Becoming Led Zeppelin

It’s hard to write about Led Zeppelin and not go straight into gushing fan-boy mode. My grade school years at Saint Mary’s of Mount Carmel School were filled with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant daydreams. I devoured all the records. “Whole Lotta Love” was particularly prized (and crazed)….with that riff that inspired 1000 more riffs, and that mid-section with the weird sounds…and Plant howling like a banshee. It sounded positively filthy….even if we didn’t quite know why yet. When my parents knocked on my bedroom door….I turned off this music before letting them in. Not sure I did that with any of my Beatle albums. Listening to Led Zeppelin made me feel like I was doing something that I wasn’t supposed to be doing, and I LOVED that feeling. It’s why kids loved rock and roll.

Male hormones are aware of two distinct time frames. Before Led Zeppelin. And after Led Zeppelin.

Zeppelin were rock gods, and every kid who ever dreamed of picking up a guitar had a Zep phase. The band’s mid 70s concert film remains the one and only time I ever attended a midnight showing of a movie. My parents were very strict, and I was 14 years old, but somehow they allowed me and a friend to go. I must have been insufferable until they relented. (Looking back, the film itself was pretentious drivel…..the music hijacked by a “fantasy sequence” filmed for each band member…..the sort of thing that surely sounded like a good idea while snorting herculean amounts of cocaine. Until the movie version of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” came out….the one where Bob Geldof shaves his eyebrows….”The Song Remains the Same” may have been the sole reason Nancy Reagan suggested we “just say no…”)

But it was the music, son. The music.

“Good Times, Bad Times”. “Communication Breakdown”. “Heartbreaker”. “When the Levee Breaks”. My God. They each drilled their own holes in my head….and each song would force my father to utilize the Flannery household “turn it down” signal, which was ramming the kitchen broom repeatedly into the ceiling.

“Stairway to Heaven” was like a hymn. When it came on the radio everybody observed 8 minutes of silence. We all knew the words even though nobody knew what the fuck “If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now / It's just a spring clean for the May queen” meant. At the time we just assumed Plant was smarter than we were and left it at that (nobody really understood drugs at the time). Even then it was whispered that the song was way overplayed on FM radio….but for all that to this very day, while I’ve heard “Mustang Sally” and “Sweet Home Alabama” massacred hundreds of times in a hundred bars, I’ve never once heard a band try “Stairway to Heaven”. Weird, right?

Anyway, we all argued about what the title of the 4th record REALLY was, and who the old hermit on the cover represented. I remember “In Through the Out Door” came wrapped in a paper bag for some reason, and that “Houses of the Holy” had a creepy cover of naked kids climbing on rocks (maybe this one should have been wrapped in a paper bag). “Immigrant Song” was about marauding Vikings, and nobody really though it was weird that they were singing about marauding Vikings. The 70s were wild. Zeppelin albums were EVENTS. They were the biggest band on the planet. And sure, yea, the band shamelessly ripped off old blues riffs, lyrics, and sometimes entire SONGS. But they did it with panache. AND they sold their soul to the devil! You tell me how the average 14 year old boy is not gonna fall in love.

But then the 80s hit and the drummer died (choked on vomit)….and that was that. Suddenly the band were “dinosaurs”. The Lord of the Rings stuff, the 20 minute drum solos, and the theatrical use of a bow with the guitar….it all became the sort of thing the Sex Pistols and the Clash railed against. The movie “Spinal Tap” would never have existed without the almost comically gargantuan excesses of Led Zeppelin in the 70s. The one time they did play in the 80s, at Live Aid, was a disaster, with a heroin-addled Page practically dribbling on himself and slashing away on an painfully out of tune guitar, while Plant couldn’t remember his own words. The fact that they tried to blame this trainwreck on Phil Collins (who was gamely sitting in on drums) made it even worse. Nothing was more toxic to the 6os and 70s than the 1980s.

But by then I had already moved on. Plant and Page reunited for an album and a tour in the 90s, but that turned into a one-off. While Page seemed eager to carry on, the thought of singing and re-singing “Stairway to Heaven” to arenas filled with nostalgia crazed drunks like myself drove Plant to Nashville and a second career with Alison Krauss, which is about as far from the orgiastic moans of “Whole Lotta Love” as a man can get. Page grew so desperate that he made an album with the lead singer of the band Whitesnake, which is a bit like Bob Dylan agreeing to make a record with Timothée Chalamet.

Aside from a few notable get-togethers (a great reunion show in 2007…..the Kennedy Center Honors…), that’s been that. Until now.

“Becoming Led Zeppelin” is the name of the documentary…..the first time the band has agreed to be involved in telling their own story. I saw it this weekend, and while there’s nothing groundbreaking about it…..nothing we didn’t already know…..it surely has Zeppelin music fired up on Ipods and Bluetooth speakers everywhere….and perhaps a whole new generation of vinyl fanatics will start listening to Stairway to Heaven backwards.

It’s good to be reminded how good this band was….and how none of that time spent as a 14 year old air-guitaring in front of the mirror with a tennis racket was spent in vain.

Just knowing this music is there, and will be there for all time, is a comfort. I hope these guys live forever.

In a bit….

—tf