known till then. For the first 45 years
of my life I had known mainly rajas,
ranis, rajkumars and princesses,
all with family genealogies that
spanned centuries. Peter, on the
other hand, was a selfmade man.
Starting off as a sheet metal worker
when he was only 13, he became
a delivery boy, stagehand, doorman
and bouncer, then graduated to
minor acting roles. Peter had done
it all, before he became the founder
manager of a rock act called Led
Zeppelin.
Okay, now I have you
sitting up, right? Yes, Peter was ‘The
Man who Led Zeppelin’, as the title
of a biography on him by Chris
Welch says, the man who was really
behind the huge success of one of
the greatest rock bands of the 1970s.
A lumbering giant of a man – he
was six-feet-four-inches tall, and
almost as wide – Peter was
aggressive, foulmouthed, heavy-
handed and intimidating, and in
almost every way so very different
from the men and women I had
known before. But he did have a
heart of gold. And his sense of
loyalty and commitment to his
people was way beyond reproach.
He took very good care of me and
entrusted me to Nigel Arnold-Foster
at Basset Dawn Engineering, who
mechanically restored me |
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during 1974-77. Around that time
my body was removed and stored
until 1988, when it was restored
and repainted to ivory and black,
the colours that i’m in even today.
Till 1983 we rarely saw Peter as he
was away touring with the band but
with the official break-up of Led
Zeppelin in 1980 and the folding up
of his music label swan song by
1983, Peter kind of retired, and from
then on he was mostly at home.
Though he had became a bit of a
recluse – what with the problems of
his marital break-up, diabetes,
alcohol and drugs – Peter did move
around occasionally, and when he
did, he would take one of us for the
ride. And though I had quite a few
illustrious garagemates – a
Porsche, a Jaguar MKII and two very
elegant straight-eight Pierce-Arrows,
amongst others – I was still the
queen of the manor. In the
meantime, I had both good news
and bad news. In 1987, Kenizé, the
daughter of Raja Sajid Hussian, who
if you recall I had met briefly in 1962,
published a book in French, ‘De la
part de la princesse morte’ (or ‘
regards from the Dead Princess’)
under the nom de plume of Kenizé
Mourad, where I figured on many
occasions as she recounted her
mother’s story: Princess Selma’s |
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life in Istanbul, then Beirut, her
marriage to Raja Sajid Hussain, her
life in Kotwara and Lucknow, and
then her return to Paris, her daughter
Kenizé’s birth, Selma’s affair with
an American and then her untimely
death in 1941, when she was not
even 27 years old. Described as an
Oriental ‘Gone with the Wind’, it’s a
must read, I was told.
The bad news was that of the death
of Raja Sajid Hussain on February 3,
1990. More was to follow. On
November 21, 1995, Peter Grant
suffered a fatal heart attack. He was
just 60 years old. I felt orphaned
twice over. On February 16, 1996, I
had a visitor – an Isotta Fraschini
expert, Colin Wilson, who came
along with the person who
had been taking care of me, John
Gould, and an American expert, Al
Mcewan, to take some photographs.
and then, on December 2, 1996, I,
along with most of my garagemates,
were auctioned off by Brooks
(now Bonhams). Soon, I was on a
ship again. But this time to a new
country, to another continent
altogether, to the US of A; and not
just some small obscure town,
but to glamville itself, Las Vegas!
there I was lodged at the imperial
Palace. no, not in |