LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER 6 Hell-Bent for Valhalla

      Meanwhile, back in England, rumor had it that no one in Led Zeppelin really wanted to go to America except the road crew. And it wasn’t just America. The band was planning to spend the entire year on the road, in tax exile to escape Britain’s draconian Inland Revenue. There was talk of playing in Australia, Japan, even South America later in the year.

      Zeppelin was six years old now, and the constant touring of 1972–73 had taken its toll. Robert Plant’s voice was shot. Sometime after the last show in 1973, he had undergone a secret operation on his vocal chords, which left him unable to speak for three weeks. There were fears at the Swan Song office, on the King’s Road in the Chelsea district of London, that Robert’s trademark battle cries—hell-bent for Valhalla—and wailing pleas for blow jobs might be more subdued this time out.

      Jimmy Page was exhausted from long nights spent mixing the tapes for Zeppelin’s new album, which he had finished only the previous November. The tracks dated from as far back as 1971, and equalizing them to sound somewhat alike for an analog record was exacting and time-consuming. Jimmy was also said to be using heroin, which left him weak, anemic, and spectrally thin. And he was anxious about the death threats that Peter Grant told him were being phoned in to the record company and the promoter in America. The threats were, supposedly, aimed not at Led Zeppelin but only at the shadowy guitarist himself.

      John Paul Jones had reportedly gone to Peter Grant at the first Zeppelin recording session after the last tour and told him he wanted to leave the band. Jones said he was unhappy with his role in Led Zeppelin and wanted to stay home with his wife and daughters and play the organ in Winchester Cathedral. Grant had told him to go home and think it over. The sessions were canceled, and Bad Company used the studio time to make their first album for Swan Song. Jones arrived at the next Zeppelin session and said nothing about leaving, but to the others he seemed sullen and more withdrawn than usual.

      And then there was John Henry Bonham, also known as Bonzo or (behind his back) the Beast. Led Zeppelin’s brilliant drummer, the driving pulse of the best rock band on the planet, was miserable about leaving his wife and two children and his cozy farm in the wintry English midlands for three months of touring in America. He was drinking a lot and had put on a ton of weight. He arrived at the only known rehearsal for the American tour; looked fat; drank more than usual; may also have been dabbling in heroin; but played with his usual stomp and drive.

      This rehearsal took place at a theater in Ealing, West London, in late November 1974. The atmosphere was light, with a few journalists from the music papers hanging about, and a photographer getting some images of the band sitting on the new drum riser. They first ran through some old rock & roll songs, like Elvis Presley’s “Little Sister,” and then some of the new songs, especially the one originally titled “Driving to Kashmir.” Also tried out onstage were “Trampled Under Foot,” “In My Time of Dying,” “Sick Again,” and “Custard Pie.” Then they played “Hound Dog” and “Don’t Be Cruel” as a souvenir of their meeting with Elvis after one of his concerts in Los Angeles, earlier in the year.

      In the past, Led Zeppelin had never mounted any kind of stage show other than a rock concert by a four-piece guitar band. Jimmy always stood on the right and Robert on the left, with Jones and the drums just behind, the drums on the same level as the group. There had never been a light show, pyro bombs, flashy costumes, or any of the other stagecraft such as working guillotines or the giant inflated penis that Mick Jagger would ride when the Rolling Stones toured America the following summer.

      But this Zeppelin tour would be different. Now the drums were up on a riser, slightly above the band. There were costume fittings. Robert would perform in his usual tight jeans with a silken, kimono-like wrap on top. Jimmy ordered expensive, beautifully embroidered stage suits. Burly John Bonham and his drum roadie, Mick Hinton, would dress in identical white boiler suits and black derby hats—the menacing garb of the thuggish droogs in the film A Clockwork Orange.

      John Paul Jones didn’t dress up, but his stage presence was amplified. Once he played only his bass guitar and the Mellotron keyboard, for the spooky bits of “No Quarter.” The Mellotron now coexisted with a Steinway grand piano (also for “No Quarter”) and a Hohner D6 Clavinet for “Trampled Under Foot.”

      And there was a new light show, supported by a big truss that had to be built and dismantled for every performance. Laser effects would illuminate the bowed sections of “Dazed and Confused” and the ghostly theremin signals of “Whole Lotta Love.” An old-fashioned mirror ball would flicker a million points of light. A huge light sign spelling out L E D Z E P P E L I N was mounted behind the band; it would flash on in a burst of white-hot bulbs only as the band was leaving the stage, reminding the kids that they had just been sandblasted by the world champions of rock.

      Everyone agreed that the rehearsal had gone well. Pumping up his team, Peter Grant assured them that the tour would be a blast. It would sell out in ten minutes. They’d all make a fortune. There would be plenty of security, no one would bother them, and they’d all have fun.

      Everyone also agreed, privately, somewhat uneasily, that Robert Plant’s voice had changed. His range was clearly lower after the surgery on his throat. The operatic Viking wails that began “Immigrant Song” could still be heard up north in Valhalla, but they would never sound as strange and crazy as in days of yore.