A Book Of Led Zeppelin

HAMMER OF THE GODS

Hammer Of The Gods is a book, and not exactly one of my favourites. It's an unauthorised Led Zeppelin biography, written by music journalist Stephen Davis in 1985, and is very unfortunately the best known Zeppelin biography there is. (The title is taken from a lyric from Immigrant Song, thanks for ruining it).

Stephen Davis had travelled with Led Zeppelin for two weeks at the beginning of their 1975 US tour, when he was a journalist for Rolling Stone Magazine. That's it. Apparently that means he's qualified to write their biography. A biography that, in my humble opinion, is probably better used to line a cat litter-tray rather than to be actually read. Apart from the fact the author barely knew the band, all three remaining band members have said that this book is full of exaggerations, mistakes and outright lies.

"I think I opened the book up in the middle somewhere and started to read it, and I just threw it out the window. I was living by a river then, so it actually found it's way to the bottom of the sea,"
~ Jimmy Page

A fitting end.

"The guy who wrote that book knew nothing about the band. I think he'd hung around us once. He got all his information from a guy who had a heroin problem who happened to be associated with us,"
~ Robert Plant

Again, more proof that he barely knew the band, the band definitely didn't know him, and his main source of information is a drug addict, who aren't known for being the most reliable sources.

"It's a very sad little book. It made us out to be sad little people. He ruined a lot of good, funny stories,"
~ John Paul Jones

If you weren't actually there when these stories happened, it's impossible to get them right. Davis clearly didn't even try to, and in doing so completely twisted them. Things taken out of context rarely get portrayed how they should be, we see that a lot, especially nowadays, where people just love sticking their noses into things that never needed to concern them and upsetting everything to get their precious (and mostly irrelevant) views across. 

Maybe you're starting to see why I hate this book so much. But it gets worse. The 'guy with a heroin problem' that Robert Plant talked about was Richard Cole, the band's former tour manager who was once their good friend. As Plant explains,

"Davis did a lot of investigations with a guy who used to work with Led Zeppelin, Richard Cole, who, over the years, had shown deep frustrations at not being in a position to have any authority at all. He was tour manager and he had a problem which could have been easily solved if he'd been given something intelligent to do rather than check the hotels, and I think it embittered him greatly. He became progressively unreliable and, sadly, became a millstone around the neck of the group. These stories would filter out from girls who'd supposedly been in my room when in fact they'd been in his. That sort of atmosphere was being created, and we were quite tired of it. So we relieve him of his position and in the meantime he got paid a lot of money for talking crap. A lot of the time he wasn't completely well. And so his view of things was permanently distorted one way or another,"

But people bought the book. And many believe everything that was written in it, which is a shame, because it is an awful book that portrays the band in a bad light. Sure, they weren't anywhere near angels, god no, and lots of those stories would have had a basis of truth in them. But how would Davis know if they were true or not? Because, again, he barely knew the band. It's that whole out of context thing; you can't understand unless you were actually there. He was going on the words of a man who was bitter towards Zeppelin anyway, had a history of making things up and also happened to be addicted to heroin. His source pretty much defines the word 'biased'.

So in conclusion, Hammer Of The Gods is a shitty book. But amazingly, there is another Zeppelin 'biography' book that's even worse than this. In 1992, Richard Cole published his own biography of Led Zeppelin, from his days as their tour manager from 1968-1979. This man doesn't even have the excuse of not knowing the band to explain why this book was even worse than Hammer Of The Gods.

In his book, he describes the background of himself and each of the band members, explaining how he developed 'close friendships' with the band. If he was ever their friend, he certainly wasn't after publishing his book, Stairway To Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored. If Hammer Of The Gods was full of exaggerations, lies and badly told stories, this one was ten times worse. As Jimmy Page said on the book,

"... It has made me completely ill. I'm so angry about it that I can't even bring myself to read the whole thing. 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. But it would be so painful to read that it wouldn't be worth it,"

And from John Paul Jones,

"Cole's accounts are a mish-mash of several stories put together, usually with the wrong endings and making us look like miserable bastards rather than what we really were,"

But that isn't even the worst thing about this book. When John Paul Jones read about how Cole depicted John Bonham in the book, as a dangerous drunken mess who angered at anything and attacked people for no reason, he was so angry that he swore to never speak to him again. And Jones is known for being the calmest, the most level headed and the most sensible member of the band. I suppose when someone resorts to shaming a dead man, who used to be a close friend, with pathetic exaggerations, it would make anyone furious.

Jones actually said in an interview about the time when he asked Cole about why he'd written such a horrendous book. Cole said that he'd been 'a drug addict who needed the money'.

There we go, everyone. If you want more money to buy more drugs, write a book full of lies about people you were once friends with, and taint the memory of a dead ex-friend whilst you're at it. That's his logic at least.

I think I'm safe in saying that Richard Cole is an absolute prick. I'm sure many of you would agree.

Picture: The two books' covers and Richard Cole himself at the bottom