Led Zeppelin's "Hey Hey What Can I Do"
John Bonham* was my first boyfriend. As you might have guessed, John Bonham was a drummer. Not just any drummer, mind you, but the head drummer of the _____ _______ High School marching band. He was tall and cute, in a very wholesome guy-who's-in-a-high-school-marching-band way, with brown hair, green eyes, and a crooked front tooth.
During football season, the band would march on to the field, play some edited-for-marching-band song like "Frankenstein," then march down to the band shell, located at the south end of the field. Because I was, at the time, a junior varsity cheerleader, I was relegated, along with my other JV colleagues, to the south end of the field, to cheer in front of the band shell. This was humiliating for many reasons: First, every time we would start a cheer, the band would start playing and drown us out. Second, every time we did flips or jumps, some wiseacre would yell that he could see our panties, and one of us would yell back, "They're not panties, asshole. They're called bloomers," which only made the heckling worse. Third, the brass players would empty their spit-valves over the side of the band shell, which, if it were the slightest bit windy, caused globs of spit to drift in our direction.
The only thing that made it tolerable for me was the information I'd received at the beginning of the season: "John Bonham likes you," Darcy Howell whispered to me before the first game. I spent the better part of that night trying not to look at the drum section, acutely aware of how silly I must have looked doing all of our stupid cheers. I tried not to yell too loudly, or kick too high, or be too enthusiastic, but it was very hard to act cool when bouncing around in a tiny skirt with an arrow embroidered on your ass. A few games later, Darcy said John Bonham had been asking about me. She said, "Can I give him your number?" I told her yes. At school the following Monday, she did me one better. She told him where my locker was and he was standing there waiting for me after school. We exchanged awkward small talk, there was a lot of blushing on my part, and finally the deal was sealed with an invitation to go out after Friday's game.
I noted, after that Friday night, a shift in how the band treated us. They let us cheer in peace, they waited for us to finish before they played anything, and if there were hecklers, we couldn't hear it. By the second half of the game, I'd finally gotten my courage up to give John Bonham a shy little wave. He waved back, I think he may have winked, too, and there was a collective "Awwwww," from the rest of the drum section, followed by a "Shut up, dude," from John. I was on cloud nine. The drum major and the cheerleader—a match as cute as Hello Kitty barf.
There were three things in particular I loved about John Bonham: One was his bomber jacket, or rather, the smell of the jacket when he wore it, a combination of leather and Irish Spring. Two was his car. It was an enormous boat of an automobile, an old Park Avenue or something, with dark blue interior and white trim. Three was that he was in a band. The band was called Argyle Tidal Wave** and because this was the early 1990s, they specialized in all manner of grunge covers—Pearl Jam to Nirvana—and assorted "Alternative Nation" nuggets from bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane's Addiction, and Ned's Atomic Dustbin. They were terrible. But live entertainment was scarce in our parts, so terrible or no, everyone went because there was nothing else to do.
John Bonham considered himself a serious musician, and though he liked enough the music he played with Argyle Tidal Wave, his true love was Led Zeppelin. He so wanted to be in a Led Zeppelin cover band. He tried in vain to get Argyle Tidal Wave to play some Zeppelin covers; they pretty much laughed at the thought, for the other guys in Argyle Tidal Wave considered themselves serious musicians, too, with designs on getting out of the John Cougar Mellencamp song we called a town, and onto the cover of Spin. Grunge covers were going to be the ticket there. So John satisfied his need to rock out with his cock out by playing along to his Led Zeppelin CDs in his spare time.
John Bonham and I had a nice run together, but come springtime, I was growing bored with him. In what would become a theme throughout most of my dating life, I wanted to throw John over because he was nice to me. And I no longer wanted nice. I wanted to be treated badly by undeserving and emotionally unavailable, but ridiculously cute, skater boys. My fickle heart and roaming eyes were starting to become a real problem. He refused, no matter how mean or hurtful I was, to break up with me—something I wanted him to do because I was too much of a dumbass to simply end it like a mature person. Finally, because I couldn't stand to see the poor guy suffer any longer, I called it off. We both agreed that we'd always be friends, too young to understand just how big a lie and an impossibility that really is.
A few weeks later, Argyle Tidal Wave was having a big show at The Grange. The Grange was once an Elks Hall or a Moose Lodge and had been converted into something of a performance space, with a low stage and bad acoustics. My friends and I decided to go—I wasn't sure if it was a good idea, but, again, nothing else to do on a Friday night in Steel Valley Ohio, so we had a few drinks and drove over there. They were just starting when we got inside. Keef, their lead singer, was in the middle of a stunningly off-key version of "Alive." On the side of the stage, the parents of the band members were looking on in adoration, swaying out of time to John Bonham's drumming. He sounded so good, that night. He looked happy and was exceptionally cute, in his white t-shirt and beat-up jeans. And, following another theme that would haunt me for the rest of my dating days, I felt a twinge of regret.
From the stage, Keef said, "Alright! We want to thank all of you for coming out tonight—"
A "Woo! You Rock!" came from the back of the room.
"You rock, too, dude," Keef said. "And just to change it up a little, we're going to play a Led Zep song that our drummer, John, picked out."
Hey! I thought. John finally got them to change their mind. That's great!
"He's been feeling a little down on account of his lady leaving him and all—"
My eyes grew wide.
"And so we said, 'Hey, man. Pick a song that expresses how you feel.' And this is the one he picked. Here we go."
At first, it was hard to decipher what song it was. I knew it was a Led Zeppelin song I'd heard John play in his car a million times. Then I remembered: it was "Hey Hey What Can I Do," from the box set. Then I also remembered: it's not such a flattering song, if you're a girl. Keef was on stage, screeching the chorus and pointing at me:
I got a woman, wanna ball all day/
I got a woman, she won't be true, no/
I got a woman, stay drunk all the time/
I said I got a little woman and she won't be true...
People scanned the room, looking to see where I was. I headed for the exit, but the spotlight, manned by John Bonham's dad, no less, caught me and fixed me there, like an insect pinned to a wall.
Led Zeppelin's "Hey Hey What Can I Do"
From the box set, Led Zeppelin
Released in 1990
* Not his real name.
** Not their real name, although, if you can believe it, their real name was just as preposterous.
During football season, the band would march on to the field, play some edited-for-marching-band song like "Frankenstein," then march down to the band shell, located at the south end of the field. Because I was, at the time, a junior varsity cheerleader, I was relegated, along with my other JV colleagues, to the south end of the field, to cheer in front of the band shell. This was humiliating for many reasons: First, every time we would start a cheer, the band would start playing and drown us out. Second, every time we did flips or jumps, some wiseacre would yell that he could see our panties, and one of us would yell back, "They're not panties, asshole. They're called bloomers," which only made the heckling worse. Third, the brass players would empty their spit-valves over the side of the band shell, which, if it were the slightest bit windy, caused globs of spit to drift in our direction.
The only thing that made it tolerable for me was the information I'd received at the beginning of the season: "John Bonham likes you," Darcy Howell whispered to me before the first game. I spent the better part of that night trying not to look at the drum section, acutely aware of how silly I must have looked doing all of our stupid cheers. I tried not to yell too loudly, or kick too high, or be too enthusiastic, but it was very hard to act cool when bouncing around in a tiny skirt with an arrow embroidered on your ass. A few games later, Darcy said John Bonham had been asking about me. She said, "Can I give him your number?" I told her yes. At school the following Monday, she did me one better. She told him where my locker was and he was standing there waiting for me after school. We exchanged awkward small talk, there was a lot of blushing on my part, and finally the deal was sealed with an invitation to go out after Friday's game.
I noted, after that Friday night, a shift in how the band treated us. They let us cheer in peace, they waited for us to finish before they played anything, and if there were hecklers, we couldn't hear it. By the second half of the game, I'd finally gotten my courage up to give John Bonham a shy little wave. He waved back, I think he may have winked, too, and there was a collective "Awwwww," from the rest of the drum section, followed by a "Shut up, dude," from John. I was on cloud nine. The drum major and the cheerleader—a match as cute as Hello Kitty barf.
There were three things in particular I loved about John Bonham: One was his bomber jacket, or rather, the smell of the jacket when he wore it, a combination of leather and Irish Spring. Two was his car. It was an enormous boat of an automobile, an old Park Avenue or something, with dark blue interior and white trim. Three was that he was in a band. The band was called Argyle Tidal Wave** and because this was the early 1990s, they specialized in all manner of grunge covers—Pearl Jam to Nirvana—and assorted "Alternative Nation" nuggets from bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane's Addiction, and Ned's Atomic Dustbin. They were terrible. But live entertainment was scarce in our parts, so terrible or no, everyone went because there was nothing else to do.
John Bonham considered himself a serious musician, and though he liked enough the music he played with Argyle Tidal Wave, his true love was Led Zeppelin. He so wanted to be in a Led Zeppelin cover band. He tried in vain to get Argyle Tidal Wave to play some Zeppelin covers; they pretty much laughed at the thought, for the other guys in Argyle Tidal Wave considered themselves serious musicians, too, with designs on getting out of the John Cougar Mellencamp song we called a town, and onto the cover of Spin. Grunge covers were going to be the ticket there. So John satisfied his need to rock out with his cock out by playing along to his Led Zeppelin CDs in his spare time.
John Bonham and I had a nice run together, but come springtime, I was growing bored with him. In what would become a theme throughout most of my dating life, I wanted to throw John over because he was nice to me. And I no longer wanted nice. I wanted to be treated badly by undeserving and emotionally unavailable, but ridiculously cute, skater boys. My fickle heart and roaming eyes were starting to become a real problem. He refused, no matter how mean or hurtful I was, to break up with me—something I wanted him to do because I was too much of a dumbass to simply end it like a mature person. Finally, because I couldn't stand to see the poor guy suffer any longer, I called it off. We both agreed that we'd always be friends, too young to understand just how big a lie and an impossibility that really is.
A few weeks later, Argyle Tidal Wave was having a big show at The Grange. The Grange was once an Elks Hall or a Moose Lodge and had been converted into something of a performance space, with a low stage and bad acoustics. My friends and I decided to go—I wasn't sure if it was a good idea, but, again, nothing else to do on a Friday night in Steel Valley Ohio, so we had a few drinks and drove over there. They were just starting when we got inside. Keef, their lead singer, was in the middle of a stunningly off-key version of "Alive." On the side of the stage, the parents of the band members were looking on in adoration, swaying out of time to John Bonham's drumming. He sounded so good, that night. He looked happy and was exceptionally cute, in his white t-shirt and beat-up jeans. And, following another theme that would haunt me for the rest of my dating days, I felt a twinge of regret.
From the stage, Keef said, "Alright! We want to thank all of you for coming out tonight—"
A "Woo! You Rock!" came from the back of the room.
"You rock, too, dude," Keef said. "And just to change it up a little, we're going to play a Led Zep song that our drummer, John, picked out."
Hey! I thought. John finally got them to change their mind. That's great!
"He's been feeling a little down on account of his lady leaving him and all—"
My eyes grew wide.
"And so we said, 'Hey, man. Pick a song that expresses how you feel.' And this is the one he picked. Here we go."
At first, it was hard to decipher what song it was. I knew it was a Led Zeppelin song I'd heard John play in his car a million times. Then I remembered: it was "Hey Hey What Can I Do," from the box set. Then I also remembered: it's not such a flattering song, if you're a girl. Keef was on stage, screeching the chorus and pointing at me:
I got a woman, wanna ball all day/
I got a woman, she won't be true, no/
I got a woman, stay drunk all the time/
I said I got a little woman and she won't be true...
People scanned the room, looking to see where I was. I headed for the exit, but the spotlight, manned by John Bonham's dad, no less, caught me and fixed me there, like an insect pinned to a wall.
Led Zeppelin's "Hey Hey What Can I Do"
From the box set, Led Zeppelin
Released in 1990
* Not his real name.
** Not their real name, although, if you can believe it, their real name was just as preposterous.
posted by Iseult at 5:42 PM
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