Random Infamous Stories From Led Zeppelin's Heyday Most Fans Don't Talk About (16 items)

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  (#8) Robert Plant's Son Died Extremely Suddenly While Zeppelin Was In The US

  In July 1977, immediately following a violent incident involving the band's manager and security in Oakland, CA, Led Zeppelin made its way to New Orleans. There, vocalist Robert Plant received two phone calls about his 5-year-old son, Karac, who was suddenly stricken with a grave stomach infection. 

  As tour manager Richard Cole recalled, “The first phone call said his son was sick. And the second phone call, unfortunately, Karac had died in that time.”

  The band immediately canceled the remainder of the tour, and Plant returned to England to be with his wife, Maureen, and their daughter, Carmen. As Plant's father said when interviewed in 1977, "Karac was the apple of Robert's eye. They idolized one another."

  Plant retreated from the band to deal with the tragedy. He later said, “After the death of my son Karac in 1977, I received a lot of support from [Bonham], and I went through the mill because the media turned on the whole thing and made it even worse." 

  Upon Karac's death, Plant quit all substances cold turkey and considered retiring from music to focus on a career in education. He eventually returned to Zeppelin. 
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  (#16) Zep Security Man John Bindon Enjoyed Waving His Notoriously Large Drum Stick About

  For its 1977 US tour, Zeppelin brought London underworld figure John Bindon and his brother along as security guards. Jack Calmes, who revolutionized concert sound and lighting systems and worked with Zeppelin frequently, recalled the following: 

  The Bindon brothers were thugs who were friends of Peter Grant’s and were on this whole tour as security guards. And they brought an element of darkness into this thing. The only thing I remember about John Bindon is that we were in The Roxy [in Los Angeles, prior to the Oakland shows] and he was in the back corner with Zeppelin, and he had his d*ck out, swinging it for a crowd of about 50 people that could see it [Bindon was famously well-endowed]. And John Bindon later stabbed this guy through the heart [he was acquitted of murder in ’79]; it sounds like something out of a blues song.
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  (#15) One TV Out The Window? Try Five If You're Led Zeppelin

  Eight years after the infamous shark incident at Seattle's Edgewater Inn, the band returned to the hotel, somehow skirting their lifetime ban. The hotel's manager, James Blum, hesitantly welcomed the rockers back, but demanded (naively) they be on their best behavior. Obviously, that's not what happened.

  Legend has it, that night the band threw not one television set into the Puget Sound, but five, racking up an obscene amount of room damages. Mr. Blum was rightly furious and charged the band $2,500 for the cost of the TVs, which tour manager Richard Cole gleefully paid. When checking out, Cole was asked by a young hotel clerk: "I’ve heard that Led Zeppelin has a reputation for throwing TVs. But I thought it was BS. Can you tell me, what does it feel like to just toss a TV out of your window?"

  Cole replied, coolly, "Kid, there are some things in life that you’ve got to experience for yourself," as he slid the clerk $500. "Here you go, mate. Go toss a TV courtesy of Led Zeppelin."
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  (#7) The Nightmare 1977 US Tour Featured Riots And Beatings

  Led Zeppelin's 1977 tour was many things - a watershed moment in over-the-top stadium tours; a huge financial success; a statement of Zeppelin's overwhelming commercial might and dominance of rock music; and a violent and tumultuous nightmare. 

  The tour was the band's first since vocalist Robert Plant broke a number of bones in a car accident while on holiday after the release of Physical Graffiti. It all went wrong from the get-go; Plant came down with laryngitis, postponing the start of the tour. And the band had already shipped its instruments to the US, leaving them without equipment for over a month - Jimmy Page didn't play guitar at all in that time. 

  In April 1977, violence erupted at Cincinnati Riverfront Coliseum, where fans without tickets rushed the gate and threw bottles and rocks through windows to crash the show. In June, at a show in Tampa, FL, a thunderstorm cut short a show, leading to rioting fans, 19 arrests, and more than 50 injuries. During a show in Chicago, Jimmy Page became violently ill.

  The paramount instance of insanity went down in Oakland, CA, and was exacerbated by Zeppelin manager Peter Grant's decision to hire criminals as security. The story goes something like this: a guy named Jim Matzorkis, who worked security for concert promoter Bill Graham, smacked around Peter Grant's 11-year-old son. Grant and another security guard/criminal, John Bindon, then went to a security trailer, found Matzorkis, and beat the crap out of him. 

  According to Zep tour manager Richard Cole:

  When the band came off the stage, Peter went after the guy with Johnny Bindon. I was outside the caravan with an iron bar, making sure no one could get in and get hold of them, because people were after Granty and Bindon then.
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  (#5) Jimmy Page Supposedly Worshipped The Devil

  Long before the Satanic Panic was tied to heavy metal in the late '70s and early '80s, Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page was deeply into the world of the Dark Lord during Led Zeppelin's meteoric rise in the late '60s.

  While Page never explicitly came out as a Satanist, telling Rolling Stone, "I don't really want to go on about my personal beliefs or my involvement in magic," (well, that clears things up), he did have an obsession with Aleister Crowley, an English occultist who called himself “the Great Beast 666."
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  (#9) They Ripped Off A Journalist's Clothes

  The members of Led Zeppelin were, in their heyday, huge rock stars. With that in mind, it's not hard to imagine the wealth of willing groupies they had around them. And yet, the band has a really problematic reputation when it comes to their interactions with women.

  One infamous tale of this abusive behavior involves a reporter from Life magazine who had been sent to profile the band. The boys - possibly soaring on an absurd amounts of drugs - started to harass the woman and allegedly tore off her clothes. The woman began to sob, understandably in fear for her own safety. Luckily, the band's manager, Peter Grant, reportedly came to her aide and pulled the band off her. 

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