DISGRACELAND - Led Zeppelin Pt 1: Dark Power, Cocaine, Backstage Brawls and Heavy Metal Magick

Episode Date: October 1, 2019

Led Zeppelin were the biggest band on the planet. The great white shark of the seventies. They defined excess. They designed the avatar for the heavy metal rock star: themselves. Along the way there were violent brawls, car crashes, lots of cocaine, alcohol, satanic sexual rituals and a very freaked out David Bowie. This episode was originally published on October 1, 2019. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at ⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about the mighty Led Zeppelin are insane. They were supposed followers of Satan and Alistair Crowley's dark arts. They traveled with a goon squad of ultra-violent hooligans. They raided and robbed drugstores to satiate their habits and divided and conquered both sides of the pond.

They held groupies captive, literally. They defiled young women with, we'll get some. that later. Led Zeppelin was led by the extremely talented and driven English guitar player Jimmy Page, an artist captivated by the occult and the potential dark power unlocked. His vision for the band was simple. Be bigger and more powerful than any other group. Pommel audience members and all comers with your music. Take no shit and take no prisoners. Leave the world rattling in your wake. Achieve a level of success previously unimaginable for anyone in the music industry and do it all. with a brand of glamour and mystique that'll live on long after you're done making music.

Led Zeppelin did all of this and more, making, of course, great music along the way. And that music you heard at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Choir Falling Down, BK, 2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights from my love by Paul McCartney and Wings. And why would I play that specific slice of puppy mullet cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on June 2nd, 1973. And that was the day Led Zeppelin embarked on a massive attendance-shattering American tour in their newly hired, decadent and powerful Boeing 720 aircraft known as the starship,

signaling that a new chapter in rock star excess and mile-high debauchery had begun. On this episode, Stumbling Choirs, Mullet Cheese, Dark Power, Rockstar Excess, and Led Zeppelin. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Charles Manson was in prison, so Squeaky Fron was in the market for a new old man. She sent countless letters to her new crush, another powerful dark prince, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. Along with the death threats from the murderous, there was the matter of the stolen $200,000, probably gambled away by some Genevese family member by now.

And there were serpentine promoters, hacked journalists, crooked cops, and a crush of fans wherever they went, as well as an endless parade of beautiful young girls. So with all of this, Peter Grant, Led Zeppelin's intimidating 300-pound manager, imported a gang of goons, football hooligans and street tuffs from London, to handle the dirty details of the road. This meant making sure members of the press, the Manson family, or any other. family involved in a more organized crime, didn't seep into the inner circle. And keeping an extra eye on the band's unruly drummer, John Bonham, who, at the moment,

was about to tear apart an innocent stagehand for no good reason. Bill Graham, the man who did as much to revolutionize the live music industry as Peter Grant had, had a problem. And John Bonham wasn't in a problem-solving kind of mood. Graham's stagehand, Jim Metzorkas, had reprimanded Peter Grant's son backstage, at the Oakland Coliseum where Zeppelin was set to perform for a stadium that Bill Graham had packed 60,000 into. Bonham was fuming. It wasn't even sound check, and he was already blitzed on vodka and pills.

He stared daggers at Jim, who stood in the doorway of one of the backstage trailers. Behind him, Peter Grant was shouting, Who do you think you are, roughing up this kid? Jim, that's not how it went down. I promise you, all I did was take back the stolen signs. Bonham screamed in Jim's face Don't you know who he is? You don't talk to that kid like this.

Otherwise... For a moment, there was just silence. As if John Bonham were searching for words. Forget about words. Bottom kicked Jim straight into the crotch, knocking him ass over T-Killow. Jim scrambled to his feet and through the pain bolted out the back.

The race was on through the maze of backstage Winobagoz. Grant and one of his Zeppelin Goose, caught Jim in another trailer, out of breath, trapped. They locked the door, and the screams could be heard throughout the entire backstage area. Grant knocked Jim about with his ham-sized fists, clad with massive rings that slashed at Jim's face. The trailer rocked back and forth,

and the screams got louder, more savage. Stagehands, road crew, groupies took notice. A second Zeppling Goon stood guard, blocking Bill Graham's arriving security. Inside, Zeppling Goon Number one stepped on Jim's throat. Grant kicked him repeatedly in his gut. The goo gouged to Jim's eyes.

And this sent Jim's adrenaline into overdrive. He threw both men off and escaped, bloodied and spilled out before the shocked gaggle of backstage onlookers. Outside, Bonham had finally made the scene. He threw Bill Graham a look that said, I don't care who you are. I'm the drummer in Led Zeppelin. Pent up and pissed, waltzed on stage,

and laid a savage beating of his own on his lud for 60,000 adoring fans. Within two days, the most powerful drummer on the planet, John Bonham, and his band's powerful manager, Peter Grant, were arrested at the behest of the most powerful concert promoter in America, Bill Graham. Led Zeppelin made bail, flew home to England, and never performed in America again. The irony was that Bonham liked Bill Graham. They both came from the streets, but canceling the American tour was no sweat off Bonham's

back. He loved being home with family. He used the time to work on his cars, his Ferrari, his roles, his rare AC Cobra 427. He'd tinker and think about Graham and other guys like him. Like the car thief, he knew back in the console flats of Redditch where he'd come up. The thief ran a genius scam. He strictly stole old jalopies, then updated them with big American V8s that roared for maximum speed. He'd trick out the interiors with plush seats, eight-track players, custom steering wheels,

and deck out the exterior with flashy paint and pinstripes. He'd turned something old and respected into something new, exciting, and dangerous, and sell it back to unsuspecting working stiffs and other neighborhoods, just like the one he'd originally nick the car from. Clever, gold, brazen. John Bonham loved it. It's why he'd bought his tricked-out Model T, the one he can be seen racing through the English countryside in,

and in Led Zeppelin's concert film, the song remains the same. The car was absurdly over the top, A far cry from its humble origins, exactly like his band, Led Zeppelin. Zeppelin's chief visionary guitarist Jimmy Page had the same approach. Take something built on sturdy bones, something you love and supercharge it.

Add your own personality, create something original, despite its derivative nature, and sell it back to the land that produced it for a mint. But Jimmy Page wasn't messing with Model T's. He was messing with the blues. A musical tradition more sacred than anything, Henry Ford, Enzo Ferrari, or any of their ilk could ever produce.

As seasoned, a session man is anyone in London by the age of 21, Page did not defer to the greats. He did not tiptoe respectively around tradition. That was for his former yardbirds, Jeff Beck, too self-conscious to be truly blue, and Eric Clapton with his beta boy purest aspirations. They could have London. Jimmy Page wanted America.

He turned the blues up louder than anyone before, louder than Hendricks, louder than Cream. Jimmy had his own VA, John Bonham, behind the kid. He had his own tricked-out exterior and one tall, cool hippie from the Midlands, kid singer Robert Plant. And he had his sturdy bones in John Paul Jones,

a freak of a musician on bass who had been slinging it alongside Jimmy in studio sessions as far back as he could remember. The band kicked into gear at full throttle and blew the doors off of audiences once they got off the starting line. There was hardly any time to write songs, So Page borrowed.

Robert Johnson, Howland Wolf, Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Jake Holmes, Joan Baez, and more had riffs, lyrics, melodies, sometimes even song titles, completely nicked or reworked in Page's new Powerhouse Zeppelin style, rarely with credit. Babe, I'm going to leave you, whole lot of love, rock and roll, dazed and confused, even stairway to heaven, all derived from dubious origin. Sometimes their author sued or settled, and to this day there are cases pending. But what Zeppelin did to these songs was so unique it was impossible to label them mere copycats. When their debut, Led Zeppelin I was released in the States, the band pummeled audiences at live shows, creating an impossible act to follow. They stopped sharing bills with other bands, turned down Woodstock, a festival that paid shit. Should they make less so other bands could make more? The demand for Led Zeppelin tickets was so intense that Peter Grant was able to flip the concert industry on its head.

No way in hell his band is going to take 10% of the gate, as was music industry custom. The kids were lined up down the street to see Led Zeppelin, not the promoter. From now on, Zeppelin would take 90% fuck you very much, Bill Graham. And fans loved them. Their record went top 10, and their first shows on those early tours were the stuff of legend. Kids could not get enough. For a teenager in the 70s, liking Zeppelin meant you were in on something dangerous, and this mystique only drove record and ticket sales further.

Despite or perhaps because all of this, critics hated them. Rolling Stone and the Boston Phoenix's John Landau, who would later go on to manage Bruce Springsteen, among many others, loudly slammed the band. Charges of thievery, cultural appropriation, and the dreaded tag of derivative linger even today. Ask any quote-unquote serious music journalists what they think of Led Zeppelin and they will no doubt find their way to the word derivative. A signal to other serious-minded people that they're in on the joke that is Led Zeppelin. Give me a break.

All rock and roll is on some level derivative. The Beatles and Stones stole from Chuck Berry and Willie Dixon liberally, asked Dave Van Rock about Bob Dylan's five-finger discount and asked Dylan about those early Springsteen records. But more than any of these artists, On their first release, Led Zeppelin took borrowed elements and crafted something unique. Babe, I'm going to leave you, you shook me, and dazed and confused, go well beyond the imaginations of Joan Baez, Willie Dixon, and Jake Holmes, their respective originators.

At one of the album's three original tunes, The Opener, Good Times, Bad Times, sounds unlike anything released in 1969 or before, despite the fact that John Bonham ripped off that little kick drum stutter step from Vanilla Fudge's Carmine Apacy. So stealth was Bonham's swipe that Carmine didn't realize he'd been nicked until he asked Bonham where he'd gotten the idea and Bonham responded, you, you wank, I stole it from you. It all added up to a bridge too far for critics. Even as Zeppelin knocked the Beatles off the charts and sold more tickets than the stones, some critics were more prescient than others.

In his 1970 review of Led Zeppelin 3, Lester Bangs noted the band's quote, pat visceral impact. while warning of their insensitive grossness. The kind of insensitive grossness that grows with unchecked power, dark power. The only kind of power Jimmy Page was interested in. Jimmy Page stared into his suitcase. It was new. Its contents weren't.

He'd been hauling them around ever since that first yard birds tore the States back in 66. Whips, chains, handcuffs, a ball gag. They enhanced his powers and were necessary for the ritual. The ritual was where it was at. More so than any sexual kink, anyway. Jimmy was hardcore like a lot of people who got turned on in the 60s, but Lori wasn't. She was too young, too innocent, a legendary L.A. groupie before she was old enough to drive, but all the same, not hardcore. She was just 15 years old. She had Jimmy Page entranced, powerless even,

but she didn't go in for the ritual. At first, sure, they all did it first. They do whatever he wanted them to do, but Lori was different. It was clear that if they weren't in love, they had at the very least sparked some sort of powerful magic that kept them coming back together time and time again, despite Jimmy's time on the road, and despite her age. Her age, 15. A fact, Jimmy Page went to great lengths to hide. Never mind that it was the highly permissive 1970s, and never mind that he'd asked and received permission from her mom to continue the relationship. Word that the 29-year-old guitar player was seeing a 15-year-old, likely would have been trouble. But Jimmy got away with it,

as did David Bowie, Lori's other internationally famous lover, who took her virginity a year earlier when she was, yes, just 14 years old. Led Zeppelin got away with most everything, as did most 70s rock gods, but statutory rape laws were in place for a reason. Children are often incapable of making adult decisions

and often powerless to decisions made by adults, No matter the situation, the decade, the culture, the weird hall pass from mom, it was wrong and Jimmy knew it. Otherwise, he wouldn't have tried to hide it. But it didn't matter. Jimmy Page couldn't quit Lori Maddox. He couldn't put her down, not even for a while. Lester Bangs was right. Insensitive grossness.

Grossness permeated the 70s groupie scene Led Zeppelin lord it over, and Jimmy Page wasn't the only one of his bandmates on a sexual power trip. John Bonham made use of Jimmy's handcuffs, not as an aid for the ritual, more as a tool. They were practical, and they kept the groupies where he wanted them, cuffed to his bedposts in his hotel suite, waiting for him when he returned from the gig. For John Bonham, who, despite his madman touring antics, missed his family back home terribly, the kept women lent a sense of domesticity to the madness of life on the road. At least that's how he justified it.

The groupies went along with it. It was part of the deal if you're going to get up close and personal with the mighty Led Zeppelin. They were into some weird shit, and the rumors of excess and darkness made the band members all the more desirable to women. Jimmy wasn't thinking of any of this as he stared into his suitcase on his hotel bed. He was thinking of the ritual. He was eager, searching. But before any ritual could take place, he needed to get the hell out of Dodge. The hotel manager was pissed off and demanding $10,000 in cash.

for the damage from the night before. He was understandably upset. The baby grand piano and the presidential suite had been totally dismantled, apparently because it had committed the sin of not being able to fit out of the window. So Bonham and Led Zeppelin's road manager, Richard Cole went at it with a hammer,

busting it up good and proceeded to throw its pieces out of the hotel suite window. This, of course, after they'd run out of televisions to throw out of the window. And this hotel was practically made for post-gig destruction. the Edgewater, Seaside in Seattle, where guests could rent rods to go fishing from their balconies overlooking the Puget Sound, and room service would discreetly respond to late-night requests for

bondage-appropriate lengths of rope. But the perk they advertised was the fishing. Bonham had caught a red snapper and coal had caught a mud shark. It was cause enough to celebrate, as if they ever needed one. Soon the suite was opened up to groupie's friends and band members, and the hotel room party was in full swing. This is obviously the part where I'm supposed to tell you about the famous Led Zeppelin incident with the mud shark, but I'm not going to do it. You all know what happened,

and it would be salacious and ridiculous for me to recreate the sounds of a group of degenerate rock stars defiling a young woman with a fish. I'm not going to do it. It's beneath me, and frankly, I'm shocked and appalled that you would even expect me to do something so low-brow. Besides, who can tell if the incident is even true or not?

Some say it is, some say it ain't, some say Bonham was in the room when it happened, Some say it was just coal and the vanilla fudge guys. Some say it was a shark. Some say it was a red snapper. Some say the devil himself crawled out of the crown of Jimmy Page's skull and forced Robert Plants' hand into doing it. Some say it wasn't even a girl.

That it was John Paul Jones. Some sick fraternal hazing gone wrong. Some say the mafia did it. The FBI, the CIA, the BBC. B.B. King did it to Dora's Day. Fucking Georgie Wood. Moby Dick! But I'm not saying any of this.

No, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to get down into the mud. No way. Regardless of what did or didn't happen, the hotel manager was pissed. There was the destroyed piano, the missing televisions, the dirty stank of fish, sex, and grass blanketing the hotel suite. There was minor fire damage and champagne spilled everywhere. Richard Cole was used to this type of attitude upon checkout.

It's why, as a tour manager, he came stacked with a fat wad. To make the problem go away, but the hotel manager wasn't upset with the damage. He was upset that he was powerless to live as freely as the rock's as checking out of his hotel who stood before him, off to no doubt rape and pillaged their way through another city. He told Cole as much who was sympathetic, so he broke off three crisp hundreds for the sad sack and instructed him to go trash a hotel room on Led Zeppelin.

And with that, Jimmy Page, John Bonham, Robert Plant, and John Paul Jones left the building. And when they left buildings, arenas, countries, they always did it in the same signature style, which is to say, dangerously excessive. Their ride was the starship, a private Boeing jet that cost them $30,000 a tour but could carry 40 musicians, muscle, groupies, whoever, and probably more once the band ripped out all of the seating and replaced it with lounges and tables and TVs, an electric organ,

a fireplace, a fully loaded bar, and least subtle of all, a private suite with a white shagged bed that one can only hope was not equipped with any black lights. Like the band that it bore in its belly, the Starship was 70s rock and roll made fat at its core. It impressed everyone who stepped aboard with its luxury and decadence. The longer you stayed, the more the glamour would fade and the more oppressive, seedy and ugly things appeared under the surface. While Bonzo and Cole relayed their fishing stories to assemble Tangers-on,

Jimmy secluded himself to watch rough cuts of the Alistair Crowley-inspired art film he was scoring for a fellow occultist's friend, the filmmaker Kenneth Anger. For Jimmy Page, glamour didn't mean wealth or celebrity. Through Crowley, Page knew the world's deeper meaning that glamour is a kind of magic spell, a Jedi mind trick produced through sheer charismatic power, and for those truly in the know, esoteric ritual. If Jimmy had anything to say about it, Led Zeppelin's glamour would never fade, and the underlying seediness would never breach the surface.

To achieve this goal, he would master the philosophies of Crowley. Those mystic rituals which could bring him the power he craved, power to create previously unheard music, music that could compel and entrance, and the key to the power laying Crowley's writings, writings which square is fearfully labeled dark arts. Scared fools, Jimmy thought. He would prove them all wrong.

He'd recently secured maximum access to the power he craved. Jimmy had just purchased Alastair Crowley's former mansion and he couldn't wait to get home. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. Brian Jones, fonding guitar player of the Rolling Stones,

had a set on him. Jimmy Page was impressed. The seance at the Kensington flat of Brian and his girlfriend and Anita Palenberg was heavy. Jimmy had never experienced anything like it before. It was his first real-life brush with the power foretold

in Alistair Crowley's magic. and theory and practice, a book he'd read as a teenager. The feeling was electric. As electric as the energy in the studio, Brian was currently recording it, Olympic. After the seance, he hired Jimmy to play guitar on his score for a German movie Anita had booked a role and titled A Degree of Murder. Brian was busying himself with organs, harmonica, sitars, and more. It was purely experimental.

And for young Jimmy Page, in thralling, this, this was where it was at. Brian Jones was on to something. Imagine if you could combine the electricity of the rolling stones or the yard birds with the experimental. And what if that electric component had the power that Crowley flirted with in his book, that dark power? Jimmy Page had a vision. Reading Crowley always led him in the right direction. It led him to Brian, and Brian led him to his concept for what would become Led Zeppelin. So when it came to Alistair Crowley, keeping his teachings near was a good idea.

which is why he had do what thou wilt, Crowley's mantra praising free will, scratched into the run-out grooves of the Led Zeppelin 3 vinyl, and it's why he bought Alistair Crowley's former mansion, Bowlskin House in Scotland. It's not hard if you squint to take Crowley's free will mantra and his related belief that magic is the art of causing change to occur in conformity with will and only see radical wackadoo individualism

and New Age positive thinking concepts. But Crowley attracted many of the art of people. artists and power brokers during the 20th century for a reason. His ideas, wakadour not, resonated. Crowley believed in sex magic and blood magic, magic as an M-A-G-I-C-K, ancient rituals, not sleight of hand tricks, the ability to commune with creatures and consciousness from other planes of reality through ritual and rhythm. Alistair Crowley sought to tear out society's bourgeois morality root and stem through orgies and ancient spells. And you know who likes orgies? Rock stars. But long before rock and roll was invented, Crowley attracted devoted followers and sought out strong women, women who

could fulfill the roles of the dominatrix and the mystical priestess, female avatars he endlessly desired and modeled his lovers into. But whether through truly dangerous magic for the K or simple cult-like gaslighting, many of Crowley's wives and followers went mad and ended up either being committed to mental hospitals, trying to murder Crowley, committing suicide, or some combination of it all. creepy. But none of this scared off Jimmy Page, quite the opposite. Jimmy saw himself as living the same kind of libertine lifestyle as Crowley had. So when he got home from a tour and spent some quiet time at Crowley's old house, he didn't feel haunted. He felt inspired. Jimmy roamed the grounds with the black dog. A big, dumb lab, barely in alpha,

jovial, docile. Jimmy loved him and kept him out his side most of the time he was at Bolskine house. Even when he was in bed, reading, like he was now from Crowley's book of obscene sex poems titled White Stains. Sex was power, especially if practiced correctly. The ritual, proper female adulation of the phallus, the microcosmic counterpart to the sun, and anal intercourse, along with tandem masturbatory techniques and delayed orgasm. It all amounted to true sex. magic, and if practiced correctly, could light every sense in your body on fire and bind you tighter to the universe, vaulting you into another dimension where a new kind of power was attainable, and if harnessed, could be used to achieve one's wildest dreams. In those dreams for Jimmy Page,

creative godliness, success, fame, all ran through music. In music, wasn't that dissimilar from sex. When practiced right, there was a telepathy between he and his bandmates or his crawler. would call it magic. Page believed that because of his knowledge of Crowley in the dark arts that the music Zeppelin made together created a fifth element, a new kind of energy that no other band was capable of producing, a type of energy that their audience picked up on

and channeled back to them. To Page, this was true power. Whatever it was, it was working. The band's success was massive, so Paige doubled down on Crowley, pulled him nearer by living in his mansion in addition to studying his occult teachings. The black dog was dead asleep in his bed aside him.

Like Jimmy, he was a heavy sleeper, which was a good thing when trying to sack out at Crowley's Bolskine House in Scotland. Out here, off the southeast bank of Loch Ness, the wind whipped up something fierce and would wake you in an instant if he slept lightly. Locals swore they could hear something else at night. Bolskine House, though previously occupied by the man they called the Beast, Alistair Crowley was built on sacred ground.

Once the land of a church that had burned with its congregation still inside, locals swore that if you listened carefully at night, you could hear the sounds of the church's organ wrapped around the horrifying screams of burning congregants. Ghosts wallowing on Lochness winds. Wind or no wind, Jimmy could feel himself fading. The candle at his bedside was on its last breath. He unconsciously let white stain. the Crowley book slip out of his hand and onto the floor.

Then, Jimmy awoke to the sound of rattling glass, the wind whipping against the single pane windows. The house felt like it was shaking. The wine glasses on the nightstand cracked into one another. More noise, the bed began to move, slowly inching itself from the back bedroom wall it stood against toward the bedroom door. The steel bed frame was being pulled

ever so slightly towards something magnetic, something powerful on the other side of the door. Then, Jimmy heard it. Black Dog. But he sounded different, unlike anything he'd heard from the Black Dog before. The sound was low, guttural, pure evil, and the mutt was nowhere in sight. The canine sounds were coming from the other side of that door,

but how? The Black Dog was lying next to Jimmy asleep at the bed with the door shut. Now it was on the other side of the door, grunting, scratching its claws into the floor, drumming up the sounds of Satan. Pure evil. The wind was now working in concert with the black dog and the sounds of faint screams,

congregants belting out horror. The sounds of their feet scurrying through purgatory compelled by a frantic sounding chorus of demonic whispers burbling up from under the bed. The bed that continued to shift toward the door, its feet carving an ungodly sound into the bedroom's stone floor. The beast on the other side of that door now roared and scratched fiercely at the threshold.

The sound was pure hellfire. Crowley's words rang out in Jimmy's consciousness. Monica growl, its magnetism, pulled Jimmy closer to the door. Jimmy let the initial fear leave his body and bend his adrenaline to his will. The bed still inching closer to the door, the beast still raging with bloodthirst on the other side. Jimmy knew he was powerless. He let go, resigned himself to the fact that whatever was on the other side, it was summoning him and it had the power and that it would do what thou wilt.

To him, to whoever, to whatever. But once he fully gave in and completely let go, it all stopped. The sounds of the raging beasts, the wind, the screaming congregants, the whispering chorus of disapproval, even the rattling glass, all gone. Jimmy lit a match to his bedside candle. The bed now somehow back in its original place, in it lying peacefully next to Jimmy. Jimmy Page knew it then. His mojo.

It was working. David Bowie was fascinated. He could not believe the story Jimmy was laying on him. In between lines of cocaine and nibbling at a pile of hot red peppers and slurps from a giant glass of cold whole milk, Bowie's face rested in an expression that said one thing. Oh my God. David Bowie had more than underage girls in common with Jimmy Page. Like Jimmy, Bowie was fascinated by the occult and Crowley and now Page.

Rumor had it that Jimmy Page held the key that could unlock the power of the dark. Arts. The page had his own aura and a unique set of dimensions. Bowie was in awe of Paige and keen on getting to know him, so he had Mick Jagger, another of Laurie Maddox's rock star boyfriends, arranged the meeting. Jimmy was in New York scoring Lucifer Rising, another one of Kenneth Anger's films, and as such, had his hands on early cuts. Anger had rented bullskin before Page and had alerted him to the fact that it was on the market Jimmy wanted in. And like the magic of the dark art, that brings people together who are interested in such things, Jimmy wanted in on Anger's movie, just like Brian Jones before him.

And now, Bowie wanted in on the dark action and was very interested in seeing the much-anticipated occultist film in progress. When Jimmy arrived at Bowie's pad on 20th Street, Bowie felt it immediately. Jimmy's aura was strong, heavy, and not in a good way. Still, Bowie availed himself, and the two got down to snorting most of Jimmy's stag. As the cocaine hit his system, he came alive in conversation.

They talked about anger, his film, London, Lori, the new Stones album Mick was in town trying to make. Bowie was polite, semi-interested. What he really wanted to know about was Paige's aura. But whenever he brought it or the occult up, Jimmy, strangely enough, didn't politely move the conversation along. He just stopped talking, completely, sat there, stone-faced. Bowie pressed. He wanted to know more about Page's experience with the occult, his learnings from Crowley, how he had applied it to composing and performing Led Zeppelin's music.

Page said nothing. Nothing at all. He didn't move a muscle. Bowie tried ignoring the awkwardness and ducked down for another line. When he pulled his head up, Jimmy was staring straight through him, still silent, but with the slightest of smiles curling out from the corners of his mouth. Bowie swore we saw the lights in the apartment flicker on and off and heard the far-off. and heard the far-off sound of an organ.

He then felt something strong in the room. A wait, Paige's smile stuck in place. Bowie felt his heart skipped and fear run up his spine. Page said nothing. Bowie said, I'd like you to leave. Page, still, nothing. He just pointed over Bowie's shoulder to an open window. Bowie, now incensed, gritted through his clinched teeth.

Why don't you leave through the window? Page said nothing, sat there staring, smiling slightly. Still, he was out of his body trying aimlessly to transmit telepathically to Major Tom sitting across from him, but ground control was not receiving the message. Bowie was a dilettante, a lightweight, disappointed Jimmy stood up and left without saying a word, scared, freak. Shortly after, he would have his home exercise for fear of the presence Jimmy Page had left

behind, and forever after, whenever the two crossed paths, Bowie would do his best to immediately leave the room. The power of Jimmy Page was dark. He was going to kill him. Didn't matter that Glenn Hughes' basis for Deep Purple was one of Bonham's best friends. If it was true, if Glenn slept with Bonham's wife, Pat, that he was a dead man. The barrel of the pistol dug into the back of Glenn's neck. He nearly pissed himself. Or maybe Bonham had. Glenn could smell the putrid alcohol emanating out of every one of Bonzo's pores. The smell, death, trash, and disgust, all rolled into one. Glenn, despite his fear, was calm. He knew how crazy Bonham was when he was drunk, which these days was most days. Glenn also knew Bonham didn't really believe that he

slept with Pat. The incident was as much a power trip than anything else. Calmly, he talked his friend into lowering his weapon and off of the ledge, off the ledge for the night at least. Bonham never strayed far from it. Nearly killing his friend in a momentary rage was just one of countless memories lost in the longer-term drunk haze. Right now, he found himself racing to the old millhouse, Jimmy's new mansion, purchased off of the actor Michael Cain. Bottom could care less about the Sted's lineage. He was concentrating on the powerful roar of his Model T racing down the M4 motorway.

The ride and the sound of the engine was a distraction. It distracted him from the stressors of being in a band. And these days there were many. His guitar player is on again off again heroin addiction, the detachment of his bass player, and the tragedy that had befallen his best friend in the band's singer Robert Plant. It had been almost a year since it had happened, but the heaviness of it still hung in the air.

And it hung tough, right next to Bonham's own reticence. Redisance about leaving his family. He wanted this, he reminded himself, and so did his bandmates, even John Paul Jones, and of course, Jimmy wanted it too. And once Jimmy got involved, it wasn't long before Robert came around. But now it was all happening, and a familiar dread had resurfaced in Bonham's gut. But he'd be damned if he couldn't drown in alcohol. John Bonham drank from the pressures of Led Zeppelin,

and because it pained him to be away from his family, but that pain couldn't compare to the tragedy that had befallen Robert Plant, the loss of a child, his five-year-old son. He died suddenly of a stomach virus while Robert was away in America. Oakland specifically sorting up the legal situation after Zeppelin's manager and the goons beat down Bill Graham's stagehand. That day, the glamour was gone. The seedy underbelly of the band was raw and exposed.

Eerily, this came just after Plant's leg had finally healed from a close-call car crash with his family two years earlier. Robert Planet seemed as a haunted man. In time, he included a tribute to his lost child, All My Love on the final Led Zeppelin album Into the Outdoor, and he agreed to tour America again. But once Robert had faced his demons, the cost of the band's dark power shifted fully to John Bonham.

It was a big day. Lots to rehearse to get tour ready. Bonham awoke with his mind set on fortifying himself. He began with 16 shots of vodka at breakfast. The pub bill read like a recipe to kill a horse. Bonham needed to drink away his pain if he was going to make it through. rehearsals. He pounded his loveweights. The band was sounding great. He sweat out the alcohol, replenishing it as he went, with an endless intake of vodka, drinking it like water, powerfully

compelling his bandmates along with him at the kit, bludgeoning the small group of crew and hangers-on with Zepplin classics, Misty Mountain Hoth, Dancing Days, Kashmir, and Achilles' Last Stand. More vodka, more songs, The Rover, Custard Pie, Nobody's Fault But Mine, and a haunting ridition of In My Time of Dying before calling it quits. Bonham sat at his stool. He stared blankly at his bandmates who wrapped up their gear before retiring

for the night. He pulled on yet another bottle of vodka and just sat, completely gassed from the high-energy workout that rehearsing and Led Zeppelin provided. It wouldn't be long before he'd knock off. He wondered what his accommodations were going to be like. He also wondered if the

rumors were true. The rumors about this house, the ghost, Was it the whispering woman or the black dog? Was it this house or one of Jimmy's others? Bullskin house or the Clearwell Castle, Bonham couldn't keep up with the rumors. Like the dead, there were too many of them. So he drank, more vodka, and then more vodka.

And he missed his wife. He missed his kids. By now, the rest of the band had disappeared into the night. John Bonham's head was on fire, too amped after rehearsal to sleep, despite the fact that his body was exhausted. He needed to sleep. Tomorrow would be another day of grinding rehearsal. He poured a tall pint of vodka, shot it down with one slug.

Then another full pint pour and another long slug. He lay back on the sofa, closed his eyes, and never opened them again. It was too much for even the burly drummer to hold down. And it came up. Gaw caught in his throat, passed out cold. He choked on his own vomit in his sleep and died. Jimmy Page had first conjured up this tricked-out muscle car of a band, John Paul Jones, the sturdy bones, Robert plant the flashy exterior, himself the luxurious interior,

and John Bonham, the V8 engine. Jonesy, still sturdy as ever, the model of the layback baseman. He had stayed out of the craziest shit. He owned a farm and he could retire to it. And Robert, road worn and scarred, to say the least, but intact, resilient. But when John Bonham died, the engine fell up. The band was done. Without John Bonham, there was no Led Zeppelin. The tragedy, some say they were brought on by Jimmy Page's submission to the occult by his ritual practice,

his craven grab-at power and attempt to bend reality to his will through sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Hail Satan and do what thou wilt, but at what cost? Thuggery, statutory rape, drug addiction, alcoholism, a car crash, a dead kid and a dead drummer.

Had Led Zeppelin and those they encountered suffered in proportion to how deeply the band drank from the devil's cup. Of course not. But the mighty Led Zeppelin lived and died by Alistair Crowley's powerful creed. The band damned societal norms and morals as shallow. They were rock gods and they could live as they please do what they wanted, fuck who they wanted, fight who they wanted. But in the end, Led Zeppelin's band members, unlike the devil, were mortal like everyone else. Their shadows tolerated their souls and fairly or unfairly, they paid the price. So no, No silly Faustian bargain could be used to explain their triumph and tragedy.

There was no crossroads. No last fair deal went down. Just inexplicable power. Corruptible power. Long-lasting power. The 19th century poet Charles Baldolera said that, quote, one of the artifices of Satan is to induce men that he does not exist. Or to quote verbal Kent from the usual suspects,

the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. Have you seen Jimmy Page lately? He's 75 years old and despite a decade plus of hard drug and alcohol use, he looks great, is dating a beautiful 29-year-old poet. Seemingly doesn't have a care in the world and remains one of the most beloved rock stars to ever pick up an instrument. And the allure of his music with Led Zeppelin is as powerful as ever. His relatively untarnished image and legacy, either magic, M-A-G-C-K or disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland.

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