[offset:0]
[00:24.34]I watched the film
[00:25.82]‘The Song Remains the Same’
[00:29.40]At the midnight movies when I was a kid
[00:34.93]At a Canton,
[00:35.85]Oh mall with friends
[00:40.42]One warm summer weekend
[00:46.34]Jimmy Page stood tall on screen
[00:51.34]I was mesmerized by everything
[00:56.46]The Peter Grant and
[00:58.42]John Paul Jones dream sequence scenes
[01:02.88]The close-up of the mahogany Double SG
[01:08.29]And though I loved the sound of the roaring Les Paul
[01:14.00]What spoke to me most was
[01:17.09]‘Rain Song’ and ‘Bron-Yr-Aur’
[01:31.23]And I loved the thunder of Jon Bonham’s drums
[01:36.90]But even more I like
[01:38.90]‘No Quarter’s Fender Rhodes’ hum
[01:54.99]I don’t know what happened
[01:56.76]or what anyone did
[01:58.26]
[02:00.52]From my earliest memories
[02:03.08]I was a very melancholic kid
[02:06.14]When anything close to me at all in the world died
[02:11.52]To my heart, forever,
[02:14.09]it would be tied
[02:16.78]Like when my friend was thrown from his moped
[02:22.19]When some kind of a big truck back-ended him
[02:27.55]And when the girl who sat in front of me in remedial
[02:32.87]Was killed in an accident one weekend
[02:36.36]and quickly forgot about at school
[02:38.95]And when we got the call
[02:40.77]that my grandmother passed
[02:45.02]The nervous tension
[02:46.58]I’d been feeling for months broke
[02:49.59]And strangely I laughed
[03:02.49]Then I went to my bedroom
[03:05.00]and I laid down
[03:08.00]And in my tears and in the heaviness of
[03:11.12]everything I drowned
[03:43.46]Though I kept to myself
[03:44.75]and for the most part was pretty coy
[03:49.45]I once got baited
[03:51.15]and had to clock some underserving boy
[03:55.11]Out on the elementary school playground
[03:57.31]
[03:59.55]I threw a punch that caught him off-guard
[04:02.65]and knocked him down
[04:05.14]And when I walked away the kids were cheering
[04:10.22]And though I grinned deep inside,
[04:12.72]I was hurting
[04:15.92]But not nearly as much as I hurt him
[04:20.83]He stood up,
[04:22.23]his glassed broken and his face was red
[04:27.31]And i was never a schoolyard bully
[04:33.67]It was only one incident
[04:36.64]And it has always eaten at me
[04:50.70]I was never the young schoolyard bully
[04:56.37]And wherever you are,
[04:58.69]that poor kid,
[05:00.59]I’m so sorry
[05:14.80]And when I grew older
[05:16.16]I learned to play guitar
[05:20.08]While everyone else was throwing around a football
[05:25.68]Wearing bright colors the school issued them
[05:30.87]Parroting passed down phrases and cheerleading
[05:36.50]I got a recording contract in 1992
[05:41.96]From there my name,
[05:43.71]my band and my audience grew
[05:45.54]
[05:47.34]And since that time so much has happened to me
[05:52.96]But I discovered I cannot shake melancholy
[05:58.69]For 46 years now I cannot break the spell
[06:04.47]I’ll carry it through my life
[06:07.46]and probably carry it down
[06:21.92]I’ll go to my grave with my melancholy
[06:27.64]And my ghost will echo
[06:30.48]my sentiments for all eternity
[07:03.16]And now when I watch
[07:04.52]‘The Song Remains the Same’
[07:08.59]The same things speak to me
[07:10.88]that spoke to me then
[07:12.29]
[07:14.38]Except that now the scenes with
[07:16.02]Peter Grant and Jon Bonham
[07:17.98]
[07:19.81]Are different when I think of the deaths
[07:22.76]that fell upon them
[07:25.11]I got a friend who lives in the desert
[07:27.65]outside Santa Fe
[07:30.98]I’m going to visit him this Saturday
[07:33.35]
[07:35.76]Between my travels and his divorce
[07:38.42]and our time not being what it was
[07:42.40]It’s been 15 years since I last saw him
[07:47.01]He’s the man who signed me back in 1992
[07:53.15]And I’m going to go there
[07:55.52]and tell him face-to-face - ’thank you’
[08:10.43]For discovering my talent so early
[08:15.83]For helping me along in this beautiful musical world
[08:21.86]I was meant to be in