Today Jimmy Page, leading light of Led Zeppelin, turns 70.
When I was in high school (1973-77), Jimmy Page, not
Clapton, was God. Page and Led Zep were
everyone’s reference point for “great rock band.” I’d have to say that Page
was, if not my first “guitar hero,” then my first idea of what a guitar hero
was.
In a way he was my first. Because I can remember, when I was
ten, talking with a kid on the school playground because I heard him imitating
the guitar sound in “Whole Lotta Love”: “whole
lotta love—rrrrrrrrrrnnnnnn / whole lotta love – rrrrrrnnnnn.” This was spring of 1970, and my older brother
had a copy of the 45. So me and the kid (Mark Gunzulu)
talked about that song, which was a bit of a puzzle. It didn’t seem to add up to a song but was
rather a series of segments, and the single was edited down, cutting out the
length of the really weird segment, which FM would play and which anyone who had the LP (we didn't) could hear. The segment that gets
me, to this day, is the guitar break. Still, it didn’t really make me crazy for
Zep or Page. But thanks to Page and Zep, two ten year olds were standing
in the playground of Our Lady of Fatima discussing a song that references anal
sex. Any self-respecting Beavis and Butthead would have to snigger at the phrase “every
inch of my love,” but I was still a bit naïve.
Anyway, none of this mattered to me too much at the time, not til
I became a teen, at least. When I was 12, the song that overwhelmed all others, in rock guitar regard, is today’s song: “Black Dog,” released by Atlantic Records as a
45 in November, 1971, and instantly a must have.I didn’t really know what this song was “about”—what’s more,
I was a bit put off by Robert Plant’s singing on the song and by most of the
words I could catch—“big-legged woman ain’t go no soul,” what the fuck?—except for
the lyrics I misheard as “Light the skies all burning red / Dreams of you all
through my head.” I liked that
part. Mostly, though, this song was
nothing but an excuse for Jimmy Page’s riffing and soloing, with fanatical
accompaniment by John Bonham on drums. And yet, with all the weird ah ah ahs, the song recalled “Whole
Lotta Love”—they both sound like Plant’s ready to have an orgasm any
second. The latter was an experience that I’d had
somewhere between the release of “Love” and “Dog,” thank you very much. And that made the song both more exciting and
more embarrassing, while also making it clear that sex, and not just lovey dovey stuff, was something worth singing about. Led Zep, what with the “squeeze my lemon, feel the juice run
down my leg” lyric, were a major purveyor of raunch for white Catholic kids in
a dull suburb nowhere near a major city. I tended to shy away from that kind of
“rock’n’roll” thing, anyway, but. “Black
Dog” was A-OK with me.
“Hey, hey, mama, said the way you move / Gonna make you
sweat, gonna make you groove.” Such
lyrics (I knew nothing about the blues except through guys like this) approached idiocy to my mind and yet there was
no denying the bodily jolt that opening gave me. And I loved the delivery of “All I ask for
when I pray / Steady rollin’ woman gonna come my way.” Yup. And that “watch your honey drip” part,
well, when the girls you’ve been going to school with since age six turn twelve and thirteen .
. . you tend to notice. And “Black Dog”
was pretty much how you felt about it, at times anyway.
In fact I used to hear a more filthy lyric than is
actually present in the song, so there. That was one of the great things about Plant’s singing. It really didn’t much matter what he was saying.
For some reason he’s just the right voice to go with Jimmy Page’s
playing. In most rock bands, I tend to
speak of the singer and “his axman,” but in Led Zep, it’s Page and his
voice-man. And that, right there, is
enough to make him a major guitar hero.
Happy birthday, Jimmy, and thanks for the memories.
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