A party started in one of the Zeppelin rooms, and Jackie was asked to remove her clothes, writes Spitz. Cole and Batman started “hitting her with the fish”, according to an account given to Spitz by Carmine Appice, the Vanilla Fudge drummer, who was there. The dead fish left teeth marks on Jackie’s back. Things reportedly descended from there.
The grim scene is thought to have been filmed. The lurid incident, and the assertion by all concerned that Jackie was a willing willing participant, tells you all you need to know about male dominance in the music industry at the time.
Enter The Starship
When touring in the US in the early Seventies, Led Zeppelin flew between gigs in a private nine-seat Fan Jet Falcon. However by 1973, when the band were at the height of their popularity, they deemed the Falcon too cramped for their ever-growing entourage. Further, it was a nightmare in turbulence. They needed something bigger. Cole had heard about a forty-seater Boeing 720B that had been kitted out for rock bands.
It came complete with a 30-foot sofa, an artificial fireplace and a bar with a built-in electronic organ. So Zeppelin’s management hired it for $10,000 a week (£50,000 today). It was known as The Starship. According to Spitz, Cole stocked the hold with Jack Daniels, Singha beer and “several cases of vintage Dom Pérignon”. The menu included steak, shrimp and caviar. The band also used The Starship on their 1975 US tour. Other acts that hired it included Elton John, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. The plane was dismantled for parts in 1982.
Good tour manager, bad businessman
Richard Cole was unquestionably an excellent tour manager. “No one was better at wrangling musicians on the road or maintaining order when things got hairy,” writes Spitz. However he was not a great businessman.
In February 1976, Peter Grant was due to fly to Los Angeles for a day-long meeting with Warner Bros executives, including the future music mogul David Geffen, to talk about the upcoming Led Zep film The Song Remains The Same. However Grant couldn’t make the trip, so he sent Cole and associate Benji Le Fevre instead. It didn’t go well.
