J and Led Zep

[“Good Times, Bad Times” is the first song on the first song on side 1 of the first album by Led Zeppelin. I was a huge Who fan at the time, and I didn’t want there to be any pretenders to the throne of rock ‘n roll, but by the time I got through 2:46 seconds of this debut record, I had to admit that the crown was looking a bit shaky. Silverback J (Mendocino Bonobos) captures the zeitgeist perfectly in his remembrance. He has appeared in the electrons of Silverback Digest before, but it’s been a long time gone. Welcome back. SB SM]

“Are You Somebody?”

{But first … a bit of throat-clearing from J himself: I guess the time has come, thanks to the prodding of two fellow MediCare recipients, John and John. Or south of the border, Juanito and Juan Grande. Perhaps the less said of them the better, due to probable lingering interest by some outfit like the CIA or their high school Deans of Discipline.

How many times over the years I’ve thought to record this memory, but been discouraged by that “Who gives a damn?” voice in my head. “Pure vanity and arrogance!” it insists. “Nobody cares.”

But now, today, I’ve been gifted with two encouraging adults, a few hours to step outside the chaos of the moment and onto a keyboard, and a few drops of THC tincture. I’m not completely done living yet. So here’s the story as I remember it, with what’s left of my brain. It was a very long time ago, on many levels … SB J}

—————–

Once in a great while, particularly if you’re young and lucky, things just seem to come together, on their own. The stars align. Timing, circumstance, chance, desire, and magic mushrooms: a certain recipe for an eventful experience.

I guess the prequel to this one begins in long-ago 1969 in far-away Athens Ohio, home of Ohio University —a diamond in the abandoned coal mine of rural Appalacia. Me and Cheri — college students in our 20s — and our three-year-old mophead Led Zeppelin fan, son Christopher. We loved that first Zeppelin album, all of us. Played the hell out of it, on our stereophonic phonograph component sound system. I can still see my bouncing boy, barefoot in pajamas with a plastic toy guitar strapped around his neck, thrashing around our living room like a Tasmanian Devil, singing along with the likes of “Good Times, Bad Times” until our little showman near collapses.

So when they somehow got Led Zeppelin for a concert in Appalacian Athens, Cheri and I didn’t peep a word about it to Christopher. Got him a babysitter, picked up our friends Lonesome Joe and that cute little trollop Debbie, and headed for the university convocation center to see these guys who had stirred our young souls and driven our flower child crazy.

Speaking of crazy, when I say “they” got Led Zeppelin, I’ve always imagined it was a small committee of OU students, at least one of them far out (i.e., stoned) enough to suggest Zeppelin, and another one crazy enough to schedule them to be the warm-up act for headliner soloist Jose Feliciano, an acoustic specialist in ballads and romantic renderings. Zep opening for Feliciano? A mismatch of musicians and vibes of epic proportions.

Well, in the interest of brevity, Zeppelin blew us away — us, and most of the audience who headed for the exits after Zep finished. Poor Jose, blindsided if you will. which is a terrible but accidental pun because Jose was blind. Still is. Sorry about that. Just came out. At least he didn’t have to see the place nearly empty before he even started. One reviewer described it as “a sad little rainbow following a hurricane.”

Anyway, as I was saying, Zep blew the roof off the place. So much so that Lonesome Joe got hit with both barrels. He was the lead guitar for Athens’s mind-blowing psychedelic band Headstone Circus, weekly headliners at the Appalacian Lighthouse, an old former hardware store now illuminated on weekend nights with seizure-inducing strobe lights and wavering globs of gel projected on the walls. Outtasight! What were we thinking? Or not. Far out.

Anyway, both barrels. Lonesome Joe not only lost his date Debbie, as explained below, but after being blown away by Jimmy Page, Joe decided on the spot to give up guitar for good (which he didn’t) since he was clear that he could never-ever play as good as Jimmy Page. I heard tell a while back that Joe went on to a career of music production and performance in LA and Hawaii. As for his foxy hippie chick date, God only knows what became of hot little brokenhearted Debbie. Hopefully, peace and true love, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

Brokenhearted because as soon as Zep’s last note faded, the little vixen disappeared, snuck backstage, spent the night doing the wild thing with Jimmy Page (how about that for a claim to fame?!), drove 200 miles a few weeks later to see them again in Cleveland, and he didn’t even remember her. “Who? … No.” Heartbreak. But I digress.

The story I’m trying to get told here began about five months later, when The Mighty Zep came to Detroit’s Olympia Stadium — a decaying hockey arena, indoor thankfully, because it was freezing ass cold that night, October 9, 1969, when the number one song in the good old US-of-A was Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds”.

Ancient Olympia Stadium was an oval arena, with bleachers and box seats and, folding chairs blanketing the floor up to the front of the stage, at the far end of the oval. The sides of the stage were roped off to the rafters, closed. Prohibited Entry. Verbotten. Lest anyone like Debbie find their way backstage.

Besides Cheri and I, there were maybe a half-dozen other of us young “heads” (i.e. pot smokers) braving the chilly winds that night. Us brothers and sisters crammed into our VW bus for the hour-long drive from Toledo, bought last minute tickets at the door for $4, then got to our crummy seats at the far back of the oval, as far from the stage as could possibly be. Bummer.

I want to pause a moment here to acknowledge my beautiful young love-beaded then-wife Cheri who when once asked in high hopes by some straight guy on the street, “Do you believe in free love?” famously shot him down with the reply, “I believe in free choice.” Lucky for me, back then I was her chosen one.

Back to Olympia Stadium. I’m coming on to magic mushrooms. “Shrooms”, as they call them today. I can tell I’m coming on, because I had dropped a few of them a little earlier, and I’m starting to not give a damn about much of anything, and I’m just letting the trip take me where it will. Which it did.

I must pause again here to say a word, lest you envision me as some kind of depraved junkie drug addict. I somehow managed to eventually become a California psychologist. After decades of senseless suppression, psilocybin mushrooms are today being hailed by researchers as the most effective medication for depression and anxiety and symbolic coming-to-Jesus known to humankind. I’m not ashamed to confess that I liked ’em and benefitted greatly from them, though it’s been many moons since I’ve gotten my hands on some. Maybe it’s time …

Anyway, we’re sitting in these distant arena seats while the warm-up band starts warming us up. It’s a local Detroit group of raucous rascals going by the name of The MC5. Since the quintet was from the “Motor City”, the logical presumption was that this enthusiastic assemblage was the “Motor City 5”. Fat chance. We enlightened new age underground heads knew damn well The MC5 were really “The Marijuana Cigarette 5”. No fooling us. We can read between the lines. We know hidden meanings. We know all about the Illuminati and that The Walrus is Paul.

MC5’s big hit was “Break Out The Jams, Motherfucker”, which I believe was history’s first song to feature that moniker, affirming how “my generation” was going to shatter all limits, including laws and walls, dress and hygiene codes, rules and precedents, decency and decorum, while delivering peace and love, freedom and joy, harmony and hashish to this troubled ol’ world of Vietnam and Civil Rights marches, assassinations and summer riots.

Again I digress. Sign of a wandering mind. Lost in the ozone. “Spaced out”, as we nicknamed it in those days of the first moon landing. I’ve probably got mid-stage dementia, I forget. Deservedly, I might add. But I’ll get there, I promise. Zeppelin. Focus.

So The MC5 is/are pretty good. Good and loud anyway. Shirtless drummer is playing a solo with his bare hands. But they ain’ t the Mighty Zep. No way. Nobody is. So the magic mushrooms and I decide to take a stroll, just to see where my feet will lead me. I get up without a word, because I can barely speak an intelligible phrase anymore, and I wander down the nearest tunnel into the dim underbelly of the concrete bleachers, where they stick the rest rooms and trash cans and hot dog vendors. Sorry.

Like I said, earlier I’d ingested a psychedelic (i.e., “mind-expanding”) fungus, and the full force of the cosmic joke has begun sweeping the cobwebs of my logical mind away, revealing complete clarity of purpose and mindless confidence that everything is perfectly as it should be in total harmony with the natural universe of order and chaos, but without the words. Like that.

Anyway, I begin walking away from people down there, who are simply a confusion, until I find myself strolling alone down that dim hallway, approaching a chair with a sign on it saying something like “Keep Out”. But what do such words mean anyway? Really and truly? Mere human-made symbols, blots of ink on paper, of no concern to this tripping hippie as I faithfully wind my way around to the back of the oval. In time (yet another arbitary human-made artifact) I come round the bend to the sight of a throng of fans restrained by a wall-to-wall rope, hoping to get a close-up look at the Zep coming out of their dressing room. Well I’ll be damned, I’m backstage. And lo and behold, a little ways in front of this restrained clot of crazed fans, a chair. A simple solitary empty chair, across from a closed door with security guards on each side. A mundane but immensely meaningful empty chair, beckoning to me. For me. Just as it should be. Clearly placed by destiny for me to sit upon, which I do. As I sit, a frantic young lady in front of the roped-off throng yells across to me, “Are you somebody?”

No need to reply to that. It’s obvious. I am as somebody as anybody. And we are all together.

I am backstage. I am comfortable. I am seated, at ease. I am not freaked out. I am silent and serene amidst the crackling energy and the movie unfolding before my eyes. I am ripped. I am here. Where I am supposed to be. I belong. I be here now.

Just then, the door opens and out strides the Mighty Zep: all glorious four of them in their glittering threads and open shirts. Zep and Me. Me, because I belong. Yes I do, here and now. I rise from my chair and walk shoulder-to-shoulder with singer Robert Plant, who knows or at least assumes that I am somebody. We, Me and Zep, climb the stairway to heaven onto the back corner of the elevated stage. Zep takes the floodlit stage amid thunderous applause and l crouch in the dark of the back corner, eight arbitrary feet from the drums, as the crowd thunders and the musicians take to their instruments. Their weapons, is more like it.

Here, now, I am, as I should be, a coin-toss from supreme master drummer John Bonham — Bonzo — who shoots me a glance as he pounds out the first beat of what has come to be known as heavy metal rhythm and blues rock and roll Zeppelification.

See, I’m a bit of a drummer myself, like Bonzo. Unlike Bonzo, in my misspent youth I played half-assed with a half-dozen nowhere Toledo bands, in a half-dozen noplace ghetto bars. Hat’s off and a shout-out to Blind Bobby Smith anyway. Later on, my two sons also played some drums, both better than I ever was. Zep-Boy Chrisopher grew to fall prey to the pied piper of that hell known as the music business, complete with day job. He’s of the “Make Love, Not War” generation. Fifteen-year distant son Jesse James, of the “Make Beer, Not War” generation, had the sense to put the sticks down and instead get addicted to computer screens. Jesse can unfreeze my computer, Christoper can unfreeze my heart. Well, they both can.

Damn, here I go digressing again.

Yes, Page is fantastic. Yes, Plant is awesome. Yes, Jones is elegant — witnessing their shaded backsides from the rear of the stage. But Bonham, spitting distance from me, he is primitive. He is effortlessly aggressive. Driven. Smooth and powerful as a Rolls Royce engine, pounding out complex rhythmic moves possibly never before heard by the human ear.

He senses me there, in harmonized vibes, I know it — following him, dazed, riding with him, grooving, rocking in synch in this timeless moment, when mid-song the spell is interrupted by a cold hand on my shoulder.

I turn to see a cop nodding for me to get off the stage. Instinctively I turn back to Bonzo, who disappears the cop with a whisk of his drumstick and shake of his head, and I am alone in the crowd again, safe and undisturbed in my dark back corner of the stage, reveling in this magic bubble, grooving with His Highness, feasting on song-after-song of primo percussion and musical mayhem. Naturally. Just as it should be.

As with all things — good and bad, bright and beautiful, sacred and profane — eventually it comes to an end, even with encores. I rise and walk silently down the steps, shoulder-to-shoulder with soul brother Bonzo, he and his mates proceeding back through the magic door, me turning left and walking on a cloud with levitated spirit and blown mind, back under the concrete bleachers, to the far end of the arena, through the tunnel, and up the steps to my brothers and sisters, where Cheri looks at me in bewilderment and says, “You missed the whole show!”

——————————————————————————————–

As things go, Bonzo died 11 years later, after a day which included 40 shots of vodka. Crumbling Olympia Stadium was demolished in 1987. And as for now-80-something-year-old Debbie — if she is still alive — I’m left wondering if she’s either proud or ashamed to speak of her one-night stand with Jimmy Page?