Thanks Bruce!
Great read (although I think I've read it before in another form), but
Rosen's a bit too much in love with alliteration ("the band was monstrously
magnificent") and facile metaphors ("a broken phone dangling like a man from
a gallows pole"?!). He also lays it on thick with the anachronisms: when
you're writing about something that happened to you in 1977, using the
expression "like playing mah-jongg with Madonna" (see above, weird metaphor
just because he can't resist using alliteration) doesn't fly because in 1977
Madonna was years away from public recognition (she probably hadn't even
have posed for those, erm, unshaven nudie pics yet). Same with "tried to
keep my heart from bursting Alien-like through my chest"--said film was only
released in 1979. Then there's his annoying penchant for throwing out his
encyclopedic knowledge of the band for no reason: "There he was, James
Patrick Page, born on January 9, 1944, in Heston, Middlesex, England,
talking to me."
Then, he makes a major goof: "In January of 1977, before embarking on this
tour, they hired and re-fitted a custom 707 jet. No airport terminals, no
waiting in lines, this fabulously appointed flying fortress afforded the
band the lofty isolation and anonymity they had previously been unable to
avoid." For a journalist who prided himself on his encyclopedic knowledge of
the band, not knowing that the band had already used their own private jet
on two previous tours is unacceptable!
Although the Editor's Note at the end clarifies things, the editor should
have done his or her job properly and _edited the original piece_ so that it
wouldn't sound as if 1977 was the first time Zeppelin (or any rock act, for
that matter) had had the brilliant idea of using a jet plane on tour.
Plus, there's the fact that this whole story (young journo successfully
meets daunting challenge of interviewing world's biggest rock band in midst
of major tour) had already been experienced two tours earlier, by Cameron
Crowe...
But still, great read.
Although that image of an angry angry Jonesy aboard Caesar's Chariot
certainly doesn't fit with any other account I've ever read, nor my personal
experience!
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