Happy 51st birthday to Led Zeppelin IV
I was only three years old when Led Zeppelin IV came out. A few years later, when I was in second or third grade, I was walking home from school and found a cassette of Led Zeppelin IV on the sidewalk. Several years passed before I had any more music in my collection so that cassette got played a lot! I was intrigued by it. No lyrics were included and the internet was decades away from being invented, but I wanted to know the lyrics. So I listened to it over and over again, stopping the tape and rewinding countless times in order to write down the lyrics myself. I probably got many of them wrong, but somewhere there was once the lyrics to Led Zeppelin IV in my third- or fourth-grade handwriting.
I was still passionate about Led Zeppelin in high school. I read Hammer of the Gods by Stephen Davis between innings at A’s games in 1985. Although the book has been criticized for its errors and inaccuracies, it only increased my fascination with the band.
