Exclusive - Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me by Martin Millar (first 3 chapters)

June 21st, 2008 by Jay | Filed under Book, Excerpt, Fantasy.

On the 4th of December, 1972, Led Zeppelin came to play in Glasgow. If you live outside of Britain, you might not know where Glasgow is. It’s a large city on the west coast of Scotland.

Scotland is just north of England.

I won’t trouble you with any more geography. I know you have a short attention span. So have I. I don’t seem able to watch a programme on TV for more than a few seconds without changing

channels. I can’t sit through long films any more. I never go to the theatre for fear of being bored. When I’m reading a book I need the chapters to be brief.

No part of this novel is longer than a few hundred words. Even with a short attention span, you’ll be able to read it easily, a little at a time.

It mostly concerns events surrounding the Led Zeppelin gig, all these years ago. I remember the main events well but my memory for detail can be poor. This often causes me problems. I never remember who people are if I’ve only met them a few times, or when anyone’s birthday is, or the date I’m meant to do anything. So I’ve been asking old friends about the concert, finding out things I might have forgotten. For instance, was it raining on the night of the gig? Glasgow is a fairly wet city and it could well have been raining, but I can’t remember. And where did the young women at my school buy their afghan coats? I must have known that at some time. I can still remember how to slit a pair of jeans to the knee, and sew in a triangle of bright material to give them an ‘extra-flared’ look.

My friend Greg was there, and Cherry, and Zed, and also Suzy, who was Zed’s girlfriend, some of the time. Greg was in love with Suzy, and so was I, or so it seemed at the time. I was fifteen, and easily confused about emotions. I was feeling passionate all through the autumn and winter, passionate about Suzy, and Led Zeppelin. I see that this chapter is just 377 words long. Short enough even for your limited attention span. You can’t argue with that.

Most of this book is a record of conversations between myself and my friend Manx. Even when I haven’t bothered writing it down so it looks like a conversation, or putting quotation marks round the TX, it’s most probably something I’ve been talking to Manx about.

The title of this novel could have been Conversations with My Friend Manx. That would have been a good name for a book. Snappy, and accurate. But I rejected it because I wanted to have ‘Led Zeppelin’ in the title. After all, that is what this book is mainly about, me going to see Led Zeppelin when I was at school and telling my friend Manx about it a long time afterwards.

I am very fond of Manx. She’s always prepared to listen to my Led Zeppelin stories. I talk to her every day, usually on the phone. Other times we email each other. Sometimes we meet but since Manx had her baby she finds it difficult to make arrangements. Despite the high quality of my Led Zeppelin stories, Manx is frequently depressed. She’s been depressed since she had the baby. I intend to cheer her up. It’s my mission in life.

“So,” says Manx. “Were you there on that day in 1972 when Led Zeppelin came to Glasgow?”

“I certainly was, Manx. And I’ll tell you all about it. I will tell you about it in a manner similar to the way Plato tells his readers about Socrates in The Symposium, which is a very interesting book, relating

all manner of things through the person of Apollodorus, who heard about it from Aristodemus.”

“That’s fascinating,” says Manx. “But don’t get carried away. Your Ancient Greek stories were last year. This year it’s Led Zeppelin.”

Socrates, who lived around 400 bc, still makes the occasional appearance in the modern world. Only a few years ago he featured in a film, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. I enjoyed that. I liked Bill

and Ted. They would have loved the Led Zeppelin gig.

III

A young friend of Manx’s recently celebrated her twenty-first birthday. We watched as she and her friends went off to enjoy themselves.

“I wish I was twenty-one,” said Manx.

“Me too,” I agreed.

It made me wonder what I did for my own twenty-first birthday. I can’t remember. My mind is blank. What did I do? There must have been some sort of festivity.

I was fifteen when I saw Led Zeppelin. I remember that well. I left home when I was seventeen. I remember that. But, only four years later, things have gone hazy.

I am now just past forty. Too young, I hope, for senile dementia. Perhaps I don’t remember things I don’t want to remember. Perhaps my twenty-first birthday celebration was a fl op. Maybe nobody came.

I have rarely enjoyed birthdays. I distinctly recall some depression on my sixteenth when I felt that I was getting old. A year before that, when Led Zeppelin were coming to town, everything was young and exciting, and the nagging unhappiness caused by my passion for Suzy was not yet causing me serious problems.

A friend in Glasgow tells me that he can’t remember very much about the gig. He doesn’t know if it was raining that night but he does recall that it was very cold outside. When we came out of the auditorium you could see clouds of steam rising off peoples’ bodies. After the excitement of witnessing Led Zeppelin playing onstage only yards away from us, everyone was drenched in perspiration and the warmth of our bodies sent vapour flying away into the freezing night air.

Late into the night, I sometimes search the Internet for the names of people I used to know when I was at school even though there is little chance that I would ever want to talk to any of these people again. I’m not certain why I do this. Probably it is a symptom of my dissatisfaction at life. I am always dissatisfied at something or other. I always have been. The only time I can remember being totally satisfied was when Led Zeppelin walked on stage and started playing. They played for two hours. Two hours of complete satisfaction. You can’t argue with that.

Many years later I’m living in London, making a living as a writer. I’ve progressed far enough to be judging literary competitions. But more of that later. Now I should tell you a little bit about my friends at school; Greg, and Suzy, and maybe Cherry, though Cherry was of not much account. And I will also say more about Suzy’s boyfriend Zed who was, crucially, a year older than us. Greg and I liked Zed. We looked up to him though it was annoying that he was going out with Suzy, who we were both in love with.

I wasn’t at Suzy’s twenty-first birthday party but I’m sure it was a fabulous celebration. She was the sort of person who would always have fabulous birthday celebrations.

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_{Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me is scheduled to be released in September 2008 by Soft Skull Press. Martin Millar was born in Glasgow, Scotland, but has lived in London, England, for a long time. He has written a lot of things — novels and plays and short stories and articles. Millar has written seven other novels — Love and Peace with Melody Paradise; Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation; Lux the Poet; The Good Fairies of New York; Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving, Ruby & The Stone Age Diet, and Lonely Werewolf Girl. Martin Millar likes Jane Austen novels, and wrote a stage play of Emma. He even wrote the novelisation of the Tank Girl movie. Last, but not least, as Martin Scott, Millar writes the Thraxas series of books. There are five so far, and he won the World Fantasy Award for the first one. When he’s not writing, Millar likes to watch Buffy The Vampire Slayer, read history books, especially if they’re about ancient Greece, and play the flute.}