When the Zeppelin Crashed
Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant, right, and drummer John Bonham, who died in 1980 from choking on his own vomit. After Bonham's death, Led Zeppelin disbanded.
Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant, right, and drummer John Bonham, who died in 1980 from choking on his own vomit. After Bonham's death, Led Zeppelin disbanded.
Drummer Neal Smith on front man Alice Cooper: "We weren’t getting the publicity a band like The Who or Led Zeppelin was getting for all the members. It was always focusing on Alice, and that’s fine. We knew that, we agreed to that. My only concern over all the publicity Alice was getting — even though everybody guaranteed he never would go out on his own — was that, if he wanted to step out, he’d have huge momentum from a band that all five of us created."
Cooper is pictured here during his solo career, which he began in 1975.
Young publicist Pat Kingsley told manager Shep Gordon: “I don’t know how to make five guys in a group called Alice Cooper famous when there is no Alice Cooper. You give me one guy called Alice Cooper in a band, that I know how to do.” In the lobby, Gordon told the band, “She said we gotta pick one of you to be Alice Cooper.” So they chose singer Vincent Damon Furnier.
Kingsley (right) is pictured here with actress Debra Winger.
David Libert, Cooper's road manager, on AC-1: "I had to institute the following rules: If you take a girl on the plane, if there's room, she had to be 18 and prove it. Rule number two: You owed her a plane ticket back to where you got her from. And if you refused to pay, you got fired."
Within minutes of The Who striking up “Magic Bus” at the Cow Palace on Nov. 20, Keith Moon appeared vacant-eyed, flailing at his cymbals, before passing out face first into the tom-toms. As the band played on, he was hoisted as if from a fishing net and carried offstage, limp and pale as a mackerel. “When Keith collapsed, it was such a shame,” Pete Townshend later recalled. “I had just been getting warmed up at that point … I didn’t want to stop playing.”
Witness this sample from Alice Cooper's backstage hospitality rider: “Purchaser shall provide three (3) cases of Budweiser, three (3) cases of Michelob, one (1) gallon of apple juice, one (1) gallon of orange juice, two (2) cases of Coca-Cola, one (1) case of ginger ale and assorted fruit. This is to be placed in a cooler with ice in Alice Cooper’s dressing room. … The Michelob beer must be in bottles and the cases of Budweiser must be in cans. In states where the sale of beer must have an alcoholic content of less than 6 percent (i.e. 3.2 beer), the beer must be imported from another state.”
Led Zeppelin flew in the luxurious Starship, a former United Airlines Boeing 720-B owned by teen heartthrob Bobby Sherman.
Led Zeppelin’s opening show at Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium with 49,236 in attendance, half of them sprawled on the baseball diamond’s grassy infield, grossed $246,000 (the same show would earn more than $1.2 million at 2012 ticket prices).
Robert Plant, left, is shown here relaxing on a fur rug with band manager Richard Cole.
One of the major players to lead the British Invasion, The Who were the hot band in the mid-'60s, culminating with the landmark rock opera Tommy. However, the band played out the '70s after Quadrophenia amid personal upheaval and public and private tragedy.
From left to right: drummer Keith Moon, singer Roger Daltrey, bassist John Entwistle and guitarist Pete Townshend.
Alice Cooper kisses Queen Elizabeth II impersonator Jeannette Charles while holding his gold-record plaque as actors (from left) Peter Sellers, Richard Chamberlain, Lyn de Paul and Peter Wyngarde look on.
Following the Billion Dollar Babies tour, the band decided to take a one-year hiatus, and Alice recorded 1975’s solo effort Welcome to My Nightmare. After that, there was no more talk of the original band regrouping. “Now what do you got?” says band publicist Bob Brown. “You got a person named Alice Cooper and a band named Alice Cooper.”
Retrofitted at a cost of $200,000 with tacky-chic ’70s delights including a water bed, shag carpeting, brass-trimmed bars and a video library stocked with everything from Deep Throat to Duck Soup, the Starship was a hit with nouveau riche rockers who could afford it. Zeppelin paid $30,000 to lease it during July 1973.
Libert said of the Starship: "There was nothing like it on the face of the Earth. It was sort of like Air Force One, but rock ’n’ roll.”
The rest of the ’70s were an unfolding nightmare for Zeppelin. The band never again played in the U.S. In the summer of 1980, Zeppelin planned a monthlong return to America in October to promote In Through the Out Door, but during rehearsals, Bonham was discovered in bed at Jimmy Page’s home, having choked to death on his vomit after consuming, it was later determined, more than a liter of vodka.
John Paul Jones is pictured here playing a Thomas electric organ behind the bar on board the Starship.