LEMONS OF THE GODS

HAMMER OF THE GODS: THE LED ZEPPELIN SAGA by Stephen Davis (Wm. Morrow & Co.)

by Bill Holdship

Whether you loved Led Zeppelin, hated them or fell somewhere in between, Hammer Of The Gods is a fascinating— albeit often disturbing—book. Stephen Davis has written one of the most thoroughly researched rock biographies to come down the line, presenting all the good, bad and ugly details of the ’70s most influential supergroup in an intimate yet somewhat detached style. And while I’ve heard that certain insiders are upset by some of the details Davis chronicles, I’ve yet to hear anyone claim that those details are unfounded.

Davis depicts the entire Zeppelin odyssey from their preYardbirds roots through John Bonham’s self-destruction, relying mainly on interviews with numerous friends and associates—most notably Richard Cole, the band’s road manager and man Friday for most of the journey. The book isn’t completely built on dirt—the individual bandmembers even come across as likable and sympathetic at times (John Paul Jones, in particular, comes out unscathed, while Robert Plant seems to reach a level of maturity as the story progresses)— although there is a lot of dirt uncovered here. Still, Davis writes in an objective, straight, “just the facts” manner, leaving readers to draw their own conclusions. If he can be faulted for anything, it would be his lack of analysis in such areas as Jimmy Page’s obsession with the occult, or the band’s transformation of underlying “black pride” blues concepts into masturbatory, white boy, cockrock fantasies.

Hammer Of The Gods takes us to the very origins of the heavy metal subculture and “lifestyle” as we know it today, even depicting the literal birth of “headbanging” in Boston during the band’s first tour when stoned fans began pounding their heads against the stage in time to the music. Davis never fails to point out Zeppelin’s influence on the evolution of metal, going so far as to illustrate that the fantasy sequences in The Song Remains The Same set the stage for the HM videos seen on MTV today. The book also captures in graphic (and depressing) detail how rock in the ’70s was suddenly transformed into a big business machine, and how Led Zeppelin changed the music industry forever. The main character here is manager Peter Grant, a mammoth, unscrupulous and ruthless shark who almost makes Colonel Tom Parker look like Captain Kangaroo in comparison.

But even more than rock history, Hammer Of The Gods is a morality study of power and a perverse rock excess (on various levels) that was basically founded by Led Zeppelin and continues to haunt us in many mutated forms to this very day. Zeppelin were the rock royalty “gods” of the decadent ’70s, and this meant an endless supply (especially in America) of any form of debauchery they desired. Considering that both Plant and Bonham were barely out of their teens—and country boys to boot—when they were suddenly thrust into this scene, it’s little wonder that the band often came across as such classic jerks. In fact, it’s amazing that Plant ever grew up at all, or that Page didn’t become another rock casualty. (It’s also amazing that Jones, from the beginning, was able to alienate himself from the entire circus atmosphere.) Bonham, of course, wasn’t as fortunate, and his pathetic downslide is vividly portrayed.

It’s all here—the gigantic tours, the madness, the endless string of tragedies that hit the band when their karma soured near the end, and detailed anecdotes that will delight any rock fan. Especially noteworthy are the two meetings with Elvis Presley (the second encounter is hilarious), a crazed Squeaky Fromme desperately trying to meet Page a week before her assassination attempt on President Ford, and a young Billy Idol of Generation X shouting insults at Zeppelin when both bands were recording in the same studio at the height of the punk explosion. The irony of the latter situation is that today’s Billy Idol seems to encompass the very excesses the punks once despised in Zeppelin.

Of course, apart from this book, the music also speaks for itself— and though we’re often tempted to blame Led Zeppelin for the devil imagery, sexism and general excess of today’s heavy metal, it should be noted (and the book illustrates) that the band did have some genuine historical roots, while it’s more than mere speculation to suggest that today’s breed of metal fascists aren’t likely to come up with anything as moving as “Stairway To Heaven” or as exciting as “Communication Breakdown.” Yes, they did have their moments of greatness—but, in the end, Hammer Of The Gods is the story of what happened to the admiration of greatness and the entire “rock star” concept during the 1970s. It isn’t a pretty story.

WAMBO, BAMBO, THANK YOU RAMBO!

RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD II (Tri-Star)

by

Joe (First Blood,

Part Infinity) Fernbacher

Sly Stallone’s cartoonish hero with a thousand weapons-soon-tobe-action toys, John Rambo, runs through the jungle zapping Orientals and the concomitant Russian meanoids with such unerring velocity (and graphically enough at times to qualify for minor splatter movie status), that by the time you get up to leave the theater, you realize that you haven’t had a single noteworthy thought in your head for the past hour or so, let alone pondered all the accompanying “controversy” surrounding this bit of ’80s-ized John Wayneism via The Road Runner. Which to me makes it the perfect summer movie; the perfect let’sget-bongoed-outta-our-skulls-andgo-to-the-show movie; the perfect fantasy a.k.a. Saturday morning cartoon for those who spend their days and nights either reading Soldier Of Fortune or this week’s issue of The Survivalist Times.

Plot—in case you’re not one of the 70 million or so who’ve seen this epic, and if you’re not, be careful because sometime in the near future, there’s gonna be a knock on your door and the local neighborhood pre-teens are gonna skewer your head to the floor with a barrage of “toy” Rambo recoilless bow & arrows for not being indoctrinated into the “Cult Of Rambo” by either seeing the movie or speaking in monosyllables—is not this film’s strong point. Excuse me, there’s a knock on the door.

The film concerns the release of town-muncher Rambo from prison by Richard Crenna, his former C.O. buddy, to perform a vitally important mission for the ta-ta government. The mission, which he decides to take, is to go back to Nam and photograph a suspected POW camp full of supposed MIAs. You can guess the rest. He goes back to Nam (and kills and maims Orientals and Russians). He finds the POWs (and kills and maims Orientals and Russians). He gets betrayed by the nasty Government Civil Servant, played by Charles Napier, who graced just about all the early Russ Meyer skinathons (and kills and maims some more Orientals and Russians). He gets pissed off, goes on a death rampage, finally rescues everybody and kills everyone who’s either a Russian or an Oriental. He gets ’em all back to the Free World, where he gives a speech about wanting America to love him because he loves it.

Actually, this speech is the best part of the movie because it is not monosyllabic. Incidentally, Rambo: First Blood II was written not only by cinema-laureate Stallone, but by poet James Cameron, who wrote Schwarzenegger’s dialogue in The Terminator.

Rambo: First Blood II is aggressive, magnificently stylized, violent, politically idiotic, fascinating and a phenomenal barometer measuring just exactly where the American psyche currently is— shudder. Stallone is Stallone, nothing more can be said on that subject. I rate this movie 10 Ouzos...Excuse me. I just heard the thump of what sounded like a piece of plastique at my door...

THESE GHOULISH THINGS

by

Edouard Dauphin

Where Were You When—now there’s an inconsequential game most people have played in their lifetimes, generally in a situation where you just want to pass the time. Like on a long car trip, or dur; ing a Madonna concert while you’re waiting for something to be sung on-key. You know the game. Some oldster tells you he was out in the back yard picking rutabagas when word came over the wireless that the Japs had bombed Pearl Harbor. Or some relic of the ’60s recalls that he was listening to the Richard Chamberlain Sings album when JFK was shot. In The Dauph’s own case, I like to remember where I was (in a bar called Carla’s Lounge on Broadway) and what I was doing (drinking boilermakers and handicapping the Florida greyhounds via long distance phone) that momentous autumn day in 1969 when I first became aware of George Romero, arguably the greatest filmmaker—or anything—ever to come out of that steel and sausage mecca, Pittsburgh, Pa.

As it happened, an acquaintance of mine, an out of work Finnish actress who doubled as a numbers runner, had just seen Romero’s then-unknown classic, Night Of The Living Dead, at a movie theater down the street where it was languishing on the second half of a double bill with something like Hercules In Las Vegas. Ulrika dragged The Dauph out of Carla’s and back to the Beacon Theater for the next showing of Living Dead, a movie that renewed my faith in the power of the horror genre to surprise, provoke and entertain. And from that afternoon on, The Dauph could never look at a flesh-eating zombie—whether on a screen or in real life—without a certain feeling of compassion, if not downright identification. Curiously, after 90 minutes of watching the black and white dead of Pittsburgh gnawing on knee joints and femurs and sucking up coils of bloody entrails, I was seized with a powerful craving for a meal of fried chicken and macaroni salad smothered in tomato paste. Weird, huh?

Over the intervening decade and a half, Living Dead has taken its rightful place in the ranks of horror masterworks. In 1979, Romero served up a dazzling sequel, Dawn Of The Dead, in which the rampage of voracious ghouls reached epic proportions. Unlike its predecessor, Dawn was in bloodthirsty color and boasted the remarkable special effects of Tom Savini. Making it all the more succulent was the setting: a garishly lit, Muzak-infested suburban shopping mall. ’Twas a pleasure watching the zombie hordes navigating escalators to gorge themselves on clotted veins and arteries and, following that movie, The Dauphin had an inexplicable hankering for vermicelli topped with barbecue sauce.

Day Of The Dead is the inevitable follow-up—by now, the armies of walking cadavers have reduced America to an apocalyptic wasteland. The dead rule, and the scattered bands of the living must take refuge in isolated outposts, hoping to fend them off or somehow reverse the tide. One such enclave is in Florida, and this provides the claustrophobic setting for the picture. In an underground maze of caverns, a detachment of psychotic soldiers is pitted against a motley gang of scientists. True to form, the military goons favor torturing the zombies and blowing their brains out while the lab geniuses opt for dissecting them to find out why they’re so damned hungry. Both choices, naturally, are tailor-made for a goreappreciative audience, so we get about equal doses of exploding crania and surgical dismemberments.

As we’ve come to expect with George Romero, Day Of The Dead has suspense, lots of sudden jolts, an enormous amount of bickering, touches of bizarre humor and, in case you’re interested, a smattering of socio-political relevance. In his bleak landscape, there is very little hope and just about none if we cave in to the doctrines of either the military or scientific leadership. If Romero’s vision of America in the future is one of a barren wilderness prowled by living corpses (“All the shopping malls are closed,” laments one character, early in the movie), The Dauph, concerned citizen that he is, has just one question: When can we expect a sequel, George? In the meantime, buoyed with the fresh memory of lungs and intestines being gruesomely wrenched from shrieking ictims, I’m off for a late snack of congo eel basted in Bordelaise sauce!