 |
 |
|
Whole Lotta Love — Tori Amos, 1994 It was 20 years ago today, following the death of John Bonham, that Led Zeppelin broke up, capping off more than a decade of cultic fervor for mindfucking music that was infused with British mysticism, and at the same time, unequivocally grounded in American blues. But Atlantic Records may never have signed that band if Led Zeppelin's numerous Brit pop predecessors hadn't already paved the way across the pond. It is tacit that every former and current British colonial is subjected to a mandate at the age of 13 to appreciate, if not celebrate, the Beatles as the undisputed musical geniuses of the latter-half of the 20th century. Memorizing the lyrics to "Eleanor Rigby" with the force of a thousand Algebra I pop quizzes, my girlfriends and I underwent a Beatles-induced cultural awakening in eighth grade that has yet to be matched by any single life change I have made in one dozen intervening years. In order to distinguish us from each other and from the garden-variety neo-hippies in our class who never truly embraced the Beatles' contemporaries with the same enthusiasm as they embraced their toxins, my girlfriends and I made a subtle, unconscious effort to claim our very own supergroups. The Who and the Rolling Stones were out of bounds since both were currently touring. We were forced to branch out, each of us becoming increasingly obsessed with the band most un-like our personality. Malini had David Bowie, Shira had Pink Floyd, Liz had the Kinks, Susan had Fleetwood Mac, and Mia had Cream. And I had Led Zeppelin all to myself. After all, what could be more un-like me, Margie the clarinet player, than a tall, cool one who says he doesn't care what neighbors say, he's gonna love me each and every day? If Robert Plant wanted to send me back to schoolin', believe me, I wanted to go. The same way I wanted to go to California, Avalon, the levee, the misty mountains, Calcutta, heaven and Evermore. Led Zeppelin scared my parents. And they scared me. I was looking for some overlords, and Led Zeppelin fit the bill.
After purchasing Led Zeppelin's oft-lionized fourth album, I painstakingly acquired the other nine albums and a box set over a series of semesters. Perhaps more significant, I had just discovered that I had one thing in common with my counterparts in the boy gender: classic rock. When I started high school, I had a bargaining chip with the boys in band class. No longer was I clarinet girl. To all the boys who sat around after school committing to memory even the most obscure Guns 'N' Roses tablature, I was cool. I wore my Physical Graffiti t-shirt with pride. In the crossword puzzle of Zeppelin trivia, I could provide a 12-letter word for one of Robert Plant's multifarious pre-Zeppelin groups, and be praised for my knowledge. Hobbstweedle. It rang out from the anathema that is eighth grade and gave me a window on the past, present, future: what is and what should never be. Then came the accoutrements. My own ringlets, a Jimmy Page black, started looking suspiciously like those adorning the face of Robert Plant in a 1975 photo on the balcony of the Riot House (nee Hyatt House) in L.A., the very day that he made this famous, albeit recently co-opted by Zeppelin disciple Cameron Crowe, declaration: "I am a golden god." My parents and friends soon realized that all I wanted for Christmas was some Led Zeppelin crap, so my cherry blossom pink bedroom walls are, to this day, filled with such artifacts as an original 5 x 7 glossy of the boys and Atlantic president Ahmet Ertegun taken with their first gold records in hand, The Song Remains The Same concert video, a black fuzz-on-neon poster, and last but not least, the pillow, a nails-on-blackboard white nylon number with pictures of the first four albums in each corner and that scary old guy with the staff presiding. In terms of male-female relations, Led Zeppelin's lyrics (and wordless moans) were far more educational than anything in Seventeen magazine. The music became my very own book-on-tape, instructing on sexual topics including, but not limited to: 1) backdoor men 2) the off-chance 3) hedgerow bustles 4) blowing it 5) faking it 6) cooking it 7) frying it 8) chill bumps 9) what happens when one "squeezes" one's partner 10) the land of the ice and snow. Valhalla, I am coming! Not that all this sex talk was entirely clear to me. I did recognize, from songs like "How Many More Times," that Led Zeppelin weren't exactly the kind of guys you wanted teaching Sex Ed. Even I knew that you couldn't get 10 children of your own just from kissing a girl. To fill in the details, I employed a dog-eared copy of Stephen T. Davis' 1986 hotel no-tell tell-all, "Hammer Of The Gods." If you haven't read it, which I recommend you do, "Hammer Of The Gods" isn't exactly "Sweet Valley High" or Judy Blume's "Forever." It has about the same amount of sex as a Harlequin romance novel, with the palpable addition of drugs, underage groupies, the nefarious "shark incident" chapter, and lurid accounts from now-deceased former Zeppelin manager Peter Grant, who looked in at years of epic levels of groupie sex and actually had to utter the words, "I'm with the band." It is raw, sensationalistic, and true. Or so I hoped. "Hammer Of The Gods" became my adolescent go-to-guide, a "Guinness Book" for teenage groupies. After all, Jimmy Page's girlfriend, Lori Maddox, was only 14 when they met. "Are you there, Robert? It's me, Margaret," I wondered, hoping that someday, Robert would come and take me to the prom. Or just take me. In July 1989, my parents and I made our annual nostalgia quest from the Washington, D.C., suburbs to my hometown of Schenectady, New York, to visit relatives and friends. Among this elite cadre was Mary Beth, my father's former boss' daughter-in-law. I didn't know Mary Beth well before that day, and I never saw her again. But she suddenly became the most important person in my 13-year-old life. Under my mother's duress, I begrudgingly accompanied Mary Beth and her three children to meet their father at Albany Airport. As we wound our way to the terminal, I couldn't have imagined that Mary Beth was actually driving me to meet the man whose ringlet-framed face was currently occupying not one, but two, photo sleeves in my Le Sportsac wallet. So there we were in the parking lot, Mary Beth and I and three girls under the age of 9, our thighs sticking miserably to the navy-blue vinyl seats. It was then that I spied him. Sitting on a bench. Drinking tea. Smiling and waving at... Wait... Is that really him? Who was he smiling at? Could he be beckoning to... me? To come over? Could that be tea with... Lemon? It was Robert Anthony Plant, alright. A mere 28 years my senior. And man, was he tall. I got out of the car, and walked over to him. It was clear, once I got closer, that it really was him. Plus, what other 40-year-old man would beckon to a 13-year-old girl he didn't know? "Excuse me, Mr. Plant. I just wanted to tell you that..." He smiled. "You're my idol." Inside, I'm sure he was freaking out. I mean, it's not normal for a 13-year-old girl to like a man old enough to be her father. But he didn't condescend; he didn't brush me aside. We just talked. We talked about how he was losing his voice. We talked about how much I liked Now And Zen, which he'd released the year before. We talked about how tea with lemon really was the best way to cure a raspy voice. We did not talk about Led Zeppelin. When his handler determined that this unexpected PR opportunity had reached critical mass, she rushed him away. But not before he stood up, all seven or eight feet of him, and gave me a hug. Mary Beth, herself a child of the '70s, was busy freaking out in the car, but quickly reminded me that I forgot to get his autograph. I ran inside and grabbed paper and a marker from the Hertz counter just inside the terminal. I realized later I'd grabbed an American Express brochure, but that didn't matter so much with the words "Be happy Margie / Love, Robert Plant" emblazoned in tall, cool script on the front. Robert Plant is everyone I want to be. When I reunited with my mother, in a complete state of adolescent bliss, the first thing I said was, "Mom, if I could meet anyone in the entire world, who would it be?" "Robert Plant," she groaned, clearly embarrassed to disclose this information in mixed company. To think Robert Plant was only 40 years old when I met him amazes me. To think that now I am 25, the same age Robert was when Houses Of The Holy was released, absolutely terrifies me. Especially since the lyrics actually mean something to me now. "Many have I loved / Many times been bitten / Many times I've gazed along the open road. Many times I've lied / Many times I've listened / Many times I've wondered how much there is to know." - "Over The Hills And Far Away" So time passed. "Bron-Yr-Aur," a fixture on every mix tape I made from 1989 through 1999, ended up on the soundtrack for the film "Almost Famous." Puff Daddy slaughtered "Kashmir" (with Jimmy Page's help, no less!), indie band Cave In is touring with a decidedly adolescent choir boy take on "Dazed And Confused," and - the ultimate last straw — Hootie and the Blowfish's 1995 cover of "Hey Hey What Can I Do," finds a spot on their recently released greatest hits album. Being a fan — an obsessed fan, if you will — means more than admitting that the music has shaped your life and times. It means that you actually ascribe yourself to the worldview presented by the music with which you are obsessed, no matter how much the musicians' values are a departure from your own. After a time, you begin to believe that not only is it okay to adopt your Weltanschauung from a bunch of alcoholics, but it's preferable to more conventional modes of personal philosophy peddled in, say, houses of worship, schools, and pop psychology how-tos. Today, listening to "No Quarter," I fantasize that I am the runaway druggie author of the anonymous 1973 teenaged autobiography "Go Ask Alice." Mind you, I wasn't, and still haven't gotten high. But that doesn't matter. Led Zeppelin is a dress-up game that I can play and pretend I am someone much cooler than I am. |
|
Pearl
Jam |
| Discuss Led
Zeppelin with freaks much like yourself. We've started a discussion for people like you. Please join in and reveal the crowning achievement of your artist worship. |
| Bron-y-Aur lives in New York City where she pays too much for too little, too late. She is not alone in this endeavor, being as how 1,487,535 other people reside on Manhattan's 73.6 square kilometers of bedrock. |
|
more
led zeppelin at nude as the news |
|
Pearl
Jam |