10 September 2022
In the autumn of 1970, on a cold, late November evening, I had returned home, on a windy weekend night, and turned my radio to CHUM FM, before falling asleep. I remember only one song, and indeed it is the memory of that song that retains the memory of that night. That tune was Immigrant Song off of Led Zeppelin III. It had about it a mythic, driving, Dionysian-Norse-god aura that I still feel when I hear Immigrant Song with refreshed ears. That was the first Zeppelin album I owned. And while there is much, much more to write about that song, we’ll turn to a quieter, acoustic song called That’s the Way, from the “B” side of the same album.
That’s the Way, in a less didactic style, picks up where the last blog—on tolerance—left off. As I hear it, That’s the Way is about intolerance, reluctantly sensed questions, and unknowable answers. It’s also about judgment—and judgment doubted.
At this point, some of you may wish to go to YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGsmyqIrZRo), Apple Music, or Spotify to listen to the original song. 52 years later, listening almost evokes tears for the tenderness of the work, the simple musicianship, and the impressionistic narrative. As with most gestaltish things, the sum of the parts is less than the whole.
The first thing I noticed is a hissing very forward on the sound stage. It’s there from the opening guitar chords and it’s only now that I’ve realized it’s probably the unfamiliar sound of a 12-string guitar. It’s also noteworthy that there’s a tentative, behind the beat, rhythm to Jimmy Page’s guitar opening. Tentative is important because that’s what they captured that day—a fleeting, effervescent understanding of the ways friendships—relationships—change. I also believe that Robert Plant’s words, at first sung on the return from a long walk, in Bron-Yr-Aur, Wales, (Welch, 1994, Wikipedia), embrace the river of becoming and fading.
The subject of the song is friendship. The deeper intent is change over time and the sad side of innocence and experience. The lyrics speak of two boys in neighbouring homes, one trying to follow his mother’s moral code, the other stepping away. The story is told by the mother’s son. And that mother’s voice is the initial normative element in the song—and the relationship. The opening lines set the stage by defining the dramatic tension:
I don’t know how I’m going to tell you,
I can’t play with you no more.
I don’t know how I’m gonna do what momma told me,
My friend, the boy next door.
I can’t believe what people saying,
You’re gonna let your hair hang down,
I’m satisfied to sit here working all day long,
You’re in the darker side of town.
The most poignant line is the third, as it expresses the tension in the mother’s son. He wants to follow his mother’s guidance while already grieving the shattered unity of the friendship, ruptured by the mother’s judgment of the changes in the boy next door.
The actual changes are longer hair and wilder associations by the boy next door; he is on the darker side of town. That the mother’s son expresses sufficient contentment to “sit here working all day long” indicates that these boys are maturing at different rates. The boy next door is seeking what he believes is available through self-expression (let your hair hang down) and that which has always been available on the darker side of towns: sex, drugs, and every era’s version of rock ‘n roll. In another light, this is a footnote to William Blake’s love of innocence and experience itself reported to be a footnote to Milton’s existential states of paradise and the fall. I think time had moderated Plant’s view of that false dichotomy—which is, I believe, the real point of the song, that falseness.
It’s clear that the mother’s son is deeply preoccupied with this inexplicable rupture, as the lyric describes four instances (hair hang down, darker side, standing by the river, kissing tiny flowers) of hearsay or interaction.
And yesterday I saw you kissing tiny flowers,
But all that lives is born to die.
And so I say to you that nothing really matters,
And all you do is stand and cry.
The first and last of these four lines are acts of the boy next door. The middle lines are (probably borrowed) judgments of the mother’s son. The unfolding is sad. The boy next door is experiencing a larger world— a larger world simultaneously revealed in the smallest of things, like tiny flowers. In response to this seemingly inexplicable behaviour, the mother’s son judges and pronounces with cynicism and faithlessness: everything dies, nothing matters. And in the echo of the distance of judgment, the boy next door cries.
My suspicion is that he cries over the growing gulf between him and his beloved friend. And while the words and interpretive notes help, the music is the thing. There are a ton of spaces in That’s the Way. Spaces filled with soaring and sorrowing pedal steel guitar lines floated atop Page’s guitar work and John Paul Jones’ mandolin. And the song needs and flourishes for those spaces as the thoughtful reflectivity of the chords alone informs the reader from the outset that something big’s going down here.
The guitar, which carries the song from beginning to end, as mentioned, is a twelve-string instrument. For those unfamiliar with guitars, a twelve-string doesn’t have twelve distinctly voiced strings but six pairs of distinctly tuned voices. The effect of an acoustic twelve-string sound is space and depth of sound. That’s the Way has the twelve-string tuned to open G. The G chord, on any guitar is one of the fullest sounds, probably second only to E major, as both use the full six strings of the guitar at resonant max. That resonance is itself figure and metaphor. It is a figure as the primary spatial character within the song/story and it is metaphor as another perspective on the depth and timelessness of the event unfolding over five minutes and thirty-seven seconds.
The final verse is the most optimistic as it leaves the careful listener with the possibility of re-union. The word unity was used above, to describe the relationship between these boys. Does any relationship, after the severance of the wonder of a childhood friendship, ever contain the same undoubted promise?
I don't know what to say about it,
When all your ears have turned away,
But now's the time to look and look again at what you see,
Is that the way it ought to stay?
There’s a Greek chorus in Plant’s lyric, the many whose ears then turn away. That chorus, in the time of the song—and today—is the mother’s son’s perception of group-speak, a force of immense power to human beings. Musically, the reflection of that chorus manifests at 4:18-4:28 on the remastered version. Hopefully, the third line begins the mother’s son’s doubt—the beginning of his own transition to experience and adulthood. And Plant sings the “look and look again” with impactfully unloaded rhythmic tension. The final question speaks for itself and is really the theme.
That theme is reinforced, perhaps inadvertently, with nine words referencing eyes, vision, and seeing within the lyric. It’s about how we choose to see. And it’s about whether or not we choose to ask questions about what is apparently being seen versus what else might be happening. One final musical note. Page is quoted (same Wikipedia article) as having himself added the bass line at 4:44, late in the mixing process, as John Paul Jones had already left the studio. That bass line is critical to the meaning conveyed. That upward moving line grounds, elevates, and enlivens the song. The grounding makes it more of the earth, the enlivened elevation suggests dancing movement, spinning off into eternity, a more optimistic end.
Why is this important? Is this important? Yes, to the latter. To the former, music is important because it is of its time and, at its best, expressive of those things which can’t be worded. That’s the Way still sails on a current not fully apparent but timeless: a wondering why we’re here and how being here unfolds. While there are certainly ethical arguments in play in the lyric, the combination, of words, music, and space, goes to a pre-ethical level of metaphysical concern: the nature of being and relating.
Dan Chalykoff is working toward an M.Ed. in Counselling Psychology and accreditation in Professional Addiction Studies. He writes these blogs to increase (and share) his own evolving understandings of ideas. Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery. Please email him (danchalykoff@hotmail.com) to be added to or removed from the Bcc’d emailing list.
References
Page, J. P. & Plant, R. A. (1970). That’s the Way, Led Zeppelin III. Atlantic Records.
Wikipedia, (2022, 24 August). That’s the Way (Led Zeppelin song). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That%27s_the_Way_(Led_Zeppelin_song)
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