The entire year I was 12, I was at the peak of my Led Zeppelin fandom. It would be the last full year that I could sing all of Robert Plant’s parts, before my voice dropped more than an octave, to more of a Lou Reed place. With that same voice, I became a bar mitzvah as 1985 came to a close. My father taught me to read chanting into a cassette recorder, which I mimicked. I told him I didn’t feel like I was learning a language. I thought I was just learning music. He, who knew many languages, said, “That’s what learning a language is.” At some point, before 14 happened, I could no longer hit the G above middle C. Manhood offered the promise that I could do much more, but the dividing line was the G above middle C. I would put away childish things, and among them would be getting the Led out with my chest voice. Because my father had a job at the Synagogue—he taught other kids to read, too, but I had connections—I actually had access to backstage at Temple. Dear reader, before I chanted Hebrew scripture, I did sit-ups in the greenroom listening to Physical Graffiti. I bet “Houses of the Holy” was part of it.
My portion was from the end of Genesis (the first book of the Torah, not the band), when Joseph forgives his brothers for betraying him, and they all go on to be around 800 years old. So I had much ahead of me, plenty of time for badassery followed by forgiveness. (My mother had taken me to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat two years earlier, so I’d seen the spectacle version.) I read Stephen Davis’s Hammer of the Gods when it was a new hardcover. I would kiss a girl for the first time that summer, but before that I would read about these guys who were so unbelievably depraved, and some of it was so strange, I wondered if that was the weird stuff they don’t tell you about. Jimmy Page had a girlfriend who shared his devotion to Satanist Aleister Crowley; according to the book, when they got together, she was the age I was at the time. John Bonham hit the drums like it was an Olympic sport and died a death worthy of Dylan Thomas, after 40 shots. John Paul Jones knew arranging and keybs along with the bass. He was the quiet one, and I assumed he was a bad boy behind the scenes. Robert Plant was the loud one. Nearly every song had a moment for at least one orgasm.
I could play every Zeppelin song on the piano, and I was clinging to the moment when I could still hit those notes. This was weird, because when my voice emerged, it was a dulcet toned baritone better for speaking than for singing. This would be the instrument that mattered. Becoming a man was the whole deal, wasn’t it? This was 1986, I had a mullet, and much was questionable. Oh, when Plant, Page, and Jones reunited for Live Aid (Phil Collins was one of the drummers), they were terrible! Plant couldn’t sing those songs anymore. He was in his mid 30s, and it seemed like he had outlived Joseph and his brothers. Is this what adulthood looked like?
Stephen Davis’s book explained to me that Paganini and Robert Johnson sold their souls to the devil. (The devil? Jews didn’t believe in the devil, and some Jews didn’t even believe in Ronald Reagan.) And Zep were so good that the only explanation was that they did the same thing. Sure, Jimmy Page brought them together because everyone else in the Yardbirds quit, but really it was Satan, because he cares and he wanted me to have this band. (Hence Crowley, the girl.) But wait, there was a catch. Robert Plant’s son would die at 4, then he would be injured in a car accident. Zep recorded Presence while Plant was in a wheelchair. Compared to their earlier work, it sounded like Absence. Soon, Bonham would die, and that would be that. You can only hit the G above middle C for so long. Time to put away those childish things, gentlemen.
By the time I was 14, I started getting into music that was harder to play on the piano, and I became more interested in Robert Johnson than the British rock he spawned. That guy sold his soul in style, but he sounded like he was as brimming with it as anyone ever was. There was no way to listen to Paganini, but, lifetimes later, I followed his favorite Guaneri and a great jazz violinist who was playing it to Genoa.
I’ll never forget the feeling of being 12, listening to “The Song Remains the Same” on my Walkman—the summer before the bar mitzvah—riding my bike on Meandering Way, wind flowing through my hair. I will never feel that carefree again. The those major and sus chords, that propulsive beat, the minor fall, the major lift, and Plant hitting those androgynous notes that sounded a bit nudged by the studio. That was a light feeling, but I was actually coveting adulthood the whole time.
And what a sight it was to see Plant, Page, and Jones, getting inducted at the Kennedy Center. Barack and Michelle Obama were there, and Jack Black gave the induction speech, insisting they were better than The Beatles. They were not, but they were more shameless, and they more aggressively tapped into a 12-year-old boy’s idea of what adult sexuality sounded like, felt like, looked like. In their heyday, they traipsed around with their shirts open, treasure trails in full view. When does that part of life start? But there they were, decades later, dressed respectably, told by Obama that all the furniture was nailed down. But then when Ann Wilson sang “Stairway to Heaven,” accompanied by an ever-widening chorus of a gospel choir, Plant started to tear up. Was he getting sentimental? Was it remorse for something? The devil? The soul? All that?
I don’t believe in that stuff, of course, but that was part of becoming a man. I discovered so many layers of beauty and complexity, and ideas about passionate love that went way beyond plagiarizing blues riffs and lyrics or telling a girl that she needs love. We all need love, a whole lot of it, in fact. It starts with learning a song and it ends with living the literature. By the time I upgraded my music to CD at 17, I never got a single Led Zeppelin album on the new format. The old records were still in my head, and when I went to college, I couldn’t take those either. There was so much in the present, even more in the future.
Still, there were cassettes, the things you took to the gym without being signifiers in your dorm room. Physical Graffiti and other Zep would become gym staples. Now we have access to everything and I’m listening to the complete canon right now. So many weird chords! So much beauty amidst all the preening. I’m not a kid on my bike anymore. I will not live as long as Joseph and his brothers. I’ve already bypassed the chances to sell my soul. I will never hit the G above middle C. I can now listen to the trance of “Kashmir” and find it fascinating beyond age 12. I can be stunned by the beauty of “The Rain Song” even after everything. I have the voice I have, the body I have, the mind I have. I’m nowhere near 800, but I will forgive my enemies. I will take Led Zeppelin for all they are and all they were to me and make the audacious claim that today I am a man.
Wonderful piece I saw them in 71 shortly before my 16th birthday. I had been a fan since the first album released two months after my bar mitzvah which was right before Nixon’s election. I was a fan before I knew anything about Plant and Bonzo when they were still THe New Yardbirds. THat was an amazing show at THe Garden. I guess that was the high point of my fandom not that I never dis liked them but I got more into Jazz and film. I remember watching PLant and Page on a Jonesless PBS special. When PLant released his first album with Alison Kraus. I decided I needed all of Led Zep on CD and I did and I do.