I listen to Led Zeppelin facedown on top of Led Zeppelin

I don’t think of Led Zeppelin as being made by people. I think of it as being hewn out of mighty tree trunks on a mountaintop somewhere in the middle of the Earth. I think of it as an avalanche of sound that cascades down from that mountaintop like a sea of white horses, burying everything, becoming wind and rain and the air that we breathe. Listening is like managing to jump on the back of one of those horses as it goes by – once you get there and are clinging on for dear life, you realize that it's rough and cold and the spray is really hitting you in the face and stinging it pretty painfully...but you are still having one fucking whopper of a good time. The whole experience feels as though at any moment it might snowball out from under you in a flurry of angry arms and feet. A toddler’s angry arms and feet. And then they play That’s The Way and you want to cry. Fuck Tangerine by the way. That song is nothing in comparison.

Jimmy Page’s tone is like a spiderweb. It is so delicate that you cannot help but be surprised at the way it supports your entire body. The notes spin out so fast you would expect them to snap and break like cheaply made toys, but no! They are elastic and tenacious and very very strong. His solos blow through you the way a really hard wind chills you to the bone and then knocks you down.

Ramble On is the best song about being in a forest that I've ever heard. At first it sounds like tiny feet running really fast. I imagine a little gnome in a pointed red hat running over a mossy forest floor. The bass starts in like big dollops of rain into a pond. The guitar is the shards of reflection on the pond. Then glass melts into water and we ripple on into the chorus. Which comes out of left field like “Wooooooshhhhh!” Perhaps that's what the gnome is running away from.

I don’t think I like Robert Plant’s voice so much as I like singing along to Robert Plant’s voice. It’s just right there in that epically fun part of my range where I can basically cover everything, and every other thing is just seeing how far I can really take it. Most people I talk to about Led Zeppelin cite his voice as one of the main reasons (usually the main reason) they don’t like the band, and having listened to it in a setting other than my car while I'm driving home from high school, I have to agree. And yes, most of the lyrics do leave something to be desired as far as poetry goes. That said, there is something about Robert Plant’s voice that basically embodies everything that Led Zeppelin is about: it’s deep in a weirdly shallow way.

I don’t really know what to say about John Bonham. Maybe because I’m listening to the beginning of Bring It On Home, where there are no drums. As soon as that fury kicks in after all this harmonica bullshit

oh there it goes.

Yeah. Bonham’s drums are the only truly solid things in the band. I don’t mean solid as in “good” or “tight.” I mean solid as in truly sturdy in the way a redwood trunk is sturdy. They kick in like soccer cleats – rooting you firmly to the earth and at the same time helicoptering you forward at a terrifying rate. John Bonham plays drums like a person angry with drums. Unlike Keith Moon, who I think just was a person who was angry with drums.

And of course, predictably and unforgivably, I have completely forgotten about JPJ until this moment. How can one man have so much to do with the sound of a band and receive so little credit for it? And I don’t mean from people who know. Obviously everyone who knows two fucks about Led Zeppelin gives him credit, but even then it’s always almost apologetic. Even people who really respect him tend to talk about how underrated he is, and tend to mention him only after they have finished talking about Page, Plant and Bonham. Maybe because what he really did had nothing to do with playing bass – though he fucking destroyed at that, obviously – and more to do with musicality and arranging. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, listen to The Rain Song, and after you’ve finished building, and worshipping for hours, an alter to John Paul Jones in your living room/studio/bedroom/closet, call me, and we can talk about it.

I think I just came to Dazed and Confused. I’m actually out of breath and all I was doing was sitting in bed in my pajamas playing air guitar. And air drums and bass and pretending to sing onstage in front of thousands of people.

Fuck Led Zeppelin is amazing.