Notable Artist/Manager Relationships: Led Zeppelin & Peter Grant

We are starting a new series called Notable Artist/Manager relationships here on our blog. Each time we will focus on a certain iconic manager, and their relationship with the artist they managed. Since we are a management company after all, we thought it would be interesting to dive deep into these artist/manager relationships.

Today we will be focusing on the relationship between Led Zeppelin & Peter Grant.

Probably there has been no deeper belief and commitment to an artist than Peter Grant was to Led Zeppelin.

Grant was born in England and became a factory worker, a photographer, a waiter, a professional wrestler, and a stagehand. By his mid-20s, he was driving American bands to London area performances where he became somewhat familiar with the general workings of performing acts. Promoter Don Arden, Sharon Osbourne’s father, hired Grant to become the tour manager for American artists like Little Richard and the Animals.

Grant began a management company with friend Mickie Most and acquired the Yardbirds as one of their acts. Eventually Grant bought out Most’s portion of the Yardbirds management agreement and became their sole manager. The Yardbirds was one of those groups from the 1960s that could boast having had at varying times band members Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. As their manager, Grant’s experience in road management proved to be the key to making the Yardbirds’ concert tours profitable after months of losing money.

When the Yardbirds broke up, Grant formed a new group using Page and some new band members, calling them the New Yardbirds. This group morphed into what became the legendary Led Zeppelin. Under Grant’s guidance, the group signed a contract with Atlantic Records that featured a $200,000 advance and full control over writing, publishing, and recording. In an era when concert promoters were receiving 40–50% of the earnings from a ticketed performance, Grant negotiated a 90/10 split with promoters, with Led Zeppelin receiving a record-level share of gates from performing. With the huge success of the group as a touring band, he convinced promoters that a 10% cut of the Zeppelin’s exposure to the media and to seek album sales rather than the sale of singles were among his nontraditional approaches to artist management in the 1970s. In 1980, the death of a member of the group led to the end of Led Zeppelin. In 1995, Grant himself died at the age of 60 from a heart attack.

John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Peter Grant, & John Bonham Led Zeppelin

So, lesson learned: The most effective manager is one whose belief in the artist is deep enough to be the basis for every decision made on their behalf, whether it is believing in their potential or believing in who they are. Peter Grant was constantly on tour with Led Zeppelin handling most of the tasks associated with tour management and artist management. But when the time came to create the words and music, and to assemble the performance, he left these creative responsibilities in the hands of the group. Likewise, the band left the management decisions, including some very unconventional ones, up to Grant. This shared and deep belief in each other became what many acknowledge as one of the strongest bonds between artists and a manager in the music business.