Dear Jimmy Page:
This Tuesday you turn 80: Happy Milestone Birthday! It’s hard to believe. In my mind you’re perpetually young, painfully thin and forever firing off a fusillade of notes from that ‘58 sunburst Gibson Les Paul you bought off Joe Walsh. We’ve never met, so I haven’t had the opportunity to thank you in person for setting my life off in a direction it wouldn’t have sans your (ahem) presence (BTW, years ago I met Robert Plant and we had a lovely conversation, then he signed my copy of Presence… which I stupidly gave away as a fundraising prize for the radio station I was on). This is my thank you letter. In my dreams someone gets it to you.
Jimmy, you changed my life. Your music super-charged my adolescence. When I was 11, down in the basement of our three-bedroom brick ranch home (real wood paneling, asbestos “miracle” tile suspended ceiling, linoleum on the floor) in Lindenhurst, on the south shore of Long Island forty-five miles due east of Manhattan, I found my brother Mario’s copy of Led Zeppelin II. He left it out, something he never did. Thinking If he catches me anywhere near his records he’ll kill me! I move fast, fishing the LP out of its sleeve and plopping it onto our old BSR turntable in one motion. We don’t have a stereo in the basement, just the BSR, an old Wollensak reel-to-reel tape recorder Mario “liberated” from the high school and a Univox guitar amp. The left and right RCA plugs of the BSR combine via Radio Shack adapter into a quarter-inch phono plug, which I stick into the preamp input of the Wollensak. Then I connect the output of the Wollensak to an input of the Univox. I switch on the BSR, the Univox and the Wollensak, in that order. I lift the creme-colored cover off the Wollensak and set it aside. The two seven-inch reels of tape hold an hour of music if I record at the slowest speed. Half of the tape is on the take-up reel. I hit REWIND and back it all up onto the feed reel. I push down PLAY and RECORD, lift up the BSR tonearm and set it on track one. There’s a laugh that sounds like a cough, then the meanest guitar riff I ever heard kicks in. The bass guitar echoes the riff.
“You need coolin’...
Baby, I’m not foolin’...”
The song booms out of the twin twelve-inch speakers of the Univox. What the hell is THIS? This is the COOLEST THING I’VE EVER HEARD.... How are they MAKING those sounds? What’s with the drums, coming in on the chorus like that and dragging behind the beat? What’s that jet-plane sound? Who is this guy going to give his love to? There’s all that high-hat and ride cymbal and those bongos.... and then the song becomes evil. What’s that croaking noise? Is that thunder crashing? We’re on a journey somewhere. There’s a long yell, some vicious, door-slamming drums, a snotty lead guitar break and the riff kicks back in, more glorious than ever. Through side one I sit mesmerized, staring at the little bulb on the Wollensak flashing along with the level of the music. When side one ends I leave the recorder running and hurriedly flip the album over. I drop the needle onto side two and listen straight though. When it’s over I decide I HAVE to learn guitar. When I get to Junior High School that September they’re offering a guitar class. I’d been studying trombone but gladly trade it in for a crappy loaner acoustic guitar. I take it home and drive everyone nuts learning Dueling Banjoes. I paper the wall above my bed with pictures of you and Led Zeppelin. My sister’s friend Rodney leaves what must be a “hot” (stolen) Harmony Stratotone at our house and I become obsessed with that electric guitar, plugging it into the Univox, strumming it constantly. When Rodney reclaims the Harmony I talk my grandmother into buying me a Kay SG copy for my birthday. It’s an utter piece of crap and a year later, when I upgrade to a white Ibanez Les Paul copy, I smash the Kay against an exterior wall of Southside Fish & Clam at the end of our block. Then I meet Billy Kammerer through my friend Glenn Katz. Billy lives at the end of Glenn’s block and stops by his house while I’m visiting. As the consummate Who fan, he’s carrying an SG without a case. I tell him about the music store where I got my Ibanez and Billy asks if I want to get together and jam. I say "Sure!”, not knowing what “jamming” is. A week later I’m in Billy's bedroom with my Ibanez and trusty Univox. I’m wearing red Converse sneakers, Levis and a black Led Zeppelin T-shirt bought at Jolly Joint in the back of the Home Decor at the Sunrise Mall. The iron-on transfer on the T-shirt features a prismatic blimp, glittering in a simple (unlicensed) design that would’ve made Peter Grant see red. I wear that shirt like armor, imagining it makes me less of a fat kid target. Billy wears Frye boots and a Who Maximum R & B T-shirt. He plugs his SG Deluxe (walnut finish, two mini-humbuckers with black plastic covers) into an Ampeg Reverb Rocket and says ”So you like Zeppelin?"
"Yeah".
I play a bit of Ramble On. Billy smiles, then offers up the opening riff of Pinball Wizard. I join him, copying as best I can. Billy plays the chords and sings. He has a good voice, upper register, like Pete Townsend’s. He strains a bit at the high notes but knows all the words. We keep meeting and jamming and eventually form a cover band, Cobra. With my Ibanez I learn the hits of 1976 and we play backyard parties and dances, culminating in our Christmas dance appearance at Our Lady Of Perpetual Help. When we end with Stairway to Heaven I notice all the Catholic School girls checking me out.
In 1977 Billy wins Led Zeppelin Madison Square tickets at face value through a lottery. Our seats are in the nosebleed section but we don’t care. We wait forever for the show to begin and hear a rumor it’s because “Percy” can’t find exactly the right jeans. I’m out of my mind seeing my favorite band tearing through their hits but I totally lose it when you bring out the violin bow and stand in a triangle of green laser lights, whacking the strings of your Les Paul with the bow, then pointing with it to different sections of the Garden while the triangle rotates each time.
When the show is "over" we brace for an hour of encores, as we’ve heard about from friends who attended one of the five nights previous. You’d just gotten back on stage when some asshole throws an M-80, which either bounces off the bass drum skin or hits you directly on your right hand, making a terrible bright flash and very loud BANG. There’s a collective gasp as we all think They blew his hand OFF! Are we witnessing the end of your career? Moments later you’re hustled offstage and I watch through binoculars as someone examines your hand. After an interminable wait Robert Plant walks onstage and stands fuming at the main microphone. I commit his words to memory.
”We've had six nights of peace and music and now some joker has to go and spoil it. I hope whoever is sitting next to that person takes care of him. We're going to do an encore… but you people don't deserve it."
The rest of the band came out onstage and limp through half of a "Whole Lotta Love" redux and then you all LEAVE. I hope whoever WAS sitting next to that joker DID take care of him. Not long after this show Billy and I go our separate ways. Cobra ends. In high school I’m shocked to see Mike Nicolosi return from the summer having lost all his excess weight. I spend more time at his house, listening to Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Motorhead, Thin Lizzy, etc. I turn 17 and discover punk rock, falling in love with The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, etc. Mike buys a cheap Hagstrom bass, I show him how to play it and we start a band. In 1980 John Bonham dies, Led Zeppelin calls it quits and Mike and I graduate and work one crappy job after another. We audition numerous singers and drummers but can’t find anyone good or even committed. The drinking age is 18, so we start heading out to a nightclub in Valley Stream for their punk rock/new wave night. We meet Ron in the parking lot and he becomes lead singer. Then we find our drummer Troy in our hometown. Back at home I take down all my Led Zeppelin stuff, embarrassed by it. I sell it all–including my 1977 tour program, Swan Song T-shirt, 1969 press kit and more–to a friend of my brother’s. This remains a life long regret.
I dub our new band The Nihilistics. We record a 5-song EP and on the back cover I rename myself “Chris T.” We play all the famous venues long gone. Max’s Kansas City. Peppermint Lounge. Mudd Club. Great Gildersleeves. My Father’s Place. Irving Plaza. CBGB. On one of these gigs I meet Jeff Nagle, playing guitar in the band Drunk Driving. A few years later, after Mike and Ron decide The Nihilistics should be more like Judas Priest, I leave. When a Checker cab hits me while stopped at a red light I take the lawsuit money awarded and move in with recently-divorced Jeff Nagle in Tenafly, NJ. Within a year I’m on on-the-air at legendary freeform radio station WFMU. Through WFMU I meet many friends and the woman who becomes my wife. I also parlay my experience there into a professional radio career. Years later we cross paths at SiriusXM when you are plugging the remastered Zeppelin albums. I catch a glimpse of you and sneak a picture with my phone. I listen to all the interviews you do at the time and feel many are wide of the beam. I imagine the questions I’d ask if given the chance:
Would any “official” history be warts-and-all?
Why are you still dismisses for“stealing” from others in light of someone like A.P. Carter, who travels around the US “Song-catching” and attaching his name to songs that existed for hundreds of years prior?
Are you owed credit for being open about your influences? I learned about Hubert Sumlin, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon and so many others because you raved about them back then.
Do you feel you’re dismissed as cultural appropriators because you were wildly successful?
Beyond your guitar playing, are you acknowledged for revolutionizing the sound of rock & roll through your production techniques?
Didn’t you also change how a rock band releases its music, whether or not it owns its work and how it’s paid for that work?
Some of the women you “dated” after you became famous can’t be called that: they were girls. Have you reflected on this in light of #metoo?
There are many more questions I’d ask but I’ll stop there and offer one more memory: My late sister Joanie playing the Led Zeppelin song “Thank You” at her wedding for the the first dance. I well up now when I hear it. It’s just one of the thousand ways you’ve enriched my life and changed its course. Thank you, Jimmy Page.
Happy Birthday,
Chris Tsakis