Christ.
The head-splitting irony of course is that Robert Plant was all of 20 years old when he stepped up to the mike at Olympic Studios that day in 1968. He might have had an intimation of exactly what vistas had opened for him when Jimbo Page selected him from the Band of Joy, and you couldn't really fault him if he had already developed a certain arrogance that reinterpreted events as destiny, but still. It's a hell of a thing when a chamac of a mere two decades pretends at maturity.
It's tragic and I am not mocking his misfortune, but the loss of his beloved son in 1977 shows exactly the kind of life-thing that the young man recording LZI had absolutely no inkling of.
And I do bet he'd tell you that himself.
Beyond that, and because of it, in this case no doubt, there is a certain aura that certain opening songs from certain debut albums achieve. Sometimes the lesson is 'nothing's ever gonna be the same,' like maybe you get with "Needles in the Camel's Eye," or "1969," or "Just Like Honey." Other times it's, 'you better up your game,' and I definitely get that kind of vibe from "NSU," and from "10538 Overture."
But the lesson and the aura with "Good Times Bad Times" is a little more subtle. It dips into experience, and legacy, and the passage of years, things that even the demi-gods in Led Zeppelin may not it turns out have any control over. One day, I'll come back to this when Plant is gone, and the irony of an artist in his youth feigning age will then seem even more ridiculous than it does to me now. Of course, one day, perhaps only a very short time after our aged Percy, I--the one currently bitching about time's effect on young men, and old--will be gone, too.
And what does *that* say about this song, as it remains?
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