OK, so, about a hundred years ago, way back in the 1960s, I had a friend named Michael B. who got me a job working at Village Oldies, a record store on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village (which later became "Bleecker Bob's Golden Oldies" on W. 3rd St.).UPDATE: I just read that Bleecker Bob passed away last week! You can read about it HERE
Anyhow, it was upstairs from some folk music bar or other and it was a couple of doors down from The Bitter End, which was/is a famous folk music venue right near the corner of LaGuardia Place, and it was across the street from the venerable old Bleecker Street Cinema and the Cafe Au Go Go where Tim "If I Were A Carpenter" Hardin used to play before he OD'd, both of which are now long-gone.
Now, although at the time I was a hard-core rock 'n' roll fan, a really die-hard Rolling Stones fan, in fact, the store actually specialized in rare, old, hard-to-find 45rpm doo-wop records, and all these paunchy old greasers, a bunch of balding old guys with big muttonchop Elvis sideburns and pot-bellies in black leather motorcycle jackets, looking for all the world like The Fonz or that idiot Bowser in that fake-ass doo-wop group Sha Na Na, would come into the store. "Give it up, grandpa," I used to say to myself when they came in, but, hey, those were the guys that the store catered to, so there you go.
OK, now, back in the mid-1960s some really big name, big money, rock and roll bands would play at the Fillmore East theater on Second Avenue at 6th Street. I mean, really big names, too, like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, The Who, Cream, and the list goes on and on, all big name bands, huge mega-stars who would be playing to packed audiences in Madison Square Garden a few years later, but back then they all played the Fillmore East, a dumpy little converted movie theater on Second Avenue.
So, one night my friend Michael B. and I were working behind the counter at Village Oldies when, all of a sudden, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin come walking into the store! I mean, you gotta understand, to Michael and me, it was like as if Jesus and the Pope had just walked in! We practically fell over!
You see, Led Zeppelin was playing at the Fillmore East that weekend and it seems that Page and Plant were fans of old 1950s doo-wop and rock 'n' roll so they came to the store to find some rare records they remembered from their youth, back in England. So, as I recall, the store owners, Bleecker Bob, and his partner, Broadway Al, a real sweetheart of a guy, locked the doors to the store so that they could have some privacy and Michael and I, who, don't forget, hated doo-wop and all that oldies crap, spent the evening totally horrified watching Bob and Al and Plant and Page strolling down memory lane going, "Hey, do you remember this one?" and then they'd put on some ghastly old "Dip-de-dip-de-dip, bomp-bomp-a-womp-bomp" doo-wop record and they'd all sigh and get all nostalgic and look contented.
Of course, since they were all of them older than us, it makes perfect sense that they liked that stuff. I mean, Michael and I were teenagers and we loved Led Zeppelin, but when those guys were teenagers, they loved Bill Haley and Elvis and Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly and all that stuff, so, it does make sense, I guess, but, I swear, standing there watching our idols, the guys who wrote and played such rock anthems as Kashmir, and finding out that they like to listen to "oldies" was like finding out that your grandma likes to kick puppies or something.
And that's the story of the night I met Led Zeppelin.
