My First Concert
One, Two, Three, Four, Open Up the Fucking Door!
A crazy time with Dad does not take away crazy times with Mom
At first, my mom refused to believe the story.
She knows I’m a storyteller and a writer of nonfiction and fiction. In other words, a con artist, a shyster, a pettifogger, a truth stretcher, a manipulator of facts, an embezzler of emotions, and a poacher of the heart.
Was this crazy story just a counterfeit — based on the Latin fictio?
Anyway, she didn’t want to believe the Saga of Led Zeppelin
I’m not sure why. Maybe she didn’t want to think, I don’t know, that we didn’t have fun with Dad. Or was it just too crazy that my dad would agree to such a request from me?
I have no idea.
A week later, or so, a phone call came. “Hey, Walt!” (She calls me Walt, even though my dad is Walt, and I’m Walter, because, you know, that’s cooler — but still an “old man’s name.”)
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re right about that thing — that concert with your dad.”
And I’m like — whoa — oh — well, that’s cool, right?
Did she call my sister Noelle or brother Dave to confirm the tale? I seem to have a different memory, even though as a writer, I write down everything. I am also cursed to remember almost everything but also blessed for that as a writer.
And I’m thinking — “It’s okay, Mom. I can love you, and I can love Dad. This ain’t no battlefront where good guys and bad guys exist. This was not Life During Wartime. A crazy time with Dad does not take away crazy times with The Mom — like when she took her three kids on a three-week, cross country camping trip at thirty-nine by herself.
But man, that Led Zeppelin concert was amazing
The film time was Midnight Mass — The Song Remains The Same. This was no longer the mid-1970s. It was either 1980 or 1981. Was I even a teenager yet? No. My dad didn’t even like Zeppelin.
He loved Creedence — a band That is Legend to me, too.
So Dad took us to see Led Zeppelin at a movie theater in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. This theater is around the corner from us now. It’s a Concord Pet Store. I’ve never been there because I do not have pets unless you count worms for my compost.
I had the LP “The Song Remains the Same” for a few years, turning into a ‘Led Head’ in 1980 by the coolest and hippest of uncles — my mom’s brother, Ron.
Dad had us for the weekend — every other weekend
I was probably twelve. Dave was three years younger. And Noelle was probably just seven. Can you imagine?
So my dad was that cool — or that foolish — to bring young kids to Midnight Mass. We all should have been in bed by then, but my dad, thank God, lived by other rules.
Rules are for people who follow rules, right?
I really wanted to see Led Zeppelin. I was a Led Zeppelin freak. I wore a different Zeppelin shirt to middle school every day. My birthday cake featured the four symbols from Zeppelin IV — made by — The Mom.
I didn’t get to see Zeppelin live with Uncle Ron because John Bonham — ‘Bonzo’ — died (September 25, 1980), and I heard that sad news on the bus to school. It was a month of mourning, and air drumming “Moby Dick” and placing the fills — the ‘Page riff becoming the drum part,’ like in “The Wanton Song” whenever I could — like in math.
Forget 4/4 time and the bass, right? Now if math could have used music, I would have done better!
It was like the day the music died, too, with John Lennon — the same year (December 8, 1980).
No wonder my grades suffered that year!
I had every Zeppelin album — even CODA
My dad bought a few of them. And I knew every song in order. Did I do my homework? No — I read books like In Their Own Words by Led Zeppelin.
At the time, The Mom criticized that book, along with a Who book I had with the same title — as not being “very bright” — thinking Legends of Rock are morons or something.
Didn’t she know they were huge Tolkien fans?
Standing in that mass — that crowd of young, stoned, and hairy hooligans was like making the hajj to Mecca. I was just not dressed for the occasion — but a contact high I think I had. Did, Noelle, too?
I had no idea about “that smell.”
Seeing Zeppelin on the big screen with the big, surround sound, was a religious experience. This was long before every concert — especially the better ones, and the earliest ones, like from some gymnasium in 1968, could be seen on YouTube.
This is even just after MTV appeared. But was Zeppelin gonna be on MTV right after “Video Killed the Radio Star”?
Bloody hell, right?
If this live footage of Immigrant Song was available back then, or “Dazed and Confused” from 1968 when Plant was only 20. Or this from Denmark —
I would have never done homework.
One, two, three, four —
The mass outside the theater pounded on the door. It’s a good thing I didn’t know about The Who concert in Cincinnati at the Riverfront Coliseum in 1979 with 11 rock fans getting crushed to death at the gates.
Over and over again, they chanted, “One, two, three, four, open up the fucking door!”
It was the craziest thing. I was both thrilled and scared to death. But once seated inside the Temple, the High Priests of Rock could take the Altar and Play and Sing the Good News — with all the trimmings of the angelic riffs and fills and bass lines and Plant’s banshee-like screeching.
What did everyone think of this young family there?
Who was this older guy with three young kids? What dad would do this?
He didn’t seem to have a problem. His son loved Zeppelin, and this was the way to see Zeppelin — long before DVDs and streaming. What did my brother Dave think?
“This guy in line asked who brought the pot,” he texted me, “and I wondered why anyone would need cookware at a movie.”
He also wrote the experience was “horrible” and “still can’t even consider watching it again.”
Wow — such a different perspective, right? SORRY, DAVE.
But I’m sure Noelle — oh, Noelle couldn’t stand Led Zeppelin. When I was mad at her, I used to rock to “Communication Breakdown” as loud as possible to interrupt her “studies.”
It was my way to annoy or thwart and rebel. But that’s another story. Another story is how I tried to use Zeppelin to woo women. (With 2k claps, it’s funny, mates.)
Noelle was sleeping on my dad’s lap
That opening from Madison Square Garden from the footage in 1973 was like Genesis for me — Let There Be Light! Bulbs flash in the dark. Someone shouts, “Let’s go!” And then Bonzo goes nuts on the kit for ten seconds with one of rock’s greatest rockers — “Rock and Roll.”
And then there was Light — and the Light was Good!
And then cue Jack Black and School of Rock.
And it was just magical for me. I underwent several states of Nirvana. I didn’t need a Stairway to Heaven, even though it helped that I was already in heaven. These legends were larger than actual life — literally. The only thing that took the edge off was feeling relatively responsible for my family being tired, irritated, and annoyed. Was I being selfish? Could Dad just have taken me?
No — it was his every other weekend with the Bowne kids.
To be honest, I also felt, slightly, out of my comfort zone. Not with the music. I knew the music better than any stoner there. But it was the “scene” and that scene never appealed to me — even though I still went to so many concerts later, even getting urinated on at a Pink Floyd show at the old JFK Stadium in Philadelphia.
The flying pigs drew my attention away from the naked, drunk guy behind me — waving his penis like some Jim Morrison dude.
Yeah, we all survived
It’s one of my favorite and most vivid memories from childhood. Nay, may I dare say, even a Rite of Passage?
It’s why I still love writing about music and playing music in the classroom and encouraging students to write about music — like Jason who is now an editor at Billboard.
I just really appreciated my dad that night
It was not his thing, but he did it for me. I just wanted to make sure that this essay is a big giant hug and thank you to my dad who probably doesn’t get enough credit and recognition for being a dad through my troubled childhood.
He’s a lovable, simple guy from Camden — a printer who came from a printer. He takes care of people. I was not an easy kid. Both my dad and I have some anger and resentment issues.
I really like when I take my dad to see the Phillies. There, we’re both in our element. Not much weed there, either. But with edibles, now, who knows?
As Plant sings in “Boogie with Stu,” ‘rock on’ people! “Rock on!”
