Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored($24.14Value)

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Led Zeppelin's tour manager describes the group's beginnings; the private lives of Page, Plant, Bonham, and Jones; the band's appetite for sexual excess; their friendship with Elvis and the Who; the death of Plant's son; and more. $75,000 ad/promo. Before Motley Crue, Metallica, Guns 'n Roses, and every other pretender to the heavy metal throne, there was Led Zeppelin, archetypal progenitors of all headbangers. Cole, their tour manager-cum-bodyguard, paramour procurer, and ace troubleshooter for 12 years, is uniquely qualified to guide us through the multifarious sexual, narcotic, alcoholic, and material excesses for which he and the band became legendary. Uncensored is the operative word as Cole recalls one anecdotal tale of surfeit and decadence after another, touching upon the band's propensity for very young teenage girls, wanton destruction of hotel property, and insatiable capacity for alcohol, cocaine, and heroin. Amazingly, all these tales are told in a young-rock-gods-will-be-boys demeanor. Many of the tales, however, can be found in Stephen Davis's Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga ( LJ 6/15/85). To his credit, Cole also attempts to celebrate the band's innumerable musical accomplishments. For large music collections. -Barry X. Miller, Austin P.L., Tex. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. Tell-all journal of the hedonism, profligacy, and perversity of the Seventies supergroup that went down in flames. Led Zeppelin was assembled by former Yardbirds guitarist Jimmy Page; 14 months after their first performance, they had a recording contract with Atlantic, were playing 20,000 seat arenas, and had been offered a million dollars for a single performance. Cole (here ably assisted by journalist Trubo) was the group's tour manager and road companion for 12 years. What happens when four men, some not yet of majority, become rich as Croesus in 20 months, have more women than imaginable throwing themselves at their feet, and unlimited alcohol, drugs, and servants as well? Cole is astoundingly clear on the details- -offhandedly honest as he is about his own gargantuan appetite for heroin and booze--and lays out the road life with all the real nitty-gritty, including the 14-year-olds Page craved, room demolitions, cross-dressing, and the infamous fornication-by-fish episode. The inevitable center of gravity of Cole's saga is the tragedy of John ``Bonzo'' Bonham, the band's drummer, dead of alcohol overdose at age 32. Bonham--a monster with his addiction fully blown, his short life drowning in a sea of alcohol--is by turns grandiose, despairing, manipulative, passionate, violent. Invited backstage to a Ten Years After Concert, he throws orange juice on Alvin Lee--the most respected guitarist of his generation--as Lee performs, then staggers on stage and rips his clothes off, defecates in women's handbags and shoes, and passes out in the gutter outside his $500 hotel room. And everywhere around him are the enablers, feeding him more alcohol, cocaine, heroin. Lacks the depth of Stephen Davis's Hammer of the Gods (1985) but dishes up the real dirt as only an insider's report can. (Photographs--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.