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New Peter Grant Book


Mook

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On 8/4/2018 at 9:33 AM, SteveAJones said:

Yeah, the Chelsea Drug Store really existed. It was not far from Mick & Keith's homes on Cheyne Walk, or Edith Grove for that matter. Alas, it's been completely refurbished and is now just another McDonalds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Drugstore

Thanks for posting the wikipedia link, very interesting. I've always thought the Chelsea drugstore is a metaphor for a place to buy stronger stuff than Aspirin and Alka Seltzer...:unsure:

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2 hours ago, LedZed66 said:

Thanks for posting the wikipedia link, very interesting. I've always thought the Chelsea drugstore is a metaphor for a place to buy stronger stuff than Aspirin and Alka Seltzer...:unsure:

Sure, it can be...though I would point out Mick also sings  he was standing in line with his friend, Mr. Jimmy who said one word back to him and that was "dead"!' Of course he is referring to James "Jimmy" Miller, the record producer at the time for The Rolling Stones, and his penchant for shouting "Dead!" at the end of a take. So the lyrics can be taken literally in the same way that some of The Beatles lyrics for Penny Lane can be taken literally in that much of what Paul is describing actually exited. As a by the way, it's Jimmy Miller on drums for You Can't Always Get What You Want, not Charlie Watts. B)

 

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On 8/4/2018 at 12:33 AM, SteveAJones said:

Yeah, the Chelsea Drug Store really existed. It was not far from Mick & Keith's homes on Cheyne Walk, or Edith Grove for that matter. Alas, it's been completely refurbished and is now just another McDonalds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Drugstore

That's a damn shame. On my previous visits to London, I was primarily focused on general historic sites and Led Zeppelin and Beatle related sites. I did find Keef's old Redlands place one year.

Edited by Strider
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  • 1 month later...
On 8/4/2018 at 8:33 AM, SteveAJones said:

Yeah, the Chelsea Drug Store really existed. It was not far from Mick & Keith's homes on Cheyne Walk, or Edith Grove for that matter. Alas, it's been completely refurbished and is now just another McDonalds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Drugstore

Yep things have really changed -and not for the better-in that part of London. When I’m feeling particularly nostalgic for the London of the late 1960s I dust down my copy of Blow Up to remind me how it must have been way back when...__

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  • 3 weeks later...

Just read a review of this in Planet Rock, and seriously looking forward to it, it looks like a corker. Mentions are made of a bloke on the Zeppelin scene in the late 70s who was an FBI informer (!), and other craziness. Plus the best bit is said to be "revelations of a plot to rob the Knebworth takings"!

This is one for pre order, no doubt.

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Having read this now I can offer a review.

First - buy this book! It's brilliant, and has a lot more information about Grant's early life than anything else I've seen. Some great photos of Grant on tour with the New Vaudevilles, with Richard Cole barely recognisable without his beard. Warren & Helen Grant are both extensively interviewed and other people are too, who I'd not seen mentioned before.

(Spoiler alert for those want to read it without knowing the surprises)

Spoiler

One of these is the abovementioned Herb Atkin, associate of Steve Weiss in New York. This is the bit I found jaw dropping about this tome. By the sound of it this bloke was important in the organisation towards the end, and it makes me wonder why he's not been mentioned in previous Zeppelin books. According to Richard Cole, in 1978 Atkin doctored a recording of a conversation with Cole making it sound like Cole was threatening Grant's kids. Cole claims he then went to Montreal & found himself mysteriously visited by gangsters who threatened him, said there was a contract on his life and Atkin got the contract lifted!

The book makes clear that not everyone agrees this stuff was real. Cole swears it was, Phil Carson says it was just paranoia due to drugs. Either way its indicative of the madness surrounding the band towards the end. There was a supposed threat to rob the second weekend's Knebworth takings from "East End gangsters" though again this is disputed as possibly down to drug-related paranoia. Either way, it looks like, after the Drake robbery, certain people were alerted to the fact that the band's management were carrying huge amounts of cash around. My reading of it was, if Grant was paranoid, maybe he had reason to be.

Anyway, highly recommended for all Zepheads. A corker of a book.

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Just finished this one; not overly impressed.  I didn't get a lot out of it that wasn't already in the Chris Welch book from 2001, and though Blake was obviously able to contact a lot of sources including Grant's adult children and various ex-Swan Song employees, it still seems like a familiar sordid story:  hardscrabble upbringing, big success, decadence and drugs, finally making peace.  

The more I read about LZ's business workings especially, the less respect I have for their organization as a whole.  There were a lot of talented artists in that era, but whether or not they built durable careers seems to have depended at least as much on their management team as the actual music.  I've made the same point in some of my rock 'n' roll books, and in this blog review of Barney Hoskyns' LZ oral history:  https://georgecaseblog.wordpress.com/2014/10/24/led-to-believe/

 

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1 hour ago, GeorgeC said:

The more I read about LZ's business workings especially, the less respect I have for their organization as a whole. 

Rightfully so. Peter Grant from '68 - '75 was at the top of his game. Peter Grant and the Led Zeppelin organization as a whole after '75 was a catastrophe.  

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