Ah it's lovely to hear these stories.
Mine LZ doscovery was a slow burner. It was in the mid-1980s, where, as a young teenager, my sister - who was an anachronistic hippy rocker in Ireland - had a copy of Physical Graffiti. This was a magical album for a youngster to paw and wonder at the mysteries within. All those strange photos. So different from the relatively straightforward covers of my other early love, Queen. One of her talented friends had even written the song titles at the bottom of each side of the inner picture sleeves. Such was the quality of the printing that I thought, in my naivety, that it was part of the actual artwork. Perhaps I should upload those for y'all to see?
Anyway, in my early, hesitant rock music explorations, I singularly fell for side two of PG. Just loved it. Over and over again. It's a comfort zone thing - the kinda thing that only kids and teenagers can do with some music and films. HOTH, TUF, then Kashmir. Just magical. The drums! (I got into playing drums once puberty hit, btw, gladly giving up my previous instrument, the piano accordion!)
Then one day, I took the audacious step of flipping the record over and listened to side one. Hmm, now this was interesting. Custard Pie was kinda cool. The Rover had a nice melody. But when I heard In My Time Of Dying, I became obsessed with the track. The drums, the slide guitar - and just what the hell was Robert Plant saying? Didn't matter. It felt amazing and had a power anything I'd ever heard - before or since. Perhaps my burgeoning loins were smelling something that would take my brain years to catch up on.
Such was my love for IMTOD that it became The Song to listen to when my older brother and I would come home from school for lunch. Arrive at 1:15pm, and if both parents were out, I'd put on IMTOD at high volume while we made sandwiches. The 11-minute running time was perfect to prepare our lunch and get our afternoon schoolbooks ready. Then when it finished, we'd retire to the living room and watch - and here is where the tastes of a teenager can really fail in retrospect - Neighbours on BBC1. Maybe my loins were searching for something else... And then at 1:50pm we'd hop on our bikes and zoom back to school. It was a wonderful ritual, the memory unsullied even by Neighbours. "Aaawww Madge!"
We also had The Song Remains The Same on double vinyl, which some became a favourite, even though I couldn't handle side two with Dazed And Confused - it was too slow, too murky, even a bit too spooky. Time, of course, has changed that perception.
At aged 14 or so, a schoolbuddy lent me a tape of ITTOD and, apart from In The Evening, the album didn't really appeal to me. Again, time and changing perceptions...
Eventually, in 1990 the Box Set came out and I bought it, even though my family didn't even have a CD player! Thankfully, a friend did and the true unveiling of the Zeppelin canon began for me. The rest you can surely work out for yourselves...
Finally, it does bother me that in my love for Zeppelin that a lot of current rock/indie bands cannot even come close. Even critically acclaimed and popular artists who sell out gigs tend to leave me cold - too trapped in a machine-like 4/4 dance groove. Not enough organic swing. I do try to change my perception, but few bands have the swing and swagger that Zep had. My search continues (and I'll refrain from naming current artists who do impress me).
That's all for now, folks.