Hanging out with Robert Plant at Jennings Farm
By Pete Frame, ZigZag, March 1973
Puking at the wayside at 5am....
It's not very often that an insignificant paper (in the eyes of most superstars' managers, that is) like Zigzag gets the opportunity to interview someone as Important in the international rock world as Jimmy Page. So, when I got up one morning last November with my head feeling as if I'd been locked in a hermetically sealed room and force-fed high volume Black Sabbath music all night, I nevertheless staggered out to meet this musician who's work has given me so much pleasure over the past 8 years or so. A handful of Anadin ought to stave off the ailment for long enough, I thought, and then I'll be able to rush back and collapse into a heap until normal health could be restored. (I don't know what was wrong with me — a chill, I suppose; a sort of head cold linked to a puky feeling in the paunch).
So, I reached the Oxford Street offices of the Zeppelin management, several storeys above one of those Milletts shops which always seem to be having a sale, and was welcomed by B.P. Fallon, temporarily acting as press officer for Led Zep, who had arranged the interview. My chat with Jimmy was concluded satisfactorily (it's in ZZ 27], but Beep had also asked me to pop up to Kidderminster with him — to say hello to Robert Plant and maybe to see Silverhead, who were playing at some college in the town. I had agreed a few days earlier, and I reckoned that, ghastly as I felt on the day, I could hardly say "Er, listen, Beep…. I don't feel too good today…. do you mind if I don't come with you?" He'd have thought his old mate Frame was acting a bit fishy….. and besides, I felt a bit better anyway.
So off we went, lurching up the MI as fast as the hired crank of a car would go, and then negotiating a maze of country byways to arrive at Robert Plant's place, where the evening's revelries were already in full swing. It was rather like the set of one of those King Arthur-type films where the inhabitants of a castle are lying around the banquet hall, having stuffed themselves with lumps of meat and goblets of wine….. with modifications, of course. Gene Vincent, Ral Donner and Dion and the Belmonts blared from the giant speakers, and Alsatians lay in front of the open log fire, with friends and residents clustered around in the flickering light. Robert himself, clad in a mediaeval style doublet, was exactly opposite to my preconceptions of him, I'd imagined him to be an egotistical monster (for no other reason than my experience with knicker-wetting idols had taught me that most of them inevitably end up as conceited self-declared superhumans), but I was staggered (and delighted) to find him the sort of bloke you could sit and talk to all day and night — he was into all the great West Coast groups, 50's rock n' roll and, in fact, had a pretty encyclopaedic knowledge about the history and development of rock music.
On Beep's suggestion, everybody (including John Bonham, who had also turned up by this time) piled into cars and hurtled off to the Silverhead gig.
We got there in time to witness their pre-gig preparations; out came mascara, tubes of Max Factor face preparation, eye liner, rouge — "for a delicate veil of silky colour, apply with the fingertips and blend evenly over the face and neck"…… it was more like the dressing room of the Windmill Theatre. Then on with the satin trousers, silver platform boots, and all that sort of stuff, and finally onto the stage.
Under the pressure of playing to a handful of audience, about half of whom were the Beep/Plant contingent, Silverhead did pretty well; the excitement and fervour of their music could not quite bridge the empty floor and reach the students, watching gingerly from the shadows at the back and sides of the hall, but the musicians, all very accomplished in their own areas, played well, and Michael the singer belted out his vocals in fine showman style. I was impressed by the standard of musical integration, the presentation and the potential, but in my fragile condition thought that the constant high-octane, loud/fast stuff should have been tempered with the occasional slower, quieter and more melodic number.
The gig over, it was back into the Range Rovers and back to Robert's ("We used to play there" says John Bonham, pointing at some cinema in Kidderminster as we flew past, "when me and Robert were in the Band of Joy; we always used to start our set with 'White Rabbit'"), with singer Michael coming along too.
And so, the aforementioned revelry continued into the night. Now, in case you think this is little more than name dropping nonsense, written to show how I hob-nob with all the stars, let me explain:
(i) I did very tittle hob-nobbing, but spent most of the time shivering in a heap in front of the fire with the dogs.
(il) The visit was, as it happened, very important to the future development of Silverhead.
Also on the Plant homestead was a second building, largely occupied by various mates (who lived there and presumably fulfilled various functions in the day to day running of the farm) but with one first floor room set aside as a rehearsal hall, complete with drums, amps, speakers and a range of guitars. It was there that Robert had, over the months, been polishing up his guitar playing under the direction, or rather with the assistance, of Robbie Blunt, who was living there and was also present that night — and several hours of jamming (Plant and Blunt on guitars and John Bonham on drums), culminated with Plant on drums (Bonham having staggered off into the dark night), and Blunt and Silverhead's Michael on guitars. Beep, adept with terms like "chemistry", "karma" and "vibe", none of which I am able to handle with ease or aplomb, was later able to put the guitar/personality interplay into perspective.
The journey home was a nightmare….. Beep driving, Michael asleep, and me, delirious and fevered by this time, crumpled up in the back. The horrors of the journey were further heightened by Beep stopping the car on the motorway and dragging us out to confirm his sighting of a UFO. Though I could see nothing but stars and whirling sky, Beep persisted that not only had he seen an extra-terrestrial craft, but that the occupants of this saucer were aware of having been seen and, further, recognised that Beep was "cool" and so there was no danger but, instead, mutual recognition of friendship and respect. It must've been something he ate.
Leaving the motorway somewhere near Newport Pagnell, I succeeded in misdirecting us to North Marston…. and instead, we went in a giant circle, passing the Open University at Bletchley twice, and flnally, my delirium, now peppered with little green spacemen, sent me rushing to the grass at the side of the road, where I was violently sick over the silvery moonlit frost.
