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you’ve repeated anything that goes on in this fucking office. If you do, I’ll cut your ears off! Cut ’em right off!”
    At that moment, I had no doubt that he would.
    â€œGive me a call at the end of the week, Cole. By then, I’ll know when you’re going to start.”
    That was my introduction to Peter Grant. It was also my foot in the door to Grant’s organization, which eventually led me to the Yardbirds.
    Â 
    My tenure with the Yardbirds was a difficult experience for both me and Pagey. In the pre-Page era, the Yardbirds had enjoyed a reign of enormous popularity that began in London in 1963. Throughout the midsixties, their name alone made rock fans worldwide take notice, in large part because of their superb guitarists. Before Jimmy, the Yardbirds had provided forums for two of the finest of the era—Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Few guitarists could follow in those footsteps; Jimmy Page was one of them.
    When Paul Samwell-Smith quit the Yardbirds in 1966, Pagey took his place. For the next two years, he was a permanent fixture in the band. But by early 1968, when I joined the Yardbirds as their tour manager, they were on their last gasp—a fact of life that everyone in the band acknowledged. If burnout can happen to rock musicians, it had definitely steamrolled its way over the Yardbirds. Of the original 1963 Yardbirds lineup of five musicians, three of them—Keith Relf, Chris Dreja, and Jim McCarty—were still hanging on at the end, although with almost no measurable enthusiasm.
    From the moment Jimmy joined the Yardbirds, he ended up carrying the band as best he could. Particularly during that final 1968 tour, Relf was just going through the motions. “We’ve got some contractual obligations, so I’m willing to meet them,” Keith told me one afternoon while sipping on a beer in his hotel room. “But I’m tired of it all. I’m just used up.”
    During that last tour, Relf was a shadow of what he had once been—drowning in his excessive use of alcohol and angel dust. He did a lot of acid, too, often in his hotel room with incense burning nearby. Jimmy and I would sometimes have a snort of coke together, but Keith seemed incapable of knowing when he was overdoing it. “I’m fine!” he used to shout when I showed some concern. “Damn it, you’re my tour manager, not my mother!”
    Throughout that tour, we traveled primarily in a leased Greyhound bus that had most of its seats removed. Canvas beds had been anchored to the floor, and that’s where we slept, or at least tried to, when we weren’t in hotels.There was a single bathroom in the back, but no stereos, cooking facilities, or power outlets. It was a third-class, thoroughly cheerless operation all the way.
    Jimmy had clearly assumed leadership of a band capsizing at sea. While the other musicians were suffocating in their own depression and despondency, approaching the last Yardbirds tour as thought it were a death march, Jimmy would kick them in the ass and try to get them excited about making music again. “Let’s give the fans their money’s worth tonight,” he would plead with the rest of the band. But no matter how passionately his appeals became, he was usually ignored.
    When Keith Relf was drunk, he played the harmonica like he had just picked it up for the first time. He also stumbled over song lyrics. He even yelled obscenities at the audience and at the other Yardbirds. Nevertheless, it was my job to try to keep Keith singing for an hour, get the money from the promoter, and deal with any complaints later.
    Most of the complaints came from Pagey himself. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Jimmy seethed after the disastrous Chicago concert. “These fans are paying money to hear us sing, Keith, not to watch you get drunk.”
    His anger fell on deaf ears. “I’m not hurting anyone, Jimmy,”