I can see Jimmy play the guitar!

I stayed up all night April 30, 1975 listening to "Physical Graffiti", not because I wanted to, but it was my last night in Utah and the dope dealers across the street were the only people I knew still in town, everybody else had disappeared with the end of the season, and they were spinning it as they got high.

I was a Zeppelin fanatic.

But I burned out with "III". Oh, I played it plenty, but even though I came to know every note, it just didn’t have the majesty of the very first album. Sure, the second was a monolith, perfect in every way, accessible to the masses, but I always had the debut to myself…well, relatively speaking.

And then I dropped out. After seeing the band perform the tunes from "III" in a mediocre fashion at the Yale Bowl.

But I was exposed to "Physical Graffiti" so much, I came to love it, it brought me back to the band, I bought the intervening albums, even "Houses Of The Holy", with the overplayed "D’yer Mak’er", I wanted to get close.

And I wouldn’t put Zeppelin past reuniting a couple of more times in the future, after all they did for Atlantic’s 40th and Live Aid, but they’re never going to go on tour and all we’ve got left are the records.

And our memories.

The best time I saw the band was during the legendary Forum stand in ’77. They played for hours, they played everything you needed to hear, it was a victory lap that of a type unknown today. Hype was limited, you could not reach everybody. But everybody who needed to know did. And tried to get a ticket.

And unlike Madonna, Robert Plant has aged gracefully, made music unforeseen by fans but fully satisfying, yet still, when I want the essence I put on "Ten Years Gone".

The first track on "Physical Graffiti" that hooked me was "Kashmir". It was the sound, the power, the majesty, you conduct the band with your hands as the notes descend. It’s like you’re ascending a mountain in the Himalayas and with this soundtrack you’ll have no problem making it to the top, with a great track in your ears you may not be able to move mountains, but you can certainly climb them!

And from there I got into "Night Flight". Then "Trampled Under Foot" and "The Rover".

But one afternoon on Chair 3 at Mammoth, a riff started going through my head. I had to go back to the condo and play Jimmy’s complete 8-track to discover it was "Ten Years Gone".

And it’s about the riff, but the intro is like Jimmy Page opens a door to a castle and you step inside, you leave everything behind and go into an all-enveloping darkness.

And then the door shuts, and the riff begins.

It’s not only one instrument, but many, thundering from every corner of the room, then it gets quiet again, and Robert starts to sing:

Then as it was, then again it will be
And though the course may change sometimes
Rivers always reach the sea

You can listen to all the new music, even go to the show, but you always come back to Zeppelin, the band excoriated by the critics but the one that lasts.

And it’s classic Zeppelin, going from quiet to loud and then back again. And two and a half minutes in, the track completely changes, its like a walk on the beach, like suddenly someone turned on the lights and everything’s bright, you’re happy, optimistic and then…

Do you ever really need somebody
Really need ’em bad

That’s the essence of rock and roll, the need, to be known, to be understood. The music does this, and if you find a like-minded person, someone else who knows the tune, you’re at the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

But the track plows on, and Jimmy’s squeaking out accents, Robert’s singing, you’re locked right on.

And then it gets quiet once again, just like life. It’s not pedal to the metal 24/7.

This is album rock. This is what built this business. Extended tracks Top Forty would never play that you spun incessantly, that changed your life.

I just want to jump inside the Thiel SCS4‘s and join the band, it sounds that damn good.

P.S. Just in case you’re under ten or you’ve been living without electricity, I’m linking to a YouTube clip of "Ten Years Gone".

But you’ve got to hear it on the big rig, on YouTube you can see it, but you don’t become it. In this compressed rendition you can take or leave it, but if you hear it in full-dimension stereo, with all the notes and no distortion, "Ten Years Gone" is UNDENIABLE!

Led Zeppelin – Ten Years Gone