Podcast #15-Physical Graffiti!!

Then as it was, then again it will be

In February ’94, we all got together for Al’s fortieth birthday.  People I hadn’t seen in years.  Like Jimmy Kay.  Mini.  Guys I’d spent every day of my life with back in the spring of ’75, at Mammoth Mountain in California.  What stunned me was everybody agreed, it was the highlight of their life.

It snowed 37" in Mammoth this past weekend.  And they needed it.  It was the driest season in years.  But I’m not going.  Oh, I’ve got a pass.  But I’m spending Christmas in Vail.  Hell, if you’re going let me know!  Let’s hook up!

And I’m forecasting quite a mighty time with Felice’s family.  But the spring is different.  Skiing without a cloud in the sky.  Sans long underwear.  In just a t-shirt.  Mammoth Mountain is the California dream.

And the soundtrack to that month-long dream was "Physical Graffiti".  Oh, I thought I was over Zeppelin.  Didn’t need them.  But "Kashmir" got under my skin.  And I learned to love "Ten Years Gone".

Now Zeppelin had a number of tracks that beat you over the head.  But, it’s the quiet, more ethereal tracks that are my favorites.  Stuff like "Dazed and Confused" from the very first record.  These songs didn’t penetrate you at first, but once they did, you couldn’t shake them, you had to hear them again and again and again.  They popped into your brain when you were ecstatic, when you were in trouble, they were your mental companions.  Still are.

I believe the best guitarist of all time is Jeff Beck.  But Jeff is a player, whereas Jimmy Page is a writer.  How he came up with the intro to "Ten Years Gone" I’ll never know.  But I believe he was home, alone, and he started hitting the notes on his Les Paul, and came up with this.

If you’re home alone, and you want to feel like someone understands you, like you belong, listen to "Ten Years Gone".  It’s the opening cut of my segment of this week’s Rhino podcast.  It starts to play at 5:17 in.

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