bdp24...
Hahahaha! Man, I hope that's true. To this day I still can't watch The Song Remains The Same - makes my skin crawl. One of the worst rock films possible and not the band's finest effort at all. For their best live effort it's How The West Was Won. Kickass great stuff.
I wish I kept all my Rolling Stone magazines to review how poorly it and the American press in general treated the band. I read EVERY music magazine in those days, Melody Maker, Creem, Crawdaddy, and maybe a few others I can't recall now.
I was recuperating from my first of two knee operations when WNEW FM debuted Zep IV one early afternoon. No cell phone. No email. No social media. My friends were still in school and there I was sticking a ruler inside my leg cast to ease the itching, listening to Led Zep IV on a transistor radio in the hospital.
I called my friends IMMEDIATELY, most of the time getting their mothers, telling them to call me as soon as they got home. I remember thinking, listening to Stairway for the first time ever, that it must have been 30 minutes long. (Had that same impression the first time I heard We Won't Get Fooled Again). ALL of my friends came to the hospital that afternoon.
That, and the time my second oldest brother came home and tossed Zep 1 on our family's console stereo (it was a Magnavox, tubed!) represent my best two personal Zep stories. Being reminded that Bonham died 37 years ago not only serves to mark some pivotal moments in my life, it made me think about all the times that Zep was the soundtrack to them. The Stones, The Who, Zep, Joni Mitchell, Zappa, The Mothers, The Band, and so many more...
Almost makes me feel like Martin Scorcese shoulda been filming me and my friends.
