What is your favorite track on Led Zeppelin I?

That’s my favorite album.  Along with "Physical Graffiti".  But unlike "Physical Graffiti", I love EVERYTHING on I.

First it was "Good Times Bad Times".

It was that guitar sound.  And Robert’s attitude.  The swagger.  That’s all you’ve got when you’re a teenager, your hopes and dreams.  Oh, there are some people who feel those were the best years of their lives.  I’m not one of them.  And I doubt you are either.  Those who flowered in high school seem to be done now.  Working at the gas station, or in their father’s business.  We flowered later.  Not that we’re believers.  Oh, some of us shop at Armani and have enough toys to feel we’re winners, but once a loser in high school, not even a loser, but an ALSO-RAN, your psyche never quite recovers.  Hearing Robert…made me feel like I was one up on everybody else.  I had this knowledge, this power, they might have been popular, but I held the key to fulfillment.

Not that they didn’t come along for the ride the following fall, when "Led Zeppelin II" went nuclear overnight.  But the first album was still mine.

Of course, loving "Good Times Bad Times" it was not hard to get into "Communication Breakdown", with its energy.  But "Communication Breakdown" lacks soul.

But there was soul-aplenty on the rest of the record.

"Babe I’m Gonna Leave You" has the same late night feel of Elton’s first American album.  But with an anger and intensity that Elton’s debut lacked.  What are you to do when nothing’s working out, when life doesn’t make sense, but listen to a record.  That’s when music is most powerful.  When it serves as your best friend.

"I Can’t Quit You Baby" was slow and meaningful, but also plodding.  It was about the blues beat.  We’d heard this before, however well the band worked out here.  Same deal with "You Shook Me".

But "Dazed and Confused" had that eerie feel of "Babe I’m Gonna Leave You", albeit with a scary EDGE!  Listening you were no longer the protagonist, you were just along for the ride.  A ride we took on a regular basis.  We grew up in split levels, played Little League, but we also boarded the New Haven Railroad for pilgrimages to the Fillmore East, where schmutz mingled with marijuana and music floated over the whole thing.  It was not like going to a show today.  There was an element of danger.  It was a secret world, you felt torn, did you want to remain here, or go back to where you once belonged.

"Black Mountain Side" isn’t a throwaway, but it works primarily as an intro to "Communication Breakdown", the change from soft to loud.

"How Many More Times" is a great closer.  Instead of being long and drawn out, like the final track on most albums, it’s full of energy.  It’s more like the kind of song that LEADS OFF an album side.  When it ends, you want more.  You want to get closer to the flame.  Yes, Zeppelin was dangerous.  It SOUNDED that way.  And ultimately lived that way.  Groupie tales and Peter Grant adventures proving the point.

But the track I come back to.  No, that would imply I leave it.  The track that I sing to myself always.  When I’m skiing, when I’m happy, when I’m depressed.  That track led off side two.

You used to get two bites at the apple.  Two chances to make an impression.  Yup, listeners would flip over the record in silence, drop the needle, and you could immediately bombard them.

Or enter their souls.

For a band that started the first side of their debut with such an onslaught, the second began in an almost psychedelic fashion.  More akin to the work of Keith Emerson than a guitar god.

And that’s why Page and Plant don’t add up to Led Zeppelin.  They need John Paul Jones.  John Paul Jones is the heart of "Your Time Is Gonna Come".  His organ ends up being soft and inviting in an act that specializes more in bludgeon and posing.

And Robert’s not posing here either.  He’s singing, not yelling, his story from the bottom of his heart.  Well, that would imply that he’s in the depths. He’s recovered, quite a bit.  But he’s still angry.  You see, her time is gonna COME!

Today it’s like it was in the midsixties.  The SINGLE is the hit.  The TRACK is the hit.  But, for a period there, from late ’67 to maybe ’73 or ’74, the ALBUM was the hit.  Maybe a bit longer thereafter.  Until the advent of MTV.

Led Zeppelin I had no hits.  Nothing played by AM radio, which still dominated automobiles at that time.  And FM…this was before the days of limited playlists, emphasis tracks.  The deejays played what they wanted to, you weren’t limited to one cut.  You heard "Good Times Bad Times" and "Communication Breakdown", but also "Your Time Is Gonna Come".  You’ve got no idea what it was like to hear "Your Time Is Gonna Come" emanate from the stereo speakers in your house.  (And that’s where you listened, on your parents’ big rig.  That was the only place you could GET FM.)

Lyin’
Cheatin’
Hurtin’
That’s all you seem to do

Every line is only one word.  That’s all that is needed to convey the message.  Country artists can spin whole YARNS about their baby who done left them, there are all those DETAILS, but Zeppelin boils it down to the essence.  Ever been involved with someone bad?  Someone selfish?  Who took you for a ride?  You thought you were together, and then you woke up by the railroad tracks in some burg you’d never been to, far from the city.  It’s beyond disheartening, it’s DISILLUSIONING!

"Your Time Is Gonna Come" doesn’t bang you over the head, it sneaks up on you.  It doesn’t relax you, rather it sets your mind in motion.  Reviewing all your past relationships.  What happened.  The person you can’t get over.  You wonder…did they realize you were the best thing they ever had?

People come and go.  You bump into your past at the strangest moments, when you least expect it.  But, generally speaking, when you’re done with love, you can disappear, you can retreat into your corner and lick your wounds.

But records are different.  They’re always there.  With all their attendant memories, their ability to set your mind adrift.  You just pick them up off the shelf and you’re back exactly where you once were.

Led Zeppelin I had the Atlantic red and green logo.  The songs were long in an era where they were still rather short.  I bought it in a head shop on the north side of Chicago.  I carried that vinyl record from Chicago to Connecticut to California.  It’s in the other room right now.  With the same scratches on the disc (limited!) and the same wear and tear on the cover.  It’s as much a part of me as my marriage license, and my divorce papers.  More.  I can’t forget it.  It’s a part of me.  So much to the point where I was just walking down the sidewalk earlier and I started to sing "Your Time Is Gonna Come".

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the rest of the album.  I just want to single "Your Time Is Gonna Come" out.  I want to give you a head’s up.  In case you overlooked it.  In case it’s your favorite too and you can use the solidarity.