“I went down to the front desk to plead for a new room. The clerk protested until I asked him how he’d like to reside in a room with wall-to-tall hamburger patties, uncola-drenched bedsheets, french-fried plastered walls, mustard-smeared mirrors, a sixteen-piece telephone and gutted cushions where the furniture used to be. I got a new room immediately.”

“You know on some nights after a gig, it’s just like the 1973 Led Zep tour (more commonly referred to as the Continental Hyatt House Capers, to the initiated). We’ve already equalled that, even in our short stay,” Robert Plant confesses, when I mockingly inquire whether the band is mellowing with age.

“The management has been more kind,” chuckles Plant, lead singer of rock’n’roll’s biggest band, both in popularity and tales of debauchery.

“It goes as far as it does because it’s a laugh. It’s not any release, you know, all that shit about road fever is just bullshit. We only do what we do because it’s fun,” Robert tells me playfully.

“But Robert, what is it? and how far does what go?”

Robert’s only reply is a coy and knowing smile.

“Well, Robert, if you don’t want to talk about specifics, why don’t we discuss the, er, psychology of the lifestyle of rock’n’roll on the road?” I prod.

“Ah…” He settles on one elbow savoring his own images before continuing. I’m surprised he doesn’t lick his lips.

“The lifestyle of rock’n’roll is to live well and to take a good woman.”

Well, does our daring rake ever find one of his female followers trying to lure him away from his happy home back in Merrie Olde?

“Yeah,” Robert replied a bit reluctantly. “But you know people can’t fall in love with me just because I’m good at what I do.”

“But do they?”

“Errrr… Yeah.”

“So, what do you do, put up a red flag and say don’t get too involved, I’m married?”

“You’ve got to do that or say, ‘Hey, you’ve got to go,’” he says resolutely. “The time may never come that I’m influenced, but I am prepared to go out and look … Whoops, I hope this doesn’t get back to England!”

Robert doesn’t have much to worry about; Swan Song Records makes sure that as little as possible of Zep’s after-hours antics ever see the light of day, much less the public eye. Much of the mystery of what goes on behind closed doors (or closets for that matter) remains a matter of speculation and rumor.

There is the ever-present bodyguard barricading the hallway with a chair propped outside his room, so he can both scrutinize all seventh floor trafficking and watch continuous color TV, making it difficult to be a first-hand observer of any of the dirt that lies hidden under the sand-colored shag carpets of the Ambassador.

Six days into an American tour, the backstage broadcasts are scorching with new and improved tales of the perverse.

“You’ve got to be kidding, nobody can do that non-stop for four hours!” … “In a fish-bowl?” … “You mean the limo driver never even turned around?” … “He did all that and walked away from the table?” … “It cost how much to keep it quiet?”

But wouldn’t you be disappointed if there weren’t any? I know I’d be aghast if I head that Zeppelin had cleaned up their offstage act.

“It was about 5:30 am, and I had finally managed to sneak away from all the carousing and carnage of the past 48 hours, and had successfully thwarted Bonzo from breaking down my door or dousing me with a wastebasket full of what I hoped was water.

“Bonzo was entertaining himself by going from room to room with a broken bedpost slung over one shoulder, demolishing as many rooms of Swingle’s Celebrity Hotel (where everybody is a star) in as little time as possible.”

FLASH: January 29, 1977, Oklahoma City, Okla.: A three day vigil of Led Zeppelin fans resorted to desperate measures as the cold became more intense and they began tearing down the fence posts to feed the fires they had built in metal cans.

Last August, Jimmy Page told writer Cameron Crowe: “I’m no fool, I know how much the mystique matters, so why should I blow it now?”

And Page is right. By casting himself as his own Loch Ness monster, sequestered between tours in Aleister Crowley’s former castle, he only adds to the enigma that goes on forever. Whatever the chinks in Led Zep’s armor, we’ll never get to know without a can opener.

My first encounter with Jimmy Page was not what you’d call cordial; if I want to be kind, it was chilly at best.

He sauntered unsteadily into the room on his obscenely (and enviably) thin legs, dressed in his regalia of the night before, which caused a passerby in the hotel lobby to remark to her companion, “If that’s not a rock star, he’s a flaming wonder!”

The attire in contention, or should I say, attention, was a pair of white billowing military jodphurs, a bit on the solid side today, a crayola crayon-colored magenta blazer, and strange braided leather appendages that trailed down his backside and scuffed umber, knee-high boots.

The outfit was flamboyant for evening, much less mid-afternoon, and Page looked anything but flaming - I’d venture he belonged (as usual) in the pale and gaunt category, probably due to his recent bout with the flu which caused Led Zep to stop midway through one of their Chicago concerts because Page was too ill to continue.

He informed Janine Safer, Swan Song resident exec (and Girl Monday through Monday) and myself that he hadn’t eaten in three days (but when he does ingest a meal, it’s liquid, he revealed - something he concocts in his own room out of vitamins, bananas and a blender); so I attribute his unsteady entry to ill health and not drugs since his dark eyes are remarkably clear.

Anyway, the general consensus of the members of this tour is that the usually excessive and over-indulgent Mr. Page is virtually drug-free. In fact, Robert was overheard to say that this is the first time in years that Jimmy has been straight, adding that this was just like the old days.

“I haven’t had this much fun with Jimmy in years,” Plant testified.

Jimmy’s commentary also seemed to substantiate the testimony, when he retold the case of the missing quaaludes (more on that caper later):

“I don’t know who the doctor thinks he is, asking me if I took his drugs, especially now, when this is the first time I’ve been healthy in years.”

Oh, so we can reasonably assume that healthy is a euphemism for straight.

After his initial tirade, we get around to introductions, and as I am introduced as working press, the ever inscrutable Mr. Page flippantly announces that it’s now time for him to “cellophane his mouth”. I didn’t expect anything more from him, considering Page and the press have traditionally been in uncomfortable company.

To further punctuate his point, Jimmy informs me that he intends to have a cocktail party (where, here?) and is going to invite just everyone but the press.

“They only come for the free drinks,” he says darkly, angrily flicking the ashes from his cigarette onto the floor to further illustrate his disdain.

But, paradoxically, he is very interested in my reaction to the previous night’s performance. I inform him I’ve seen better Zeppelin, and thought this particular show seemed a little lack-lustre; more remote than control.

Janine makes the comment that both the Minneapolis dailies and Robert echo that sentiment. I add, but not in any act of appeasement, that Page seemed more enthusiastic and animated onstage this time than in the previous tour.

“That’s why Robert is so pissed,” Jimmy says solemnly, without betraying whether the comment is in jest or not. “I’m very animated, that’s because I’m happy,” he tells me.

“In fact, I think there were some tremendous moments last night. It was very intense…” he trails off, looking vaguely out the window at the parking lot below.

Yeah, like during the acoustic set when he became so absorbed and enraptured in his guitar work that he leaped out of his chair and edged toward the end of the stage - unplugging his guitar in the process.

Suddenly brightened by some memory (the same one?) of last night, he adds, “We were tight, yet loose. Loosely tight.”

As if savoring the phrase, he says, “You know, someday I’d like to call an album that, ‘Loosely Tight’.”

FLASH: January 30, 1977, Houston, Texas; In South Houston, police had to call in fire trucks to hose down the 3,000-3,500 Led Zeppelin fans who tried to stampede Warehouse Records and Tapes to buy tickets for the band’s April concert. Store officials instructed the successful buyers to hide their tickets and leave by the rear entrance of the store, to avoid having them stolen by the crowd.

FLASH: March 17, 1977, Chicago, Illinois: Thirty young men, including several juveniles, were arrested by police during a disturbance around Chicago Stadium, as thousands of people sought to buy tickets for a concert by Led Zeppelin, “a rock group.”

This tour consists of 40 cities in two legs, over 700,000 tickets sold, and a projected gross somewhere in the altitude of ten million dollars.

“But just suppose Led Zeppelin were scheduling their next tour and the tickets didn’t sell out and it looked as if you weren’t as big as you used to be?” I ask.

“We’d just do the tour,” Robert replied confidently, maybe a little surprised that I’d even hint that they’d throw in the towel.

“We’d tour and become our own best advertisement…I mean, our music may change so much in times to come that our audience does diminish. Because I know we won’t become passe, we might take things beyond what people are prepared to accept from us.

“For example, our third album wasn’t immediately accepted, but it was a signpost for the continuity of the internal stimulus of the band. It had to be. It was the next step and people didn’t take to it too quickly.

“They were more interested in where’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’? Had we not done that, we would probably have stayed together for only one more album. When you think you’ve reached a dead end, you have to get off the horse.”

Instead of dismounting, they’ve increased their horsepower considerably; for this tour they’re traveling in a Boeing 727, which jets from city to city, and back to the home base they’ve set up at the Ambassador whenever possible. (As long as the supply of new rooms holds out!)

Tonight, however, the twenty-some persons belted into their cushioned seats are traveling to Minnesota for a two-day stint in the Twin Cities.

The interior of this pleasure ship is blue and metallic silver, decorated in early video cassettes, Swan Song’s Icarus logo, Caesar’s Palace swizzle sticks and a bar dispensing brain-altering banana daiquiris.

The mood of the journey is not quite that of four businessmen commuting to work, but more like one of those chartered social excursions sponsored by the Elk’s Club or Acme Travel to such exotic digs as Las Vegas or Palm Beach.

Maybe it’s the caviar canapés, the light chit chat, John Paul Jones’ backgammon tourneys, or perhaps the presence of Dr. Larry Something, the tour doctor, who is threading his way through the cabin, passing out pre-“game” vitamins to all occupants of said cabin, regardless whether you’re one of the “players” or not.

Very coffee, tea, or vitamin E.

Dr. Larry is a veteran of two Zep tours and one Rolling Stones invasion, besides being a graduate of Harvard. He seems to do little more than administer the occasional throat spray and aspirin, in addition to picking up as many willing young lovelies as medically possible.

Tonight, our MD is having an especially heavy workout, beginning with the task of trying to revive Robert’s current traveling companion who has just fainted - probably from the high altitude, or else too close contact with one of rock’s most desirable dream dates.

Two more will crumble before the night is over, and the dear doctor doesn’t seem at all amused that he had to discontinue socializing with the giddy Cher lookalike that he’s brought along for the ride.

Dr. Larry only scowled, an expression he seemed to effect all evening. Especially when he discovered someone had rummaged through his satchel and looted his entire supply of methaquaalude.

He almost wrote his final prescription when he decided to corner Jimmy Page in a bathroom and cross-examine him as to the whereabouts of the stolen sopers.

“Accusing me!” Page exploded. “Who does he think is paying his salary anyways?” (Is that a disclaimer?)

Dr. Larry was so outraged and astounded by the theft of his drugs - no major infraction for a rock’n’roll tour of this proportion - that you’d think he’d been hired to perform brain surgery, rather than installed as resident rock medicine man.

But the trials of the AMA took a backseat, and we all buckled up again, coasting into magnificent Minneapolis to begin the five point plan which began with deplaning into seven waiting limos, complete with motor-cycle escort, to hurry to the Minneapolis Sports Arena.

It was teeming with about 18,000 of Zep’s most faithful, all in a state of suspended anticipation to experience some auditory euphoria, after their anguishing two-year deprivation, part of which was spent slobbering on the shrink-wrap of the “Presence” album; awaiting the performance of the Real Thing, otherwise known as Led Zeppelin, the defending champs of heavy rock.

The audience will be administered three hours, seventeen-plus songs, 30,000 watts of hard and heady rock, English flash blues, and empyrean meanderings from Zeppelin’s repertoire.

Dished up along with laser beams, a twelve-minute drum solo, smoke, dry ice, extraterrestrial guitar soars and stud-swaggering body language. (Zzzzzz. - Ed.)

You know it’s 1977, and Led Zeppelin have been around for nine years now, and I can’t help but wonder if part of their popularity is due to the fact that they’re the last of an era of cock rockers who play dirty and, if you’ll excuse the expression, “chauvinistic” rock’n’roll, fulfilling all those wild-hearted bad boy aggressions on stage that their audience only fantasize about.

FLASH: April 17, 1977, Miami, Florida: Five hundred to 1,000 Led Zeppelin fans waiting in line to buy tickets, broke through the gates and began vandalizing the Orange Bowl Stadium. Police had to use tear gas to break up that melee, and 16 policemen were injured as a result.

What does Robert Plant feel about the hysteria around Led Zeppelin?

“Well… One thing about us that does upset me - I see a lot of craziness around us. Somehow, we generate it and we revile it.

“This is an aspect since I’ve been away from it which made me contemplate whether we are doing more harm than we are good. That’s very important to me.

“I’m not doing a Peter Green or anything. What I mean is, what we are trying to put across is positive and wholesome; the essence of a survival band, and almost a symbol of the phoenix if you will; and people react in such an excitable manner that they miss the meaning of it, and that makes me lose my calm, and I get grrr, angry.”

(“Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up. Cool out the ‘works, they don’t help our show very much.”

Robert admonishes the firecracker-happy audience from centre stage, stopping the show after the third song.

“Why don’t you save ‘em until you get home and stick ‘em down a drain,” he suggests irritably.)

“I don’t know why the fans toss firecrackers. I think it’s horrible. That’s the element that makes you wonder whether it’s better to be half-way up a tree in Wales,” Robert proclaims to me.

So what are you doing here instead of up that tree?

“The thing is, I look into so many eyes every night, and when I initially look, those eyes are sort of sealed ‘cause they don’t think I’m real, but bit by bit, I work on just those pairs of eyes until they glow with warmth, and then it makes it worthwhile, and whoooosh, the firecrackers dim down…”

In an era where disposable bands and itinerant musicians constantly play a game of musical chairs, it’s an oddity to find a band existing as a unit for the past nine years with the same members that were involved as its inception. In light of that, Led Zeppelin is a study in endurance.

I ask Plant whether any of them had ever anticipated LZ being together this long.

“No. It took a long time before we could look at ourselves from a distance, look back and say: there’s no reason why this thing should ever stop! It’s one of those bands with enough imagination amongst us to keep it going.”

But, if you hadn’t beat the odds, could Led Zeppelin ever have been strictly a recording band?

“Had it been me, I wasn’t going to compromise by being Frank Sinatra or somebody. Still having a voice, I’ve got a right to perform. The performance always comes first,” says Robert.

So now, Robert, you’ve given me the secret of your success, your speedy recovery, your peace of mind, your popularity, and pocket money. But there’s one very, very important formula you’ve left out, that I’m sure all your fans are dying to know:

To what do you attribute your long life?

“Imagination, self-stimulation and chicks,” he said with a straight face.

Any projections on the next thing, since you said before that there was no reason why your band couldn’t go on forever?

“There are two paths you can take…” he pauses to see if I get it. Very funny, but the words go like this, wise guy: “There are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there’s still time to change the road you’re on…” Robert, taken only slightly aback by the proper lyrics, pauses and grins.

“I don’t know… I think it’s an extension of what I’m doing but I don’t think I’ll be surrounded by so much hysteria. I think I will go to Kashmir one day, when some great change hits me and I have to really go away and think about my future as a man rather than a prancing boy.”

FLASH: June 1, 1977, Poughkeepsie, New York: Rumors of a Led Zeppelin tour scheduled for fall of 1979, spanning 30 cities in 28 days, has sparked off an unprecedented appeal for ticket information. Unhappy fans, when told that tickets were not yet available, resorted to sending plastic explosives to Ticketron offices across the U.S.A. - Jaan Uhelski