Royal Orleans
From Freepedia
"Royal Orleans" was the name of a hotel in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana. It was purchased by Omni Hotels and is currently known as the Omni Royal Orleans. It was constructed in 1960 on the corner of St. Louis Street and Royal Street in the French Quarter, at the site of the old St. Louis Hotel, which had been destroyed in a hurricane.
"Royal Orleans" is also a song by Led Zeppelin, from their album (Presence), released in 1976. Members of the group would stay at the Royal Orleans Hotel whenever they visited the city, and the song is reportedly based on an incident that occurred there.
Once when they were visiting the city in the early 1970s, a member of Led Zeppelin accidentally brought a transvestite up to his room, thinking it was a woman. Both smoked marijuana and fell asleep, the transvestite with a lit joint in his hand, which caught fire and burned the room down (though everyone escaped). To this day nobody is quite sure which member of the group was involved, although it has been suggested that it was most likely bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones.
"Royal Orleans" is the only song on the album credited to all four members (or any members besides Robert Plant and Jimmy Page). The lyrics include lines such as "Be careful how you choose it", "He kissed the whiskers, left and right" and "Poor whiskers set the room alight" to reference the event. The song's main character, a man named "John Cameron", is allegedly an alias for bassist John Paul Jones, the name taken from a rival session musician he knew in the 1960s.
Lead singer Robert Plant wrote most of the lyrics, using the song as a way to poke fun at bandmate Jones, allegedly because of a comment Jones once made that vocals were the least important part of the band.
