Last night BBC2 showed Celebration Day, the Led Zeppelin re-union concert, from their gig in London in 2007. I really enjoyed watching it, though I think it was a shortened version of the film. I was entranced at the sight of Led Zeppelin onstage again. 35 years after their heyday, and with their original drummer no longer around, Led Zeppelin were still brilliant. When Jimmy Page brought out the violin bow to make weird noises on his guitar - always one of my favourite moments - I had a strong vision of being very young again, and watching them live in Glasgow, as I did, in 1972.
Because of the concert on BBC, 'Led Zeppelin' was trending in Britain on Twitter. Most comments were favourable, of course, from people of all ages. I noticed one sub-strand of these tweets, from girls talking about their fathers, saying things like 'Just arrived home to find Dad blaring out Led Zeppelin in the living room' or 'Dad is downstairs playing air-guitar in front of Led Zeppelin on the TV.'
I thought that was funny, the image of fathers around the country still transfixed by the mighty Led Zeppelin, while their daughters looked on with amusement. Fortunately, all the daughters' tweets about their dads seemed sympathetic, if amused.
But the TV concert gave me a bad memory too. When Led Zeppelin played in London, in 2007, it sold out immediately, and it was hard to get a ticket. Only last month I was talking to someone who told me how difficult he'd found it to get to the gig. Well, I was offered a ticket by a journalist friend, but I couldn't go, because my agoraphobia was too severe at the time. At that point in 2007, I could hardly leave the house. So that's not a great memory. I wish I'd been able to go. My agoraphobia is not so bad these days, though it still troubles me quite a lot.
Watching the gig on TV, I almost fulfilled something from my book 'Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me,' when I said that I planned, in later life, to get a DVD of Led Zeppelin, put it on, and pretend I was a teenager again, watching them in Glasgow. Last night I came quite close to doing just that, putting the lights off in the room so I could watch it like I was at a gig, and turning it up loud. I'd have lit some incense if I'd thought about it, and bought a load of cheap, strong, Scottish beer to get me in the right mood. But even without the beer and the incense, I felt very cheerful watching led Zeppelin, 35 years on.
