Angie Bowie on partying with Jimmy "Hoover Nose" Page, the "phenomenally tight" Robert Plant and other Zep guys
Excerpt from her 1993 memoir Backstage Passes: Life on the Wild Side with David Bowie ETA: Corrections to the excerpt have been made in the comments
It's Hollywood, 1979, and I'm riding a limo down Sunset Strip in the company of Keith [Moon], heading for the Continental Riot (Hyatt) House.
They arrived at the Hyatt, where another band was playing in the lounge. Keith approached the stage, and the drummer gave him his seat. Once he was done playing, he grabbed Angela, ran her outside and ordered the limo driver to take them back to their hotel, the Beverly Hilton.
'No, no, Keith,' I demand. 'Wait a minute. We're supposed to go meet Richard Cole and Peter Grant and the Zep guys at the Rainbow, remember? That's where we should go.'
'Nah, nah! Don't wanna do that! C'mon! Let's go back to the Beverly Hilton and fuck!'
He's not listening. He starts into a long, passionate, disjointed ramble about how much he loves me from the depths of his soul, which is very funny, but I have to end it somewhere. This is as clear a case for my 'Never fuck 'em if they're too stoned to remember it' rule as any I can recall.
'You're being ridiculous, Keith. You don't even know me, for God's sake.'
'Yes I do,' he says. 'I've seen you around. I've seen you everywhere. I've seen you all over the world.'
This is true, of course, but irrelevant, as is the stuff he goes on saying until I simply take the necessary action and tell the driver, in no uncertain terms, to take us to the Rainbow, where the Zep are partying, as planned. Which he does.
Keith is still raving when we get there, so I tell the driver to keep him in the limo at all costs, and I slip away to get help. I've assumed my tour-manager role; I'm considering the greater good of everyone, and I'm thinking it wouldn't be too swell for Moon to come on the Zep's scene right at this moment. He's far too far gone to be fun, even for Jimmy Page and the boys (which is saying quite a lot).
Richard Cole is the man I need. He's been 'director of security' for the Zep for many moons (no pun intended) and now he's risen to the rank of tour manager, and he's a very helpful man. This is true in 1979, while he's still a rabid consumer of intoxicants, and it'll be just as true in 1992, when he'll be clean and sober out there on the road, helping recovering rockers such as dear old Ozzy Osbourne stay away from booze and drugs. I'm proud of him.
He looks a lot like Pete Townshend when he's wearing a beard, as he often is, but he's a fair bit more physically substantial than Pete; the figure he cuts, in fact, suggests a very intelligent Hell's Angel. I've always been a sucker for the biker type, and I find him just as attractive as have legions of Zep groupies over the years (When you're security director for a big British rock band, your sexual magnetism does get rather a lot of opportunities to establish its own status; your band's more serious young female fans do require screening, selection, and user testing before being passed along, if indeed you personally judge them worthy of such an honor, to the lads themselves.) [Disgusting, Angie.]
Richard appears before me after a brief search of the Rainbow, and I describe my dilemma. 'I don't know, Richard, I'm afraid Moon's really far out, and he'll really misbehave if he comes in here.
Richard gives me a look, then smiles. 'Angie, this is Keith Moon you're talking about. He's not David Bowie. He doesn't have to behave!'
I take umbrage at that — David doesn't behave at all, he's a raving paranoid coke freak! — but I see Richard's point, accepting that Moon is indeed in a class by himself and long ago earned a license for mayhem miles broader than anyone else's. So I calm down and decide to go with it: What will be will be. That which is destined to be broken will get broken, those who are fated to be puked on will get puked on.
Richard comes out to the limo with me, ready to embrace the hurricane, and the driver hops out and opens the door. Instead of a raging cyclone, however, we're greeted by the sight of the Moon at rest, passed out and gone, peaceful as a sunset on the ocean.
'Well,' says Richard, 'that worked, didn't it? Smooth move, Angie.'
'I guess so. Hmm. We'd better get him back to the Beverly Hilton now, hadn't we? Can you take him, Richard?'
He shakes his head regretfully but firmly. 'Sorry, luv. I can't do that, not under any circumstances. I've got hot babes going on in there, see.'
Oh, well. One tries one's best. Accepting the call of duty, I get in the limo, escort Moon back to the Beverly Hilton, negotiate him upstairs, and put him to bed.
And that, sorry to say, is the anticlimatic end of that. Rock-and- roll drunks can be a lot of fun, but sooner or later they fold up and pass out, even the semi-divine ones.
This is going to be the last time I see Keith, by the way. He'll die of too much of something a few months later, to nobody's great surprise. Certainly not mine. I always thought he was one of those characters never built for the long haul, and found it ironic that it was his band brother Roger Daltrey, a born survivor, who sang the line by which Moon lived: I hope I die before I get old.
Exit the Moon stage left; enter Led Zeppelin stage right, the scene the pool area at the Beverly Hilton a little later in the day, with the sun just beginning to lose its mid-afternoon power.
I'm relaxing with Richard Cole and our friend Biffo, of grievous-bodily-harm and three-pint-mugs-off-the-dick fame, who is working Richard's former job as security director in the Zep organization (a role for which he would seem to be supremely qualified), when Robert Plant, the singer I don't know very well but have always thought of, mistakenly, as the blond bimbo of the band, comes over and sits down with us.
Robert is the very model of charm and affability, as he chats away happily about this and that, and I find him quite engaging. Mostly we talk about what's going on back in London — whence I've just arrived; he's been on a US tour, which means weeks without cricket and Sundays without the News of the World — and all in all we pass the time very pleasantly indeed. The encounter has a flavor not uncommon between me and the boys in British bands; it's as if I'm their aunt or their sister, or maybe someone from their home office, with whom family language can be used and home turf trod for a while in comfort amid the strain of foreign strangeness. We talk about who just got a new song up to the top of the charts, who made a fool of himself at Tramp's last week, and so on.
After a little while Biffo goes off, then comes back and asks if Robert wants to talk to any of the girls who are trying to get at him. Robert declines: 'No, no, I don't think so, not right now. I'm talking to Angie.'
Quizzical looks pass between Biffo and Richard Cole, but they let it go. They can't however, ignore the uncharacteristic nature of Robert's next move.
'Well, come on, Richard,' Robert says. 'What are you doing just sitting there? Get the waitress, eh!'
Richard looks at him, stunned. 'Pardon? Did I hear you correctly? Am I to understand that you mean to actually buy a drink?'
Robert pretends he doesn't catch the drift — it's an article of faith in our circles that he, along with the Scottish Rod Stewart and my Yorkshire husband, is phenomenally tight with his money — and acting as if it's the most natural thing in the world, he forges ahead.
'Of course I'm going to buy drinks,' he says. 'Angie's here. Get a waitress!'
This is done amid further protestations of astonishment from Richard and Biffo, and we all order tequila sunrises. One round leads to multiple others, as often happens with tequila drinks, and we begin to get pretty wrecked. Every so often Biffo or Richard launches a reprise of the Robert-as-tightwad theme — 'Do you realize how many times the man's put his hand in his pocket? I thought he kept the bloody thing sewn shut!' or 'Robert's poorly. He's not at all himself. We need a psychiatrist' — but Robert doesn't seem to mind. He appears to be having a wonderful time.
After a couple of hours Richard bestirs himself. 'Bloody 'ell, we're drunk,' he says. 'We'd better go upstairs and sober up a bit.'
An admirable idea, the rest of us agree, and off we go to Richard's suite, where our host pulls out his stash and chops up the lines. We take turns sobering up a little.
It strikes me at this point, with some force, that these guys are fun. They're so loose, so unlike David. If this were David and his little crew, nobody would be clowning around or sharing drugs: David would be off in the bathroom with his secret little vials while the others sat around waiting for orders, trying to figure out how to please the Great One. Fun would be the last thing on anyone's mind.
That's sad, I'm thinking, but I don't get the opportunity to dwell on it. My attention gets taken by another knock at the door.
Richard looks at me and starts laughing. 'What do you want to bet some bastard smelled some free charlie in here and came running?' he says. 'Which one d'you think it is?'
I go to the door, and Richard's right. It's Jimmy Page, guitar god, groupie magnet, and famous fan of the Antichrist, grinning from ear to cute little ear. I let him in.
Biffo takes one look and says, 'Oh, fuck me, Hoover Nose is here, hide the grams!' But before anything can get started, there's another knock at the door.
Interpreting this second knock as potential chaos, and sobered up to the point of pleasantly alert, not yet manic efficiency, I shift immediately into my crisis manager/tour director mode and begin handling things. I open the door just a crack and peer out, assuming the expression of slightly dangerous disinterest so familiar to anyone
who has ever knocked on a rock star's door and had some bitch like me answer.
It's a girl, looking for Jimmy: the usual very young, very gorgeous stoned-out suburbanite, doubtless just as wanton and wet as can be this very minute.
I accept her inquiry, tell her to wait a minute, close the door on her, and turn to Richard Cole. 'Richard! Lock this door. Take all the knocks at the other door, okay?'
Shifting into security mode himself, Richard comprehends immediately. We'll keep the door into the living room of the suite closed, cutting off any view of our action from outside, and use the door down the hallway of the suite, near the bathroom, as a blind checkpoint.
I tell the chick to go down to the other door, and Richard goes down there, talks to her a moment, and then lets her in. I watch as he ushers her into the bathroom and closes the door on her. I notice at this point that there's a pair of handcuffs hanging half out of the back pocket of his jeans.
He turns around and comes back into the living room. 'Jimmy, there's someone here to see you.'
Jimmy, who has his face down on the table, living up to Biffo's characterization of his suction power, is reluctant to be disturbed. 'What do you mean, "There's someone here to see you"? Who the fuck is here to see me?'
Richard is not to be deterred. 'C'mon,' he says, taking Jimmy by the arm and leading him down the hall to the bathroom. As they go I see him reach behind and whip out the handcuffs. Whatever this is going to be, I'm thinking, it looks like it won't be dull.
As soon as he gets Jimmy through the bathroom door he snaps one cuff around the guitar god's left wrist — a practiced gesture, deft and easy — and, before anyone has a chance to resist, whips the other cuff around the back of the toilet and snaps it onto the right wrist of the somewhat startled visitor. Jimmy and the girl are now manacled firmly together, and unless they somehow rip the toilet out of the wall, they're not going anywhere until Richard decides to let them. Which he's not about to do. He gives them a little wave, closes the bathroom door, and returns, whistling nonchalantly, to the vacuum party in the living room.
'Well now, that's good,' he says. 'We'll get some peace and quiet now that Hoover Nose is locked up for the afternoon. I tell you, you've got to be firm with these buggers. You've got to know how to handle them.'
Biffo is in stitches at this point, and I'm pretty amused myself — the good, clean, twisted balls-out fun these Zep boys are having is a very refreshing change from the paranoid, control-freak chill of David's road scene — and whatever happens next, it's obvious that peace and quiet aren't on the bill.
As if to emphasize that point, there comes yet another knock at the door, and off goes Richard to answer. It's Robert Plant, which reminds us that he hasn't been with us since we left the pool area, which in turn reminds us that we really are quite drunk.
'Where'd you all go?' Robert is saying in a breathless slur. 'Where's the girls? Where's Angie? I was right there at the pool and, like, you'd all just gone!'
'Sorry about that, Robert,' says Richard soothingly, thinking on his feet. 'We couldn't be sure you'd really pay for those drinks if we told you we were leaving, so we didn't. Come on, we're all in here.'
They both come into the living room, where Robert sees me and lights up. 'There you are, Angie! I was looking for you all over!'
He moves to sit down with us, but Richard intercepts him. 'Robert, guess what's in the bathroom.'
'Wot?' says Robert confusedly, then comprehends the question. 'Well, what?'
'Come here,' says Richard, 'I'll show you.' And he takes him over to a large walk-in closet off the dining room and, despite poor Robert's continuing confusion — 'Wait a minute, this doesn't look like a bathroom' — ushers him gently inside and closes the door behind him. Then he comes and sits back down with us. 'Right. Now, where were we?'
'Oh, come on, Richard,' I say — I've begun to think this is all pretty silly — 'let Robert out of the closet, and go get Jimmy from the bathroom.'
Richard gives me an interesting look, but I never find out what it means, because here comes another knock on the door, and off he goes again.
Now it's Peter Grant, the Zep's manager, Richard's and Biffo's boss, another lovely man: a wonderful large-spirited lunatic, big, with receding hairline but hair long enough to be tied back into a ponytail; his pierced ears on this day feature a snake earring five or six inches long, studded with garnets and emeralds.
The Beverly Hilton, where the lead singer of the world's first and greatest heavy metal band is still shut in the closet, the lead guitarist is still manacled to the toilet with his groupie, and Peter Grant has made himself comfortable.
'Have you seen Jimmy?' he asks. 'And where's Robert? We're supposed to go to dinner with Keith Moon, you know. He's gonna be here any minute. We've got to get it going here.'
Richard gives a little shrug, walks over to the closet, and lets Robert out. Robert's still a mite confused. 'I couldn't find the bathroom anywhere down that hallway,' he mumbles.
'That's all right, Robert,' I tell him. 'There's been a mistake, but it's okay now. Here, I've got something really funny to show you. You'll like this.'
I take him down the hallway to the real bathroom and open the door, and there's Jimmy sitting forlornly on one side of the toilet, the girl likewise on the other. 'I'm really over this, you know,' Jimmy's saying. 'I… Oh, hi, Robert. Hi, Peter. Richard, would you, er…?'
Richard unlocks the cuffs once we've all had a chance to linger on the spectacle before us, and everybody saunters nonchalantly back into the living room.
Jimmy follows us quietly and calmly, as if he'd been washing his hands or taking a telephone call or doing something else entirely unremarkable. And I guess that is indeed the case. In the Led Zeppelin life-style, getting handcuffed for half an hour to a groupie in a toilet is pretty routine.
'Right, then,' he says. 'Where are we going to dinner?'
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