Three Managers: an Historical Retrospective. Part 2: Peter Grant 

By Dawoud Kringle

Peter Grant was perhaps the quintessential artist manager of his era. The legendary manager was equal parts savvy businessman, loyal caretaker, and protector for his clients and friends, as well as fearsome swashbuckling rock & roll behemoth (he stood 6’5” and weighed more than 300 pounds) who nobody in their right mind would ever cross.

Grant was born in London England on April 5th, 1935. After WW2, he worked as a sheet metal worker and delivery man before involving himself in the entertainment industry. He worked as a stagehand for the Croydon Empire Theatre until 1953 when he was drafted for military service. He was honorably discharged after earning the rank of corporal.

After his military service, he worked briefly as an entertainment manager at a hotel, and later as a bouncer and doorman at the 2i’s Coffee Bar in London. Paul Lincoln was one of the owners, and also a professional wrestler. He suggested Grant try wrestling. He appeared on television as a wrestler using the names “Count Massimo” and “Count Bruno Alassio of Milan.” He also worked for a time as an actor, stuntman, and body double. Between 1958 and 1963, Grant appeared in several movies, including A Night to Remember (1958), The Guns of Navarone (1961), and Cleopatra (1963). He also appeared in the TV shows The Saint, Dixon of Dock Green, and the Benny Hill Show. He invested the money he made in his own entertainment transport business.

In 1963, Don Arden, a well-known promoter, hired Grant to be the British tour manager for Bo Diddley, The Everly Brothers, Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, and The Animals. The following year, Grant managed his own acts; The Nashville Teens, She Trinity, The Jeff Beck Group, Stone the Crows, and others. Grant and record producer Mickey Most soon founded RAK Music Management.

A foreshadowing of Grant’s music business career occurred at the Cumberland Hotel in Marylebone. He first witnessed a hotel room being destroyed when Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent fought over a woman, and Vincent tore the door off Cochran’s hotel suite. Grant made it clear to the two pioneers of rock & roll that such things were not tolerated in the UK. Five years later, Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham’s habit of destroying hotel rooms would become the norm.

In 1966, Yardbirds’ manager Simon Napier-Bell asked Grant to take over management of the group. This happened concurrently with the band’s demise. But the experience was, nonetheless, a revelation for him. The Yardbirds had no hit singles but were mainstays on the college circuit and underground scene in the US. He realized that another market existed.

During the final tours of the original Yardbirds lineup, Grant booked the band in Mafia-controlled clubs across the US. In Warwick, Rhode Island, the Yardbirds’ bus turned up an hour late. Two promoters boarded the bus, pulled out guns, and threatened the band. Grant acted as a human shield and yelled for them to get off the chartered bus. That night, the show went on as scheduled without incident.

The Yardbirds broke up in 1968. Jimmy Page, who was one of the guitarists of the band, constructed a new group consisting of himself, Robert Plant, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones. They first used the name The New Yardbirds to fulfill a contractual agreement to tour Europe. The other Yardbird members of the original Yardbirds allowed them to use the name “The New Yardbirds”. After the tour, the agreement to use the name expired. A “cease and desist” notice was sent to Page and Grant by guitarist Chris Dreja. After a casual (and alcohol-inspired) suggestion by The Who’s drummer Keith Moon, the group chose the name Led Zeppelin.  Grant’s role as manager was cemented by a gentleman’s agreement.

In retrospect, while the unique combination of musical talent was indisputable, Led Zeppelin’s success would have been impossible without Grant.

Previously, the Yardbirds were signed to Columbia Records’ subsidiary Epic Records in the US. Clive Davis had signed the individual members of the Yardbirds to recording contracts. Upon hearing that Page’s new project Led Zeppelin was getting major hype, he assumed he already owned them (Page’s Yardbirds contract entitled him to retain his own recording rights, which made him a free agent when it came to Led Zeppelin.). A subsequent meeting between Davis and Grant revealed that the group had signed with Atlantic Records. Grant essentially pitted Davis and Columbia against Ahmet Ertegun and Atlantic. In doing so, he managed to secure one of the most profitable recording contracts in the history of rock music at the time; $210,000 for a relatively unknown band for three years.

The Atlantic contract had, at Grant’s insistence, a ‘no soundtracks’ clause which prohibited Atlantic any claim to the rights to any Zeppelin film soundtracks. In later years, when they made the movie The Song Remains The Same, Atlantic wanted to treat it as a live album. They couldn’t, due to it being a soundtrack album.

Grant strongly believed that bands would earn more money and have more artistic merit by focusing their efforts on albums instead of singles. He also believed that live performances were more important than television appearances. Grant exploited US audiences and the underground movement that was emerging in the US. Led Zeppelin was the first UK band to be booked at the Fillmore. This knowledge of the American touring scene placed Led Zeppelin into the forefront of the American rock market at the moment of its development.

In 1968, Grant helped Led Zeppelin set up their publishing company Superhype Music.

Grant fought to eliminate the middleman by ensuring that ticket profits ended up in the bank accounts of the musicians, and not promoters and booking agents. He was reputed to have demanded 90% of gate money from the band’s concerts. This was unprecedented at the time, and made an enormous amount of money for himself and the band. His tactics shifted the power to the artists and management. Grant was unique in the fact that, unlike other managers, he never exploited an artist for short-term profits, focusing instead on long-term income streams.

One of his more controversial business decisions was in 1970. An American broadcast company approached Grant with the offer to do a satellite TV broadcast of a concert in West Germany to be broadcast in the US on New Year’s Eve. Grant was not tech-savvy, and had unfavorable impressions of television technology in those days. He turned down half a million dollars for the concert.

Grant’s past experience provided him with the means and procedures to manage the chaos that frequently surrounded Led Zeppelin while the band was on tour. The extremes of his protectiveness and determination to safeguard the financial interests of Led Zeppelin and the other artists he managed are the stuff of legends. He’d visit record stores in London that sold Led Zeppelin bootlegs and confiscate their stock. He monitored the crowd at Led Zeppelin concerts in order to locate anything resembling recording equipment. At the 1970 Bath Festival, he threw a bucket of water over a bootlegger’s recording equipment and destroyed it with an axe. In 1971, at a venue in Vancouver, he found what appeared to be recording equipment and destroyed it. It turned out to be a noise pollution unit operated by city officials. Bootleggers were fortunate to only have their equipment and merchandise confiscated and destroyed, followed by a verbal warning.

While Grant was never afraid to use physical violence against anyone, he was more than capable of negotiating in any situation.

He could be vicious and didn’t suffer fools gladly. In January 1972, the manager of the Midem music business convention, Bernard Chevry, wrote to Grant, asking for “Led Zeppelin and his backing group” to appear. The fact that Chevry was unaware that Led Zeppelin was a group irritated Grant to no end. His response was to take out a full-page advertisement in Record Retailer magazine mocking Chevry.

By the early ’70s, Grant began to indulge in the excesses of the rock & roll life. People later said there was a tangible air of menace around Led Zeppelin and Grant. Many were terrified of Grant and his entourage. This worked to their advantage, but it brought a dark side to their success.

After Led Zeppelin’s five-year contract with Atlantic expired at the end of 1973, Grant helped set up Swan Song Records which gave Led Zeppelin further financial and artistic control over its products. Atlantic would handle the distribution of Swan Songs’ releases. They also handled solo releases by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant and had signed Bad Company, Pretty Things, Dave Edmonds, Stone the Crows, and Maggie Bell.

In 1975, Grant turned down a lucrative offer to manage Queen. He later said he wished he could have taken the offer, because he really loved the band, but was already spread thin with his responsibilities to Led Zeppelin and the other bands on Swan Song.

In 1977, a physical altercation started between John Bindon (Led Zeppelin’s security co-coordinator, alongside tour manager Richard Cole), and stage crew chief Jim Downey, a member of promoter Bill Graham’s stage crew. Bindon knocked Downey unconscious. Minutes later, a separate incident occurred. Graham’s security man Jim Matzorkis allegedly slapped Grant’s 11-year-old son Warren, whom he suspected of removing a dressing room sign. This escalated into an all-out brawl that resulted in Matzorkis requiring hospitalization after being beaten by Grant and Bindon. While this happened, with the exception of drummer John Bonham, the band had been performing on stage and were unaware of what happened. Led Zeppelin’s second Oakland show took place only after Bill Graham signed a letter of indemnification, absolving Led Zeppelin from responsibility for the previous night’s incident. Graham later refused to honor the letter because, according to his legal advice, he was under no obligation to agree to its terms. The next morning a surprise police raid took Bindon, Cole, Grant, and Bonham into custody. They were released on bail. Graham filed a suit against them for $2 million. Led Zeppelin offered to settle and all four pleaded nolo contendere. They received suspended sentences and paid undisclosed fines. Grant later stated that allowing Bindon to be hired was the biggest mistake he ever made as a manager. Grant also said that while he didn’t like or get along with Graham, he had great respect for him.

The remaining dates on the 1977 tour were canceled due to the sudden death of Robert Plant’s son, Karac, after contracting a stomach illness.

The same year, Col Tom Parker, Elvis Presley’s manager, contacted Grant with an offer to manage Presley’s UK tour. Parker never arranged or managed any overseas tours himself because (unknown to Presley) Parker had originally immigrated illegally to the United States and assumed a new name. Applying for a visa and traveling beyond the United States would have put Parker’s status at risk of discovery by immigration officials. The negotiations were abandoned when Presley died in August of that year.

Nonetheless, Led Zeppelin was the biggest band in the world. They played the Pontiac Silverdome in Detroit on April 30, 1977, the last show on the first leg of that year’s first North American tour since 1975, when Plant broke his ankle and elbow in a car accident in Greece that forced the cancellation of a planned summer tour. The attendance at the Silverdome concert was 76,229 people. This set a new world record for the largest audience for a single-act indoor concert.

They were bringing in so much money they had their own Boeing 720 jet. Nicknamed The Starship, it was the first Boeing 720 built. It was purchased by United Airlines in October 1960 and then purchased in 1973 by Contemporary Entertainment. The aircraft had a seating capacity of 40, a bar, seats and tables, revolving armchairs, a couch, a TV set, and a video cassette player with a video library. An electronic organ was built into the bar (which bassist John Paul Jones often played). At the rear of the craft were two back rooms, one with a low couch and pillows on the floor, and the other a bedroom with a shower room. Led Zeppelin used the aircraft for their 1973 and 1975 North American tours, which Grant rented at a cost of $30,000. Other bands that rented it included Deep Purple, Elton John, and the Allman Brothers.

Eventually, Grant began backing up his own intimidating manner by hiring armed security guards with guns. His philosophy seemed to be that whoever wasn’t a friend was an enemy. Coping with Led Zeppelin’s security and financial problems caused him to neglect his family affairs. His Elizabethan manor house with tapestries and antiques, but his wife Gloria found herself living in isolation, which put a strain on the Grants’ marriage. She was especially unhappy at the time her husband was living in a rented house in Long Island, reputedly to avoid having to pay UK taxes. He later went to live in Los Angeles, where his cocaine use escalated.

By 1978 Led Zeppelin had recovered sufficiently to continue performing and recording. Grant tried concentrating on running Swan Song. However, he had a mild heart attack and suffered from diabetes. His doctor forbade him from drinking alcohol or eating sugar.

Two concerts at Knebworth were planned for August 1979. It would be Zeppelin’s first UK appearance since 1975. This proved to be Grant’s last stand.

They planned to organize a European tour in 1980, before attempting a return to America. Rehearsals for the tour began on September 24, 1980. On the first day of rehearsals, Bonham drank an excessive amount of vodka. The following day he was found dead.

The band’s unanimous decision was that Led Zeppelin could not exist as a band without Bonham. They officially broke up the following December.

Grant was devastated by Bonham’s death. He became a paranoid recluse, rarely leaving his home. Soon after, his wife Gloria left him and filed for divorce.

Swan Song ceased operations in October 1983. Atlantic Records executive Phil Carson attempted to save the label and failed. Robert Plant started his own label, Es Paranza Records. Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones returned to Atlantic Records. In the late 1980s, Bad Company moved over to both Atlantic and its subsidiary Atco. As of this writing, the label is used only for reissues of its original catalog.

After years of struggles with marital problems, diabetes, cocaine addiction, alcoholism, and the folding of the Swan Song label in 1983, Grant retired from the music business to his private estate in East Sussex. By 1990, he successfully kicked his drug habit and lost so much weight that people didn’t recognize him. He moved to a flat in Eastbourne, where he became a local dignitary, and was asked to become a magistrate. He avoided the music business, preferring to collect vintage cars.

On the afternoon of November 21st, 1995, Grant suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 60.

Grant’s legacy for improving pay and conditions for musicians in dealings with concert promoters was unprecedented in the music business. Before the standards he established, musicians had few rights. He was the first to make sure the artists came first and were paid properly. He single-handedly changed the dynamic that existed between bands, managers, and promoters.

In 1996, the Music Managers Forum Award for outstanding achievement in artist management was renamed the Peter Grant Award, in his honor.

Grant was once asked his secret to be an exemplary manager, Grant replied, “Have belief in your artists. Don’t do it because you think, what’s 20% of that? Believe in them and as musicians.” He also said that his greatest strength as a manager was “Being able to say no. That’s very important.”