1
THE GODFATHER OF ROCK

Peter Grant was the most charming, courteous and affable of men – until you slammed a car door on his foot, tried to throw him in a pool or attempted to rob or cheat his beloved Led Zeppelin. Then the wrath of Jehovah would be a welcome alternative to the splenetic fury of the ‘Godfather of Rock’.

Peter Grant was a former South London wrestler who became one of the most powerful men in the music industry. The formidable figure of ‘G’ struck fear into the hearts of anyone foolish enough to try to rip off Led Zep or obstruct their inexorable rise to fame. ‘G’ was a towering, six-foot, 18-stone, moustachioed giant, a 20th century Genghis Khan of the rock world, who would brook no opposition. His favourite weapon was alarmingly abusive language delivered with machine-gun like precision that rendered argument futile. Coupled with his fearsomely powerful presence, which communicated the certain knowledge that should fighting erupt ‘G’ would win hands down, ‘verbal violence’ – as he termed it – won many a battle before it was actually fought.

Yet there was much more to Peter Grant than his semi-mythical status as the hardest of the ‘hard men’ in the band business. Adept at negotiation, policy making and strategy, he drove the world’s most powerful and dynamic rock team to the top of their game with unrivalled skill and commitment. Grant understood better than anyone that a new phenomenon required special treatment. In the process of taking Led Zep to the top he laid down the ground rules that ensured that the ill-treated pop groups of the Sixties became the millionaire superstars of the Seventies and beyond. If Led Zeppelin were paid so well they were nicknamed ‘Led Wallet’ byawed rivals, then their tireless manager could take much of the credit. Such was his importance to Zeppelin, he became known as the ‘fifth member’. It was an accolade he richly deserved.

Some saw his attitude as bloody-minded aggression. Others recognised he was single-handedly turning rock into a global business with massive rewards to match. Where once promoters demanded the lion’s share of money from concert revenues, Grant ensured his artists received 90 per cent. Even as Led Zeppelin were stunning fans with screaming vocals, blistering guitar solos and dazzling light shows, Peter was hard at work behind the scenes, arguing with promoters and wading into bootleggers. He never missed a gig and he never missed a trick.

Unlike many managers, he was never tempted to interfere with the band’s records or stage act. He left the music entirely in the hands of the musicians. When Led Zep were on the road, they became his family, surrogate sons to be protected and encouraged when times were tough. It was a caring attitude he had adopted right from the start of his career, when he looked after the rock’n’roll giants of an earlier epoch, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Gene Vincent.

At the same time, the British band’s huge success gave Grant the personal respect, status and power he had craved since he fought his way out of a tough childhood and tougher neighbourhood. Often his fits of temper seemed triggered by a sense of outrage that his personal space was being invaded or his hard won prestige eroded. Nothing angered him more than people ‘taking liberties’ or trying to muscle in on his territory. It was an attitude not always easy to comprehend, especially by those from comfortable, secure backgrounds where there was no need to shout, swear or raise a fist to make a way in life. In America especially, many were surprised at the way in which ‘G’ overturned their idea of the ‘traditional Englishman’. Grant was no David Niven style gentleman nor another middle-class and slightly naïve Brian Epstein, waiting to be exploited and given the run-around. The tough talking Londoner, raised on a diet of street talk and cash, could take on the shady, the devious and the organised – and win.

When necessary, of course, Grant wouldn’t bat an eyelid at demonstrating the kind of immense personal bravery necessary to ward off a threat. Indeed, he would take fiendish pleasure in offering his personal, physical protection to vulnerable young charges. When a group of sailors began mocking and jeering at Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page’s long hair during a US trip by The Yardbirds, Peter stormed into action. He recalled later: “The three of us were flying down to Miami and I turned round and heard these blokes. One of them looked like a little tough, so I lifted him up under the arm and said, ‘Okay, what’s your problem Popeye?’ And the other one ran.”

If anyone ever needed reminding he’d say: “If I’m out at a concert and somebody is gonna do something to one of my artists, then I’ll fucking tread on ‘em, without thinking about it.”

Yet like many supposed ‘hard men’, Peter retained a gentle streak, probably inherited from his mother. He was a man full of contrasts. At times pugnacious and abrasive, he could also be relaxed, polite, witty and stimulating company. He had a finely developed sense of humour and was surprisingly cultured in his tastes, displaying a genuine passion for antiques and works of art. Often dangerously overweight and improbably dressed in ill-fitting kaftans, baggy jeans and coonskin hats, he attracted the slim, the slight and the delicate. Both men and women found him a comforting, reassuring companion. It wouldn’t take much, however, to tip the scales and the gently chuckling host would once again become the man with a face like thunder, erupting with cries of “What the fucking hell do you think you’re fucking doing!”

Says journalist Michael Watts, who met and interviewed Peter on several occasions: “I think the interesting thing is you don’t need to be a psychologist to see that for a man who was so overweight, having access to women and a certain kind of lifestyle through being the manager of what at one point was the most famous pop band in the world, must have been terrific. He was certainly the man who broke the mould of pop group management and did something different.”

In later years, when Grant became a mellow family man, cherishing his own son and daughter and grandchildren, many were puzzled that such a friendly, relaxed individual could ever have been portrayed as a rock’n’roll monster. Certainly his ‘gangster image’, enhanced by his appearance in the movie The Song Remains The Same, had long since faded and was always something of an embellishment. He certainly delighted in telling anecdotes of his former exploits. “I did a lot of that,” he’d say, prodding people in the chest with his finger and recalling how his wrestling techniques often came in useful when a point needed to be made.

But right to the end, there was always a glint of danger, a menace that would surface unexpectedly and put an end to any attempt to outsmart him. Some tried to dismiss the Peter Grant of his retirement years as ‘a pussy cat’ but even at his most relaxed and genial, when the danger signal flashed red, it was wise to take heed. The forces of impatience and aggression that drove him as a young man were ever present.

In an age when pop acts and bands are all too frequently entirely the product of auditions followed by intense promotion through TV and media, the creation of Led Zeppelin seems in retrospect like an even more remarkable achievement. How could they have become so huge when they had just one or two men behind them and a mountain to climb?

It wasn’t even easy to convince the existing music industry of the Sixties that Led Zeppelin was something special, as Peter Grant quickly discovered to his chagrin and fury. Indeed, his early treatment by the media, including the radio and TV networks, more or less forced him into adopting an aggressive stance and isolationist policies. If no one would help his band, then he’d help himself, do the job his way, the only way he knew how.

A crucial moment in the early days of Zeppelin came when he invited a BBC TV crew to the Marquee Club in London to film the band in action for their regular rock show The Old Grey Whistle Test. The show was a sell-out. Hundreds of fans lined the streets, waiting in line to get in.

The BBC crew failed to turn up and never even apologised to Grant for letting him down. There and then he decided he wouldn’t pander to the media or play by their rules. To the anguish and disbelief of his record company he promptly decided never to release a Led Zeppelin single in Britain, thus ensuring that Zep would never belittle themselves by appearing on Top Of The Pops. He would rely instead chiefly on the support of the fans who queued at the clubs – and bought the albums. As far as he was concerned Zep were and would remain a true ‘underground’ band.

This slightly eccentric, self-help attitude remained at the core of Zeppelin’s line of attack for years, manifesting itself in the small number of staff Grant employed, the avoidance of lavishly furnished prestige offices, the playing down of ‘official’ corporate style PR and a reliance on direct contact with friends and supporters for press coverage. It also secured for Zeppelin a certain mystique which, buoyed up by Grant’s firm belief in always leaving the fans wanting more, has somehow been sustained to this day.

When Led Zeppelin suddenly took off at the end of 1968, following their first visits to America and the release of their stunning début album, it was a time for bittersweet revenge. Yet Peter Grant never indulged in such tactics. He laughed and chuckled instead, and took great pleasure in seeing the looks on the faces of those who had scorned him. He knew himself how hard it was for any ‘pop group’ to make a name for itself, and understood the tough and cynical attitudes of the so-called music industry. He also recognised the blind incompetence that lay at the heart of many of its most important institutions – and he forgave them. After all, as Led Zeppelin was being showered with gold and platinum albums, he could afford to have the last laugh.

As he flew around the world on board private jets, sipping champagne and browsing through the pages of Country Life in search of property and antiques, he could reflect on the magnificently strange and fascinating paths his life had taken since the days when he was a lonely teenager, abandoned by a father he never knew, determined to rise above a life of poverty in the war-battered, crime-ridden London suburb that was home. There was a way out – to the glittering world of show business – via The Croydon Empire!

2
THE ROCK’N’ROLL YEARS

Despite many attempts to unravel his past, a degree of mystery seems destined to forever surround the origins of one of the music industry’s most powerful and controversial figures. What is certain is that Peter Grant, future manager of Led Zeppelin, was born on April 5, 1935, in South Norwood, a south London suburb. His mother, Dorothy Louise Grant, who on his birth certificate described herself as a private secretary, lived in Norhyrst Avenue, South Norwood. According to the birth certificate, Peter was born at an address in ‘Birdhurst Road, U.D.’ (sic). There is a Birdhurst Road in South Croydon, only three stations away on the railway line from Norwood Junction. However, there is also a Birdhurst Road in Wandsworth, not far from Battersea, where Peter grew up. No father’s name is given on the certificate and as Peter took his mother’s surname, this strongly suggests he was born illegitimate.

It is reasonable to assume, therefore, that Peter Grant was raised in what would nowadays respectfully be termed a ‘single parent family’, never knowing his father. While such circumstances are commonplace today, in the pre-war years and for at least two decades after, there was a stigma attached to illegitimacy which evoked the use of pejorative words and phrases intended to hurt and demean. “Peter was – to use the word – a bastard,” says Richard Cole, his personal assistant for many years. “He didn’t know who his father was and his mum brought him up. He was very close to his mum and he always took care of her. But he never spoke much about his childhood.” From the secrecy that Peter adopted towards his early years, it was clear the subject was painful to him and one he was reluctant ever to discuss.

His son Warren – born February 23, 1966 – admits that little is known about Peter’s upbringing, even within the fairly tight-knit circles of their small family. “He never talked about his father, although he adored his mum,” he says. “I don’t have many memories of my granny. Dorothy Louise died when I was quite young. There was a load of stuff that he kept very personal about his parents. After he died, a friend of my dad’s gave me a lot of papers relating to the family background. I was told I should open the packet and have a look. But I didn’t want to do that, because he had kept it so private all his life. So it went with him in the coffin. I thought it was best to keep it that way. It was a big envelope full of letters and bits and pieces. I just didn’t want to open it. I know that his family were very poor. They were totally skint! He started from nothing and that made him hungry for success.”

One close friend that Peter confided in to a certain extent was Mickie Most, with whom he would enjoy a fruitful business partnership in later years. Says Mickie: “Peter was half Jewish. He told me he was half Jewish and I think his mother was Jewish. Peter never talked much about his childhood. He was illegitimate which he didn’t deny. He just didn’t want to discuss it. He was very close to his mum, who had diabetes. She had a very serious condition and had to have her leg amputated. If you have diabetes badly you can go blind and lose limbs. It was terrible. I attended her funeral in Streatham with Peter in the Seventies.”

Intriguingly, Peter’s solid sounding surname ‘Grant’ is from the Latin grandis, which evolved into the 13th century Norman nickname, ‘graund’ or ‘graunt’ meaning large. It was usually given to ‘a person of remarkable size’ and while it can also mean ‘elder’ or ‘senior’, in most cases ‘grante’, as it became in Old English, simply meant ‘tall’. It was highly appropriate, given Grant’s formidable girth and dimensions, a condition increasingly evident from his late teens onwards. To what minuscule knowledge is known about Peter’s father, it can safely be added that he, too, was probably very powerfully built.

There may not have been many Norman French ‘Graunts’ left living in South Norwood during the Thirties, but a hundred years earlier it was a happy hunting ground for roaming bands of gypsies. The area where Peter’s mother lived was once the southern part of the Great North Wood of Surrey, which lay between Upper Norwood and Croydon. It was land owned by successive Archbishops of Canterbury and noted for its beauty. However, woodmen and charcoal burners destroyed the trees and over time the area became what has been chillingly described by historians as ‘an immense wasteland inhabited by beggars’.

Once the miles of common land were enclosed and the railways built in the mid-19th century, the population increased and large numbers of suburban houses were built. Among the more celebrated inhabitants was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who lived at 12 Tennison Road, where he wrote the first of his famous Sherlock Holmes detective stories, including one entitled The Adventure Of The Norwood Builder.

Dorothy and Peter subsequently moved from Norwood to the inner city suburb of Battersea, just across the River Thames from fashionable Chelsea, where they lived in a two-up, two-down terraced house. Close to the southern banks of the river, Battersea (originally Bedric’s Island) was once marshland and a Saxon settlement. By the middle of the 19th century the many acres of market gardens that made it such an attractive locale were engulfed with smoke belching factories, making candles, glucose, starch, gas and gloves. The final touches to this bleak urban landscape were made when the huge power station was opened in 1933 (and closed in 1983).

Peter’s mother tried her best to adapt to her new home and took a secretarial job with the Church of England’s Pension Board. Despite this touch of respectability, a twangy South London accent and tough attitude meant there seemed little chance that her son Peter would make it beyond the lower rungs of society. According to his teacher’s somewhat despairing school report: “The boy will never make anything of his life.” Indeed, so poor was his mother that for a period little Peter was placed in a children’s home. Even his limited schooling was disrupted, this time by the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939. With bombs raining down, London was no place for a child and four-year-old Peter was evacuated with thousands of others to the safety of the country. In his case, the entire school was relocated to Charterhouse, a famous public school not far from Godolming, deep in the wealthy stockbroker belt of the Surrey countryside.^*

It was a far cry from the smoky streets of Battersea and Grant later talked of the way he was looked down upon by the public schoolboys he encountered. It’s not surprising that he developed an early antipathy towards the pervasive effects of class-consciousness in society, not to mention a withering attitude towards the upper-middle classes, especially those to whom fortune came without fortitude.

It certainly made him all the more determined to become a success, whatever his origins. As he said somewhat bitterly: “You can imagine. The scum had arrived from Battersea. They loathed us. World War Two was on and there was another war going on down there that nobody knew about. There used to be great battles and we’d beat them up.”

After the war Peter returned to his mother in Battersea. Of his schooldays little is known, though it can be assumed that the world of academe held no attraction whatsoever. By his own account, he left school at the age of 13 and took a labouring job at a sheet metal factory a few miles away in Croydon. Peter lasted just five weeks in his one and only factory job. “I knew it just wasn’t for me,” he confessed later. “I had a bad, bad education. It was all mixed up with being evacuated during the war and my circumstances … not knowing my father.”

Says his daughter Helen: “He never did anything at school. He was never an academic. But when his headmaster gave him that horrible report, it gave him an incentive. He thought: ‘Right, sod you, I’m going to do something.’” Peter realised from an early age that if he were to achieve anything in life, he’d have to do it on his own terms, by the force of his personality and, if necessary, sheer physical strength. Fortunately, he was well endowed in that department, so much so that future employers probably assumed he was considerably older than he really was.

Attracted by the allure of show business, he took a more interesting job than sheet metal bashing, working as a stagehand at the Croydon Empire, a mecca for mass entertainment in south London. In 1948, before the arrival of television, variety and the cinema happily co-existed in the same premises. South London was full of superbly appointed cinemas with evocative names, Odeons, Rialtos and Gaumonts, where the magic of the silver screen offered a brief respite from the drudgery of post-war England. The Empire was situated at 94 North End, Croydon and opened as a music hall in 1906. It converted into a movie house in the Thirties, featuring a mixture of talkies, newsreels and the occasional ‘live’ variety act. There were so many cinemas in the locality that from 1938 onwards the Empire became a ‘live’ entertainment venue only.

When Peter Grant became an eager, 13-year-old stagehand, earning fifteen shillings a night, the Empire was owned by the Hyams Brothers. They had bought the theatre in 1946 and continued the policy of staging ‘live’ shows. In this rather oddly designed building, with its narrow street entrance leading to a grand foyer, young Peter caught his first glimpse of the stars of the day, albeit somewhat downmarket ‘artistes’ on variety bills. One of the last shows put on at the Empire, before it converted to the Eros Cinema in the early Fifties, was called Soldiers In Skirts. Skirts may well have been on Peter’s mind as he excitedly swept up the stage, pulled back the curtains and ogled the actresses.

The Croydon Empire/Eros Cinema closed in May 1959 and was demolished to make way for a barren concrete shopping centre. However the closure of many such theatres did not deter the young stagehand from pursuing his dreams. It was an era of almost full employment and jobs were easy to come by for someone to whom work was second nature. Unemployment was never an option for Peter Grant and, eager for adventure and undaunted by his lack of education, he took a wide variety of casual jobs. They included working as a waiter at Frascati’s restaurant in Soho and as a messenger for Reuters, the international news agency, in Fleet Street. He delivered the latest news photographs, taking wet prints on his arm to the various newspaper offices that lined the street that in those days was the heart of London’s newspaper business.

In 1953, at the age of 18, Grant was called up to do his obligatory two years of National Service in the Army. Under the terms of the National Service Act of 1948, all of Britain’s young men were called upon to undergo two years’ military training. This was the first time that compulsory military service had been introduced in Britain outside of wartime, and its very existence contributed to the air of drabness and repression that pervaded the early Fifties.

It also evoked an atmosphere of authoritarianism in which young men of Peter’s age and background were encouraged to believe that they should defer to their ‘elders and betters’. Teenage years – that sublime interval between leaving school and adulthood – simply did not exist; whatever revolt may have been kindling in the soul was extinguished by the army.

This wholesale aura of oppression almost certainly supplied the launch-pad for the Teddy Boy phenomenon, which in the early-Fifties was beginning to emerge in working-class areas like Battersea and Clapham. In what history generally records as the first great youth cult of the 20th century, lads just out of the Army threw away their uniforms and ‘demob suits’ and, in a kind of homage to pre-war Edwardian fashions, began wearing drainpipe trousers and thigh-length drape jackets with velvet collars. Visitors to the Festival Of Britain Funfair in Battersea Park in 1951 were alarmed to see the first wave of Teddy Boys and their girlfriends rampaging around the grounds. In those days the Teds listened to big band jazz and bought the noisiest, brassiest records by Stan Kenton and Ted Heath. Later, when Bill Haley & The Comets hit the world with ‘Rock Around The Clock’ in 1956, they would switch their allegiance to rock’n’roll.

Peter Grant spent his late teenage years ‘square bashing’ and undergoing basic army training. Although some found National Service frightening or plain boring, Peter seems to have enjoyed his time in the army and progressed well in the RAOC (Royal Army Ordinance Corps). He was promoted to the rank of Corporal and placed in charge of the dining hall. He used his theatrical experience to work as a stage manager for shows put on by the NAAFI, the service organisation that provided tea, buns and entertainment for the troops. He later claimed it was ‘a very cushy number’.

Many years later, when Peter was the rich and somewhat notorious manager of one of the world’s great rock groups, he took a brief nostalgic trip back to his army barracks. He was driving through the Midlands with his assistant Richard Cole and Atlantic Records executive Phil Carson. Recalls Richard: “We were near Kettering and he drove us into his old barracks in his brand new Rolls-Royce convertible. The soldier on duty saluted us and opened the gates. We drove all around this army camp and Peter showed us the huts where he used to live.”

His two years of National Service completed, Peter worked for a season in a holiday camp, an experience he would later succinctly describe as ‘dreadful’. He was also employed briefly as entertainments manager at a hotel in Jersey. For a while he dreamed of becoming an actor, but instead found himself back in London’s West End, working as a bouncer and doorman at the 2Is Coffee Bar at 59 Old Compton Street. This unpretentious café was soon to become the crucible of British skiffle and rock’n’ roll, where Tommy Steele, the first UK post-Elvis pop star was discovered. Young Harry Webb & The Drifters also played there, before they became Cliff Richard & The Shadows.

Many of the key figures in the first wave of the British rock’n’roll music industry got their start at the 2Is. Andrew Oldham, who later managed The Rolling Stones, used to sweep the floor there and Lionel Bart, later Britain’s most successful composer of hit musicals, painted murals on the basement wall. The waiter at the 2Is was Mickie Most, who went into partnership with Peter and became one of Britain’s top pop record producers. The coffee bar itself became part of pop culture and during an outside broadcast in November 1957 was used as the setting for the pioneering BBC TV pop show Six Five Special. It was also celebrated in the witty and satirical movie Expresso Bongo (1958), starring Cliff Richard and Laurence Harvey.

Coffee houses had been established in London way back in the days of Samuel Pepys and remained popular well into the 20th century. But it was in 1948 that British coffee drinking was revolutionised by the arrival of the chromium-plated Gaggia espresso machine. The first Soho coffee bar equipped with a Gaggia was the Moka Bar in Frith Street, in 1953. Henceforth coffee bars provided an attractive meeting place for teenagers, excluded from the ‘spit and sawdust’ pubs at a time when publicans were very strict about the over-18 entry policy. The 2Is was opened in 1956 by three Iranian-born brothers who originally owned the premises and called it the 3Is. When one of the brothers left, it was renamed the 2Is. Business wasn’t good and in April that year it was taken over by two Australian wrestlers, Paul Lincoln and Ray Hunter, who hoped to earn a steadier income from selling espresso than they could from wrestling. But they began losing money right from the start and matters were made worse when another coffee bar called Heaven And Hell opened right next door.

But change was in the air. In July 1956, during the annual Soho Fair, Wally Whyton, leader of The Vipers Skiffle Group, popped into the 2Is and asked if his group could play in the basement. The place was deserted and the desperate owners had nothing to lose, so they acquiesced, praying silently that ‘live’ music might bring in some customers. Their prayers were answered: the cellar bar was only 25 feet long and 16 feet wide, but soon it was packed with fans, jiving to The Vipers lively skiffle rhythms.

It wasn’t long before teenagers were queuing around the block to get in. Many of them fainted in the heat, but copious cups of coffee brought them round to hear the stars of the future like Adam Faith, Tommy Hicks, Emile Ford, Vince Taylor, Wee Willie Harris and Terry Dene. They also heard Mickie Most, who sometimes leapt up from behind the counter to sing a few numbers.

On the door, struggling with the crush of teenagers desperate to get an earful of this liberating music, was Peter Grant. He later recalled his time at the history making Soho cellar: “I had known Mickie Most since 1957. We used to work together at the 2Is. Mickie poured the coffee while I sold the tickets at the top of the stairs. You got a meal and ten shillings a night.” He must have insisted that pay and conditions be improved because he later claimed: “We got paid a quid per night and the guy who owned the place, Tom Littlewood, took ten per cent of our salary, which left us with eighteen bob (shillings).”

As the year went by, Mickie Most would play an increasingly important role in Peter’s life. Christened Michael Hayes, he was born in 1938, in Aldershot, Hampshire. He moved to Harrow in north London with his family and became friends with singer Terry Dene during the skiffle era. While Terry was becoming one of Britain’s first pop idols, Mickie was still operating the coffee machine at the 2Is while his mate Peter worked the door.

Paul Lincoln, the manager of the tiny cellar, began to take an interest in Mickie’s pal, the tough and confident giant from Battersea. Paul was still working as a wrestler and he decided the doorman at the 2Is was a perfect specimen for the professional wrestling game. Paul encouraged Peter to join him in a few bouts, to the delight of the punters. Weighing in at an estimated 23 stone, he was soon bouncing off the canvas, billed as ‘His Highness Count Bruno Alassio Of Milan’ or as ‘Count Massimo’. Some recall him being dubbed ‘The Masked Marauder’, the fighter who would take on anybody in the audience who was daft enough to volunteer.

Wrestling was hugely popular in Britain at the time and television coverage made stars of the top wrestlers. Sporting authorities, unimpressed by the stagy nature of the ‘grappling game’, frowned upon it from on high, describing it as “a pseudo-sport, a form of entertainment in which performers do muscular feats, using body contact and stunts, patterned on the skills of wrestling”. One rather pointed definition stated that: “For dramatic effect on the spectators, who believe they are observing a sports competition, the performance is likely to include expressions of anger, pain and helplessness.”^* Nevertheless, it filled the hour on TV on Saturday afternoons immediately before the football results, grabbing the attention of men just back from the pub who required undemanding entertainment to fill in the time before the pubs reopened.

Peter’s wrestling experience would provide invaluable skills for his future career at the sharp end of the rock’n’roll business. Even so, he was rather anxious to forget those days, especially when he became a highly respected rock group manager. When his former exploits were revealed in a Daily Mirror article in 1971, it made him wary of giving interviews to newspapers. He later relented and would admit: “I was a wrestler for about 18 months when I needed some money.” This did not stop tabloid journalists forever harking back to his past and calling him a ‘giant’, ‘brute’ and a ‘devil’ – often in the same paragraph. He was once described as ‘looking like a bodyguard in a Turkish harem’. For his part, Peter would almost always refer to red-top tabloid newspapers as ‘the rags’.

Mickie Most casts new light on the beginnings of Peter’s wrestling career and explains: “We used to work together way back in the Fifties. We used to put up the wrestling rings for Dale Martin Promotions. Sometimes if a wrestler didn’t show up for the first bout, Peter used to do a bit of wrestling. He was a big guy and if the other wrestler was a bit small, then it would be what they called a ‘catch weight’, which is an odd weight. They used to throw each other all over the ring for a few minutes as the opening act. It didn’t happen a lot, but if Peter was available he’d have a go. I was a bit too skinny to have a go myself. They would have laughed if I’d come out in wrestling shorts. Peter was big even then, but in the early days he was in quite good condition. He wasn’t heavy from overeating. He was well built. I never heard him being called ‘Count Massimo’, but Paul Lincoln was known as ‘Doctor Death’ and these Australian guys worked the circuit around England. I often went with them to their shows. I’d jump on a train down to Southend and go with them to the venue and help out. That was the basis of Peter’s wrestling career. Peter was paid to put up the rings and take them down again. There’d be wrestling every Monday night at Wembley Town Hall and somebody had to put the ring up! I used to go to see wrestling there with Jet Harris. He loved it. When Peter butted someone with his stomach, that was just using a wrestling technique. Nobody ever got hurt. If they did get hurt it was an accident. It wasn’t meant to happen. There was no physical damage because it was all showbiz. It’s still big business in America, but nobody gets hurt.”

Around the same period, Peter took on another job as a doorman, this time at Murray’s Cabaret Club where he was the only man working amongst forty showgirls. “Being the doorman at Murray’s was good fun too. I wasn’t married then and what with me being the only man around and about forty girls on backstage, it was all right,” he said, diplomatically.

Less appealing was his brief stint acting as a minder for the notorious slum landlord Peter Rachman. Mickie Most explains this as the sort of work which was a matter of expediency rather than a chosen way of life. “It was the Fifties. Nobody had any money and everybody needed it. He was a dreamer and he hustled.”

Peter’s overriding ambition was still to get away from this kind of rough stuff and find work as a movie actor. He told Malcolm Dome in 1989: “I wanted to be an actor, but I was never really good enough, although I did get quite a lot of work in the Fifties and early Sixties. I used to ‘double’ for Robert Morley, even though they had to pad me out quite a bit and I also put on a bald wig. I had hair back then!”

Peter acted as a ‘double’ for Anthony Quinn in The Guns Of Navarone, the hit war movie of 1961. He worked briefly in a mime act and also appeared in several episodes of The Saint, a TV series starring Roger Moore. He once popped up as a barman, with all of two lines to recite. Grant’s children, Warren and Helen, would later fall about in hysterics whenever this episode was re-shown on TV. He also appeared in the popular BBC TV shows Crackerjack and Dixon Of Dock Green, and played a cowboy in The Benny Hill Show. In 1961 he had a small part as a Macedonian guard, clad in armour and make-up in Cleopatra, the movie starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

Cleopatra was made at Pinewood studios in England. However progress was slow as Liz Taylor was unable or unwilling to cope with the cold weather and kept walking off the set and returning to her hotel. This didn’t bother the Macedonian guard in his rubber outfit. He was being paid £15 a day and enjoying the easy money, although getting up at 6 a.m. every morning was not to his taste. Eventually filming was transferred to Egypt, a more authentic location, where it was considerably warmer. All the scenes that featured Peter were scrapped, so he didn’t appear in the final version, which in any case turned out to be an expensive flop. Peter also appeared as a sailor in A Night To Remember (1958), a better than average British version of the story of the sinking of The Titanic, starring Kenneth More. To Grant’s vast amusement, it was filmed not in the iceberg-infested Atlantic but in the murky depths of the Ruislip Lido.

Although an acting career was attractive, there were few roles in the movies or on TV for an overweight south Londoner. In later, less restrictive times, he might have become a star of such people friendly soaps as BBC TV’s EastEnders, or – more probably – as a villain in one of the endless series of cop shows. Either way, it’s unlikely he would ever have progressed beyond the realms of a character actor, a sort of south London Wilfred Hyde-White or even a George Cole who wouldn’t bolt when danger loomed.

Following his experience as a stagehand and bit part actor, Peter hit on a more practical way to remain in show business. He invested in a couple of minibuses and used them to transport variety acts around British US air bases, where home-grown entertainment was in great demand. He often drove The Shadows to gigs and even the popular comedians Mike & Bernie Winters.

Recalls Warren Grant: “Dad started off doing minibus driving and transporting artists around. He had already worked as a stagehand, pulling the curtains, sweeping the floor and acting as a bouncer. It was all good experience for him.”

This is confirmed by Peter’s friend, the former Dire Straits manager Ed Bicknell: “He once told me the reason he got into the music business was because he owned a minibus,” he says.

Driving the minibus was to lead directly to Peter becoming a fully-fledged tour manager. It thus became his exacting task to look after, cajole and protect the wild and reckless American artists who visited Britain in the wake of the rock’n’roll explosion. Bill Haley & The Comets and Elvis Presley had caused a sensation with hit records like ‘Rock Around The Clock’ and ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. British youth was smitten with the new music.

The fans might never be able to see Elvis Presley ‘live’ on stage, but at least they could see Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran. For many, this exposure to the American stars of Fifties rock’n’roll would spark a lifelong musical obsession. It certainly paved the way for a whole generation of British artists, including The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, who would emulate their heroes and in turn provide the raw talent for the rock boom to come.

One of the biggest British pop promoters of the day was Don Arden. Business colleagues and musicians knew Arden informally as ‘the Al Capone of Pop’, a title which suited his hard man image. After acting as a leading rock’n’roll impresario he went into management and handled such groups as The Small Faces and ELO with considerable success. However, in the early Sixties he specialised in bringing in many of the American stars and, together with agent Colin Berlin, put them on touring package shows. A pugnacious businessman and former singer, Arden provided the prototype for Grant’s own hard-nosed style. Not that a man who had survived National Service and professional wrestling needed much tutelage in streetwise tactics. However, as he later acknowledged: “In 1963 I got my first big break. That’s when I began working for Don Arden, from whom I learnt a lot. He brought Bo Diddley over to Britain and I was his tour manager.”

There’s no doubt Grant took his cue from Arden, who showed him how a tough reputation could be almost as effective as the use of real force in dealing with people and situations. Don evidently regarded Peter as an apprentice, a useful man to have around, and taught him the ropes out on the road. Explains Arden: “If there was a cheque to be collected I had to make him aware that sometimes the promise of a cheque was broken. I gave him a list of people who were good, genuine promoters and a list of those who really weren’t to be trusted. There was one thing Peter learned from me. If you don’t like somebody, let ‘em know from the first bell baby. And he did that pretty well.”

Peter’s background in such a wide variety of casual jobs had taught him about the flow of money, most especially the swift exchange of cash and the ways it can be subverted, delayed and – more importantly – grasped permanently. Peter Grant would always have a healthy respect for cash, the wad of notes at the end of the line that found its way into his back pocket, where it stayed. Adds Mickie Most: “He always made sure a contract was honoured … and he had a very good head for figures.”

Don Arden hired Peter as tour manager for the cream of visiting American talent, including The Everly Brothers, Little Richard, Brian Hyland, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Gene Vincent. The task of looking after them would provide a wealth of after dinner stories for Peter to relate with many a deep-throated chuckle. The late Gene Vincent was undoubtedly his most difficult customer. Compared to him, Led Zeppelin were like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Grant recalled later: “Gene was a bit of a loony. He used to drive cars at me.”

The black leather clad singer from Norfolk, Virginia, USA was born Eugene Vincent Craddock on February 11, 1935 (just two months before Peter Grant). Gene was always a special hero to British rock’n’roll fans, with Teddy Boys flocking to see him for the manic intensity he displayed in The Girl Can’t Help It (1957), the first Technicolor rock movie. When Gene Vincent & The Blue Caps performed their classic hit ‘Be Bop A Lula’ there were screams of delight and riots in the cinemas.

When Vincent arrived in Britain in the flesh, he proved to be an anguished soul, whose life was ruled by pain. A former despatch rider in the US Navy, he had suffered severe injuries to his left leg in a motorcycle accident in 1955, which left him permanently disabled. The story goes that he’d had too much to drink one night and on returning to base, instead of stopping at the guardhouse gate, tried to ride under the barrier. The bike slid from underneath him and he smashed his leg. It was pinned back together, but he had to wear a calliper for the rest of his days. One of his greatest British fans was the late Ian Dury, who clearly empathised with Vincent’s condition as well as his music and dark, brooding image.

Although Gene Vincent was deemed too working class and tough for American tastes, he became one of the biggest drawing artists in Europe and remained so until the advent of Beatlemania in 1964. He was prickly and prone to violent outbursts. Excessive drinking didn’t help his temper, but he needed drink to dull the pain of his injury and overcome stage fright. Peter was not the first British tour manager to fall foul of the curly-haired, pinch-faced Vincent.

Hal Carter was tour manager on many early rock’n’roll package shows, working with Vincent and Eddie Cochran and later managing British singer Billy Fury. Although he enjoyed life on the road, Hal does not have particularly happy memories of his time with Vincent. It was Hal’s job to look after Gene on behalf of promoter Larry Parnes and he travelled hundreds of miles with them by coach to the various draughty theatres where the stars were expected to perform.

In the early Sixties Britain lacked many of the comforts taken for granted in the USA. There was virtually no air conditioning, no central heating and no McDonalds style fast food restaurants. Credit cards were unknown, the black and white TV service was limited to two channels which closed down very early by American standards, shops shut at 5 p.m. and pubs and hotels were closed by 10.30 p.m. or 11 at weekends. Finding a bottle of Jack Daniels was a huge problem and there wasn’t much either Peter Grant or Hal Carter could do to cheer up the miserable young American visitors. Hal remembers Eddie Cochran wailing: “Goddam – I’m never going to get home – I’m gonna freeze to death in this country!”

Carter describes Eddie as ‘a lovely guy’ but he confesses he didn’t like Gene Vincent at all. Says Hal: “I never really liked him – he used to upset Eddie a lot on tour. Gene drove me crazy and made my life a misery at times. I was a young tour manager trying to make my way and he wouldn’t listen to anything I said. Whatever you said – he’d disagree. In the end I thought he was a wicked, self-centred, selfish, evil man who treated his women very badly. I know this upsets his fans when I say this. Don’t get me wrong – he was a great performer, but I had no time for him.”

Hal gives an example of Gene’s erratic behaviour that finally led him to walk out on the star. “He used to carry a knife called ‘Henry’. It was a sharp, pointy switchblade. One day we were on a coach coming back from a gig in Ipswich. He was going crazy, shouting abuse at everyone. He went up to the young bass player with a group called The Beat Boys and sliced the front of his suit off with his knife. Just ripped it to shreds.” Another member of the party was Hal’s friend the late Henry Henroid, who pulled Vincent off the terrified kid. Carter was sitting next to singer Johnny Gentle, trying to ignore the scene.

“Just at that moment Johnny said something that made me laugh. Gene flew up the aisle of the coach and put his knife up against my throat and said: ‘I’ll teach you to laugh at me.’ I said – ‘Gene, we’re not laughing at you, we’re just having a conversation.’ He then ripped my shirt with the knife. Well when we got to Dartford, the next big town before London, I said to the driver, ‘Stop here at the lights, drop me off and take him (Vincent) to Marble Arch.’ I jumped out, the coach drove off and I never saw him again. I’d had enough.”

It was shortly after this episode that Peter Grant took over Hal’s job as tour manager for the dreaded Vincent. Hal’s advice to Peter was: “If Gene plays up grab him and put one on him.” He was impressed when he learned later that if the singer was being difficult and wouldn’t do a show, Grant would “grab him by the throat and push him on the stage”.

On the other side of the coin, Peter was quite fearless in the lengths he went to save his artists from manic fans and – quite often – from themselves. On one occasion he was alleged to have disarmed Vincent when the singer went on a drunken rampage, waving a loaded gun in a house in Brighton. When he was in Italy he was said to have flattened no less than six Italian policemen, trying to protect Little Richard from harassment.

Journalist Keith Altham was a young writer on Fabulous magazine when he got to know Peter Grant. Keith has vivid memories of Grant in action, when he was still developing his firm but fair, no nonsense management style. “Peter was working as a tour manager for Gene Vincent when I first met him,” recalls Altham. “I remember going on a trip with him in 1963. Gene was always billed as ‘Direct from America’, although he had been living in England for three years. You got more kudos if you came from the States in those days. He was doing gigs up and down the country and Peter was charged with keeping him sober. That was quite a job in itself. Vincent had a hollowed out walking stick, which he filled up with vodka or whatever else he was drinking. Peter didn’t know about this for ages, but as soon as he found out, he confiscated the stick. Yet Gene was still going on stage pissed and Peter couldn’t understand it.”

Grant locked Vincent in his dressing room for two hours before the performance. The tour manager alone had the key and nobody else was allowed in. “Then Vincent would stagger out of his dressing room and go on stage, pissed as a parrot! He had been bribing a member of the road crew to go out and get him a bottle of brandy. He had put a straw through the keyhole of the door, so he could drink the brandy, through the straw.”

During the trip, Peter told Keith about all the problems he’d been having with the troubled rock legend. “We’ve got him in pretty good shape tonight, because we’re doing a double header. We don’t get the money unless, when the curtains open, he’s physically there on stage.”

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