photo courtesy dreamstime / eautographhunter
Robert Plant and Jimmy Page
I turned 26 on March 4, 1995, and celebrated my birthday at The Pyramid with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. It was an epic night for a man born in 1969, the year both Led Zeppelin and Led Zeppelin II were released. And it was the precise midpoint between the year Led Zeppelin III was produced here in Memphis (1970) and 2020, a year we’ve come to consider those things dear to us … a little extra dear. Music is of a moment, always. But the temporal quality of the music that reaches us on the deepest level — many would call it spiritual — is a life-shaping force, whatever stage of life we may currently occupy.
I attended that 1995 concert with my buddy Michael Finger, a fan old enough to have actually listened to those first three Zeppelin albums within days of their release. I envy that life moment more than I’ve been able to explain to Michael all these years. I knew “Whole Lotta Love” would shake the walls of my soul, because people told me before I first heard it. Michael — and millions of his generation — felt those walls shake without warning. Gives me goose bumps to merely imagine.
When Plant and Page took the stage in ’95 — two-thirds of Led Zeppelin’s surviving members — it became one of the few moments in my adult life that I found myself saying, not quite aloud, “That’s really them. That’s Robert Plant. That’s Jimmy Page. In real life.” When children see Mickey Mouse for the first time at Disney World? The cartoon come to life? That was me, sitting about 80 yards from Plant and Page as they performed songs from their just-released album, No Quarter. Different takes on Zeppelin classics like “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” and “Kashmir,” but delivered by the very forces who created them. Plant was 46 years old at the time, Page 51. How could gods flash such thunder at such advanced ages?
Fast-forward 15 years, and I appeared on the front page of The Commercial Appeal with Robert Plant. The day before, Plant received his sidewalk star from the Orpheum Theatre, a gesture of welcome as he prepared to perform (with Alison Krauss), but a salute to Plant’s gargantuan past as a rock star, standard-maker, and style-setter. The photo of a smiling Plant departing his press conference happened to include a 41-year-old reporter, barely visible behind the Golden God’s right shoulder. Time. Place. Moment.
As I write this column, I’m now the age Jimmy Page was when we first met at The Pyramid, an arena that now celebrates (and sells) hunting and fishing equipment. (That may be a tall elevator, but it doesn’t reach quite the heights I did in that building 25 years ago.) The man considered by many the greatest rock guitarist to ever take a stage is now 76. Robert Plant turned 72 in August. But close your eyes and listen to “Black Dog” (especially if it’s the first time). It’s a song you cannot hear without feeling 17 and bursting with an energy that, quite simply, cannot be wasted on the young.
photo courtesy dreamstime / michael bush
Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen was one of the few men who could intrude on Page’s territory in the conversation about greatest guitarists to ever live. (There’s tragic brevity to Jimi Hendrix’s case, in my view, as the catalog of music produced must count in the debate.) Van Halen died of cancer on October 6th at what I’ll now call a “tender age” of 65. Van Halen — the band — being a little closer to my generation (as defined by our teen years) than Zeppelin, Eddie’s passing sliced off a significant portion of my youth. Too many memories — be they from dance floors, party cabins, or car stereos — wrapped within songs from 1984 and 5150. Just like “Black Dog,” those songs are to be heard by the young at heart. When I listen to “Panama” or “Dreams” today, I’m again young at heart, if not so much in the mirror. But with Eddie gone, there’s a sadness, even within the blistering finger-tapping of his iconic “Eruption.” There’s more life in that guitar solo — less than two minutes, start-to-finish — than in 20 minutes of your favorite classical music. Bach is meant to be listened to, absorbed. Eddie Van Halen’s guitar is to be felt.
In the summer of 1988, I had a first date with a special girl. And I was anxious about the music to play in my parents’ car’s cassette deck. KISS (my go-to with the boys) wouldn’t do. AC/DC or M¨otley Cr¨ue … gloves off, inappropriate. Led Zeppelin would have made the vibe too Seventies (I thought then). So I put in OU812, the album Van Halen released just a few weeks earlier. She agreed to a second date. And we’ve now been married 26 years. I think this would make Eddie Van Halen smile.
Our favorite music is of us, and we are a part of every tune in the playlist that accompanies us, from one stage (pun intended) to another. Be sure and read Alex Greene’s terrific story on how Led Zeppelin III came to life right here in the Bluff City (page 18). An album now 50 years old has raised a few generations of fans and made its own distinct impact on dance floors, party cabins, and car stereos. I may well be playing it as you read this issue, imagining my pal Michael Finger when he was 17 years old. If not, I’m surely cranking up 1984, reminding myself that, yes, I can be 15 again.
