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How was I to know when I slipped the headphones on that a screaming onslaught of machine gun guitar licks would fly off the strings of Jimmy Page’s Gibson doubleneck, lodge in the depths of my cerebral cortex and change my life forever?

Could it really have been mere seconds earlier that Josh Jarvis had handed me his Walkman? Since then my nervous system had accelerated from standstill into overdrive and now was on the verge of short-circuiting, not least because of the thirty-seven megaton force of John Bonham's murderous kick and snare assault. Every bass drum blow was a jolt of molten pleasure injected directly into my vitals. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. What was happening to me?

As if by magic, strange symbols began to inscribe themselves on the insides of my eyelids: ancient runes I'd never seen before yet understood perfectly. These runes told tales: the tales of old. In an instant centuries of forbidden knowledge became known to me. I became privy to the exploits of Viking armies, the secrets of mystical druids and the disappearance of the Other One.

A spine-tingling howl abruptly awakened me from my reverie. Several sets of glowing red eyes became visible through the eerie gloom. A pack of menacing hellhounds was approaching to devour me!

Instinctively, I began to run. The uncanny hounds tore after me. These "dogs of doom" would not be satisfied, I instinctively realized, until they drank of my blood and tasted of my flesh. In desperation I headed for a path leading into a dense wood. This proved to be a mistake. As each moment passed I found myself stumbling through ever more treacherous and craggy terrain. I caught a glimpse of a stooped figure on a distant hilltop bearing a load of straw on his back. Only death will ease your burden, old man, I thought sadly.

Still I ran on, the demonic dogs in frenzied pursuit. We flew across a clearing and through an ornate iron gate--and all at once I realized we were no longer on terrestrial soil but had entered the burning, pitted fields of the underworld! Pagey's thunderous riffs spurred me on, each wailing squall evoking the voices of ten thousand doomed souls crying out for mercy. These lonely spectres seemed to materialize before my eyes and reach out towards me as I raced by. What did they want? How had they gotten there?

I hardly had time to stop and ask, however--for I could sense the hounds' slavering fangs gnashing inches from my heels. Only the sheer driving power of Bonzo's ear-shattering cymbal attack pushed me forward and kept me from losing heart. “Best rock drummer of all time,” I gasped, nearly in tears. "Better than Moon...better than Copeland...better than Peart."

If I thought the sonic blitz was over, though, I had another thing coming. Out of nowhere came Robert Plant’s piercing, unearthly shriek, catching me unawares. “Ba-aby!" he wailed. "Babee babeee babee babee! I’m gonna leave you! I ain’t jokin’ woman--I got to ramble!” The fair haired rocker's banshee wail bored into my skull like a neurosurgeon’s drill, threatening to turn my nervous system into a gelatinous stew. Plant was right: the soul of a woman had been created below.

On and on we ran until my lungs felt ready to split open. It was no use. The ravenous dogs were closing in; it was only a matter of time now. I crumpled to the ground in despair and braced myself for my gruesome end. But all at once I felt myself swept up into the air to safety! For John Paul Jones' triumphant, horn-like keyboard solo in "All My Love" (track 2, Side B from In Through the Out Door) had begun...and the majestic tapestry of sound he'd woven had literally buoyed me into the shimmering ether! I watched in awe as the landscape became distant and the hellhounds mere specks on the horizon. Could it really be possible, I asked myself with astonishment, that Jonesy and Pagey once toiled as mere session men? As we sped through the just-breaking Icelandic dawn I found myself laughing with joyful disbelief and shouting aloud to the four winds. “Zeppelin! Fuckin’ Zeppelin!”

Date Written: July 22, 2004
Author: Jon Matza
Average Vote: 4.5