Even the greatest bands in the world were once jelous about sharing the stage with other bands. Grand Funk Railroad’s Mark Farner told Eddie Trunk the bad blood that happened between them and Led Zep’s manager Peter Grant. Read it here:
“We started in Cleveland and had a heck of a good response from the Cleveland audience. Then the next night, we went to Detroit, to Olympia. It’s a big building, maybe 15,000, and we were getting a favorable response from our hometown crowd.
“They came up and we were getting ready to go and do ‘Inside Looking Out,’ and they could feel it coming, the place was about to come apart. And [Zeppelin manager] Peter Grant walks up and tells our manager, ‘Pull the plug. Stop this band or I will pull the plug.’
“They shut the power down on us, so the only thing you could hear was the drums. The drums are pounding on, I turn around and look and [manager] Terry comes walking out with a microphone in his hands and he says, ‘Due to a contractual obligation, Grand Funk has to leave the stage.’
“You couldn’t believe the wine and whiskey bottles people were throwing up on the stage…”
We were stealing the thunder. They went on to some house an hour and a half later, and they waited, and waited, and waited, and I went on, I watched Jimmy [Page] do his thing – they put on a good show, but too bad the whole house wasn’t there to appreciate it.”
