Kashmir? I’m there!
Another Led Zeppelin Evening
The teenage dirtbag in me can’t stop writing about Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page and Physical Graffiti (here and in my now-retired newsletter See You Next Tue!). I apologize in advance for indulging myself yet again but the band, musician and album loomed large in my adolescence and dog me to this day. With the widespread release of the documentary Becoming Led Zeppelin and Sunday night’s attendance at my second Jason Bonham (AKA “Son of Bonzo,” late Zeppelin drummer John Bonham) Led Zeppelin Evening (shortened to JBLZE and pronounced “J-Blaze,” apparently) show, it’s time once more to delve into my undying yet problematic love for all three.
If you haven’t seen Becoming Led Zeppelin because you dismiss the band as musical thieves or feel they get more attention than they warrant or can’t stand Robert Plant’s voice or think Jimmy Page was a pedophile, I get it. I can offer a wan defense of the first allegation: back then every British rock band back lifted blues riffs and lyrics but some didn’t need to be sued to credit the original authors. The other three? I won’t even try. When I discovered Led Zeppelin I had no idea Page had a two-year relationship with a 14 year-old girl. Though Becoming Led Zeppelin thoroughly documents the unlikely forces that brought Plant, Page, Bonham and John Paul Jones into the same orbit, the band’s thorough involvement means it steers well clear of the band’s subsequent drug and groupie excesses except for one Robert Plant “…temptations of the road” reference.
Jimmy Page? What can I say? I can’t completely abandon him. He’s the reason I picked up a guitar, which utterly changed the trajectory of my life. The question that prompted me to begin NIHILISTIC remains: Is it possible to separate people from their misdeeds? If I can acknowledge gratitude to a person who tried to choke me to death - Nihilistics co-founder Mike Nicolosi (RIP) – I can say “Thank you, Jimmy Page.”
Led Zeppelin’s sixth album, Physical Graffiti, arrived in America February 24, 1975. I was 12 and after hearing tracks from the record on the radio (probably WBAB-FM), I bought a bootleg 8-track copy at Ye Old Shoppe Village in West Babylon. Played repeatedly on my craptastic Longines-Symphonette all-in-one (AM/FM, turntable, 8-track), the tape would routinely break and – in a precursor to my future audio engineer career – I became expert at patching it back together using a single-edge razor blade, Scotch™ tape years before I encountered a splicing block. Physical Graffiti hit me just right at a crucial moment as I evolved from “Introverted-Scale-Model-Builder-Chris” to “Extroverted-Guitar-Player Chris.” I wanted to be like the album’s songs: confident, bombastic, intense, majestic, virile, tender and sexy, often all at once. Fuck me, I couldn’t even PLAY the songs, never mind embody their essence. When Billy K. and I formed Cobra, our Junior High cover band, we didn’t fuck with any material from Physical Graffiti (though we were only too glad to massacre Stairway to Heaven).
Which brings me back to J-BlZE.
I first saw Jason Bonham as a toddler in Bonzo’s interstitial segment (the only one of the four that isn’t stoned fantasy hokum – we see Bonham with his family, drinking at a local pub and driving a Model T hot rod too fast, a lad from the Black Country made good) of the Led Zeppelin Madison Square Garden “concert film” (some of was recreated on a soundstage) The Song Remains The Same. Playing a wee set of drums as his father looks on proudly, it feels preordained that Jason would follow the old man into the family business. Playing the drums behind the three surviving Led Zeppelin members (John Bonham died in 1980 at the age of 32) in 1988, 1990 and – most famously – at the 2007 Ahmet Ertegun O2 Arena tribute show (released in 2012 as the film Celebration Day) solidified Jason’s coronation. He’s been in other bands, backed up many musicians and done tons of session work but in 2010 he put together an evening to celebrate his father and Led Zeppelin and it’s been his main gig since. I can’t begrudge him. He lost his father when he was 14 and many sons go into the family business. But when I first saw JBLZE in December of last year it wasn’t because of Jason Bonham: it was to see up close a man who’s dedicated his life to being what I could never be: Jimmy Page.
“Jimmy” Sakurai was a Japanese Kimono salesman in Tokyo when he decided to dedicate his life to replicating every aspect of Page’s playing, appearance, wardrobe and onstage demeanor. The documentary Mr. Jimmy (now widely available) is fascinating even if you never cared for Led Zeppelin or Jimmy Page. It shines a light on the uniquely Japanese art of complete and total replication. I said to my friend Keith – a professional guitar player – in Montclair’s Wellmont Theater as we sat awestruck by Mr. Jimmy’s note-perfect rendition of songs we’d heard hundreds of times, “Show me another human being with a living, breathing Japanese replica…” Sure, Jason Bonham is able to embody his father’s playing… but where Bonzo swung, his son mostly plodded. And except for Mr. Jimmy, no one tried to embody their Led Zeppelin counterparts (though he nailed the vocals, the singer – a bald 61 year-old dude from Parsippany – gave off zero Plant-ness). Something else I said to Keith: “What I wanna see is Mr. Jimmy’s band!” THOSE cats are putting on the entire show, their latest production is in tribute to Zeppelin’s 1975 Earl’s Court concert and if you squint or have cataracts it’s probably a YOU WERE THERE moment.
Me, I was there. I saw Led Zeppelin the last time they played Madison Square Garden, June 14 1977. Yes, Billy K. and I were in the nosebleed section and, no, I don’t remember much of the show (there are bootleg recordings out there) except the undeniable thrill to finally be seeing my idol live. Of course, it being New York City, some mook with a cherry bomb or M-80 tried to blow one of Jimmy Page’s hands off and we got cheated out of the long encores the band had done every night previous.
I don’t think of myself as a nostalgic person and generally abhor the whole idea of “tribute bands” (one last thing I said to Keith as we were driving home: “I’ve seen Jason Bonham twice and never need to see him again.”) but for one night me and the other aging dirtbags who filled the Wellmont Theater – bikers and their old ladies, dudes who work in the trades, own landscaping and construction companies, who are cops and firefighters, that gray-haired woman squirming rhythmically in her wheelchair – got to hurtle back 50 years in time to when we were all on the cusp of the rest of their lives.