Stairway To Heaven Read Online Free PDF Page A

sexual fantasy and fly with them on their private jet, the Starship , where a bedroom provided privacy, and drugs and booze helped heighten their senses.
    I had been Led Zeppelin’s tour manager from the beginning, since theirfirst American concert at the Denver Coliseum in 1968, where they opened for Vanilla Fudge. Over the course of the next twelve years, I had been with them on every tour and at every concert until almost the end—scheduling flights and hotel accommodations, helping to choose concert sites, planning details from the size of the stage to the height of the crash barriers, providing show-no-mercy, paramilitarylike security, escorting girls to the rooms of the band members, and keeping Zeppelin nourished with drugs. In the process, I had seen them evolve into a powerhouse force in the music industry.
    But John Bonham’s death proved that there was nothing omnipotent about Led Zeppelin. Their music might live forever, but they had paid a terrible price.

2
THE DOWNFALL
    I saw John Bonham for the last time just days before I had left for Italy in summer 1980. We met at a pub called the Water Rat on the King’s Road, after an evening rehearsal in which the band was preparing for a summer European tour. While John and I drank Brandy Alexanders, I grumbled about Peter Grant, the band’s manager, sending me to Italy to kick my heroin habit rather than accompanying the band on their upcoming tour.
    â€œDon’t worry,” John said, “you’ll get off that shit and be back with us before the summer’s over.”
    When we left the pub, John took me for a ride in a Ferrari Daytona Spider convertible he had bought two days before. As he dropped me off in front of the pub, I turned to Bonzo.
    â€œDo you realize that this European tour will be the first Zeppelin gigs I’ve ever missed?” I told John. “I hope you bastards miss me.”
    Bonzo smiled. “Very unlikely, Cole,” he quipped. “Don’t count on it.” Then he asked, “How pissed off are you at Peter?”
    â€œ Very pissed off. But I also know that I need to get off smack once and for all. And so do you, Bonzo.”
    Bonham laughed. “It’s not a problem for me,” he said with exuberance. “If it becomes a problem, I’ll just quit!”
    Even though I wanted to go on the European tour, I also recognized that I was losing interest. As good as Led Zeppelin’s music continued to be, I couldsee the organization beginning to suffocate in its own personal turmoil. For me, the hassles were starting to outweigh the joys.
    In the early years of Zeppelin, we had been a close, six-man unit, with Peter and me providing the support for the four musicians. There was real joy in seeing the fame of the band mushroom so quickly, which translated into enormous financial rewards and the chance to live an incredible fantasy lifestyle that a bunch of musicians from mostly working-class backgrounds found irresistible and intoxicating.
    But from the inside, the signs of Led Zeppelin’s disintegration began to surface in the late 1970s. Jimmy, Bonzo, and I were becoming increasingly caught up in the quagmire of drugs, enough to really anger Robert and John Paul. “You’re one of the people in charge of this operation,” Robert once told me. “And it makes us nervous to see what’s going on. Can’t you see what’s happening?”
    I thought Robert was crazy. From the earliest years, Zeppelin’s concert tours had always been drenched in alcohol…champagne, beer, wine, Scotch, Jack Daniels, gin…and brimming with drugs, even though we rarely paid for any of the illegal substances. Drugs for the band were often given to me by fans, by friends, who would knock on my hotel room door, hand me a bagful of cocaine or marijuana, and say something like, “We have a present for you.” The band rarely turned anything down.
    When Bonzo, Jimmy,