That’s Jimmy Page!
As Bonnie and I drank our way through downtown Chicago, we stumbled inside a bar called Mother’s.
Atop a set of steep stairs sat the bouncer. “IDs please,” he said, looking straight at me.
The drinking age in Chicago was 21; I was 20 and Bonnie was 18. Bonnie had a fake ID that she’d been using for years. It had her picture on it and her own birthday. I was using my friend Jodi’s fake ID – whose picture (not mine) was on the ID, along with a completely fabricated name, birthdate and New York address.
The bouncer watched me swaying and said, “What’s your address?”
I looked at Bonnie for support; I wanted to run.
“Why are you looking at her?” the bouncer said. “Don’t you know your own address?”
I spit out something that may or may not have been the right address. So he asked for “my” birthday – which I had memorized; I quickly spit out the digits from Jodi’s fake ID.
The bouncer rolled his eyes and handed back our IDs. He didn’t even quiz Bonnie who, at 18, looked at least 25 while I looked 16 until I was almost 30.
We made our way down the steep stairs and into the bar. We ordered very strong drinks to calm our nerves after the close encounter. Then we started to enjoy ourselves in the otherwise very empty bar.
Maybe half an hour later, a group of freaky people came in. They sat at the bar, too, a few stools away.
“Oh my god look at his hair!” I whispered, probably too loud for the very small space. My comment couldn’t have been new to the guy whose hair-sprayed ‘do resembled a bleach-blonde Everest. A cross between a mohawk and a pompadour, that guy’s hair was totally 80’s.
Bonnie looked where I was pointing. “I think that’s Jimmy Page,” she said.
I had no idea what Jimmy Page looked like. “He’s like 20!” I said about the hair-guy.
“Not him!” Bonnie hissed frantically. “The guy sitting next to him! That’s fucking Jimmy Page!”
Jimmy Page, the legendary Led Zeppelin guitarist, was one of Bonnie’s idols. Bonnie did her high school term paper on Stairway to Heaven.
“That can’t be Jimmy Page,” I said. To me, the guy she referenced looked old and tired. Plus there was a girl stuck to him who looked like she’d just stepped out of 1962 in her gold miniskirt and thigh-high boots.
“I’m going over there,” Bonnie said.
Of course I went with her, terrified to my core.
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FLASHBACK to a day in an airport, when I was young. My family and I were walking through the airport, back when airport lounges were wide open, cigarette smoke pouring into the fray.
An old man with huge glasses and a cigar sat front and center at the airport lounge; everyone insisted he was George Burns. As “cute little kid,” someone gave me 50 cents to ask “George” if he was the person he appeared to be.
It took every ounce of courage in my tiny body, but I walked over and asked.
“George” (who sounded exactly like George Burns) laughed and said, “No, but I get that all the time.” To this day, I have no idea if I met George Burns.
But in Mother’s bar in Chicago on that cold day in 1985, I definitely met Jimmy Page.
I also met Bad Company’s Paul Rogers, drummer Chris Slade and bassist Tony Franklin, all members of Jimmy’s new band, The Firm.
That night was the beginning of a rough ride.