Stairway To Heaven by Richard Cole Page B

could catch a flight from Seattle to Los Angeles—if we could just get the rented LTD through the storm to the Seattle airport. As a native of London, I didn’t have much experience driving in snow flurries, but escaping Washington was all the motivation I needed.
    The band climbed into the car and I got behind the wheel for the 200-mile drive. Kenny Pickett was by himself in the U-Haul truck. The road conditions started out bad—slush and snowbanks—and it only deteriorated. As we slipped and slid, the visibility became worse. And I was becoming more anxious.
    â€œDo you guys have your wills made out?” I nervously joked.
    No one laughed.
    To try to calm myself, I reached into the backseat and grabbed a bottle of whiskey. I handed it to Bonzo and said, “Open it! Quick! I need something to relax me!” We passed the bottle around, and everyone had a few swigs.
    At about the halfway point, the road conditions became almost impossible. Through the storm up ahead, I could see some state police cars parked with their red lights flashing. They had erected roadblocks. “Shit,” I thought. “These bastards better not be turning us around.”
    As we came to a stop, a cop on foot approached our car. I cracked the car window, and he yelled to us, “The Snoqualmie Pass is impassable. It’s just snowing too hard. Take the exit off the highway and turn around.”
    We groaned at the possibility of spending another night in Spokane. I started thinking about other bands—the Beatles, the Rolling Stones. I doubted that they had ever gotten themselves into messes like this. And I began to wonder whether I’d ever get us out of this one.
    In the time it took me to drive off the highway, however, I had already decided to keep heading for Seattle. Maybe the whiskey had given me some extra courage, but when we got to the top of the exit ramp, I announced, “We’re gonna fuckin’ go down the other side of the ramp and get back on the highway. I don’t care what those cops say. They’re never going to be able to see us or catch us.”
    I drove around the cloverleaf and back onto the highway, and we continued on to Seattle. I felt victorious, like I had put one over on the state police. But after just a few minutes, I realized that maybe the cops had been right.
    Sheets of snow alternated with torrents of rain and hail. The winds were ferocious. We were the only car on the highway. Parts of the road were caked with ice, and the car was skidding from lane to lane. If conditions got any worse, I could have turned off the ignition and just let the car slide all the way to Seattle.
    By this point, I was really scared. But I didn’t dare let the band know that. Because Jimmy and I had worked together in the past, he had confidence in me and figured—probably erroneously—that I knew what I was doing. He also was struggling with the Hong Kong flu and didn’t have much energy to complain about anything.
    The rest of the band, however, was absolutely terrified with my driving, particularly during the hairpin curves. They had every reason to be. At one point, we approached a long, narrow suspension bridge that was actually swaying in the wind gusts. If we had taken a vote in the car, we wouldn’t have gone any farther. In fact, by that point, I was finally almost ready to turn around.
    We started across the bridge. I could feel it trembling beneath us, and my heartbeat quickened. We were so close to the edge—and to a drop of about 100 feet—that Bonzo and Robert became absolutely frantic.
    â€œRichard, you fuckin’ asshole, you’re about to get us killed,” Robert shrieked, grabbing the bottle of whiskey from John Paul’s hands.
    â€œOh, my God,” screamed Bonzo. “Can’t you pull over until this storm ends?”
    I shouted back, “Shut up, you fuckers, just drink some more whiskey.” In fear and