“You Shook Me” by Led Zeppelin
Dad: Jimmy Page is just a hauntingly good guitarist.
5songpjct: I feel like in this song, instead of sticking with the with the downplayed guitar that provided a foundation for the singer to do his work, the guitar echoes Robert Plant’s voice.
Dad: I think it is the other way around. I think Robert Plant is trying to sound like a guitar. All I can say is that back then we didn’t dissect songs, but each of the songs I chose touched a part of me. When a song gets through, it is kind of in you when it is playing. Plus I thought Led Zeppelin stole it from the Jeff Beck Group. I could have chose both versions of “You Shook Me.”
5songpjct: I remember when I talked to Monica in my first interview for this project we were talking about how certain types of music meant you acted or dressed in a certain way. If you liked The Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees, of course that meant you wore all black, dark clothes, and black lipstick. Did Led Zeppelin, Rod Stewart, and Jeff Beck influence the way you dressed?
Dad: Not at the time because there were dress codes at school. Boy’s had mandatory JROTC. (Junior Reserve Officers Training Core.) You couldn’t wear blue jeans, your hair couldn’t touch your collar, and you had to wear a belt. Outside of school, a friend and I dressed like the Beatles, but lots of guys my age did back then. I had Beatle boots and a hat. I had a Nehru shirt. Looking at the Beatles album 62-66 right now, on the front cover they didn’t really have long hair. They called them the mop tops then. John’s hair is barely covering his ears, but they were so controversial. You wanted to emulate them of course. These bands Zeppelin, Cream, and Jeff Beck Group had an influence on us and an influence on fashion itself. Bell bottoms, paisley, Zeppelin was Bohemian. I grew my hair out and started wearing bell bottoms immediately after high school.
There was a certain cross-section of people who liked these groups. Now these groups could fill stadiums, but back when we were listening to them, in the beginning of their careers, they would play much smaller club-like venues.
We didn’t really classify music back then, we didn’t call it hard rock. There are too many sub-genres of music these days. Back then it was rock, all of these bands were rock. Not prog rock, alternative rock, they were just rock. I can’t keep up with these definitions.
NEXT UP… Robert Fripp