Jimmy Page, Robert Plant: Goodbye Richard Cole, the son of bitch of rock and roll

By editorial board on December 6, 2021

Legendary Led Zeppelin road manager Richard Cole died last week after a battle with cancer. The road manager of Led Zeppelin is gone, the man who with his fists and guns got them out of trouble for 12 incredible years. He also ended up in jail in Italy

Cole was Led Zeppelin's road manager and fixer from 1968 until 1980, and later authored the controversial Stairway To Heaven biography of the band. He was also Stephen Davis's chief source for his infamous Hammer Of The Gods.(loudersound)

While the band members have publicly refuted the accuracy of both books – Page said of the former, "The two bits that I have read are so ridiculously false, that I'm sure if I read the rest I'd be able to sue Cole and the publishers" – Cole was ultimately forgiven, and was invited to attend Led Zeppelin's Celebration Day show in London on 2007 as a VIP guest.

Fired by the manager of the group Peter Grant because he was now considered too unpredictable and unreliable, he had been persuaded to come to Rome to detoxify himself from heroin: bad luck wanted him to land in Fiumicino on the day of the Bologna massacre, 2 August 1980,  and throw him to jail on charges of terrorism. He was totally unrelated to the facts, but they kept him in for cocaine possession.

Page posted, "Richard and I went back a long way and he had been recruited by Peter Grant to be tour manager with the Yardbirds Keith Relf, Jim McCarty, Chris Dreja, and myself during our American touring schedule of underground venues. He was with me at the time that band folded and when I formed Led Zeppelin.

He was "one of the band", willing to share girls and drugs and push himself to the excesses of rock'n'roll Babylon, but he knew - and how - his business: the annals remember him as the first to insist that British groups away in the States brought crews and sound systems with them, instead of hiring inexperienced people and shoddy equipment on site.

Ruthless and brutal with his "enemies" and those who dared to put a spoke in his wheel, Cole was nevertheless an extraordinary problem solver: able to organize a daring escape in the middle of the night from a dilapidated Greek hospital when in 1977 Plant and his family were victims of a serious road accident in Rhodes, to come to the aid of his assistants when they got into some trouble, to refuel the Starship, the Boeing hired by Zeppelins for North American trips, of all good things. He didn't hide behind a finger, and even though (after also working for Eric Clapton, Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne) he cleaned himself off drugs by reinventing himself a respectable and peaceful second life, he had no qualms about remembering his most nefarious exploits. and amazing: claiming the starring role in the infamous and legendary mud shark incident, the story of dead fish used as sex toys that inspired a song for Frank Zappa, and remembering his prowess alongside the equally wild and irrepressible Bonham , whether it was riding a Harley Davidson in the corridors of a hotel in Los Angeles or slicing a hotel room in Japan with the blows of samurai swords (Rolling Stone.it)

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