Peter Grant and Led Zeppelin
THE East End has play-ed its part in the history of rock and roll.
From the Small Faces and Helen Shapiro, to enigmatic Fleetwood Mac guitar virtuoso Peter Green, The The main man Matt Johnson and bass guitar guru Jah Wobble, cockney talent has spanned five decades of pop music.
But of all the larger than life figures emanating from Tower Hamlets none was larger, or more infamous, than the manager who made Led Zeppelin the biggest band on the planet – Peter Grant.
Born into a broken – and painfully poor – Bethnal Green home on 5 April 1935, Grant had to provide for himself from an early age.
He left school at 14 to work in a sheet metal factory, swiftly moving on to become a runner for the newspapers on Fleet Street. It was the start of a series of colourful jobs.
After National Service in the Army, Grant returned to the East End, turning his enormous 250lb bulk to his advantage by fighting as a professional wrestler and appearing in a film as a double for king-size actor Robert Morley.
It was the late 50s and dance halls were giving way to rock and roll. Grant began arranging concerts for visiting rockers such as Gene Vincent, the Everly Brothers and Chuck Berry, and honed his organisational skills as one of Britain’s first real tour managers.
Until now, the bookers had sat in their London offices while the bands hiked up and down the A1 in tatty old vans. Grant broke the mould by travelling with them, making sure they arrived on time, arranging their itineraries and, vitally, ensuring they got paid.
Native talent
As the 1960s drew on, native talent was supplanting the American bands and Grant was superbly placed to manage the up-and-coming talent. Working with top producer Mickie Most, Grant took the Animals to America, then came home to manage the Yardbirds and the New Vaudeville Band.
By the late 60s, the hard-nosed cockney had the knowledge and contacts to create the first supergroup. Led Zeppelin started off as an unsuccessful spin-off, the tired dregs of the New Yardbirds. That they became as big as they did was as much down to Grant as to their own musical excellence.
Grant’s power and menace became legendary. At a time when most bands were managed by ex-public schoolboys like the Stones’ Andrew Oldham or the Yardbirds’ Simon Napier-Bell, he brought a streetwise style honed in his tough teenage years in Bethnal Green.
That style consisted of, first and last, looking after his lads. In an era when promoters
took 90 per cent of the gate giving 10 per cent to the band, Grant reversed the odds, making Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page and John Bonham – and himself – rich in the process.
Bootleggers were his pet hate. He was often seen prowling outside gigs in the early seventies with a baseball bat,
confiscating and destroying
the wares of hapless merchandisers outside.
His friend, Mark St John, manager of the Pretty Things, reckoned Grant changed the playing field for groups.
Verbal violence
“He would intimidate the living hell out of people, but only if necessary,” said St John.
“He went in for verbal violence, an explosion of sheer power that stopped just short of physical aggression. That did the trick.”
Grant’s heart went out of the business when his pal John Bonham, the band’s giant drummer, died in 1980.
He decided it was time to retire, but for the boy who had been born into East End poverty, things had certainly changed.
The man who was part manager, part accountant, part fixer, part father and part minder to Led Zeppelin retreated to his Sussex estate to look after his two children and his collection of classic cars.
He died of a heart attack on November 21, 1995.