The other day at work (I've been picking up a few shifts at TKE this month) I told Aaron about the time I almost saw Led Zeppelin perform.
Okay. First. You have to know that Led Zeppelin for me is the Holy Grail of Rock Bands. Always has been. Always will be. When I was being treated for depression shortly after 9/11, my shrink suggested I try a little music therapy to lift my spirits, and I promptly went out that day and bought every cd I was missing from my collection.
I'm better now.
Clearly it worked.
So, anyway, LZ played Salt Lake in 1973. At the time I was hanging out a lot with a high school guy friend who shall remain nameless because I know he appreciates being left nameless. Especially when I tell this story. Suffice it to say, there was no romance involved. He had a serious girlfriend, and I was seriously committed to not being serious with anyone. It was a friendship. We made each laugh a lot.
But you know how these things can be--suddenly all When Harry Met Sally-ish. One day he woke up thinking he might--you know--like me and therefore he'd ask me to go to the LZ concert with him. He approached me with fear and trepidation in the library during lunch that very day, and . . . apparently I said or did something that scared him back into just wanting to be friends. Meanwhile he took someone else. Someone else who eventually became his wife.
He confessed all of this to me later, and all I could do was weep and wail and put on a little sack-of-ashcloth skirt. It would have been kinder to have kept this secret from me then to make me live for DECADES EVER AFTER KNOWING I MISSED OUT ON LED.
Ah. The roads not taken.
5 comments:
I taught school for quite a while on an adolescent psychiatric unit and, in my idealism, thought I would expand their juvenile horizons by playing Mozart occasionally during class.
One day when I plugged the TAPE into my BOOM-BOX (yes, those were things), it was not a Mozart piano sonata but Stairway to Heaven that filled the classroom. The little thugs had recorded over god's music. I tried to be mad about it, but they were so pleased with themselves. And I had to admit--they were right. We rocked on.
Good times bad times, eh?
there should be a whole subgenre of narratives about the concerts that might have been. For me it was the Dylan "Before the Flood" concert--when he went electric and everyone lost their minds. I missed this because it was on the Sabbath, and because of Sabbath-breaking and the prohibitions thereof. Gnash Weep Wail.
But LZ! Oh LZ!
Do you know I have my 1980 jr high calendar with John Bohnam's death written on it?
When Jonathan was a kid we exchanged music genres for awhile. He listened to classical and I listened to Led Zeppelin. It was a great mother son bonding experience, and I've loved Led Zeppelin ever since.
Wow. This story could've gone a whole other way. I love how it didn't.
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