Whole Lot Of Love

Probably more than one or two of my dear readers will remember listening to WKTK-FM in the early 70s where evening DJ Joe Buccheri would play "Stairway To Heaven" from LED ZEPPELIN IV on two turntables at once, one spinning just a half a second behind the other. 

The effect was psychedelic, man. Herbed-up listeners thrilled at the sonic phasing and then ordered 17 pizzas from Village Pizza to quell the munchies.

Down the road at the country station, I tried spinning two copies of  The Philadelphia Fillies by Del Reeves, but no one noticed the slightest bit of difference.

But you will remember sitting there on the floor in the rumpus room in your bellbottoms and tie-dyed tank top, listening to Zep and looking at the album cover and wondering, "Who's that guy?"

And then, someone you knew who knew a guy who knew the guy who used to carry Robert Plant's dry cleaning home said the word was that the fellow known as "stick man" was "Jerry Garcia, man." 

Well now, our top researchers, having cured the world of the common cold and poverty, have the time now to look into these important matters, and we know know who the man was, so read no further if you want to continue wondering.

The album itself doesn't give up anything, no name, no nothin', just a picture of a bent-over man hobbling along on a cane with a bindle of twigs on his back. This photo is seen hanging on a wall with tattered, peeling wallpaper, just like at Sluggo's house.

No less an authority on all things Led Zep than the BBC now weighs in with these facts. They say the band's lead singer, Robert Plant, was looking through the stuff for sale in an antique store in Berkshire, England. He bought it to use on the album jacket.

And now 50-some years later, University of the West of England historian Brian Edwards found an original of the picture while rummaging through auction house news releases on the internet.

Edwards is a Zeppelin fan, so he knew what he had there (“Led Zeppelin created the soundtrack that has accompanied me since my teenage years, so I really hope the discovery of this Victorian photograph pleases and entertains Robert, Jimmy and John Paul") and he got the Wiltshire Museum, which had presented an exhibition of his three years ago, to pony up $515 to buy the original, which was in a photo album entitled  “Reminiscences of a visit to Shaftesbury. Whitsuntide 1892. A present to Auntie from Ernest.”

And the museum verifies that the photographer was one Ernest Howard Farmer, a Victorian photographer.

What's more, the museum says the stick man was Lot Long, 69 at the time, a widowed roof thatcher living in a small cottage.

It is for sure that he didn't even have one record player, let alone two.