I get in the mood to hear certain musicians/bands, and when it hits, I can't let go for awhile and play or read about anyone else. It could be for 15 minutes, it could be hours, or days ,untilI am satisfied.
I have an addictive personality. Once I like something...I like it TOO MUCH.
When I was 12 years old, in Grade 6, summer of 1980,a schoolmate asked me to check something out. He pulled out a mono tape recorder and played "Dazed and Confused" by Led Zeppelin.
It was like nothing I had heard before in my life ,I never heard of the band before, (and I would not hear and know about Black Sabbath for another year,and even then, just knew their radio "hits", like Iron Man).
so,listened to this Zep tune.... afterwards, believe it or not, I said it was kind of too heavy and too slow for me and I'd rather listen to The Who. He just smiled and said "yeah, they're pretty heavy alright, guess it isn't for everyone, but that's what I'm listening to all the time now".
(Frankly, at the time, I thought it was just a really, really weird, creepy song).
He later became a HUGE,HUGE bootleg cassette collector, mainly for Zeppelin.
He also told us in the hallway, between classes, the day Bonham died, and was pretty angry,saying he was planning to see them in concert, it might have been his first huge concert, and I doubt nobody I knew in school had ever been to one at that point.
Fast forward 3 years to high school, 1983,and the LA metal scene was just about to break out on regular rock radio, and tv stations,especially with Ratt's Round & Round and Quiet Riot's Cum On Feel The Noize,and Metal Health, videos playing every 30 minutes to fill up space they could not sell commercial time for, on my local station that would become a FOX station eventually I grew my hair and even though didn't really hang out with many rockers, as everybody seemed to be either an asshole, or into pop music.
This was when Miami Vice soon went on the air and the nerdy new wave type fashions on Square Pegs, were also part of the preppy crowd at my school.
so, going along my merry way, delivering morning newspapers so I could buy cigarettes and vinyl albums (started off collecting a lot of David Bowie as I was into his singing and lyrics), and staying up all night reading all sorts of books on the history of rock, and listening to Q107-FM, the heaviest rock radio station we had, especially after 11 pm to like 6 am, which was no good, as I had to be out the door by 6 to do my morning papers, which for awhile became TWO paper routes... (sometime in Grade Nine I finally had to quit them).
Too many times being late (got me suspended once actually), also getting chewed out for falling asleep in class, not getting homework done half the time, as I was busy reading classic science fiction from the 1950s to 1970s, horror, and more importantly, books like
Up and Down with the Rolling Stones by Tony Sanchez,
No One Gets Out of Here Alive, the Jim Morrison biography by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman ,
Billion Dollar Baby about Alice Cooper by Bob Greene,
Circus and
Creem rock magazines,and eventually, sometime during my years there wondering what the hell I was doing at school being miserable every day it seemed, and reading another sensationalist paperback to fill me in on the little I knew about what seemed to be EVERYBODY's favourite band, even school teachers said they like them, Led Zeppelin -
Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga. by Stephen Davis.
I think the first 2 Zeppelin albums I bought (and on vinyl, this was pre-cd days as far as I know), IV, and then the debut.
Must have played them over and over and over.
I sometimes did that with other rock I took to, like Black Sabbath with Ozzy,the Ramones,1970s KISS, and AC/DC.
The steady diet of 1960s psychedelic/blues/pop rock had me grow from being a fan of the Beatles and Stones and The Who and the Kinks, to finally looking for HEAVIER music.
The school friend by 1984 was in other classes, like most of my elementary school mates were suddenly "too cool" to talk to me, so whatever.
However, we started talking on a streetcar ride home, and he wanted to borrow mny Fastway LP "All Fired Up" as he heard it was like Zeppelin supposedly.
When I picked it up, he also gave me back a cassette I gave him, and copied the album for me (I had no stereo yet,just a walkman, and a taperecorder),plus the Scorpions set and interview from the US Festival... he had just now also given me my next baby step I was making slowly
- listening to European heavy metal.
WHAT really blew my mind, was when he went to find the tape for me, I seen his room...stacks,and stacks , among stacks of hundreds or thousands of cassette tapes. He was copying both albums and a LOT of bootleg tapes. He had an older friend who was into tapetrading or buying vinyl bootlegs, that was letting him copy it all.
Sometimes I wonder if what he had is now on sites like
Guitars101.
Here is a recent photo of one of your fave guitarists and mine, Mr Jimmy Page.
I found it after learning of two recommended sites,
led-zeppelin.com and
Tight But Loose/.
They were mentioned in the back of a really great book, filling in details I never knew about the man, and clearing away some of the tales I had read repeatedly in Hammer of The Gods.
If you can beg, borrow, or buy (don't steal it), you have to read
Jimmy Page - Magus Musician Man, An Unathorized Biography by George Case. It was published in 2007 so it fills in on post-Led Zeppelin history.
It was nice to read in it also about other heroes/faves I got, like Jeff Beck,Keith Richatrds,Ron Woods, Eric Clapton, etc
For example,
If it wasn't for the Beck/Page/Clapton connection, I might not have looked more closely at and enjoyed Yardbirds songs when I was in highschool, and especially even more so, the last 5 years of my life,
ALL the YARDBIRDS material.
