Apathy for the Devil (13 page)

The bullish John Bonham-I duly discovered - was the group’s resident loose cannon, its most unpredictable component and scariest asset. He was a nice bloke when he was sober, but he was rarely sober for long and would often undergo an alcohol-fuelled Jekyll-to-Hyde personality transformation whilst inebriating himself in a way that was more than a little unhealthy to be in the immediate vicinity of. The rest of the group had long tired of witnessing their drummer on his frequent drunken rampages; Page, Plant and Jones simply excused themselves and left the room whenever they saw Bonham after a show downing shots of hard liquor in swift succession, his eyes turning harder and narrower with each gulp. In their absence, Richard Cole happily took on the role of Bonham’s drinking buddy, and you certainly wouldn’t have wanted to bump into those two down some dark alley after midnight. Cole was the real barbarian in Led Zeppelin’s court - most of the deeply lurid tales of wanton cruelty associated with them actually stem from incidents initiated by him. His menacing, piratical personality dovetailed effortlessly with Bonham’s belligerent drunken side; together they were double trouble writ large.

Seven years down the road, of course, Bonham’s out-of-control drinking would drive the decisive final nail into Led Zeppelin’s career coffin, but there was little that the others could have done to temper his thirst. In the seventies no self-respecting musician believed in twelve-step rehab and ‘interventions’. Booze and drugs were just part of the landscape, something to
lose yourself in whilst out on the road or in a recording studio. And Led Zeppelin in the early seventies weren’t that excessive on the drug front. Plant and Jones liked to smoke pot, and all four enjoyed the odd line of cocaine, but when touring in Europe their chemical consumption was relatively frugal, particularly in comparison to what the Rolling Stones were getting up to during the same time line. Mind you, that would all change when the group toured America again just four months in the future.

It was in the eighties that some perceptive soul finally coined the ultimate description of cocaine as ‘God’s way of telling you you’re making too much money’. Joe Boyd - in his insightful autobiography
White Bicycles
- is even more critical of the drug and its debilitating hold over the musical culture of the seventies. ‘I never knew cocaine to improve anything,’ he wrote. ‘When the white lines came out, it was time to call it a night: the music could only get worse. If I joined in, the next day’s playback would provide clear evidence of the deterioration of both the performances and of my critical ability to judge them. I suspect that the surge in cocaine’s popularity explains - at least in part - why so many great sixties artists made such bad records in the following decade.’

Nowadays I concur heartily with these views. But back in the day I was less wise and infinitely more impulsive. The very idea of the drug had me hypnotised like a lemming scrambling towards a clifftop. The hype surrounding cocaine was that it somehow opened up the gateway to thinking brilliant thoughts, but the reality was invariably more brutal: sudden jagged mood swings, dry mouth, scary heart palpitations. The first time I tried it - backstage at a Hawkwind concert in October ’72 - I almost fell down a long flight of stairs when the brain rush actually
kicked in. The second time I was with a group called the Flamin’ Groovies a month later and we all got pulled over by the police outside the dealer’s Earls Court house. If someone hadn’t tossed the incriminating packet of powder into a nearby garden, we’d have all been facing criminal prosecution.

God was evidently trying to tell me something, but I steadfastly refused to listen up. By early 1973 I was wasting one or two nights of every week snorting the devil’s dandruff in the company of other young London-based pleasure-seekers. By the time dawn broke through the gaps in the drawn curtains of their basement lairs, I’d be feeling very brittle and twitchy indeed. The simple fact of the matter was that the drug didn’t agree with my central nervous system and made me plain jittery. But I was too much of a schmuck to walk away from its temptation and most of what I consumed was offered to me for free anyway. I duped myself into thinking it would be impolite to refuse and carried on numbing my sinuses whenever the opportunity arose.

At the same time I was getting ready to launch my personal invasion on the land of opportunity. By early February everything was in place: I’d drawn all my funds out of the bank, paid for an open-ended return airline ticket to Michigan and had a special US visa stamped into my passport. In the middle of the month I boarded my flight and some ten hours later was standing on US soil.

At first the customs authorities didn’t want to let me in. ‘Are you a homosexual?’ one of them kept asking me. If I’d said yes, they’d have sent me straight back to Limey-land. But I simply told them the truth until they relented and grudgingly allowed me entry into the Motor City. Soon enough I’d hailed a taxi and was sizing up my new surroundings: a big motorway covered
with humongous gas-guzzling automobiles and bordered by huge billboards and head-spinning changes of scenery. At one point we dipped through downtown Detroit and the streets there seemed as menacing as they were congested. But then another strip of highway would open up and the buildings would suddenly look cleaner and the sidewalks a lot less threatening. Continuing seventeen miles north-west of Detroit, we arrived in a well-appointed residential area on the outskirts of Birmingham, Michigan, where Debbie Boushell and her nouveau riche parents dwelt. This would be my home away from home for all of one evening. After that I was on my own.

I’d always envisaged the Motor City as a Mecca for tough-sounding high-quality music but by the time I arrived there, the home-grown musical culture was facing a steep recession. A local heroin epidemic had killed off the MC
₅
and forced the Stooges to relocate in Hollywood, thus depriving the state of its two most promising hard-rock bands. Others like Bob Seger and Ted Nugent would still have to wait several years before they could start creating any kind of impact for themselves outside of Michigan. The one exception was Grand Funk Railroad, a shallow, bombastic power trio from Flint, Michigan, who played populist stoner rock specifically aimed at a new and disturbingly prevalent US demographic - teenage barbiturate-gobblers. Their God-awful records always seemed to be shacked up in the highest echelons of the
Billboard
and
Cashbox
top ten best-seller listings or polluting the airwaves in the early seventies. Like herpes, you just couldn’t get rid of their feckless racket.

But the most demoralising blow to Michigan’s culture had lately been dealt by Tamla Motown supremo Berry Gordy, the area’s most revered music entrepreneur. In the late sixties the
wily, always ahead-of-the-game Gordy had migrated to Hollywood in order to better monitor the career transformation of his beloved princess Diana Ross from singer to movie actress. He’d assured his old Hitsville U.S.A. employees that he’d never shut down Motown’s original Detroit premises, but by 1970 he’d set up a more spacious Los Angeles-based studio and was compelling his most prized recent discoveries - the Jackson 5 - to record only at this new location. After that, the writing was on the wall. By October of 1972 - the month that saw Marvin Gaye reluctantly vacate his Michigan mansion and join the exodus to California - the label’s downtown office had been closed down, its fabled studio - nicknamed the Snakepit - had been stripped of all its functioning recording equipment and its auxiliary session players - known as the Funk Brothers - were suddenly unemployed and not a little bitter about the way they’d suddenly been shunted aside by the big boss.

At least they weren’t alone in their desolation. The whole state grieved alongside them. Motown’s joyful music throughout the sixties had been such a morale-boosting tonic to the huge multiracial community from which it sprang that when the company stole away to supposedly greener pastures, Michigan felt deeply betrayed by the departure, as though their personal beacon of hope had been suddenly savagely extinguished. Motown was no longer a matter of great civic pride, the clarion call for a brighter tomorrow; it was the sound of a dream deferred, a promise unfulfilled. Detroit radio stations still played Motown’s latest LASHAPED waxings but spiritually speaking this new fare had little in common with the cavalcade of uplifting hits that had been concocted at the Snakepit. The Temptations’ ‘Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone’ was the label’s unavoidable smash
du jour
, the track I recall
hearing the most in cars and bars throughout my stay. It was a long gloomy song about betrayal - the singer berating an absent father for deserting his family - and it perfectly nailed the local mood of brooding discontent and abandonment.

My first night in the Motor City is now something of a foggy memory - and perhaps that’s just as well. I recall Debbie and her boyfriend driving me in the evening to a bar where an atrocious live band played the top-40 hits of the day. I recall a biker offering me some PCP which I politely refused. I then recall a tall blonde girl giving me a Quaalude - American Mandrax - and suggesting we both repair to a nearby motel, book a cheaply priced room and partake in sexual congress together. I can even recall entering the motel room with her, surveying its tawdry interior and thinking that Sam Cooke met his end in similar circumstances. Everything after that is a blank. I was suddenly knocked unconscious by the impact of the Quaalude on my already jet-lagged metabolism.

When I awoke many hours later, daylight was streaming through the windows. I was alone in the bed and a bird-faced Hispanic cleaning lady was standing over me ranting in an incomprehensible form of pidgin English. Debbie arrived soon after that - and boy, was she pissed off! The girl I’d accompanied to this godforsaken fuck-pit turned out to be one of her sworn enemies. She’d stormed out soon after I’d passed out, mistaking a drug-induced coma for callous rejection. I’d been in Michigan less than twenty-four hours and already had two of its native daughters on the warpath after me. Time to activate plan B.

Birmingham, Michigan - unlike its plug-ugly namesake in the English Midlands - was an attractive middle-class suburb boasting good schools, high-end property, condos, classy boutiques
and chintzy antique stores. But sedition still lurked within its carefully manicured borders: the town had lately begun to play host to
Creem
magazine and its rowdy editorial staff. The ferociously irreverent monthly had recently upped its national sales to 150,000 per issue and celebrated by splashing out on new office space on the second floor of the Birmingham Theatre building. Publisher Barry Kramer also rented a nearby house - 416 Brown Street - for the magazine’s key employees to share. That’s where I’d be spending my second night in the United States of America and most of my subsequent days and nights in the Midwest.

It had been a dream of mine: to link up with Lester Bangs and learn at the feet of the master of new rock journalism. Now my dream was about to come true. Once again I owe Debbie Boushell a debt of gratitude for helping to make it happen. She was the one who actually phoned
Creem
’s headquarters and told them about my plight regarding immediate accommodation until they relented and offered me a room for the night. She even drove me to the location. Mind you, we arrived well after midnight and I was - oh dear - once again under the foolhardy influence of the dreaded Quaalude. I may have even consumed two earlier in the evening in order to calm my nerves. I suppose I was looking to attain chemically induced courageousness. What I arrived at instead was mush-mouthed slobbering stupidity.

I remember staggering into a dimly lit living room and being surrounded by three male figures. One was short and bespectacled and introduced himself as Dave Marsh. A second - taller, California-blond and more muscular - answered to the name of Ben Edmonds. And the third was Lester Bangs. I’d never even seen a photograph of him before this night, so it was the first opportunity I ever had to gaze upon the physical reality of the
man behind the byline. My first impression: he looked like a rodeo clown without the make-up. Or an auto worker on a beer break. He was a big guy with tousled black hair that was neither long nor short and a full moustache plastered across his manic grinning face. You wouldn’t have called him handsome but he wasn’t ugly either. Right away his basic sweet nature became apparent to me. There was a soulfulness about the guy that was palpable in its outstretched humanity.

Consider the situation for a moment. A complete stranger turns up at your front door after midnight - dressed like a goddam professional ice-skater and visibly fucked up on tranquillisers and God knows what else - in hope of finding shelter for the night. Would you let him into your humble abode, make him welcome and even attempt to converse with him at some length? Of course you wouldn’t.

But Lester wasn’t like most people. He empathised with fuckups because he was often one himself. He gamely sat down and talked with me uncondescendingly for over an hour. He even took me upstairs to his bear-pit of a room and played me his just-received white-label copy of
Raw Power
. I don’t remember if it was during that hour or the morning after that I asked him to be my teacher. I explained my situation anyway: young university drop-out lucks out at the
NME
but still needs to find his own voice as a writer in order to make the most of his good fortune. I craved guidance I couldn’t find back in merry old England. Could Lester show me - by example - how to reach my full writing potential? Would he even be interested? ‘Sure - OK then’ was his immediate unblinking reply.

Just thinking about his generosity of spirit still makes my eyes moist. I didn’t know it then but other young would-be rock
scribes had already personally contacted him for tips and career guidance. One of them, Cameron Crowe, of course would later go on to write and direct an Oscar-winning film in 2000 called
Almost Famous
that evocatively transposed his real-life teenaged tutelage at the feet of guru Bangs onto the big screen. But I was the first to have made the trip all the way across the Atlantic in order to seek his indulgence, so maybe that’s partly what sealed the deal. That and the fact that we both liked to get wasted. But mostly it was down to him being such a big-hearted guy.