Bill Curbishley, the former manager of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, will publish his memoirs on April 16.

The book has not yet been officially announced, but pre-order listings and a catalogue posted online by publishing firm Little, Brown and Company seen by LedZepNews reveal details of the upcoming memoirs.

Curbishley’s 320-page autobiography will be titled “To Be Or Not To Be: A Life in Music”, LedZepNews has found.

Little, Brown and Company calls the book “the memoir of one of rock music’s greatest band managers, Bill Curbishley, who looked after the Who, Roger Daltrey, Judas Priest, UB40 and Led Zep”, in a catalogue posted online.

“Bill Curbishley is one the last of the great rock band mangers still with us,” the book’s description in the catalogue continues. “He is part of a select group of larger-than-life characters – that includes Peter Grant (Led Zeppelin), Steve O’Rourke (Pink Floyd), Malcolm McLaren (Sex Pistols), Allen Klein (the Beatles, the Rolling Stones), Rob Gretton (Joy Division and New Order) – who were nearly as famous as their charges. Curbishley will reveal all about the rock scene from the ’70s to the ’90s, and what it was like managing the Who and Led Zep.”

Bill Curbishley helped to reunite Led Zeppelin in 2007

Despite the publisher’s claims, Curbishley technically never managed Led Zeppelin but did manage Plant from 1982 to around 2007, when Nicola Powell took over his management.

Curbishley replaced Brian Goode as Page’s manager in 1994 and managed Page until around 2007, when he was replaced by Peter Mensch.

Curbishley orchestrated the 1994 Page and Plant project and also helped to organise the 2007 Led Zeppelin reunion performance in London.

Curbishley’s role in helping to reunite Led Zeppelin in 2007 was explained by Mensch in a 2018 on-stage interview at the International Live Music Conference that was reported on by Billboard.

“There was an agenda, like a proper business meeting, and the fifth item on there brought up by Bill Curbishley, who was managing Robert Plant at the time, was that [legendary Atlantic Records co-founder] Ahmet Ertegun had died. Bill Curbishley said we should play a memorial concert for him. I’m on the job for two hours and all of a sudden Bill Curbishley wants [Led Zeppelin] to play a concert. And by the end of the meeting we had agreed to play a tribute concert.”

Curbishley was a key support for both Page and Plant

“I was with Robert Plant from 1982,” Curbishley told Music Business Worldwide in 2017. “A few years later, he approached me about managing Jimmy and I said: look, I’ll meet with Jimmy, but you both have to understand that when things come up I’m probably going to have to agree with one half of you and not the other – so you’d better be prepared for that.”

“It was difficult, because they’re totally different characters,” Curbishley added. “I did things for them which, if asked with their hand on their heart, they should be eternally grateful for.

One of Curbishley’s largest contributions to the careers of Page and Plant was helping them retain the rights to the Led Zeppelin catalogue. Plant sold his publishing rights to the Led Zeppelin catalogue, something Curbishley claimed to have helped fix.

“They sold all of their record catalogue income and all of their publishing rights to Atlantic and Warner/Chappell some years prior to me joining them,” he told Music Business Worldwide. “And I, along with George Fearon, their US lawyer, got both back for them – which they still have today.”

Along with managing Page and Plant, Curbishley also managed The Who, something he claimed Plant took issue with.

“I think that that was one of the problems with Robert Plant”, Curbishley said in a 2019 podcast interview with Bob Lefsetz. “I think that he resented any time I spent with The Who. I tried to juggle it as best as possible, but I think he resented that a bit.”

During the 1990s, Curbishley was closely involved with the negotations that eventually led to Led Zeppelin officially releasing footage of the band’s January 9, 1970 Royal Albert Hall performance.

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