Expert: Mike Caldwell - 7/8/2009

Question
QUESTION: Did Zeppelin always have the limosines with the entourage and the police cars guiding them to the venues? Even in the early days?

ANSWER: The limousines didn't really happen in 1969, they started riding in them after that year, however.  Police escorts didn't happen very often, never in the early days.  In later years, some cities were very cooperative with offering police escorts, some weren't.  For example, in Greensboro, 1975, there's a story about rowdy fans trapping the band and keeping the limos from leaving.  Not having police escorts there, Peter Grant himself had to jump into the driver's seat of the lead vehicle and speed away, running red lights, etc.  The police motorcade shown in the film was actually from Pittsburgh, not New York City, as the film makers wanted us to believe.

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QUESTION: Has Led Zeppelin ever used a tour bus?

ANSWER: Briefly in the North American tours of 1968/1969, when they were touring with other acts (like Vanilla Fudgea and Iron Butterfly), they rode in a bus.  As early as 1970, they were already flying on commercial flights from town to town, and after that of course, private jet.

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Has there been a fued/dislike between jpj and plant over the years?

Answer
The closest thing to a "feud" was around 1994.  Jones was miffed when he found out from the press that Plant and Page were doing a project together (the "No Quarter" CD), and that neither Plant nor Page told him about it, let alone asked him if he wanted to participate.  There was some public tension about this as time went on.  As Jones later said:

"Well, relations are cordial. We meet for Zeppelin business, but I've never really asked them why they called their first album "NO QUARTER", for a start [laughs]. At the time, I was a bit upset that I read about what they were doing in a newspaper rather than anybody having the courtesy to call me up and say, "We're doing this and you'll probably read about it everywhere." Apart from that, we have gone our separate ways, shall we say. And I'm really pleased, because in the end they've done me a favor. Because they probably pushed me into deciding it is about time I did this solo album. So I'm happy."

Eventually, they obviously resolved their differences, but in the mid 90s, things weren't so chummy.  Otherwise, Jones was always very professional and independent about things.