s career and produced those incredible soul masterpieces, one after the other. And he took Dusty Springfield to Memphis and delivered the album of a lifetime. Wexler had the golden touch. He invited Maggie to his home in the Hamptons, and the two spent days strolling along the beach, sorting out a game plan. Wexler promised her great songs—he had a knack for uncovering hits and had already put aside some by John Prine and J.J. Cale—and an all-star group of session players, including Cornell Dupree, Hugh McCracken, Richard Tee, and Steve Gadd.

  Despite all the setbacks and the odds stacked against her, Maggie Bell would wind up being the first artist released on Led Zeppelin’s new record label. But even that distinction had strings attached. She was on the label . . . but not on the label. Her album would appear on Atlantic Records, because Led Zeppelin’s label still had no name.

  Chapter Fifteen

  FLYING TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN

  [1]

  Despite the layoff, Led Zeppelin had plenty on their plates to deal with.

  While working on the new album in early 1974, they’d taken a night off to check in with Joe Massot on the progress of their documentary. The director organized a screening to preview a rough cut of the work in progress and, hopefully, to give them reassurance that things were rolling along smoothly. They were a rough bunch to please, never reticent about their feelings. Jimmy acknowledged that “the band was mad at [Massot] all the time.” Massot knew there were doubts. The footage, he hoped, would speak for itself.

  Unfortunately, it spoke all too vividly. Everyone fidgeted from the moment the lights went down. As actors readily admit, it’s a strange experience to see your image on the screen. Flaws and blemishes are too easily magnified, no one is ever satisfied. A few invitees at the screening claimed Jimmy thought his ass looked too big; when he appeared as Father Time in the fantasy sequence, Bonzo burst into hysterics. “They finally came to the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ sequence,” Massot recalled, “and started to fight and yell.” Robert had worn extremely tight-fitting jeans during that scene, making his crotch look IMAX-ready. “They thought it was my fault that Robert had such a big cock.”

  There was plenty of bellyaching to go around. “We found a lot of the things we’d hoped would be there hadn’t come out right,” Bonzo said.

  The biggest knock against Massot, Jimmy said, was “that he didn’t get all of ‘Whole Lotta Love’ on film.” There were bits and pieces of it, but not enough to capture the song’s dynamism. “At the time, the film didn’t seem very meaningful. It actually seemed amateurish and weird.”

  Peter Grant had seen enough. He summarily sacked Massot and, in typical fashion, sent a team of thugs to the director’s flat to repossess the editing equipment. As for the film, the lingering question was whether to continue—to throw good money after bad. G had had some preliminary discussion with Peter Clifton, a young Australian documentary filmmaker, about taking over and sent him to look at Massot’s rough cut. Clifton came away unimpressed. Massot, he realized, was out of his depth.

  “None of the material he had captured on 16mm or 35mm actually created sequences,” Clifton said. “There were a few good shots, but they didn’t match up; there was no continuity and no cutaways or matching material to edit or build sequences.” Some of the documentary footage was worth salvaging, in his estimation, “but there’s nothing that holds together as a film.” He also got the impression from Led Zeppelin that “the guys weren’t terribly into it.” Clifton was all for moving on and forgetting it.

  Instead, Peter Grant called him and said, “Jimmy loves your editing, so we’d like you to make the film.”

  Clifton agreed to work on a script that would include shooting additional concert footage, either at a gig or on a soundstage. In the meantime, he’d evaluate the overall project and come up with a plan on how to proceed.

  The most pressing piece of business for Led Zeppelin, however, was naming the damn record label. The clever names had all hit a dead end, either because they were salacious, because they were already taken, or because one of the guys expressed an objection. Somewhere in the exchange, Jimmy flashed on the unfinished instrumental on his studio drawing board. Swan Song. Supposedly, a swan song was a beautiful sound that normally silent swans emit in the throes of death. It was apocryphal but sparked some lively discussion. “If you think about it in relation to the original Led Zeppelin idea of a lead balloon, it’s carrying on the original idea,” Jimmy quipped.

  Robert understood the allusion in a way only he could. “The name Led Zeppelin means a failure and Swan Song means a last gasp,” he said, “so why not name our record label that?” Consider their roster: Bad Company’s Paul Rodgers and Simon Kirke were late of Free and Mick Ralphs ex–Mott the Hoople; Maggie Bell was formerly with Stone the Crows; Robert was flirting with signing the Pretty Things, who had been around the block once or twice. It’d be the Miami Beach of record labels, where old rock ’n roll acts went to die.

  Swan Song—everyone liked the way it sat on the tongue. Finally! The label had a name.

  Lore has it that Jimmy saw a print of Evening (The Fall of Day), a painting by eccentric Romantic painter William Rimmer and adapted it as the Swan Song logo. In fact, Peter Grant commissioned Aubrey Powell, who had designed the artwork for Houses of the Holy, to create something that would make a statement.

  “I immediately came up with a design for a Formula One racing car with zeppelins on the side and dark blue stars all over it,” Po recalls. Close—but the band wanted something that had more poetry to it. “I had four or five illustrators working on it, so lots of ideas came along. Storm [Thorgerson, his partner] and I had been talking about an image of the winged Icarus figure in Milton’s Paradise Lost who flew too close to the sun. I got Joe Petagno, an American artist, to draw the illustration, and I showed it to the band. Everybody loved it.”

  Still, there was a rub. “It looks a bit like Robert,” Bonzo said.

  Sure enough, the figure had a fey, hippie-like aspect. Po insisted Robert had never crossed his mind and was given the go-ahead to put it into production. “But I found it strange,” he says. “Nobody said to me, ‘Icarus flew too close to the sun . . . and got burnt.’ ”

  * * *

  —

  Swan Song officially opened for business in May, 1974. The King’s Road office was a hive of activity, and in the beginning, Jimmy and Robert made a concerted effort to show up there regularly. The two frontmen were determined that the label not depend entirely on the next Led Zeppelin album to drop.

  “I didn’t want to end up as Led Zeppelin’s label with only Led Zeppelin on it,” Robert reminded anyone who asked.

  They were acutely aware that it had taken the Rolling Stones two years to sign the first act to their label—Kracker, an unqualified bust. That was a hard lesson learned by example. No, Swan Song was not “going to be an ego thing,” Jimmy insisted. He was clear about how Led Zeppelin would avoid obvious pitfalls. When it came to signing acts, they were interested only in bands who were reasonably self-sufficient. “We didn’t really want to get bogged down in having to develop artists. We wanted people who were together enough to handle that type of thing themselves.”

  They already had a good head start. Peter had opted to manage Bad Company himself and word on their album was heating up in places that mattered. “Atlantic knew they had a smash on their hands,” says Phil Carson. The album was a barn burner from start to finish—great performances, four or five potential singles. The group had already been booked on a long Edgar Winter Band tour. “And Jerry Wexler was delirious about his Maggie Bell sessions.”

  The Pretty Things would be another key addition. The journeyman band had succès d’estime—massive critical respect without a popular following. Their 1968 album S.F. Sorrow was acknowledged as the first rock opera, recorded eighteen months before Tommy (but in U.S. stores three months after The Who’s epic), and their follow-up, Parachute, was a Rolling Stone “Album of the Year.” Neither of them, however, found any sort of audience.

  Robert bumped into Phil May, the Pretty Things’ lead singer and remaining original member, in a club one night in 1974. “I told him how great I thought the band’s albums were,” he said, adding: “One day, I’d love to come to you and make you an offer and help you move it along a bit.”

  That day had finally arrived. Jimmy was completely on board. He had played on the Pretty Things’ first session in 1965 and thought “Rosalyn,” one of their early singles, packed enormous punch. Both he and Robert hoped that a Swan Song makeover would provide the band with a long-overdue breakthrough.

  They also made a play for Roy Harper. He continued to captivate them as a shape-shifting artist, to the consternation of others in their entourage. Harper was an acquired taste. He could play—no doubt about that. His fingerpicking wizardry blew the mind of no less a stylist than Jimmy Page, who had played on two tracks of Harper’s Lifemask album. But the general consensus on Roy was, as one music manager so eloquently put it, “fucking weird, on some strange planet of his own.” Talking to him was challenging; he was a master of ornate misdirection. Was he putting you on or a serious space cadet? Jimmy and Robert loved his eccentricity. Roy was unique, they felt. He had a loyal following and was the kind of artist who would give Swan Song class.

  Negotiations, however, dragged on forever. According to Richard Cole, “Peter could never make an amicable agreement with his manager.”

  It wasn’t chiefly the manager’s fault. Peter had become a hard man to reach. He put in an occasional appearance at the Swan Song office, but mostly he worked from home. It had become a refuge from the craziness of the road. An appointment to see G inevitably meant an odyssey. First of all, it required a two-hour trek to Horselunges in East Sussex. If that weren’t demanding enough, a scheduled meeting time had anywhere from a three- to five-hour window to it—if luck was on your side. People had been known to arrive at the planned hour on a Wednesday morning and not see Peter until Friday afternoon. Phil Carson, who made the trip regularly, says, “I always packed an overnight bag and made sure I had enough work to keep me busy.”

  “Horselunges was a lovely old house,” Aubrey Powell says, “especially in those early days, when it was full of joy and family. The interior was especially beautiful.” Mixed in with the animal heads and trophies on the walls was a world-class collection of antiques. A gorgeous medieval billiards table stood regally in a grand salon. Peter had also built a ballet studio, complete with barre and mirrored walls, for his daughter Helen and wife, Gloria. “There was a very laid-back atmosphere at Horselunges,” says Phil Carlo, who visited often. “All sorts of people wandered in and out—roadies, drug dealers, musicians. Peter’s son had a nasty-looking snake, and there were two dogs that ran around the place and shit on the floor.”

  But there were rules, as well. If and when Grant conducted business at home, he’d retire to “the great chamber,” a salon off the entrance, and seal it off. “When you saw this piece of leather string go through the door,” his daughter recalled, “it meant it was locked from the inside, and the message was to ‘fuck off.’ ” G preferred never to set foot in the London office, but as Swan Song rolled out its roster of acts, his presence there was imperative.

  Maggie Bell’s album, Queen of the Night, was released in April 1974, and while it had an Atlantic label on it, she was being touted and recognized as Swan Song’s debut artist. The record, despite huge expectations, was an artistic letdown. It was too slick. It sounded like it was made with studio musicians playing airtight arrangements, but without soul. As one Swan Song staffer put it: “over-produced within an inch of its life—an unholy mess.” It had no edge. Jerry Wexler made the kind of studio album he might have constructed for Roberta Flack, “giving the whole thing a clean production,” a British review concluded. Maggie sounded neutered, uninspired. “There is rarely more than a momentary flash in which you feel that the voice is unselfconscious: its elemental quality is transparently stylized.” Peter Grant put it in his usual blunt way. “The album lacks balls,” he said. “It lacks Maggie Bell.”

  Still, the game plan was to extoll Maggie as the First Lady of Swan Song, so her presence was ceremonial at three consecutive launch parties for the label—in New York, Los Angeles, and London. The first one, on May 7 at the legendary Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan, was a particularly lavish affair, with two hundred of New York’s toniest scene makers on hand. Predictably, the swan theme was omnipresent. There were swan-shaped cream pastries and a flock of the creatures swimming in the Pool Room’s renowned fountain, a body of water through which Bonzo made a sloppy entrance. Danny Goldberg, who arranged for the animals, was a city boy who could differentiate between Bruce Springsteen and Lou Reed, but swans and geese? Not so much. Peter grant threw a fit. “We all live on fucking farms!” he bellowed. “Get these geese out of here!”

  Led Zeppelin had flown in from London and sat isolated in a corner, giving off the vibe that anyone approaching their table would be dragged off in leg irons. Bonzo was particularly sullen. He’d drunk throughout the journey from Heathrow to JFK and had pissed himself rather than get up to use the bathroom. At the launch party, he took up where he’d left off, throwing back one glass of wine after the next. Wives and partners had been left off the guest list—judiciously so, as young Lori Mattix had arrived from Los Angeles to resume her relationship with Jimmy Page, and a bevy of groupies gravitated to the St. Regis hotel, where Led Zeppelin had a series of suites.

  It wasn’t long before things went squiffy. Richard Cole had requisitioned a platter from the Four Seasons’ swank buffet, emptied a mound of cocaine onto it, and draped a cloth napkin, waiter style, over his arm. “Hors d’oeuvres, anyone?” he intoned, offering his fare to those at the band’s table. “We snorted the drug right off the plate,” he recalled, “with Jimmy, Bonzo, and I monopolizing most of it.”

  At some point in the festivities, Richard and Bonzo, both drunk and intemperately high, began riling up the geese, no mean undertaking, as they had weights strapped to their feet to keep them from leaving the fountain. Cole managed to chase two out onto busy Fifty-second Street, where they were instantaneously killed in traffic.

  New York was potentially dangerous for Led Zeppelin, too. The FBI’s investigation of the Drake Hotel robbery remained unsolved and ongoing, with agents scouring the St. Regis, conducting new, harder-edged interviews while the band was in town. “It was heavy-duty shit, but Jimmy told me not to worry about it,” Lori recalls, “that Richard had taken the money, and everything was fine.” Peter Grant wasn’t as worried about the FBI’s probe so much as he was about their finding an underage girl in Jimmy’s suite. “You can’t have fucking Lori hanging around here,” he declared. He had her put on the next plane out of town.