Page? Rage!

Alternate title: Led? Dread!

Christmas tree in the corner all aglow, throwing variegated shadows, Baby Billy catting me just beyond the laptop, decrepitude breathing down my neck, I’m wishing I’d begun writing it all down sooner. Fifty years on, to go back and read what 12 year-old Chris thought on the cusp of life… what would I glean, ravaged by the intervening years yet reclining comfortably in our living room? Sweet T.’s upstairs settling in for the night, I’m down here with the cats (Marty’s under the tree), trying unsuccessfully to fend off dark thoughts while dreading what comes next. Who wants to enter their motherfucking golden years knowing the bad guys won and unwilling to contemplate how bad it’ll get? Since November 5 I’ve gone into self-protection mode and checked out. Fuck the future. (As David Milch wrote in an episode of Deadwood, “You do not fuck the future, sir, the future fucks you.”) I’ve stopped reading the Times and the Post but have yet to turn off the breaking news notifications, so, yes, I know our latest folk hero’s been apprehended in Altoona at a Mickey D.’s (I mean, why not toss the gun and the fake ID and the manifesto unless you WANT to be caught?!). There were many awful people I thought deserved to die but I like my freedom too much and never seriously considered homicide. Suicide, sure. Brought so low by circumstances and a malfunctioning mind, who hasn’t thought What if I wasn’t here? The finality sinks in, the moment passes and you kept walking past the open windows (me, I was in a band whose most well-known song is “Kill Yourself” so expectations are front-loaded). But what did 12 year-old Chris feel about his life? What was his day-to-day reality? Maybe hypnosis would bring a finer focus but I can generate a grainy picture. My father was gone by then. My parents were married in 1956 or ‘57 and it was 1973 or ’74 when Mario and Joan called it quits. I was 11 or 12 and a sad little fucker. Chunking up rapidly, I was well on my way to “Fat kid worthy of daily verbal abuse.” You’ve heard all their names for me (blimp, fatso, fat fuck, fat piece of shit, etc.) but it wasn’t just my older brothers: schoolmates and random strangers got in on the fun. There was physical abuse too, of course. Fat kids were the perfect target for everyone’s vitriol, especially as other forms of openly-expressed prejudice became less and less tolerable. I don’t know how it is now in our age of body positivity but common sense dictates fat kids still come in for bullying, shaming and name-calling. Everyone needs someone to look down on, right? Back then, fat kids were rare, like some exotic bird, a green and yellow parrot living where parrots shouldn’t be, like next to a highway rest-stop far from were parrots are usually found. Now green and yellow parrots are everywhere. So many fat kids, so many fat adults, so much shitty food, so readily available. I come from a time when you couldn’t buy shitty food at the hardware store as you checked out. No racks and racks of sugary treats, no million year-old beef jerky, no bottles of carbonated Type 2 diabetes in a refrigerated case. Jesus, 12 year-old Chris might’ve been even fatter if shitty food was available at the hardware store. Not that I was there often. I’d go buy Krylon, not much else. A master with a rattle can, I painted several of my own bikes. Painted a guitar. Something one of my brothers brought home. Was it green and I turned it black? Vice-versa? I was 12, just getting into guitar, thinking I could be Jimmy Page. I’d discovered Led Zeppelin and their music grabbed me like nothing else. Even now I feel like a dirtbag incarnate admitting it. Zeppelin, those thieves. Stole everything from uncredited bluesmen, didn’t they? What did I know? Only that nothing hit me like Jimmy Page’s guitar playing. Not even Hendrix. I couldn’t understand what Jimi was doing. I loved it but it didn’t seem in the realm of possibility for me. Jimmy was cranking out riffs I could sort of play, even if his sloppy leads tied my fingers up in knots when I was 12 and needed a guitar hero. What Jimmy could do with two notes and a whole bunch of attitude was light years ahead of most guitarists. The repetition, the pounding it into your brain, the spiraling, coiling lead breaks following their own internal logic, the snarl, the menace, the darkness… I wanted to do that. As undisciplined as I was, I could never be Jimmy. But I could pound out a racket and forge my own path, following the guitar as it changed me, an arrow shot from the life I no longer wanted–object of ridicule–to one I never expected–talk show host with a radio career. I’m sure I’m not the only kid who wanted to become Jimmy Page. But one person went and did it. Jimmy Sakurai, AKA Mr. Jimmy, a Japanese shoe salesman who played guitar and decided he’d transform himself into Jimmy Page. And he did, so successfully he makes his living at it and has been featured in his own documentary. I managed to miss that film several times but Sunday night found myself mesmerized by Mr. Jimmy in the flesh the way I was once transfixed by Jimmy Page at Madison Square Garden. The son of Zeppelin drummer John Bonham (RIP) brought his JBLZE (Jason Bonham Led Zeppelin Evening) tour to Montclair, NJ’s Wellmont Theater and I joined hundreds of other dirtbags my age but in rougher shape, walking with canes, prominent Milwaukee tumors entering the venue before the rest of them (even me, in this age of body positivity, fat shaming). So what if this human wreckage likes to drink beer, one after the other, after the other? Can’t we all be here for Led Zeppelin, or the closest approximation we’ll get? My seats in the bar area afforded a perfect view of the stage and the mixing and lighting position. I was near enough to want to lean over and say to the sound guy “Why does this band sound like shit?” They call themselves Jager Henry and I had no idea they were opening. Why is the lead singer busting our balls so hard? Calling us lazy motherfuckers for not getting out of our seats. Some of us CAN’T get out of our seats. When the active metal Jager Henry set is over I Google the name. What the fuck? It’s Jason Bonham’s son. John Bonham’s grandson. So this nepo baby night just added a layer. Cool. Thank Jesus it’s over. Now I get to stare at Mr. Jimmy as he eerily replicates every aspect of Jimmy Page’s playing and onstage demeanor. The hand moves, sending notes flying to the rafters with a wave. The hip shake. The shimmy across the stage. He’s even doing that snarl/sneer. There rest of the band is not even trying to look like the other members of Led Zeppelin (Bonham comes by his resemblance honestly but his father had a full head of long hair and Jason’s bald). Most discordant note is the JBLZE Robert Plant (also bald), who has the right register and that’s it. If I squint my ears he gets into Plant territory but no such effort is necessary with Mr. Jimmy. As someone intimately familiar with every note Jimmy Page ever played I’d tell you if Mr. Jimmy went astray. All night long he did not, even on the DADGAD-tuned Danelectro-specific White Summer/Black Mountain Side into Kashmir. It was invariable I’d teleport to 1977 and Madison Square Garden, then further back to 12 year-old me trying to discern the words of that well-worn track by constantly lifting the stylus to move it back a section. What I thought that song had to say to lonely little me is lost to time, along with my handwritten incredibly wrong lyrics. I got further with the riffs, (poorly) approximating Whole Lotta Love, Heartbreaker, etc. Our cover band Cobra came next and before long Mike Nicolosi and I were forming the Nihilistics. If you’ve been with me long enough, you’ve heard that story. When you get old enough you invariably do more looking back than forward. I’m not immune to the phenomenon but not entirely happy about it either. Maybe I don’t want to see what’s coming these next four years but I’m also not one to wallow in nostalgia. There is no warm glow emanating from my past. Much of it was painful, difficult, bereft of love, caring, nurturing, belief. If not for Jimmy Page and my grandmother I’m not sure how I would’ve turned out. I’m happy someone fulfilled their dream of becoming my favorite guitarist (and, yes, he was much more than that) and I hope it makes Mr. Jimmy happy, too. I’m lucky I saw all those bands now being resurrected by the tribute acts “Coming soon to the Wellmont Theater!” so pardon me if I don’t join you in looking backwards. As much as I’d like to fuck the future, the future will no doubt fuck me.