50 years of Led Zeppelin!

"Physical Graffiti" has an anniversary, how about it?

Until this morning, about 5:30 to be precise, it never occurred to me that the Camelot apartment complex in Nashua, New Hampshire did sort of resemble the cover of Led Zeppelin’s double-album extravaganza “Physical Graffiti,” an album which came out in 1975 when I was living there. It’s an album celebrating — and it’s hard to believe this — but a 50th anniversary! Sure enough, Zep is on the cover of the always wonderful British music magazine Uncut. We can’t have a magazine like that in America?

Now, to be specific, there weren’t fire escapes on the Camelot apartments front like on the imposing brownstone on the cover of the Zeppelin album, but there were hundreds of windowed apartments that looked out on a giant grass courtyard. The apartment building, shaped like an upside-down “U,” housed an awful lot of people apparently in transition jammed into these apartments, saving to buy a house, getting over a divorce, retiring, finishing school, shacking up, hiding out.

I was finishing college at Rivier then, wondering where I’d go and where life would lead me. I remember going to RockBottom records and buying “Physical Graffiti” Zeppelin’s fifth record on the day it came out. Music was really important to me, especially then. My parents had split up a year or two earlier, Mom had remarried so, without a car, I moved to Nashua as it was closer to college. Life changed.

I’d never lived in an apartment before, one that had shag carpeting, a garbage disposal, neighbors above, beside, underneath me, no friends through the woods, across the field, nobody to play catch or throw the football around. Nobody to listen to music with and discuss.

My window on the second floor looked out on the courtyard and all those apartments, all sorts of people getting on with their lives, their futures, me wondering about mine. In the meantime, I had four new sides of Led Zeppelin to listen to.

Led Zeppelin's "Physical Graffiti" - four sides of prime Zeppelin - Thanks, Jimmy!

If you were alive in the 70’s, there was no escaping the music of Led Zeppelin. It was loud, explosive, dynamic, exciting. From “Whole Lotta Love” to “Stairway to Heaven,” they were a musical force and a rousing band for me. I loved The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, The Band, Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Roxy Music and The Who. I really wasn’t into metal or boogie bands like Humble Pie or Foghat or metal bands like Black Sabbath or Judas Priest.

To me, at least, there was an elegance, a classic quality to Zeppelin’s music, despite what we read about their untamed off-stage behavior or the unusual rowdiness of their audiences. As much as I loved their music, I was never tempted to go see them in concert. Jimmy Page, a superb guitarist, was so much better — to my ears — in the studio, where he was a master. Seeing the film with the unfortunately dead-on title “The Song Remains The Same” only confirmed my suspicions.

But four albums sides of prime Zeppelin? I was ready to dig in. On Side One, you’ve got Page riffing like nobody’s business on “Custard Pie” and the grungy “The Rover” before they slide — and I do mean slide — into ten thunderous minutes of “In My Time Of Dying.” Can’t really make out much of what Robert Plant is singing about on some of these songs but does it matter? His voice is just like another instrument.

Then Side Two, one of the monumental Zeppelin sides of all-time. First, “Houses Of The Holy,” a song recorded for their previous album which bore that title (!) if not the song, with that memorable line “Let the music be your master,” which would have been a good underlying theme for their career. Then there’s the wonderful crunch of “Trampled Underfoot,” a song nobody else could have done. Capping the side, probably the single-greatest Zep classic, “Kasmir,” a song that I re-played over and over again the first time I heard it. Atmospheric, haunting, relentless, a song that like the Morroccan music that inspired it, “Kasmir” can put you in a trance. How cool that my son used it as his walk-up song playing baseball for Florida State.

The magical “In The Light” leads off Side Three, as gentle and captivating and mystical a track as Zep ever recorded. The tender “Bron-Y-Aur:, a sweet acoustic instrumental is next, quieting things, for the lovely “Down By The Seaside” and the Side Three closer, one of my top five Zeppelin songs, “Ten Years Gone,” a wistful song that echoes in your heart — at least it did mine, recently having been ditched then. Plant sings it superbly and Page’s guitar has never been more evocative. A perfect track. Along with “Kasmir” this was my favorite track. There’d be other girls…

After three sides of great stuff, Side Four was more unbridled Page with “Night Flight” and “The Wanton Song” and “Sick Again.” There’s a bit of light-hearted foolishness with “Boogie With Stu,” the unsung Ian Stewart on the ivories and an acoustic number “Black Country Woman” — with airplane — just Page and Plant having fun outside somewhere in England. And there it was, a soup-to-nuts collection of Zeppelin rocking, swinging, going places no other rock and roll band ever tried. Music that I thought at time would last. It has. It certainly came at the right time for me. Four sides of Zeppelin to get lost in.

The record player I had at the time let you stack albums and I loved the record so much, I actually put the two speakers in my window and went downstairs, sat on a lawn chair reading, Led Zeppelin blasting across the courtyard so the world could hear this incredible music.

I managed to get through two sides, “Kasmir” proudly ringing out across the wide-open courtyard as if it were an Arabian desert before a neighbor raised his shade, opened his window and stuck his head out.

“Hey man,” he hollered down to me. “I work nights. I need to sleep."

:”Oh,” I said, getting up and starting to head back inside. “Sorry about that,”

“It’s OK. Great f——ing album though, isn’t it?”