Bob Gruen photographs and travels with dozens of bands in the early seventies—Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, and the Who among them—and witnesses firsthand the creation of the rock-star mindset. “It's contempt for everybody,” Gruen says. “It was just, ‘We're special, we're gods, everybody adores us and we deserve whatever we want.’ They were above the law. There is a sense of entitlement when you're in a band. You have twenty people traveling and supporting you, and even they feel special. There’s a cockiness that goes along with that, and you have a gang to back you up. And because you have this arrogance, you kind of take over. Going through the airport with a band is much more fun than going through by yourself. Every minute is planned, there’s people yelling, ‘Come this way! Get in this car!’ You really don't have a lot of contact with the people around you or even with the ground. You're kind of coming in from the air, you land in the town, you drive everybody crazy, and you're gone before dawn. So there is this feeling of a military operation where you come in, and you conquer, and you're gone. So that screwing a couple of girls and leaving without knowing their names, that’s part of it.”
Gruen first encounters Led Zeppelin during the ’73 tour while waiting to join them in a limo outside the band’s New York hotel. “There were a few autograph fans standing on the sidewalk. And before the band walked out, Peter Grant came out with Richard Cole, and the two of them walked through and over the fans. Didn't even go so far as to push them out of the way, but acted as if they weren't even there and literally knocked the kids down like they were bowling pins. It was just pointlessly cruel to the people that supported the band. I mean, it would have been harsh if they had yelled at them or pushed them out of the way. But I didn't even see them attempt—they just banged right into them and knocked them down. Whereas the band seemed cheerful and pleasant and without a care in the world because they had these two killers watching out for them.”
What You Want Is in the Limo, Michael Walker, 2013
