Come on you Wolves
When I was young, I was a huge Led Zeppelin fan. As my parents and neighbours will testify. On a date in 1975 I arrived home with Physical Graffiti under my arm and proceeded to play it. Realising it was that good I decided the whole street should hear it; not just the once but all day long and at an ear-splitting, head wrecking volume. Suffice to say not everyone on our road in Rathfarnham agreed with me.
I was more a Jimmy Page gal than a Robert Plant gal: I did admire Percy`s vocal range but found his onstage contortions and his tummy a bit off putting. Jimmy was darker and weirder and , well, darker.
Makes it all the more cringey to tell this tale. In 1987 I left my job in the design department of Tyne Tees TV and joined a new crew at Pinewood Studios to begin a new Channel Four music series titled *Wired*. This was meant to be a leaner, better, cooler version of The Tube which had just ended.
I was employed by an infuriating little man called Willy, or Alasdair, depending on what day it was and who was asking. Within a couple of weeks of working with him I realised he was either working on two or three other films at the same time or , more likely, was on the run from somebody.
He designed a set for the show which, among other anomalies, featured a completely impractical sloping stage. Needless to say any road crew that arrived to set up found this more than annoying as it made setting up equipment quite a challenge. Anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of physics would know this wasn`t going to work. And because my boss was almost entirely absent when the shouting started, I, being his assistant, had to face the flak from numerous sweaty disgruntled crewmembers as amps and snare drums slid gently off the stage with alarming frequency . After a couple of weeks of this, during which I was shouted at by backline from Ry Cooder to the Style Council, I realised this was a job I would not be enjoying for much longer.
Then one fine Monday morning I was informed that Robert Plant and his new band would be doing a *special* in Studio 8. Now, if you were me,and this was an ordinary situation, and I was fourteen, and I was happy at my work, this would definitely be something to write home about. A lot of squeeeeeeeeeing and fainting and pawing and fainting again.
But no.
I had spent most of the morning being yelled at down the phone by somebody or other followed in quick succession by a lengthening queue of people making utterly unreasonable demands, follwed again by people wanting to know where my boss was and more importantly what his real name was.
By noon I was grumpy,fractured, tetchy and exasperated and marched up and down the corridors of Pinewood muttering about having quit better jobs than this.
I stamped into my office and slammed the door and sat at the drawing board, fuming and hissing with resentment.
There was a gentle knock on the door and before I could shout *GET LOST*, Robert Plant poked his head round the door.
"Hi babe. Mind if I use your phone?"
Oh all right then, I thought. But said, "Of course. Want me to get out?"
"No, no, work away", which I did,; I remember drawing skulls and crossbones on a cartoon of my boss`s anno
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