The late Peter Grant managed Led Zeppelin to global stardom. But his life story was every bit as extraordinary and dramatic as the musicians he looked after. For the first time ever, the Grant family have allowed an author access to previously unseen correspondence and photographs to help build the most complete and revealing story yet of a man who was a pioneer of rock music management, but also a son, a husband and a father.
Published to coincide with Led Zeppelin's 50th anniversary, Bring It On Home charts Peter Grant's rise from wartime poverty through his time as a nightclub doorman, wrestler and bit-part actor to the birth of rock'n'roll in the 1950s. From here, it explores his pivotal role in the formation of Led Zeppelin and charts the impossible highs and lows of life on the road with rock's most outrageous band.
Bring It On Home includes almost 100 new interviews with family members, friends, musicians and rival managers, and walk-on parts for Sharon Osbourne, Bob Dylan, Stanley Kubrick, Freddie Mercury, Elizabeth Taylor, the FBI, the CIA, the Mafia - and Elvis Presley. As Grant's son Warren says now: 'My dad knew everyone.'
It is the first biography to reveal the truth behind Led Zeppelin's demise, Grant's subsequent fall from grace amid death threats and the shadow of organised crime, and his final days as a man who shunned the excesses of the music industry in favour of his friends and family.
With access to several previously unpublished interviews - including Grant's last and most revealing yet - Bring It On Home sheds new light on the story of rock's greatest manag
About the Author
Mark Blake is a long-time contributor to Q and Mojo, and has also been published in The Times, Classic Rock, Daily Telegraph and Rolling Stone. He is the author of three previous books, including the bestselling Pigs Might Fly: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd.
Industry Reviews
It's tempting to dismiss Grant as a supremely unappetising figure, so it is a credit to this enthralling and rigorously researched book that we get a sufficiently three-dimensional portrait to be able to understand what drove him * Sunday Times *
A juicy saga of excess all areas, Mark Blake's biography of Led Zeppelin's notoriously combative manager, Peter Grant, reads at times like an all-you-can-eat buffet of guilty pleasures . . . a riotous rollercoaster ride full of larger-than-life characters . . . the first authorised in-depth portrait . . . an entertaining journey into a lost epoch of unchecked superstar excess * The Times *
Exhaustive and detailed resume . . . the detail is priceless . . . Blake has talked to everyone, and the stories are both lurid and melancholy * Mail on Sunday *
Meticulous always entertaining . . . never shies away from its subject's belligerent reputation . . . Naturally, this is a book about Zeppelin as well as Grant, but their story, as told through a Peter Grant-shaped lens, is magnified and augmented . . . A tale as expansive and complex as the man himself -- James McNair * Mojo *
The incredible inside story of Led Zeppelin's fabled hardman manager . . . forensically-researched . . . the volume of other new stories unearthed here is impressive . . . To say Bring It On Home is a rambunctious page-turner is an understatement; but despite all the violence and weirdness, you can't help liking the 'real' Peter Grant who emerges here * Planet Rock *
Grimly entertaining . . . richly anecdotal . . . insight into a thankfully lost world * Q magazine *
Glimpses of this former wrestler and doorman's life have made him a legend, but this is the first time it has been revealed in depth. With a wealth of unseen pics and detail, Bring It On Home is like Grant himself - awesome * Weekend Sport *
In this entertaining, sympathetic biography, music journalist Mark Blake . . . provides a fresh perspective on the Zeppelin story * Observer *
Of the many Led Zeppelin biographies marking the band's 50th anniversary, this is the most illuminating -- Will Hodgkinson * The Times *
[Grant] is captured vividly by Mark Blake, who paints a compelling, warts-and-all portrait of a figure who was as much a gangster as a Svengali, equal parts visionary and monster -- Dan Cairns * Sunday Times *
Well-researched . . . at once amusing, candid, guarded, vague, clever and occasionally contradictory . . . Blake has written a pleasantly humane portrayal of a much-mythologised man -- John Perry * Record Collector *
Shed[s] new light on how excess and tragedy tore this amazing band apart * The Sun *
