Jimmy Page by Chris Salewicz

Author:Chris Salewicz
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2018-06-12T16:00:00+00:00

In early February 1972 Led Zeppelin boarded an Air India flight at London’s Heathrow Airport. They flew to Bombay for a four-day break on their way to their first tour of Australia; Peter Grant had secured round-the-world tickets from Air India for only £500 for each traveller. Following a reprise of the sexual shenanigans on their previous visit to Bombay, the musicians spent an afternoon enjoying a camel ride along an Indian beach, which left their bodies sore and battered. Both Page and Plant – especially Robert Plant, in fact – were taken with the notion of imbuing their own work with music from other cultures.

In line with Australia’s much-trumpeted tall-poppy view of life – Someone getting above their station? Cut the buggers down to size! – the country’s media and forces of law and order had a reputation for meting out harsh justice to visiting celebrities.

And it seemed that an example would be made of Led Zeppelin. They arrived in Perth for their 16 February show at the Subiaco Oval – an outdoors show, as all the dates on this Australasian tour would be – before a crowd of 80,000 people. It was a sensational concert – there was even a stage invasion – and the crowd size was boosted by 300 or so fans who, to the chagrin of the local police, cut their way through fences and gates to get in.

Following the show Led Zeppelin went to a nightclub in the city, where they ended the night banging out classic rock ’n’ roll songs together on a tiny stage.

After the group returned to the Scarborough Hotel and put their heads down on their pillows, there came a knocking at their door. It was the police, with warrants to search their rooms, which they duly did. As Led Zeppelin had only just arrived in Australia, they had not even made any drug connections yet. Always a professional despite his severe jet lag, Page was shocked at such incompetence: ‘Those stupid arseholes. If they had waited a day or two, we might have had something.’ Grant slept through the entire episode, and when he learned of it in the morning, he immediately hired a security team of former police detectives to act as a buffer against any further raids.

Although a thunderstorm delayed their second date, a show in Adelaide, by two days, when it finally happened the local press were ecstatic about the gig, the loudest there ever: ‘From the start, all eyes were on brilliant lead guitarist Jimmy Page. His electric guitar work was extraordinary. At one stage, using a bow, he smashed out a string of piercing notes only to end with a run of delicate sitar-sounding music. Thunderous applause followed all his work.’

In Sydney, a city famed for its gay population, they hung out with the transsexuals from a cabaret club called Les Girls. Questions were asked of the four members’ sexuality.

In Auckland in New Zealand they played to the largest crowd ever gathered together in the country up to that point.

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