TERRY Reid is sanguine about being forever known as the man who turned down Led Zeppelin. But he’d rather be known as the man who put together Led Zeppelin. “Jimmy [Page] asked me what he should do with the band,” explains Reid, Zooming in from his home in Indio, California. “He needed a singer who could sing around those guitar licks, and not everybody could do that. I’d seen Robert with John Bonham, so I said to him, ‘Not only is Robert perfect, you’ve got to get the drummer – he’s an animal!’”
It turns out that Reid might be the greatest rock matchmaker of all-time. The Jimi Hendrix Experience? That was him too. “Mitch [Mitchell] called me up and said, ‘Hey Terry, you know this guy who’s around town – big afro hair and he wears all this women’s’ clothing? He’s putting a band together andNow, I’d heard Jimi [play], so I went, ‘Get your arse down there right now!’ And the rest is history.”
