‘I saw two nuns frolicking in a coffin’: inside Led Zeppelin’s wildest party
Led Zeppelin’s debauched party in Kent’s Chislehurst Caves was so memorable that, 50 years on, guest Simon Kirke recalls it in vivid detail
“The fact that I can remember it in such detail 50 years later shows you what an impact it made on me,” chuckles Simon Kirke down the phone from his home in New York. The Free and Bad Company drummer may be 74 years old but he has just recalled – with unflinching clarity – details of the most extravagant and debauched party in rock and roll history.
The date was Halloween, 1974, and the location, under a full moon, was Chislehurst Caves in Kent, a labyrinth of centuries-old man-made tunnels just outside London. The occasion was the official launch party of Led Zeppelin’s own record label Swan Song, which was formed half a century ago this week.
Led Zeppelin and their pugnacious manager, the former wrestler Peter Grant, never did things by half. The annals of rock history are stuffed with legendary parties – Keith Moon’s 21st birthday pool party at a Michigan Holiday Inn in 1967, or Queen’s swamp-themed bash in New Orleans for the release of their 1978 album Jazz, for example – but Zeppelin walk away with the prize.
Kirke was at the party because rock supergroup Bad Company were Swan Song’s new star signings. His band – which comprised him and Paul Rodgers from Free as well as Mick Ralphs and Boz Burrell from Mott the Hoople and King Crimson respectively – were picked up from London on the evening of October 31 in a series of Rolls Royce Phantoms and stretch Mercedes limousines. It was the first time the group had been “introduced to the largesse” of Grant, the drummer recalls. As he got stuck into the limo’s well-stocked bar, Kirke pondered the black invitation with its gothic script and pseudo-mystical language urging guests to “do what thou wilt” with “this summons”.
