In a recent interview with Metro, Jimmy Page shared his frustration with filmmakers who wanted to portray Led Zeppelin’s story like that of bands such as Mötley Crüe.
Page was approached by Warner Brothers with an idea for a movie that focused on the rock ‘n’ roll party lifestyle, starting with a hotel lobby full of groupies. “Yeah…Warner Brothers, who were trying to float this idea with an absolute idiot. We had a meeting, and he was saying, ‘Oh, well, it starts off at the Continental Hyatt Hotel. And it’s in the lobby and there’s lots of groupies and then you come down in the lift…’”
Page made it clear that this wasn’t the image of Led Zeppelin he wanted to show. “Excuse me? What group is it you think are doing this? You’re not talking to Led Zeppelin? Is it Mötley Crüe? Or Quiet Riot? It was really insulting because I’m about what the music is about.”
Although Led Zeppelin may not have as many groupie stories as Mötley Crüe, they do have one famous groupie tale.
The incident, mentioned in Bob Spitz’s book ‘Led Zeppelin: The Biography,’ took place after a tour with Vanilla Fudge in Seattle. Richard Cole and Bruce Wayne, the road managers for the two bands, had caught some fish while fishing at the Edgewater Inn. They brought the fish to John Paul Jones’ room while he was smoking pot with Carmine Appice and a 17-year-old groupie named Jackie. After Jackie had gotten high, Cole and Wayne told her to take off her clothes.
“Once she was naked, they started hitting her with the fish, and it left little teeth marks on her back,” says Appice in the book. “Things got pretty ugly, pretty intense, so we went out into the hall, where Bonzo [Led Zep drummer John Bonham] and his wife, Pat, joined us, and we watched the action through the door.”
While the rest of the story is pretty disturbing, the incident was revisited by Cole in his 2002 book ‘Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored.’ “Word about the escapade spread quickly. Rumours circulated that the girl had been raped…that she had been crying hysterically…that she had pleaded for me to stop…that she had struggled to escape…that a shark had been used to penetrate her. None of the stories was true,” he wrote at the time.
Mark Stein, the singer of Vanilla Fudge, allegedly filmed the whole event on a Super 8 camera. He later said he gave the film to Bruce Wayne, and it disappeared after that.
